Lover

Chapter Seven

“Hold on,” he said. “Right here is good enough.”

“This is only 93rd,” the cabby said. “Thought you wanted 96th Street.”

“This’ll do.”

He passed a bill to the driver, told him to keep the change, then opened the door and swung out onto the sidewalk. It was a bright, warm day — no clouds, a hot sun overhead. For several moments he stood still on the sidewalk, watching the cab pull away from the curb and continue north on Broadway, looking the old neighborhood over to get the feel of it once again after three or four months away from it, sniffing the air and getting his bearings. Then he crossed Broadway at the corner, then continued uptown toward 96th Street with his arms swinging at his sides.

The same old neighborhood, he thought. The same buildings, the same people. He wondered what he’d expected to find. Nothing much, he thought.

Why come back at all? That was a good question. The books would have dozens of answers. Symbolic search after his vanished past. A back-to-the-womb movement. An unconscious attempt to regain his previous footing now that he was slipping.

Hell with it. He was coming back to have a look at his old stamping grounds. To hell with the books. That was all he was doing and to hell with it.

He wore the jacket of his brown tweed suit with a pair of soft brown flannel slacks. He wore a tan sport shirt open at the neck. He walked easily, but as he approached the pool hall he felt his stride changing to the walk of the old Johnny Wells. He was turning into a jungle animal again, walking hungry. He felt old familiar lines of tension and wariness return to the corners of his eyes and to his mouth.

Home, he thought. He grinned wryly to himself and pulled open the outer door of the pool hall, then took the stairs two at a time. He was still in good shape — good living hadn’t ruined his physical condition at all. He hesitated at the top of the stairs, glanced through one door at a small bowling alley, then opened the other door and strode into the pool hall.

Nothing was changed. Cigarette butts were sprinkled across the wood board floor. A gnarled man stood behind the counter and smoked a cigar. Teen-agers leaned against the walls, bent over the green felt-covered tables, smoked and talked. Older men played billiards with the precision of mathematicians. It took Johnny a couple of seconds to get his bearings. He hadn’t been in a pool hall since he had left the neighborhood. A gentleman didn’t frequent a pool hall. A gentleman didn’t play pocket pool at all and if he played billiards it was in a home or a private club. He felt awkward standing there and covered his awkwardness by lighting a cigarette. He blew out smoke and felt a little more at home.

He looked around. There were plenty of familiar faces but he couldn’t put names to any of them. Ricky and Beans and Long Sam were not around He glanced at his watch. It was almost five. Maybe someone would drop around soon.

He walked to the counter and the gnarled man looked up at him. “Gimme a pool table,” he said. The man nodded shortly and told him to take table six.

He walked over to select a cue and thought that it was funny — he hadn’t said I’d like a table or A table please. Instead his speech had found its way back to four months ago. It fit the neighborhood again. Funny.

He found a heavy cue that didn’t seem to be warped. He rolled it on table six and saw that it was true. He racked the balls tightly, chalked his cue and broke the pack. He walked around the table, getting his bearings, then took an easy shot at the six, trying to poke it into the side, and miscued. He topped the cue ball and it dribbled off the side for a scratch.

He cut his next shot too thin and missed the pocket a full six inches. He shot several more times and missed each time, and he felt as though everybody in the place was staring at him. This he knew at once to be patently ridiculous. Few people at a pool hall waste their time watching other players. But he was embarrassed and more than a little disgusted by the way he was playing. He stopped to light another cigarette and smoked for a few minutes while studying the table and trying to settle down. Then he ground the cigarette under his heel and picked up his cue again, crouching over the table.

He sank two in a row, missed a tough bank shot, dropped another ball, then missed twice in a row. He kept playing and gradually his game came back to him. He still knew how to play — it was just a question of restoring the lines of communication between his brain and his hands. Piece by piece the lines returned. His cuts were more precise, his English better, his position more nearly accurate. He ran a string of five balls climaxed with a tough combination shot and felt a lot better.

He went on playing. The game took control of him — once he got better he stopped worrying about the people around him, about himself, about anything other than the game. He cleared the table, racked the balls, cleared and racked again and again. From time to time somebody approached him and suggested a game; each time he dismissed the new arrival without raising his head and went ahead with his practice. He did not get particularly good but then he had never been top-flight. He could give Beans a game and could take Long Sam most of the time but he was never a match for Ricky. He simply wasn’t that good.

He lost track of the time and merely played. Then, while he was lining a hard shot and gauging his position at the conclusion of the shot, a hand took hold of his cue. He whirled around, angry, and Ricky was there.

“Cool,” Ricky said. “You’re a stranger here. Welcome home, man.”

“You been around long?”

“Ten minutes. I been watching you. Man, I never saw you work so hard on a string of balls in my life. You were almost sweating, man. You weren’t so bad, come to think of it.”

“Just out of practice.”

“Yeah, I guess. What are you doing here man? Thought you were gone for good. I was digging the threads, you know, and they stack up fine. You dress like money. What are you doing uptown, huh? Slumming?”

The tone was banter but Johnny caught a note of reproach. “Just wanted to drop around,” he said. “See people, like that. What’s happening?”

“Not much.”

“Beans and Sam around?”

Ricky shrugged. “Beans lammed,” he said. “Two, three weeks after you split. Somebody tipped him they saw fuzz around his building. Beans didn’t even try to go home. He had a roll stashed and he grabbed it and split. Caught a rattler for Chi.”

“He still in Chicago?”

“I don’t know, man. Like he never wrote.”

“And Sam?”

Ricky sighed. “Sam got busted,” he said. “He hit this cat and this cat got a look at his face before the lights went out. Picked Sam out of a lineup. We found Sam a lawyer who told him to cop a plea. He got a year and a day. His lawyer put the fix in for him and he should be on the street in another, oh, three months at the outside. Makes a total of six months.”

“That’s hard.”

“It’s a bitch.”

“And you?” Johnny looked at him. He looked the same — the same clothes, the same hungry look. But it was always hard to tell what Ricky was thinking.

“I’m alive. You want to split, talk over a beer or something? This place can get on your nerves after a while.”

“Solid.”

Johnny returned his cue to the rack, went to the counter and paid for his time. He’d been there almost two hours. It hadn’t seemed that long.

They went down the stairs to the street, then around the corner and across 96th Street to a small neighborhood bar. Ricky ordered two glasses of draft and they carried them to a table. Johnny sipped the beer and didn’t like the taste. But he couldn’t order cognac in a bar like that. It would be definitely the wrong way to come on. He sipped more of the beer, then lit another cigarette and gave one to Ricky.

“So?”

“I don’t know,” Ricky said. “It’s a hassle.”

“There’s a shortage of marks?”

“Not that. But you get a reputation. You hustle too long and they know you, see you coming. I can’t get a game around here unless it’s with some dumb schmuck who just blew in from Toledo or something. I been going up to a few places in the Bronx, neighborhood places up there where they don’t know me. Another week or two and they know me there. It’s a bitch.”

Johnny didn’t say anything.

“Anyway, another two weeks and it doesn’t matter.”

“How’s that?”

“The army. I’m going in.”

“You get drafted?”

“Hell, no. They don’t draft you until you’re past twenty-one around here. No, I signed up. Three years working for old Uncle Sam.”

Ricky made circles on the table top with the beer glass. He made half a dozen circles while Johnny sat and watched him. “I don’t know,” he said. “I figure it’ll be a drag. But it’s like more of a drag sitting around on your butt all the time, looking to hustle some schmuck for a couple of bucks, then taking in a movie or some dumb broad with braces on her teeth and her eyes crossed. At least I get out of this crap town. Three squares a day, a nice pretty uniform to get the broads nice and hot. Maybe I’m nuts, I don’t know.”

“It makes sense.”

“That’s how I figure it but I might be wrong. How about you, man? Got things going for yourself?”

“I get by.”

“You must to dress like that. Those threads cost somebody money, man. You working?”

“Still hustling.” It was true enough, he thought. He was still working the angles. The money didn’t make him any less of a hustler.

“Working the broads?”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s a living. I guess it’s breaking right for you, huh? That’s all that counts.”

Johnny nodded. Rick picked up his glass, finished his beer. “Look, man, like I got to go now. I’d like to hang around but I have to cut.”

“Something cooking?”

Ricky hesitated. “You remember a girl named Elaine Conners?”

Johnny remembered the girl vaguely and nodded. He tried to recall whether he had made her or not and decided that he hadn’t. She wasn’t too much to look at. Not ugly, but sort of plain-looking. About a year younger than he was.

“Well, I been seeing her lately. I got to run over to her place now.”

“You getting much?”

Ricky looked slightly embarrassed. “Well,” he said, “no. It’s not like that. I mean she doesn’t want to, well, to put out. I suppose she would if I wanted her to bad enough but I don’t want to push, if you know what I mean.”

Johnny nodded.

“The army bit was her idea,” he said. “To get it out of the way, so I won’t have to go later. And partly to get some money saved up.” He lowered his eyes. “Maybe I’ll never see her again, I don’t know. But it looks like we might get married or something when I get out of the army. Hell, it’s too far away to talk about it. But you never know.”

There was an awkward moment during which neither of them said anything. Then Ricky stood up, grinning. “Take it slow,” he said. “We’ll run into each other, man. Be cool and keep taking good care of the broads. Knock off one or two for me, huh? Just for old times sake.”

Johnny watched him leave. Then he turned his attention back to his beer. He looked at it but didn’t drink it. He lit another cigarette from the butt of the one he was smoking and thought about Ricky.

Things had changed.

Beans was gone, headed for Chi the last anybody had heard. Long Sam was doing a bit in jail with three months to go before he hit the street again. Ricky was ready to put on a uniform and play soldier. And thinking about getting married to a girl who wouldn’t even spread for him.

Things had definitely changed.

And here I am, he thought. Looking around for something and not knowing what it is. He didn’t fit this neighborhood any more. He could relax in it, could let his speech find its way back to the way it had been, could walk like a hood and think like a hood. But it was temporary. He didn’t belong on the upper west side any more. He was a different person than the Johnny Wells who had lived on 99th Street.

Where did he belong?

A good question, he thought. He picked up his beer, raised it to his lips, then changed his mind and returned it to the table. He just plain didn’t like beer. There didn’t seem to be any point in faking it.

He stood up and walked out of the bar. He had a problem and he couldn’t find the answer. But the answer had to be somewhere uptown. He was fairly sure of it.

Outside, the air had a chill in it. He buttoned the brown tweed jacket. He started to put the collar up the way you did on the upper west side when the air was cold. Then he remembered that it was an expensive jacket and left it as it was.

He started walking after a few seconds of indecision. He had no goal in mind. He simply followed his feet, letting them take him wherever they wanted to go.

He was surprised when he looked up suddenly and found himself standing in front of the building where he used to live. He had not planned on going back. There was nothing to go back to — his room had undoubtedly been rented time and time again since he left it. There was nobody there whom he wanted to see.

Then he remembered the girl.

The fourteen year old one. The virgin. The girl it had been so much fun to make love to, and the girl it had been so amazingly easy to forget along with the neighborhood and the old way of life that went with the neighborhood.

Now he remembered her, remembered her and wondered what she was like now, wondered what she had been doing and how she looked and other things about her. What had her name been? Linda, he remembered And her last name had been something unpronounceably Polish, and she lived across the hall from his old room with her alcoholic mother.

Was she still there?

Probably not. But it was worth a look, he told himself. He opened the door to the building and walked into the foyer, with cooking smells hitting his nostrils instantly. It was the same building — it looked the same and it smelled the same. He climbed four flights of stairs and passed all the different odors until he was on the fifth floor. Then he found her door, stood awkwardly in front of it for a second or so, and then knocked.

He waited.

The door opened. A fat old woman with broken blood vessels in her nose opened the door and stood staring at him. She was indescribably ugly. She was also Linda’s mother.

“Wanna drink?”

He did not want a drink. “Uh... is Linda around?”

“She don’t live here.”

“Aren’t you her mother?”

“Yeah, I’m her mother. What good it is to me, I’m her mother. Yeah.”

“She moved away?”

“Ungrateful little slut,” the woman said. “She don’t live her no more.”

“When did she move?”

“I don’t know. Yesterday, a month ago, last year. I don’t know when. Go away.”

The woman’s breath was knocking him out. He moved away but kept one foot in the door.

“You know where she lives now?”

“Don’t know,” the woman said. “Don’t care. You want a drink? Get the hell out.”

He got the hell out, glad to get away from the woman. He hurried down the stairs and out of the building and wondered why he was disappointed that Linda hadn’t been around. She wouldn’t have done him any good. The only sensible thing to do with her was to take her to bed, and he couldn’t very well do that in his present state of impotence.

He didn’t have any place else to go, unless he wanted to head back to the Ruskin and call it an evening. Somehow that didn’t appeal in the least. He gave up trying to think straight and sat down on the stoop waiting for something to happen.

Something happened.

She said: “Hello, Johnny Wells.”

He looked up and saw her. It took him a minute to recognize her, mainly because he didn’t believe his eyes. She was wearing a black skirt that was tight on her hips and a white sweater that was even tighter on her breasts. A splash of lipstick reddened her mouth.

It was Linda.

“Let’s go someplace,” she said. “I don’t like to hang around the building if I can help it. I don’t want to run into the old lady. She’s worse than ever.”

“I saw her a few minutes ago.”

“Yeah? How come?”

“I was looking for you.”

“I suppose I should be flattered,” she said. “One night with me and you disappear for four months. Then you come looking for me and I should be flattered.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be. You had things to do. I know all about it.”

“Yeah?”

She nodded. “You’ve been making the gigolo scene. Doing good at it according to what I hear.”

“How did you find out?”

“I didn’t put detectives on you. You hang around this neighborhood long enough and you hear everything about everybody. You know that. Somebody saw you and told somebody else. The word spread. Congratulations.”

“Look,” he said, “about that night. I’m sorry I left that way. It was a rotten thing to do.”

“Forget it.”

“I mean—”

“You were the first,” she told him. “You weren’t the last. So forget it.”

He didn’t say anything. They were walking east on 98th Street by now and she was holding his arm. He tried to figure her out. She was still fourteen, he remembered, but she wasn’t the way he remembered her. She seemed at least several years older. He wondered what had happened to her.

“You don’t live with your mother,” he said finally.

“Good thinking.”

“When did you leave?”

“Three weeks ago. I couldn’t take it any more. She got worse every day, drinking like a fish and hollering all the time. If I brought a guy up she raised hell. I couldn’t stand it so I cut out on my own.”

“Where do you live?”

“Another block the way we’re heading. I got a room to myself. It’s not much but it’s better than the other dump.”

“How do you make money?”

“How do you think?”

Her eyes challenged him and he turned away. It seemed somehow inconceivable, but there was one answer and only one. No wonder she seemed so much older than before.

“You hustle,” he said.

“Sure. I’m not a professional or anything. I turn a trick when I’m broke. It pays the rent and keeps me eating and that’s about all. I don’t turn more than a trick a night and I don’t work all the time. I’m not a full-fledged whore yet, is what I’m trying to say.”

He didn’t have anything to say to that. Somehow it seemed very wrong to him that she was playing the prostitute, even on a part-time semi-pro basis. He wondered what kind of a double standard he was dreaming up. If it was all right for him to make love for money, why was it wrong for her?

“Here’s where I live,” she said. “Why don’t you come up for a while?”

“Well—”

“Come on,” she said. “It’s a clean place. You won’t get your clothes dirty or anything. And if we wind up in bed I won’t charge you a penny. Old times sake and all.”

He felt that she was laughing at him. Well, maybe she had a right to. He followed her into the brownstone and up one flight of stairs to her room.

“Better than 99th Street,” she said. “No smell here. And only one flight of stairs to climb.”

She opened the door. It was a small room but she had it fixed up nice. The furniture was old but presentable.

“Nice place,” he said.

“You like it?”

“Sure.”

“But your place is nicer, isn’t it? I’m sure it is. Where are you living now, Johnny?”

He told her.

She whistled. “Fancy,” she said. “What does it cost you to hang out there?”

“Thirty-five a week.”

“It costs me ten. I guess your place must be pretty slick, huh? ’Cause this isn’t bad and yours is three and a half times as much.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Can I make you some coffee? I’m not supposed to cook here but I got a hot plate and I can make instant coffee. You want a cup?”

“If you’re having some.”

“Sure,” she said. “I’ll just put a pot of water up. Wait a minute.”

They talked about nothing in particular while the water boiled. She spooned coffee into two white china cups, poured the boiling water into each cup and stirred with a tin spoon. She handed one of the cups to him and kept the other for herself.

“No cream or sugar. You mind?”

“I like it black.”

“Me too. You been gone a long time, Johnny. What have you been doing with yourself? You act different. You don’t fit in around here any more.”

“I know.”

“Tell me all about it,” she said. “About the places you been and the things you did.”

“It’s not much of a story.”

“But I’m interested.”

“Why?”

“Because I like you.”

He hesitated, then started to tell her what he’d done, the plans he had made and the way he had carried them out. He started out intending to summarize everything briefly and get it over with in a hurry, but something stopped him from carrying this plan to completion.

Instead he wound up giving her a very detailed picture of his activities from the morning he had left her to the present. Somewhere in the middle of it he began talking as much to himself as to her. It was a way of looking back, a way of getting the whole picture again. He sat in a straight-backed chair and she sat on the bed. He sipped his coffee from time to time and he talked. She listened without saying a word.

He didn’t tell her that he’d been impotent lately. He left this tid-bit of information out. It was just about all he left out, however.

When he finished they sat in silence for several minutes. He could hear the wind outside. It was blowing up a storm and looked like rain.

“You happy, Johnny?”

“I don’t know.”

She nodded. “I’m not,” she said. “But I don’t figure to be happy. I mean, I haven’t gotten any place or anything. I live from one day to the next and I sort of bide my time, if you know what I mean. I haven’t got any education like you do. I think a lot, but I haven’t got much to think about. And I can always tell myself that one of these days something’ll happen, a rich man’ll come and want to marry me or a million dollars’ll fall down and hit me on the head or something. You know what I mean?”

“I guess so.”

“So it must be worse for you. I mean, I haven’t got anything. If I’m not happy I can still think it’s going to be different and I’ll come out smelling like a rose. But you’ve got plenty. Just what you wanted. Don’t you?”

He nodded.

“So if you aren’t happy it’s a mess,” she said. “That’s what I mean.”

More silence. She was right, he realized. She had hit it on the nose. It was bearable when you had nothing, because then you knew that your life was ahead of you and you could only move in one direction — up. And it was better yet when you were moving and you got further along every day and you had something you were killing yourself to get.

But once you got where you were going, then it was time to watch out. Because then you were in a bind. You could only go one way — down. And you didn’t like it so much where you were, and it was a mess.

“Johnny?”

He looked at her.

“I’m not working tonight.”

He didn’t get it.

“I’m not working tonight,” she repeated. “I only hustle when I have to. The rest of the time I just sit around. Tonight I’ll just be sitting around.”

“Oh,” he said.

And I get lonely. Do you ever get lonely, Johnny? Probably not with all the things you got going for you.”

“I get lonely.”

“Honest?”

“I don’t know anybody. Not really. Unless I’m... working... I just stay by myself.”

“It sounds like a drag.”

“It is.”

“Johnny?”

He waited.

“Would you like to stay here tonight?”

He thought about himself and thought about the fact that he wouldn’t be able to make love to her. But she hadn’t even asked that. She asked if he wanted to stay, and he did want to stay even if he had to sleep on the floor. It seemed very important for him to be with someone this night. It was not entirely a sexual thing. It was more a matter of companionship.

“Yes,” he said. “I’d like that very much.”

She smiled. “Just sit where you are,” she said. “I’ll make some more coffee. Then we can talk some more.”

It was late. They’d had many cups of coffee and they’d talked about many things. He told her some of the places he’d been to and some of the things he’d done and people he’d met. He told her about things he read in books and things he learned and she listened most receptively. She talked, too, and he was interested in what she had to say.

Then it was time for bed.

“Johnny—”

She was standing now, a strange expression on her face.

“Johnny, sex is a business for both of us. You make more dough at it than I do but we both hustle ourselves for a living. So this is going to be silly, I guess. A busman’s holiday. But would you like to make love?”

I want to make love, he thought. It’s just a matter of communicating that desire to something that hasn’t been listening to me lately.

And he walked to her and took her in his arms.

“Let’s leave the lights on,” she said. “Like the first time. Remember?”

“I remember.”

“Then kiss me.”

He hadn’t kissed a girl and meant it in a long time. He took her in his arms, felt the incredible softness of her warm young body against him, and his tongue darted into her mouth. He tasted the sweetness of her and his arms held her very close and very tight. His heart started to pound.

“Be gentle with me,” she was whispering. “Nobody’s ever gentle any more. Nobody’s nice or sweet or anything. Be gentle with me, Johnny.”

He lifted her in his arms and put her on the bed. He stretched out beside her and kissed her again. His hands found her breasts and he held onto them and felt how soft and firm they were.

“Nice,” he said.

“Nicer than last time. They keep on growing. Are they too big?”

“I can’t tell.”

“Why not?”

“You’ve got too many clothes on.”

“But no bra, Johnny. Just a sweater, see? I still don’t need a bra. No matter how big they get they still stand up all by themselves.”

“You’ve still got too many clothes on.”

“Then do something about it.”

He pulled the sweater over her head, threw it to the floor. When he caught sight of her breasts he had to stop. They were the most perfect he had ever seen. She was right — they had grown since he’d first made love to her. And they were firm, rich and firm, and he couldn’t keep his hands off them. They were cool to the touch and the nipples were suffused with desire a second after his fingers touched them.

“See? They’re still sensitive.”

“Do they like to be kissed?”

“Try them and see.”

He bent to kiss her breasts.

Maybe it was going to be all right, he thought. Maybe this time it would work for him. Maybe he would get excited, and then maybe he would be able to make love to her, and then maybe he wouldn’t be impotent again for the next fifty years. Maybe she would cure everything.

He hoped so.

But he didn’t care simply because he wanted to be cured, simply because he wanted to make love to other women and grow rich in the process.

Not now.

Now only one thing was important. Now he wanted only to make love to her properly and efficiently and spectacularly. Now all that mattered was what the two of them were going to do now, in her bed, in the next hour or so.

Nothing else mattered.

He wanted her more than he had ever wanted a woman in his life. He wanted her badly, so badly he would have given anything for her.

And she wanted him.

“Johnny,” she moaned. “Oh, God, there wasn’t anybody like you. The others were a waste of time, the others were nothing; there was always you and nobody else. Nobody ever made me feel like this, Johnny. Nobody ever. You’re the only man who can make me feel like this.”

“How do you feel?”

“Like a goddess.”

“That’s how you should always feel.”

“Why?”

“Because you are a goddess.”

Her hands were busy with the buttons of his sport shirt. He’d taken his jacket off earlier, when the room had grown warm, and now her hands were inside his jacket, toying with his chest. He kissed her mouth, then moved lower to kiss her breasts again. He touched her leg at the knee and his hand began to travel.

She moaned softly.

“Johnny!”

He took her skirt off.

He looked at her, saw the naked perfection of her body, saw every bit of her.

And something began to happen.

He didn’t believe it at first. He had thought that it couldn’t happen, that it perhaps would never happen again. But it was happening, and it was happening to him, and he couldn’t have been more pleased by any occurrence.

He was a man again.

He stood up, tearing his shirt off, kicking off shoes and socks and pants.

Then he was naked and she was nude and it was time.

Time to make love.

It was magnificent.

No one could tell it in detail because the details were far too subtle to be told. Everything happened, and everything happened quite flawlessly, and the experience for both of them was not only the quintessence of physical satisfaction but a mental and even spiritual experience at once.

When it was over she cried. He did not cry but wanted to, and he held her in his arms, stroked her face and loved her.