19 Purchase Street Read online

  The city.

  He used it to prepare himself for it.

  “Hey kid.”

  A man with a horse face. Wearing a suit that couldn’t be wrinkled.

  “You live around here? I always see you around here.”

  Gainer didn’t say anything.

  Horse Face told him: “You can make money today.”

  All Gainer had to do was go uptown to the Seagram’s Building and pick up an envelope. A sturdy five by eleven envelope, surely sealed, that Gainer put inside his shirt and buttoned from sight because he thought he knew what was in it. For doing the errand Horse Face gave him ten dollars.

  Gainer ran that same errand again for Horse Face and from then on, it became a weekly way to make ten. Horse Face asked offhand if Gainer knew what the envelope contained. Gainer made sure the way he said no also said he didn’t care. One week the envelope wasn’t well sealed and Gainer saw it contained hundred dollar bills, about a quarter inch of them. That time, when he handed over the envelope he had to go with Horse Face into the men’s room of a coffee shop and wait while Horse Face was in the toilet booth with the door closed. He didn’t blame Horse Face for counting the money.

  That ten a week was the first money he could almost depend on. He also earned when he could by posting, upon any possible surface, posters for politicians and Village plays. Sometimes he helped wash cars at the Rolls and Bentley dealer’s on Third Avenue.

  For quite a while he was a shill for a tattoo artist. He’d roam around midtown on the lookout for servicemen, long-haired guys and motorcycle types. Aside, in a low voice, Gainer would ask: “Want to get a tattoo?” It was against New York law for anyone to tattoo, so Gainer would lead the customer to an apartment on West Forty-sixth, where the artist and his needles waited. Guys who got that far seldom balked, but at the first sign of misgiving Gainer would bare his chest or shoulder to show his tattoo. An elaborate eagle with a bolt of lightning in his talons, or a pair of doves in flight with a furbelow displaying the word MOTHER. Having LET ME in blue on the tip of his tongue was always good for a laugh. That a thirteen-year-old had the nerve was enough to shame any grown man into submitting. Gainer’s tattoos, of course, were done with watercolor brushes and inks that only required some hard scrubbing.

  Shortly before Christmas of that year a guy Gainer had seen around put it to him that the going price for a set of license plates was five dollars. Gainer gave it about a week’s thought and then borrowed the screwdrivers, a regular and a Phillips. He went out at two in the morning. Keeping low between parked cars he worked systematically, removed the front plate of one car, merely turned around and removed the rear plate of the next. All the way down an entire sleeping block of East Seventieth Street.

  Twenty sets of plates.

  A hundred dollars.

  It had been so easy Gainer almost wanted to go for more.

  He spent twelve of the hundred on a wallet for himself at Dunhil’s. The rest went for presents for Norma. He had a great time buying a wool hat, a new hairdryer, and a number of other nice things for her. He wrapped and tied them individually and wrote some serious and some funny inscriptions on the tags.

  Norma was overwhelmed, truly, and she didn’t spoil it by asking where he’d gotten the money. He knew, of course, she wondered about it, and he wanted to tell her, but they both put it off and kept putting it off until it took an unessential place in the past.

  Gainer was so much in and around the city he could easily have chosen to fall into trouble, but the opposites in his character gave him a sort of balance, like the weights on the tips of a tightrope walker’s pole.

  Trouble.

  Inevitably, it did fall on him.

  “Help me.”

  The plaintive voice came from behind Gainer. It was not a plea that always got total immediate attention in the city where those two words were commonplace. So, Gainer kept walking, merely glanced back. He saw a boy near his own age, skulking in a doorway.

  Gainer stopped, turned.

  The boy rushed to him. He was taller than Gainer and better dressed, had on a navy blazer with a school crest sewn on its breast pocket. A packsack of school books was strapped to him. “I’ll give you a dollar if you walk me home.” he said.

  They were on Central Park West at half past three in the afternoon, the lull time before work let out. There was scarcely anyone along the street, no one within a block on either direction.

  “Please walk home with me.”

  The boy’s voice, elevated by hysteria, was more like a girl’s.

  Gainer noticed four toughs standing across the way at the edge of the park. He asked where the boy lived. It was only a block out of Gainer’s way.

  The boy walked beside Gainer with a short sort of tiptoe step, as though even with his longer legs it was an effort to keep up. He was so relieved to get home he forgot the promised dollar. Gainer told himself he probably wouldn’t have accepted it anyway. He crossed over at Seventy-eighth to cut through the park.

  The toughs came at him.

  No chance for Gainer. Because they were four and older, heavier boys. He couldn’t fight in every direction. When he went down they held him up to hit him and when they let him stay down they kicked him.

  Gainer was taken by police ambulance to Mount Sinai Hospital. He was still unconscious when Norma got there. His condition was listed as serious. Norma signed the required hospital forms, assuming responsibility. She would have signed anything.

  She remained all night in the waiting room of the intensive care unit. Gainer became conscious the next morning and she was allowed in to see him for a moment.

  His eyes were almost swollen closed, the areas around them bruised purple and green. It didn’t seem his eyes could see her so she wasn’t sure her smile got through until she saw a trace of a smile in response from him. She told him it was a miracle his nose wasn’t broken and he opened his mouth so she could see he still had all his teeth. She didn’t cry until after she left him.

  A doctor told Norma it was too early to know the extent of Gainer’s injuries. There could be internal traumas. Numerous X-rays and tests were needed. Blood had already shown in Gainer’s urine, his blood pressure was erratic and his white count was up. The doctor was by no means a hand-patter, didn’t say not to worry, which would have been a waste of words anyway.

  No matter that the hospital wasn’t sure Gainer would be all right, Norma felt she knew. She drew her reassurance from the same well-spring that produced her fear—her deep love for Gainer. He would get well. He would. She refused to think otherwise, as though such a dreaded thought might be an influence transmitted from her.

  And Gainer began mending. Even before it was determined that he had two cracked ribs, a concussion, spinal contusions and bleeding in his right kidney. He was recovering so rapidly that Norma had the impression she could see minute-by-minute changes for the better. His spirit helped. It was as resilient as his sixteen-year-old body. During the hours when Norma wasn’t visiting, he’d lay there and whistle, a faint, thin, nearly self-contained whistle. Fragments of obscure show tunes. Some from third acts he’d seen of shows that had failed and been forgotten by almost everyone after a single first night.

  Perhaps another reason for Gainer’s quick repair was the mounting hospital bill.

  Norma coped with that.

  At the time she was working at a restaurant in the financial district. As a waitress her salary wasn’t much, but not paying taxes on her tips made up for that. She wasn’t yet resigned to doing whatever brought in the most money, even though this was her third restaurant job. Over the past seven years she had clerked at Korvette’s, given shampoos at Kenneth’s, and been an assistant in the showroom of the wholesale furrier, Theodor Beecher.

  She had hoped the job at Beecher might lead to better things, give her some special experience. There were two Theodor Beechers, a senior and a junior, ages sixty-five and forty. The day Norma started, Theodor Junior started on her. Not with hi
s hands but with his words, told her what he would do to her sexually, as though the favor would be his.

  Norma mentally sidestepped it, thought that was the best way to handle it. But that only seemed to inspire Theodor Junior. His verbal approaches grew more lewd, more explicit.

  It was impossible for her to avoid him. Each workday from first minute to last he seldom missed a chance to speak in one obscene way or another. Still, he hadn’t physically touched her, not once. He seemed to avoid contact, gave her a wide right of way whenever they passed, and there were times when he reacted as though he risked being the cornered one.

  Probably, Norma thought, Theodor Junior was incapable of anything beyond talk. If so, the threat was out of it. All she had to contend with was her own repugnance.

  Even the worst words were harmless, she reasoned. Words couldn’t draw blood. Unless she herself gave meaning to them, words were babble, nonsense syllables. That, she decided, was how she would hear Theodor Junior.

  It worked, to some extent, when she was extremely preoccupied. When whatever he said to her included a word such as cunt she tried to intercept and scramble it before it registered. Naturally, her brain’s associating process was too quick for her. Besides, such a word was always issued in context with other active words that insured its meaning. She got tired of trying.

  One morning in the vault, surrounded by pelts. With him.

  “Theodor …”

  “Yeah?”

  “Give me a break.”

  “How do you want it?”

  “Please?”

  A silent moment like an emotional hyphen. She was almost sure she saw a flicker of compassion in his eyes.

  “Okay,” he said compliantly and, after a beat, added, “I’ll let you suck me off for lunch.”

  Her quitting check was made out by Theodor Senior. No apology from him, so she insisted on being paid right up to the hour.

  From that job and the others Norma wasn’t able to save much. Usually it was a stretch to come out even month by month. However, when there was extra money, no matter how little, she banked it.

  The balance in her passbook was one thousand two hundred and some.

  Gainer’s hospital bill was already over two thousand, on the way to three.

  Norma had nothing to sell or use as collateral. Four banks approved of loaning the money to her if she brought in a qualified co-signer.

  She turned to Vicky.

  They had kept in touch over the years, phoned one another often and occasionally met for lunch. Norma remained grateful for the advice and help Vicky had given at the start. Vicky referred to Norma as her only straight friend. She made no secret of what she did for money. She never discussed it in detail with Norma who was never the one to bring it up. Norma knew what Vicky meant when she mentioned having to take care of business on a trip to Jamaica or wherever.

  Vicky’s most recent name was Danielle Hansen, but Norma didn’t have to call her that. The name, Vicky claimed, suggested shameless Swede and practical French. She was much changed from the Vicky Norma had first known. Thinner, for one thing, and prettier for it. Smarter-looking, and not nearly as able to be enthusiastic about anything.

  She sat there in her own place on a dark brown velour covered sectional beneath a slightly magenta light with her back to an expensive downtown view. She heard Norma out, then told her: “Two thousand isn’t much.” While those were her words, her mind was converting two thousand into fucks and it came to a more arduous number. “I’ve got the money,” she said, “but I’ll have to ask for it.”

  The reason for that contradiction appeared within minutes. His name was just Charlie. He was in his early twenties, underweight, dressed snugly to flaunt his build. His eyes appeared locked in their sockets, never moved without his entire head moving with them.

  Vicky was both pleased and intimidated by his presence. She got him a drink he didn’t have to ask for, and instead of extending it to him she placed it in his hand. She didn’t look at him while she explained Norma’s predicament.

  Charlie seemed to already know it, had heard it before, many times.

  Norma had the feeling that he was pricing her.

  “Stop worrying,” Charlie told her with his slow-motion voice, “you’ve got the two large.” He took hundreds from his pocket, counted off twenty that he tucked beneath the edge of an ashtray on the table. Halfway to Norma.

  She was about to thank him when he told her: “I expect you to bring me four by the end of the month.” Three weeks from then.

  “Four thousand?”

  “Okay, make it three.”

  “I can’t possibly …”

  “Sure you can. You’ll do a thousand a week easy.”

  “I can’t …”

  “Any working girl, even a dog on the stroll, could do three,” Charlie told her.

  Norma was taken aback but managed not to show it out of deference to Vicky.

  Vicky was a spectator, but her silence endorsed the proposition.

  “Take it or leave it,” Charlie said.

  Norma left it.

  She went to visit Gainer at the hospital, brought him the Village Voice and some huge black grapes.

  He sensed her worry, hit right on it.

  “Bring me some clothes,” he told her. “I’ll just drift out like I don’t belong here. I’m probably as good at getting out of places as I am at getting in.”

  He was serious but they laughed about it and his ribs hurt, and after visiting hours, Norma stopped in at the hospital accounting office for the latest total due.

  From there she walked twenty-five blocks, slowly, not truly convinced that her legs were independent from her better judgment. All the way to Vicky’s place.

  Charlie wasn’t there.

  But the two thousand was still under the ashtray, expecting her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  IT was a juncture for Norma and Gainer, a time point. Norma would always think of it as the year of the three weeks. After the hospital, as soon as he regained his street legs, Gainer went out to find regular work. It was imperative to him that he pull his share, not on a hustling maybe basis, but dependably. No doubt, Norma’s bailing him out of Mount Sinai was the influence. Gainer was about eighty percent sure he knew how the money had been raised by her. He didn’t try to put it out of mind, the idea that she loved him that much.

  The job he got nearly suited his school hours. He went around in a panel truck with a man named Jim, servicing instant photo machines. Those four-poses-for-a-quarter machines located in Grand Central and LaGuardia, Woolworth stores and other such places.

  Gainer lugged the heavy containers of developer and fixative and refilled the tanks inside the machine. Jim checked the automatic mechanisms and emptied the coin box.

  Jim was a horseplayer. The sort who considered not losing much almost the same as winning. While riding around between stops, Gainer read the Daily Racing Form and handicapped. After hitting five out of eight, including a forty-some dollar horse, he had Jim’s confidence. He also had the key to the coin boxes of the photo machines. But he never used it.

  One summer Gainer worked for Parke-Bernet, helping handle the items that were sold in sequence to and from the lighted auction stage. One day it would be weighty Boulle commodes and gigantic Regence bronze doré chandeliers or rugs such as an Isfahan with over seven million knots that needed three men to display. Next day it might be antique faience from Choisy or eighteenth-century Canton porcelains requiring delicacy and absolutely sure hands. He came in touch, literally, with many of the world’s most precious paintings and got to see the backs of those as well, the scribblings, codes and seals on the canvas stretchers, cross-braces and frames, like decipherable commercial histories.

  Another summer he cooked fifty-two thousand hot dogs at the cafeteria of the Central Park Zoo.

  For quite a while, when he was nineteen and going to City College, he worked at the New York Public Library, the main branch on Fifth Avenue. His dut
ies were down in the stacks, locating books and sending them up the conveyor or returning books to the shelves where they belonged. He liked it there. One reason was that at any time he could reach in almost any direction and learn something. The other reason was Edna Scott.

  Edna Scott was thirty-two. A career librarian with a degree from the University of Vermont. She was in charge of the stacks, serious about their order and intolerant when a book was mistreated. She had straight brown hair and a face with fine features unenhanced by make-up. When she wasn’t wearing her eyeglasses, they hung from a plaited brown ribbon around her neck.

  Edna Scott was indeed bookish.

  Hands plain as blank pages. Clothes linear and concealing as the conservative bindings around her. Her speech was almost uninflected. She pronounced Gainer’s name like a book title, always both his names. Andrew Gainer.

  It made him wince inside.

  One morning he was pushing a cartload of returns along one of the deadends of Biography when he saw Edna Scott alone down an intersecting aisle. It was a moment unexpectedly meeting a moment. She had her skirt lifted, was reaching up in under to tug her blouse neat.

  Gainer continued on. She’d been so preoccupied he doubted she was aware that he’d seen.

  He was wrong.

  It was like an activating switch.

  That night, as usual, he left the library by way of the Forty-second Street access. It was snowing, large floaty flakes. Edna Scott was standing on the library steps, apparently waiting. A brown wool cap pulled over her ears, low-heeled rubber boots. Waiting for Gainer. She told him that right off.

  He kept his balance, not a blink from him. Smiled his best smile and said what was right in an easy way, so they could walk together.

  She lived in the Murray Hill district.

  He was surprised to see a pair of Head skis standing in her entrance hall and even more unexpected was the carnival red bulb in the socket of her bedside lamp. The red took the innocence from her skin, exaggerated its warmth.

  Edna Scott’s body was a completed woman’s body. Unlike those Gainer had previously experienced, girls with intermediate shapes.