Big Man Read online

  5

  All the way uptown, I kept hoping she’d be home. And then I kept telling myself she wouldn’t be home, just so I wouldn’t be disappointed in case she wasn’t. I used to play that game with myself when I was a kid. I remember one Christmas I was wishing so hard for a two-wheeler bike I almost got to be a nervous wreck. So I kept telling myself, “You ain’t gonna get that bike. You’re gonna wake up Christmas morning, and there’s gonna be the usual five-and-dime crap under the tree, and maybe some socks or ties from one of Papa’s sisters. But no bike.” That’s what I kept telling myself. And when Christmas morning came, there wasn’t no bike, just like I really knew there wouldn’t be. And I wasn’t so disappointed, though I’ll tell you the truth, it really broke my heart that Christmas morning.

  I did the same thing to myself now. First I said, “She’ll be home,” and then I said, “She won’t.” Back and forth, like a ping-pong game. When the cab pulled up in front of her building, I reached into my pocket for the wad Turk had given me. There was five hundred dollars in that wad! I’d never seen so much money all together in all my life! I whistled and handed the cabbie a fiver, and then I pocketed the wad and climbed up the steps on the front stoop. Some kids were playing Johnny-on-a-Pony, and a skinny kid in the pony line was having a hell of a time holding up another kid who must have weighed at least four hundred pounds.

  I went into the building and almost ran up to the third floor. I walked down to the door at the end of the hall, and I stopped to catch my breath, and I thought, Be home, Celia honey. Please be home. And then I thought, She won’t be home.

  I knocked on the door.

  There was a long pause, and then I heard her say, “Who is it?”

  My hands were beginning to shake a little. “Me,” I said. “Frankie.”

  “Oh.” She paused. “Just a second.”

  I waited for her to come to the door, wondering what she’d be wearing, hoping she’d have on what she had on the night she cleaned my leg. I wondered what it would be like when she let me into the apartment. I was getting very nervous in the hallway there. I’ve always been an impatient guy. If something’s gonna happen, I like it to happen quick.

  The door came back a little, and then was stopped by the chain. Celia’s face showed in the crack of the door, the blond hair hanging loose over one eye. She didn’t have on no lipstick. I figured I’d rustled her out of bed.

  “If you want Andy,” she said, “he’s not home.”

  “I know. I don’t want Andy.”

  “No? What do you want?”

  “You know what I want,” I said. “Take the chain off the door.”

  “Just like that, huh?” she said.

  “Yes. Just like that.”

  “Suppose I don’t want to take the chain off?”

  “You do. I know you do.”

  “Andy may be home any minute,” she said. “Andy’s a very jealous man.”

  “Andy’s doing an errand for Mr. Carfon. And after that he’s going to a ball game. Andy won’t be home any minute.”

  “My,” Celia said, and I could see her smiling in the crack of the door. “You’ve really planned this out, haven’t you?”

  “Haven’t you?” I said. “Take off the chain.”

  “I’m not even dressed,” she said. “I was taking a nap when you came.”

  “Let me in, Celia,” I said.

  “I told you. I’m not dressed.” She stepped a little closer to the door, and I could see the hint of white flesh showing in the narrow wedge between the door and the doorframe.

  “Open it, Celia,” I said.

  “Lower your voice,” she said, and I could see the smile on her mouth behind the goddamn thick wooden door that separated us. “I have neighbors, you know.”

  “I don’t care about—”

  “What would my neighbors think? A strange man calling on me when I’m not even dressed?”

  “Open the door, Celia!”

  “Do you really want me to open the door?”

  “Yes, damnit!”

  It was a funny thing. I mean, it was like that time in the car. That time it was as if holding her ankle was everything there was in the world. This time it was as if what was happening there with that door between us, with that damn chain keeping the door closed against me, with the glimpses of her body and her face and her blond hair flashing into the wedge, it was as if this was everything there was. It was as if everything would have already happened the minute she took off the chain. After that, there maybe would be a letdown. This was the whole bit, the whole mounting, building goddamn bit to the minute she took off that chain and let me into the apartment.

  “Won’t you please go, Frankie?” she said poutingly.

  “No.”

  “But I told you, baby, I’m not dressed. You don’t want to come in and find me this way, do you?”

  “Yes. That’s what I want, Celia.”

  “If I took off this chain, Frankie, I’m not sure I’d be able to trust myself.”

  “Take off the chain, Celia.”

  “Oh, but Frankie, I’m afraid,” she said, and she didn’t sound afraid at all. “Suppose I lost control of myself? Suppose—”

  “Open it, Celia!”

  “Don’t force me, Frankie!”

  “Open the goddamn door!”

  “Why? What do you want, Frankie?”

  “You know what I want.”

  “What?” she whispered. “Tell me.”

  “I want to go to bed with you.”

  The hall was very quiet. In the wedge of the door, Celia was no longer smiling. Slowly, she wet her lips with her tongue, and then her hand came up, slowly, slowly, passing the white flesh of her breasts, the puckering thrust, and then the shadowed hollow of her throat, and then her slender fingers touched the metal and she took off the chain.

  The streets were alive.

  You can say what you want about New York, but it’s the only city that jumps. It jumps twenty-four hours a day. It jumps in the morning when everybody’s rushing to get to work, it jumps at lunchtime when everybody’s in the streets rushing around digging everything, it jumps all afternoon when the kids are out of school and playing stickball or riding their pushos or playing stoopball or just lounging with the girls; it jumps, it’s the goddamned jumpingest town in the world. And at night, when the lights come on, they set the pace, man, they tell the world this is New York, come live, man, this is New York where everybody’s alive, where everybody jumps!

  I was feeling great that afternoon. There were kids swarming all over the streets, and I could hear the honk of horns and that big groaning sound the buses make when they pull away from the curb, and the swish of the DSC trucks sprinkling the streets, and the yells of the guys selling fruit and vegetables from wagons that were still pulled by horses. I wished somebody would turn on a johnny pump because I felt like running right under the water with my clothes on. Jesus Christ, she was a woman. Jesus Christ, I was flying!

  I walked along feeling like I owned the city. Everything in the city was mine, you follow me? I owned that skyline. It belonged to me, Frankie Taglio, and the hell with you! I owned those streets that cut like razors from the Hudson to the East River. I owned all those bridges that connected all the goddamn confused boroughs of the city, I owned everybody running around in the streets, I owned all the kids who were screaming their heads off, and I owned all the young girls who were just beginning to blossom, and I owned all the older girls in their tight dresses with their marvelous wiggling little behinds; I owned the streets, I owned the buildings, I owned the people, I owned the city!

  I wanted more of her. I wanted all I could get.

  I was still flying when I ran into May. I was walking down Third Avenue, and for a minute I missed the El, did you ever feel that way? It was like I expected it to be there, and all of a sudden it wasn’t there. I missed the shadow all at once, and the big noise of the trains and the sparks that used to fly down into the street. There was a big
wide avenue now where the elevated used to be, and I was walking along thinking how everything changes and thinking how I myself was beginning to change in just the past few days, how I was on my way to being somebody in a big outfit, how if I played my cards right I could be a big man, when I ran into May.

  “Frankie!” she said, and I stopped short and looked around for a few minutes, and then I saw her standing on the sidewalk near the furniture store.

  “Oh, hello, May,” I said.

  I walked over to her, and she smiled with all of her face, the way she always smiled, her eyes crinkling and her nose crinkling and her lips opening over the whitest teeth God ever made. I got to explain the way May looked that day because I think it was part of this feeling that I owned the city. I felt, you see, like I owned her too a little. I guess it tied in with what happened with Celia, but Celia was something you did, and May could be something you owned, I don’t know if that makes any sense. But anyway she was wearing a bright yellow dress, a sort of cotton thing, I guess. It looked very good on her because of the black hair cut real close to her head and the big brown eyes which always looked to me like the kind of eyes you expect on some South Sea Island girl, sort of tilted, you know, and fringed with very thick black lashes. She was a pretty kid, May, with none of the kind of electricity that came out of Celia, but Celia was an older woman, thirty, you know, and May was only nineteen and with this sweetness coming out of her, like a young, pure thing you wanted to pet. I hadn’t seen her since before that night I got shot, and it was good seeing her again. I mean it.

  “Where have you been, Frankie?” she said.

  “Oh, around.”

  “You haven’t called.”

  “No. I been busy.”

  “Too busy to pick up a telephone?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been real busy.”

  “It was kind of sudden, you know. All at once, no Frankie. You date me three months in a row, and then you can’t even afford a phone call.”

  “I can afford phone calls.”

  “They why didn’t you call me?”

  “I told you. I was busy.”

  “Are you still busy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.”

  “That ain’t what I meant. Look, May, I got to go downtown. I’ll give you a ring, huh?” I don’t know why, but she was beginning to give me a sort of pressed feeling. It started out with me feeling I owned her, and now it was twisting around so that I wanted to get clear fast before she owned me. “I’ll give you a ring, huh?”

  She opened the brown peepers wide and nailed them right to my eyes and said, “When?”

  I had to laugh. She looked so damn cute in that minute that I forgot all about being owned. “Boy, you don’t believe in rushing a guy, do you?”

  “When the guy is you, it makes a difference,” she said. “I was very hurt when you stopped calling, Frankie.”

  “Well,” I said, “I was out of town for a while. That’s why I didn’t call, you see.”

  “Really? Where were you?”

  “Just out of town.”

  “Vacation?”

  “Sort of.”

  We didn’t say anything for a few minutes. I didn’t know whether to ask her out or not. I thought of Celia and how different they were from each other, but of course Celia was something else, I mean I didn’t even think of taking Celia out, I mean that was out of the question.

  “What are you doing now?” I said.

  “You mean right this minute?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Nothing special. I was just …” She stopped. “Why?”

  “You want to come downtown with me? I got some shopping to do.”

  “What kind of shopping?”

  “A few shirts, a suit, things like that. What do you say? You can help me pick them out.”

  “Well … I don’t know …”

  “And we can get a bite to eat and take in a show later. What do you say?”

  May smiled. “I’d love it, Frankie,” she said.

  I began seeing Celia every night Andy was away.

  September had just rolled in, and there ain’t none of this falling-leaves jive in the city; there’s just the feeling that life’s about to begin, everybody’s kicking off that old summer dust and getting ready to come to grips with that bastard winter again. It was great. I really felt great. Having Celia was like having an oil well in Texas.

  One night, one of those crazy cool nights, I was dressing when the phone rang. I went out of the bedroom and into the living room. I picked up the phone and said, “Yah?”

  “Is that a way to answer the phone?” Celia said.

  “Celia? Hey, I’m sorry, I thought … I was expecting …”

  “One of your other women, I guess,” Celia said.

  “No, Milt.”

  “Can you come over tonight?”

  “What?”

  “Tonight. Andy’s not going to be home. Can you come here?”

  “Well …”

  “Don’t you want to?”

  “Oh, baby, how I want to.”

  “Then?”

  “I can’t. There’s a big meeting at Mr. Carfon’s place.”

  “You don’t have to go.”

  “Sure I do. You know that. I have to go.”

  “Break it, Frankie. Come to me.”

  “Celia, I can’t.”

  She sighed, and that sigh went through me like a spear, I swear it. “Tomorrow night then?” she said. “I’ll get rid of Andy.”

  “What time?”

  “Eight o’clock. I’ll send Andy to the fights.”

  “Gone,” I said.

  “Good. I’ll be waiting. Goodbye, boy.”

  I hung up and smiled. My mother looked up at me. She was wearing an old house dress, and she had that drunkard’s look on her face, you know the look I mean? Where all the respect goes, and where there’s nothing left but a pair of sad eyes and a droopy mouth, where even the skin seems to have given up the fight.

  “You going out again, Frankie?” she said.

  “Yeah.” I went over to her, and I sat down next to her, feeling sorry for her all at once. “Ma,” I said, “why don’t you lay off that stuff, huh?”

  “Leave me alone, Frankie,” she told me. “Don’t tell your mother what to do.”

  “Ma, listen to me. I’m going places. I’m gonna be a big man, I mean it. You don’t have to … to poison yourself like this. Look, Ma, in a little while maybe we can get out of this dump, you know? Get out of Harlem for good, you see? I’ll be able to get you nice clothes, and a good house, and a car maybe. How’d you like that, Ma? A nice car.”

  “I don’t want a nice car,” she said.

  “Come on, Ma, can’t you just lay off this stuff? Ma, it’s only … Ma, don’t you remember what you used to look like, how you used to walk, and laugh, and be fun all the time? Ma, for Christ’s sake, can’t you—?”

  “Oh, shut up!” she said.

  I got up and went out of the room, and when I was tying my tie I all of a sudden felt like crying. What was the sense? I thought. What the hell was the sense of anything? The Russians are ready to grab outer space, and my mother is a drunken pig. What’s the sense?

  I sat in the bedroom all alone, wearing my new suit, smoking a cigarette, waiting for Milt to call. In the living room, my mother began weeping the way she always does when the sauce takes hold of her, crying for ghosts, crying for dead things, not knowing she herself was a ghost. Milt called and said he’d stop by for me at seven thirty. When he got there at seven twenty-five, my mother was passed out on the couch. He took a look at her, but he didn’t say nothing. Nobody has to say nothing about a drunk. A drunk is a drunk. You just don’t spell it any other way.

  Milt was driving a big new Olds. We piled in, and he said, “Big doings tonight.”

  “Yeah? How so?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “We got to do another caper?”

  “No, nothing like that. You’ll
see.”

  He was smiling like that disappearing cat in the Alice in Wonderland thing, and I wondered just what was up. I knew Milt was a pretty big man because, as far as I could see, he never went out on a caper. The way I figured it, there was Mr. Carfon who was the top and untouchable. Then there was Turk Fenton who was sort of like Mr. Carfon’s confidential assistant, although maybe he was a full partner, having brought in the Chicago crowd.

  The organization branched out after that into a lot of little organizations, like sort of branch offices with one executive office. Milt, Andy, Weasel, Jobbo, me, and about half a dozen other guys formed one branch of the organization. I’d met a few guys from the other branches, like the Bronx crowd, and the Nassau County bunch, and even once a guy from some hick town named Monticello, but of course I wasn’t real chummy with them.

  Milt was like the top man in our branch. He took orders from nobody but Mr. Carfon and Turk. Then came Andy, I supposed, and then Weasel, and I was on a par with Jobbo and the other half-dozen guys—or maybe I was just a little ahead of them, who knows? Truth was, I hardly saw Jobbo at all since the night I got shot, so maybe he wasn’t even a part of the thing, maybe he just was what Turk called a punk. But I was a part of the thing, that’s for sure, a big outfit and a very smooth-running one, with plenty room for advancement because guys were always being promoted. It sounds funny when you say it like that, but that’s just the way it worked—like a big business outfit.

  Andy and Weasel and Petey and Max and Carrie and most of the guys from our branch were there when we got to Mr. Carfon’s place. I didn’t see Turk around noplace, but I figured he was in back with Mr. Carfon. There were drinks around, so I helped myself, and I munched on some potato chips and such, and just shot the breeze with the boys. Andy was in a pretty chipper mood, it seemed, and when Milt asked him “How’s that piecy wife of yours, man?” he just smiled and chuckled and nodded his head, and I thought, Man, if you only knew how that piecy wife of yours really is! Anyway, everybody seemed to be in a real happy mood, so I figured something happy was in the breeze. Maybe Mr. Carfon was going to give us a bonus or something.

  After about ten minutes, Mr. Carfon came out of his office.