Death in The Life Read online

  “What am I supposed to be? Some kind of holy woman? Well, let me tell you right now, I’m not any holier than thou.”

  The flit of a smile.

  “Will you call Doctor Callahan and go see her? Just once. See what happens. You took a chance coming in here, didn’t you? Are you any worse off than you were before?”

  She shook her head.

  “I’ll write the phone number down for you,” Julie said, and tore a piece of paper from the back of her notebook. She remembered the little box of cards, but used the notebook paper nonetheless. “Tell Doctor that Julie told you to call her.”

  “Friend Julie.”

  “Just Julie.”

  All the anxiety symptoms of the first visit had disappeared.

  “Where’s your boss today?” Julie asked at the door.

  “He’s breaking in a new girl.”

  “I see,” Julie said, although she didn’t.

  Rita knew she didn’t. “It’s kind of like a honeymoon, supposed to be.”

  “For goodness’ sake,” Julie said, getting the picture. She wasn’t often shocked herself.

  “Thanks for everything,” Rita said, on the way down again.

  “Are you going to call Doctor Callahan?”

  “I’ve got to think about it”

  “She’s expecting you to,” Julie said. Her last trump.

  Julie had got into the habit of stepping outside the shop when visitors were leaving, a moment or two outside the walls and with a swatch of sky to look up into. Her upstairs neighbor was at the window. She often was.

  “How is business?” the woman asked.

  “Okay.”

  “You will stay?”

  “Not forever, but I’ll stay for now.”

  “Would you like to have supper with Juanita and me? My husband works late tonight.”

  Juanita came to the window, seven or eight, with dark solemn eyes and a mouth that looked as though it had been built around a thumb.

  “That’s very nice of you. All right.”

  “Whenever you close up.”

  At six Julie locked the shop door and went up the green-walled tenement stairway. She took with her a fresh bunch of tulips she had bought that morning.

  “Our name is Rodriguez,” the woman said and engulfed Julie’s hand in a clasp that felt like warm bread dough.

  “How do you do? I’m Julie Hayes.”

  “Julie.” Mrs. Rodriguez made it sound like “Woolie.” “Papa works extra sometimes on the ferry boat to Staten Island.”

  “Is he a pilot?’ That was something out of Julie’s own fantasy.

  “Only up here,” Mrs. Rodriguez said and tapped her head.

  “Me too,” Julie said.

  THE ROOM WAS AGLOW with the light of seven or eight lamps and crowded with bric-a-brac and heavy furniture in plastic covers. There was a general feeling of cleanliness which was reassuring. A picture of the three Rodriguezes, the Señora in bridal veil and Juanita not much different from the way she looked today, stood on the table. Papa’s main distinction was a mammoth moustache. A second marriage, Julie decided. The wall was hung with a picture of Jesus after open-heart surgery. The way He pointed it out caused her to think of Goldie and his golden cross. Mrs. Rodriguez removed some artificial flowers from a horn-shaped vase, put water in it, and set Julie’s tulips under the Christus. Juanita was left to entertain the guest while her mother set out their supper on a table near the windows. In the absence of conversation, Julie suggested that Juanita show her her dolls. She had seen most of them at one time or another on the sidewalk outside the shop, not a one of them that wasn’t missing clothes or an arm or leg. “Old friends,” she said, and asked their names. That got them by until supper was served. Chicken and rice and salad. It wasn’t much easier to talk with the mother than with the child.

  “Señora Cabrera was like family,” Mrs. Rodriguez said, and Julie hoped to God they could get a conversation going on that old lady.

  “I wish I’d known her.”

  “She could teach you. Do you have good powers?”

  “Pretty good.”

  “You will read the cards for me and I will tell you the truth.”

  “Okay.”

  “I am like a daughter to her, you know? Juanita, she tells everybody, her grandchild. Sometimes she plays for hours in the waiting room—an old deck of cards.”

  Julie felt she was being measured for a built-in baby-sitter. Something. “Do you work, Mrs. Rodriguez?”

  Mrs. Rodriguez ignored the question. “People like to see a child. If their luck is not so good, a child speaks for something better going to happen in the future. They come in to find out.”

  She was being offered a little shill.

  “She never interrupts and does what she’s told. Five days a week Papa works for the subway. Weekends and nights he does the moonlight. He sends all his money home to buy a farm. I think his brothers steal it from him. He never knows, but if I steal it, he knows twenty-five cents.”

  Julie would have thought from the looks of the place that Papa was a pretty good provider. She betrayed the thought, glancing around the room. She didn’t care. To hell with all complainers.

  “I like nice things. You can see?” The woman smiled.

  “Beautiful,” Julie said.

  “When you finish your supper I will show you the bedroom.”

  Oh, boy. That invitation to supper: Mrs. Rodriguez had popped it, seeing Rita come and go downstairs. “I think I’ve had enough to eat thank you. It was delicious.”

  Mrs. Rodriguez ordered the child to clear the table. She spoke in Spanish. The child obeyed like a mama doll. Julie was given the bedroom tour.

  Louis-something-or-other-style chairs, a taffeta cover on the bed, crystal jars on the dresser. Just the place for Papa when he came up out of the subway. It smelled like a perfume factory.

  “Very nice,” Julie said, staying close to the door.

  “You’d never know from the outside, would you?”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “So we can make the same arrangement?”

  “Hold everything. What arrangement?”

  The smile slipped out of the voice and off the face. “I know the arrangement with Mr. Goldie.”

  “I canceled that contract, Mrs. Rodriguez.”

  “But that girl…”

  “A friend and she doesn’t go with Goldie.”

  “She’s on the street. I’m not on the street.”

  “So?”

  “Now and then, just one. Goldie never knows and Juanita stays downstairs with you. We go half and half. It is such a good arrangement. What harm?”

  “I’m just not into that scene. I’m sorry.” Sorry!

  “Friend Julie”—the woman’s lips curled nastily around the words—“I don’t believe you.”

  “Okay. Ask Goldie.”

  “Don’t smart-ass me, little blond bitch.”

  Right out of Goldie’s repertoire.

  “Thanks for the supper, Mrs. Rodriguez.” Julie got out of the bedroom and found her purse.

  “What did you come up here for?”

  “To bring flowers to Jesus. Buenos noches, Juanita.”

  “Julie, wait. I do not understand, you know? I think everything is the same.” The voice had changed again, buttery, and she closed the bedroom door behind her. “I will make us coffee. Good Spanish coffee.”

  “I don’t think so, Mrs. Rodriguez, but no hard feelings. What you do is none of my business. I don’t care. I don’t judge, I don’t care. Okay?”

  “Okay. What harm?”

  “I said it’s none of my business. Only I’m not in the racket.”

  “If somebody comes… Terry maybe, and asks for Rose…”

  “I get it. I’ll say you still live upstairs. It’s only the downstairs management that’s changed.”

  “Gracias.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “You must never tell Goldie.”

  “N
o, ma’am.”

  “It was a secret, Señora and me.”

  “What if he’d found out?”

  “Señora Cabrera, she would take care of him. You don’t have curses, no?”

  “I’m not into that yet,” Julie said.

  9

  JULIE WANTED TO LAUGH at the Rodriguez situation—a Rose by any other name—and hell, as the woman said, what harm? If Westchester housewives turned belles du jour, why not Rose Rodriguez of Forty-fourth Street, Manhattan? Julie hated her wildly and she liked the feeling, never mind what about it, Doctor. She hated her more than she did Goldie. And she hated the child with her mutilated dolls. And there it was: the child that was being mutilated, used, the silent, obedient victim.

  Goddamn.

  She took a long letter from Jeff into the bath with her and read it just above water level. He was going to Cyprus for a couple of weeks. After which he would be in Paris. “If you feel you can take the time away from Dr. Callahan, how would you like to join me for the month of June in Paris? It’s time we had another honeymoon. I find myself missing my little girl very much tonight…”

  “Me too,” Julie said aloud. A reflex. Her me-toos were a cop-out. She could hardly remember the first honeymoon. What she did remember was the fight with her mother in the bedroom while she changed into traveling clothes. She’d rather have changed into blue jeans and sneakers and she wound up screaming at Mother, You go, why don’t you go instead of me? You’re more married to him than I am… something like that, and she was. She’d courted Jeff from the moment she laid eyes on him. On the platform at Julie’s graduation from college. He’d got an honorary degree. Cum Julie.

  Come Julie.

  She tried a half-hour of Yoga.

  When the phone rang it startled her. It hadn’t been ringing much lately.

  “Pete! What a nice surprise.”

  “I just met Mrs. Ryan and her goddamn dog. If he had more teeth he’d ’ve chewed off my ankle.”

  “I don’t think he likes men. How are you, Pete?’ She could feel her heartbeat in her throat.

  “How should I be? I’m working with a bunch of stupid micks at the New Irish Theatre. They don’t know a ceiling spot from the star of Bethlehem. How’s the wheel of fortune?”

  “Going round and round. Something new every day.”

  He waited. Then: “I’m listening.”

  “Today there was Mrs. Rodriguez upstairs. It’s a long story.”

  “I’ve got a pocketful of dimes.”

  She was tempted to ask him if he would like to come down to Seventeenth Street But if he said no? “It turns out my predecessor had a deal with Goldie. Do you know who he is?”

  “I know him.”

  “Friend Julie’s Place used to be a way station, a sort of connection between trick and… treat. Hey!”

  “I got it. Are you surprised?”

  “I guess not really. But the lady upstairs—that’s something else.” She told him about Mrs. Rodriguez’s expectations.

  “Street games,” Pete said.

  “It’s the child that bugs me, those great big empty eyes.”

  “Little Orphan Annie.”

  “Warbucks,” Julie said. “Money is rotten, Pete.”

  “That’s where we left off. What isn’t rotten?”

  “You, me, spring, poetry, hope… There’s a girl that’s been in to see me twice now, a sixteen-year-old whore who wants to go home.”

  “Sixteen,” Pete said.

  “Going on seventeen, she says. I’d have said younger.”

  “Did she tell you where home was?”

  “No.”

  “So you couldn’t give her the exact fare.”

  “Don’t be cynical, Pete. It’s not like you.”

  “Honey, what’s like me? Do you know?”

  “No.”

  “Then don’t romanticize me. I’m not a romantic figure. I’m not even nice most of the time. Would you like to see the plays? Yeats—what else would the New Irish Theatre do?”

  “I love Yeats. I would like to see them, yes.”

  “They make nice noise.”

  “When am I invited for?”

  “It opens Friday night. That’ll be a shambles. Come on Saturday. A few minutes before eight and I’ll walk you through.”

  “Thank you, Pete. I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Take care.”

  He had only needed one dime.

  She found herself listening to what seemed like the echo of her own words. Thank you, Pete. I’m looking forward to it. She thought of Mrs. Ryan standing on tiptoe in Mr. Kanakas’s wanting to be in on everything, but careful not to touch.

  Touch, touch, touch.

  “Dearest Jeff, I’ll talk to Doctor about Paris in June…” April in New York… April is the crudest month… They had honeymooned on an island off the coast of Maine. They had bathed in the rock pools… two different pools, his and hers. After dark they had made love, retaining a certain anonymity.

  10

  JUANITA PLAYED IN FRONT of the shop so much of the time Julie wondered if Mrs. Rodriguez wasn’t psyching her into the baby-sitting role in spite of the cordon sanitaire. She often did find herself looking out to see how the child was doing. Why wasn’t she in school? Why, when other children in the block were not in school, wasn’t Juanita playing with some of them? The child hauled a cardboard box bump, bump, bump down the stairs and took her dolls out one by one and seated them against the wall beneath Julie’s window. That solemn little face was always bobbing up and down in the window as she went from doll to doll to punish each for an imaginary wickedness.

  Julie did more reading than writing, and a lot of watching; she knew she was waiting. Five days had passed since Rita’s last visit. She avoided Eighth Avenue, not wanting to see her there. If she was there. The rodeo was still in town, the trick from Wyoming. Now and then a seeker came for a throw of the Tarot, Friend Julie’s card in hand. Always women, bored, stuck, discontented women who wanted something about which they were calling to do nothing. They came for a fix. Julie had made seventy-four dollars to date. Seventy-four. Seven, four, and one were numbers that often recurred in her life. She lived on Seventeenth Street. Her childhood phone number had been 7714, Rita was going on seventeen, and Pete lived at 741. Whenever she doodled in numbers, it was with a combination of the three. And on the first of June Jeff was going to be forty-one, he had reminded her in his letter. She decided to invent a layout of the Tarot, seven, four, and one. At the moment it occurred to her to wonder if Juanita might by any chance be seven years old, she leaned back in her chair and looked out the window in time to see a sleek giant of a man stoop and roughly push the child out of his way. Both Mrs. Rodriguez and Julie responded. He looked up to the window above and down to the door, then up to the window again. Julie drew back without opening the door. He was a caricature, but of what? The cream-colored, tight-fitting suit with its braided lapels, contoured with muscles. Sulky good looks and wavy red hair that was almost orange, a dye job that must have curdled. He kept answering Mrs. Rodriguez back, his soft mouth curling into the shape of what Julie was sure were obscenities. Finally he took some coins from his pocket and flung them on the ground for the child to gather. He came into the shop, the scent of his male cologne like an emanation.

  Julie waited, her hands fisted in the pockets of her smock.

  He looked at her as though it was she who was ridiculous. “Are you Salvation Army or what?”

  “There’s a sign in the window. What can I do for you?”

  “They call me Mack around the neighborhood. Now do you know?”

  “I’ve heard the name,” Julie said.

  “I don’t like Jesus freaks messing with my girls.”

  “You got the wrong address, Mister Mack. I don’t think I could even call myself a friend of Jesus.”

  He sat down in the chair out front without being asked. Fine. She preferred to look down to him than to look up.

  “How about Ri
ta? A friend of hers?”

  “An acquaintance.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I’ve been wondering the same thing myself, and that’s the God’s truth.”

  “If it ain’t, I’ll find out and it won’t do you any good, sister.”

  “I don’t know that I’d tell you if I did know, but the simple truth is, I don’t.”

  “That’s twice you don’t know. Once more.”

  “Same answer.”

  “She come to you, didn’t she, saying how she’d like to quit The Life and go home? That’s bullshit. She’s the best little hustler on the street, but she’s so jealous of me taking a new girl, she cuts out every time.”

  “Well,” Julie said, feeling a little sick, if this were so, at having possibly involved Doctor Callahan, “you know her better than I do.” Rita had admitted Mack was breaking in a new girl. What Julie thought was something like disgust might have been jealousy.

  “Straight people don’t understand how my girls feel about me.”

  Julie shrugged. Then, on impulse: “How do you feel about you?”

  “I like me a lot.”

  Julie just nodded.

  “Don’t understand that, do you?”

  “That’s right, man.”

  “The only way to dig The Life is from the inside.”

  “Goldie said something like that to me the other day.”

  “That man’s something else, isn’t he? Now if you was to ask me how I feel, a white man in a black man’s trade, that’d show you understood a little.”

  “You know what, Mack? I just realized something: I’m not really curious. I don’t give a damn.”

  “Then don’t try getting my girls out of The Life, because you can’t do it.”

  “I keep telling you, that’s not my mission. Where did you get the idea it was? How come you’re here anyway?”

  “My girls take care of one another when I’m not around. Wife-in-laws, do you dig that?”

  “Not mathematically.”

  “You’re too damn smart, too smart for your own good.”

  “Sorry,” Julie said. “But I would like to know where the idea that I’m into religion came from.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, sister, I’ve got no objection to religion as long as it don’t get in the way of business.”