CHAPTER NINE
"Mr. Smith...Mr. Smith... Are you all right?"
"Yes, Mrs. Zubensky. Come on in."
"I didn't want to bother you if you were resting."
"No bother. No bother at all, Mrs. Zubenski."
"Alice asked me to stop in this morning and see if everything was all right."
"That girl. She's just a worry-wart. I wish she wouldn't do things like that."
"You don't mean that, do you, Mr. Smith? I mean, Alice is such a fine girl. She really loves you. All you children do."
"I know, Mrs. Zubensky. I just don't like to see Alice worry so hard, that's all."
"I brought you some soup and crackers. I just made it this morning. Hope you like it."
"You shouldn't have done that, Mrs. Zubenski. I don't like being fussed over."
"Oh, I'm not fussing. You always did like my vegetable soup. It makes me proud when somebody brags about it like you do. Gerald never has a kind thing to say about my cooking, except maybe a belch or two now and then, and I never know how to take that."
"Well, you don make excellent vegetable soup. I'll say that without any qualms."
"Thank you, Mr. Smith. If you like, I'll send some over for the kids when they get home, if one of them will come and get it."
"I'll mention it to them, Mrs. Zubenski."
"Would you?"
"Sure. I said I would."
"You really will? I mean you promise."
"I promise."
"I'll hold you to that...you hear?"
"I'm not guaranteeing that they'll come and get it, but I do promise that I'll tell them that it's available."
"That's fair enough. Now, you get busy and eat yours. Don't pay no attention to me. Just go on and eat."
"All right. It isn't too hot is it?"
"No. Just right. Gee, your place looks empty now."
"I guess it does."
"I saw the furniture truck yesterday. I sure wished I could have done something to stop them. I mean, it just doesn't seem fair for them to take it away like that."
"Just one of those things, Mrs. Zubenski. It's a dollar-and-cents world. If you don't make your installment payments, you can't keep your toys."
"Toys?"
"Just a figure of speech."
"Oh, you mean they took the children's toys too. That wasn't very kind of them. That's the same as stealing, as far as I'm concerned."
"Forget it."
"I can't, Mr. Smith. It's not an easy thing to forget. I know, because the same thing happened to Gerald and me once. I mean, losing our furniture like you did. But it was different for us. I mean...ah...the circumstances. We didn't have no children or nothing. It just ain't fair, that's all. I mean, there just ain't no justice for people like us these days when they're up against it."
"Oh, I don't know. Life is life, I guess. The wolf will howl, you know. The soup is up to its usual excellent standards, Mrs. Zubenski. Just what a fellow needs to be up against on a day like this."
"Thank you, Mr. Smith. Glad you like it. But I don't know how you stand it."
"The soup?"
"No, no! The way things are, I mean. I know I couldn't. And Gerald would probably rush right out and shoot himself, if it happened to him. That is, if I wasn't around. Of course, we don't have no little ones around, but he'd still be helpless without his woman."
"Well...some men would be, I suppose."
"You ought' a do something about it, Mr. Smith. I mean just for the children's sake."
"I'll get new furniture when I get my finances back in order."
"Oh, I don't mean that. I mean about getting a woman."
"Oh, that. Well, I'm doing something about it, Mrs. Zubenski. All I can, in fact."
"Alice did say that you were making some kind of arrangments. Who was it she told me was coming?...Oh, now...who was it? It must have slipped my mind. Right on the tip of my tongue, too."
"Here's your bowl, Mrs. Zubenski. The soup was just fine."
"Thanks. Oh, I wish I could remember who Alice said it was."
"Why don't you ask her next Monday. I'm sure she will be able to remember."
"Oh, it's not that important, I suppose."
"What time do you have, Mrs. Zubenski?"
"Ten-fifteen."
"That's late! Almost time for my morning nap."
"Oh, I didn't realize I was keeping you. I'll be running."
"Don't hurry too fast. I wouldn't want you to slip on the ice and hurt yourself."
"The ice is all melted now. No danger. If you need anything before Alice gets home, you be sure and give me a call."
"Certainly, Mrs. Zubenski, certainly."
"Bye, bye, now."
"Good morning to you."
------
Call her, indeed! On what? We haven't had a telephone for months, and I'm sure not going to stand out on the porch and play dingdong with my tonsils in this kind of weather. What does she think I am, a trumpet player? How in the hell would I call anyone from four blocks away?
I hope I don't sound vindictive about Mrs. Zubenski. She just irks me, that's all. Two or three times a week she has to make a trip through the whole neighborhood. That business with the soup is her ticket to the show. Everything she hears gets multiplied a dozen times over before she gets back to her own home.
Why, not too very long ago, Marty came down with the sniffles, and I kept him out of school for a couple of days. But the way fat mouth Zubenski told it, Marty was dying of pneumonia. She hadn't been gone from the house two hours that morning, when just about every woman in the area swarmed in on me with mustard plasters, warmed up duck broth, vaporizers, mentholate, mentholated diapers, blankets, Vaseline, and goose grease. They liked to worry poor Marty to death. If I hadn't of got mad and run them all off, they'd have probably killed the little fellow. I sure haven't been on good speaking terms with the ladies in the neighborhood ever since. About the only one who bothers to stop anymore is Mrs. Zubenski. I usually keep her well supplied with gossip material, and all I have to do to do that is keep my mouth shut. I'd sure give a ten-dollar bill, if I had it, to see what she does with this furniture business. I'd bet ten to one it took three moving vans and a squad of policemen with tear gas to get the darn stuff out of my house, before she gets a block away on her current tour.
Being honest, it may be that I have just developed this thing about women. I don't think I have, but I guess I could have since Edie was here. Maybe, it's because I've bumped heads with too many phonies like Mrs. Zubenski -- you know, all sweet talk on the surface and undiluted acid underneath; the kind that want everything and give nothing in return, whether it's love or money. Edie was never like that, not at anytime. I guess she was enough to spoil any man.
For instance, that night on our first date was a good example. Edie wasn't that least bit perturbed that I was waiting outside the Club Royalty Alley for her. Any other girl would have probably called a cab from inside and left me standing right where I was for good. But she came striding out like she was walking out of an art museum without a bother in the world.
"Boy," she said. "It sure did get hot in there all of a sudden. Don't you think so?"
I told her yes, and she said something about walking for a while to get her system re-primed, because it was too early to give up such a lovely evening. I agreed and we walked.
A little bit later, I pulled out the napkin and gave it to her. Right then I found out one important thing about Edie. She thought it was wonderful that I thought enough of her to collect a souvenir, but when I told her that I sort of pilfered it, she lit into me with a sermon and told me that I was never to do that sort of thing again. The way she put it was: "No fellow ever has to steal something to make a girl happy."
Then she went on to tell me that if it weren't for destroying my dignity she would make me march right back and return the napkin. Then she quit talking, held my arm tight, leaned her head against my shoulder, and we walked...and walked.
And I was confused and thought of what a strange night it had been for me, what with the way things had gone, both good and bad. And I kept getting nervous flashes, thinking about how that big red napkin had got stuck in my fly and how Edie had all but called me a thief for taking it, when all I had done was a little innocent shoplifting.
And I felt kind of big and little at the same time, too, as we walked side by side down the quiet streets. Big, because Edie seemed so tiny and frail against my arm; little, because I was in love with her and didn't have courage enough to tell her, because it was so sudden, and I feared that she would call me a fool, because we had hardly seen each other enough to much more than decide that we were a boy and girl. So we walked.
And we walked until Edie proclaimed that it was getting chilly and that it was time to go home, and I hailed a cab and we got in and started for her place. I figured then that the night was over for me and felt like getting personal as hell right there in the taxi and couldn't, because I didn't want to spoil things with Edie.
And then we arrived at her place, and I paid the cabdriver and started thinking of what I'd do to make sure that I at least got one kiss for a going away present. But when we got to her apartment door, Edie wasn't having any of the doorstep stuff. She handed me her key, and I opened the door, and she walked on by and whispered, "Come in."
She kicked off her shoes in the living room and put some music on her record player -- Edie always loved good music; it seems like she was always surrounded by the stuff -- and fell down on the couch. She extended her arms and whispered again, "Come mere."
Her voice, her perfume, her infective demeanor were as toxic as the music that floated in a room which had suddenly become as dimensionless as a midnight sky. I sat down, not nervous now, but trembling; not frightened, nor brave, but filled with the simultaneous sensation of both.
The music played on. She loosened my tie, and I felt oceans break loose in my head, as her cold fingers danced around my collar. They were like delicately scented cold feathers with icicle points darting softly through the heat of my burning face.
Edie's blue eyes were now sunlight sparkles dancing in the froth of the coming wave, as though she were a nymph-goddess riding her own private breaker, fragile but lovely on her throne.
I put my arms around her and pulled her to me and kissed her and felt her lips press against mine. Her eyes closed. So did mine. I didn't care or even think for minutes what it would all lead to, because, for once, I was getting something I really wanted and knew I wanted. And it was not a reward for an evening of entertainment; for love given by two lovers in a kiss is more than and earthly or spiritual thing; it is a sensation born of desire, fulfilled in the moist, compassionate moments of the one thrusting reality that pushes back and bites and begs and gives, until neither lover is left with enough breath to ask for mercy, nor cares for anything other than the strength to carry on one split second longer, reaching toward the perfect forever...a splash of time measured by an eternity that suddenly dies of human frailty, of human weakness.
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