Seventh Avenue

by Norman Bogner

  “I have to make Kaddish, no?”

  “Certainly you do.”

  “Then why not next Friday?”

  The sexton, an elderly forgetful man with a monk-like bald pate and saliva running down his chin appeared at the doorway, a man in the full flower of his dotage. He waved at Davidson and called out:

  “On the phone, they want you.”

  “Just coming . . .” He wheeled around and extended his hand to Latkin. “Git Shabbos, Mr. Latkin.”

  Latkin squeezed his hand till it hurt, and the rabbi tried to extricate himself but without success. It was like a bear-trap. “The phone,” he said in a thin whine.

  “Where’s the phone?”

  “Someone’s waiting to speak to me.”

  “I got news for you. The world is waitink to speak to you . . . the whole world. A man so young in years and wise in wisdom.”

  “Thank you.” Davidson pulled his hand away when Latkin’s defenses were lulled.

  “Git Shabbos, Rabbi Davidson. And don’t forget, the world is waitink for a message.”

  “I won’t.” He rushed up the steps and was about to close the door when he saw Latkin following him, but Latkin paused and bent down and picked up a coin.

  “You were standing on a penny. Gold, it falls from your mouth. This penny is my blessing. A sign from God.”

  He turned and began to walk towards his car. The Sabbath was not over, but he had to see Sports. He had a new Packard, and he puffed as he drove the car like an engineer operating a steam engine, manually. The traffic was straggly as he negotiated the hill down to Sports’ apartment. He was surprised and delighted when he saw there were furniture and a doorman in the lobby, and he asked the man to buzz Sports on the house phone. Sports’ distorted voice came over the minuscule speaker, and Latkin was shown to the elevator. He rubbed his hands affectionately because the omens were favorable to his collecting the debt.

  Neal opened the door for him, and Latkin massaged his scalp. Neal pushed his hand off and glared at him suspiciously. He didn’t like Latkin’s dark, bituminous eyes, or the swaying fleshy chins that hung pendulously from his jaw. Latkin tried to fondle him again, and Neal skirted out of the way. Latkin removed his hat and handed it to Neal; the hat was too tight or Latkin’s head was too large, for there was an uneven saucer-like ring bisecting the tufts of hair on his head that appeared to spring out of the most unlikely places like cactus in a desert.

  “You Sports’ son?” He removed his coat and draped it on Neal’s arm.

  “No, I’m not. I don’t run the checkroom either,” he said, handing Latkin’s coat back to him. He disliked the strange, aggressive visitors who wandered through the apartment, treating him like a bellhop. Two days earlier he had returned from school and had found a man sleeping in his bed, and when he asked Rhoda where he could do his homework he was told to do it on the kitchen table so that he wouldn’t disturb the sleeping visitor. It didn’t seem real to Neal - the constant talk about games, horses, track conditions, radios blaring all night long, the stream of furtive men and women who played cards in the living room till three or four in the morning, and whose names were repeated to him time and time again, but he could never remember them. His mother had grown increasingly listless and apathetic, allowing him total freedom, never asking where he had gone, who he had been with. And she avoided looking at him. The change had taken place since she had married Sports. Neal would find her lying on her bed smoking cigarettes that had a peculiar odor and then she would begin to giggle stupidly or fall into morose silence, while Sports energetically shouted numbers on the telephone to ghostlike voices. Neal decided to run away from home when the weather got warmer - possibly sometime in March - and hitchhike down to Florida or Texas and find a job on a farm that employed young boys. He had seen a film about a ranch where boys worked for their room and board and three dollars a week, and he believed he could do the same thing.

  Latkin shuffled into the living room where Sports and Rhoda stood disconsolately by the imitation fireplace. The red light that was supposed to suggest fire revolved around a small wheel.

  “Varra nice,” Latkin observed. “You livin’ like a king, no, Sports?”

  “It ain’t bad.”

  “A cup of tea I wouldn’t mind.”

  “Rhoda, make him some tea.”

  “I don’t have any tea.”

  “It’s cold like anyting outside,” Latkin said. “Schnapps you got?”

  Sports went over to the liquor cabinet and poured him a large drink.

  “We’ve got rye, okay?”

  “Nutting wrong mit rye. It warms.”

  “Want some water or soda with it?” Rhoda asked. She was too nervous to stand around.

  “No, nevah. ‘S’like putting water in hot soup. Nobody does. So why in Schnapps, I esk you?”

  He held the glass tightly in his chubby fist, sniffed the bouquet and downed about two fingers, ejaculated a long resounding “Aaah,” then squinted at the two of them. He had often been in similar situations, and he knew the people were uncomfortable and fearful when they couldn’t pay up. He divided the world into those who could pay, and those who couldn’t. The latter always displayed an obsequious, dissembling attitude that skidded into belligerence, hollow unconvincing defiance that he could rend with a wave of his hand. He was an astute judge of human nature, and he specialized in lending money to gamblers because he knew most of them were incapable of violence, cowardly, and they all told the same lies.

  “It’s a sad day. Today I say Kaddish for my Mamma.”

  “It’s a sad day for a lot of other people,” Sports replied.

  If Sports had had the money, he would have flashed it by this time. Latkin thought; the inevitable excuses, apologies, explanations, would now follow. He swallowed the rest of the whiskey and belched into his fist Sports took his glass and filled it again. Latkin looked at Neal standing in a corner, and he felt a great wave of sadness for the child who might now find himself on the street. He played with an alternative idea that might enable Sports to pay him off without forcing him to break up his home.

  “Business is very bad, Mr. Latkin,” Rhoda said.

  “Terrible. I know for myself. I can’t move a silver fox or even a Persian lamb. Stock I got like corns.” He removed a grubby well-thumbed notebook from his vest pocket and turned to a page that contained Sports’ account. His lips moved as he did some rapid sums. “It comes to ten tousan’ dollars. You make it the same?”

  “That’s right. Ten grand.” Sports gazed out of the window at a car waiting for a green light. The license plate of the car ended with three. He would’ve bet that the next car to pass the light also ended in an odd number. A seven came past, and he squeezed his hands excitedly. It was an even money bet. Why couldn’t he have bet Latkin on it, or the next car, or the one after that? He turned back to Latkin, who sipped his drink pensively. He had to stop making mind bets. One of his friends had started to lose his mind making bets like this. According to the friend, various people, unknown to themselves, owed him sixty-two million dollars. That was the kind of streak he was on.

  “Maybe you should stop gembling?” Latkin suggested.

  “And do what?”

  “Gemblers don’t win, but the bookmakers live in two-family houses and their wives wear mink coats.”

  “That’s true,” Rhoda said. “When Sports was booking he was making three, four thousand dollars a week.”

  “Then why stop? That’s a good living.”

  “He’s smarter than the bookmakers. He would make three and bet five,” she explained.

  “I never liked booking. There’s no skill in it. You’re like a banker. You have to take the teams that other people don’t want.”

  “But the odds help a bookmaker, no?”

  “That’s not the point. It’s having the action that’s exciting. It’s pitting your brains against other people’s and fate.”

  “Fate,” Latkin spat the word out contemptuously. “
Fate is one ting: you’re born, and you die. Gembling is a sickness.”

  Sports shifted his weight from one foot to the other uneasily. The discussion was tiring him, and he was getting nowhere with Latkin. How could he explain the excitement, the thrill of betting on a winner? The money was unimportant - it was the action.

  “I haven’t got it,” he said finally. The admission relaxed him.

  “Don’t you think I know you don’t got it.”

  “What’s gonna happen?” asked Rhoda, on the edge of panic.

  “What should happen?”

  “The apartment, the furniture . . . it’s worth something? Maybe three thousand. We could sell it by the end of next week!”

  “Where would the boy live?”

  “He’ll live where I decide. He’s my son.”

  “To move out of such a nice apartment. It’s a pity.”

  “That’s not our fault, is it?” Sports said captiously. “You want your money.”

  “I’m entitled . . . no? I didn’t esk to lend you. You esked me.”

  “Aw, Christ, what’s the point?”

  “Maybe I can help.”

  “Give me more time!” Sports was jubilant.

  “No, that I can’t do. Enough time you’ve had.” He looked around the room. “Nice apartment. How many rooms you got?”

  “Four. Neal has a bedroom, and we have one.”

  “The living room’s fine. A good-sized room.”

  “For what?” Rhoda said.

  “I run a little game, and the people don’t have where to play.”

  “What kind of game?” Rhoda said.

  “Creps.”

  “A floater?”

  “Whadelse? Nice respectable men in the game. No roughnecks.”

  “How big is the game?” Sports inquired; he saw an opportunity to get even.

  “The biggest. But you won’t play.”

  “Why not?”

  “They don’t play for credit and nobody borrows money. A man goes bad, he leaves the game, like a gentleman. He’s always welcome to play when he’s got enough.”

  “What’s enough?”

  “No one without twenty thousand. Pikers can look for anoder game.”

  “So what’s in it for me?”

  “A thousand a night. Ten nights, they play here . . . we’re even. Longer is up to you.”

  “A thousand a night. For a game like that, the house takes ten percent off every winning roll.”

  “I know. The ten percent is me.”

  “Will you be here every night?”

  “Me? You crazy? I go to bed ten o’clock ever night. The game starts at twelve till five. What do I want to stay up ah night? I don’t know anytink about gembling.”

  “If the cops break it up I can do three years. The guys on the bunko squad don’t do business. They make a pinch, and the D.A. gets busy.”

  Latkin’s dark eyes roamed Sports’ face for a sign of strength, for resistance.

  “You a gembler, right? Well, this is a gemble. You win or lose. If you lose before the ten nights is out, then I write off what you owe me.”

  “While I’m in the keister. Raymond Street, or the Tombs.”

  “At five o’clock on the dot I call on the telephone. The phone rings four times, so you can think about it. You pick up the phone, that means you don’t want to cooperate. You let it ring four times, and you don’t owe me no more.” He extended his hand to Rhoda, then to Sports, patted Neal’s head, and walked out of the room. As he made to open the door, Sports rushed up to him.

  “Latkin, if you’re not at the game collecting your ten percent, then who is?”

  Latkin smiled with some embarrassment and shrugged his shoulders.

  “Sports, you don’t hev to worry your head. I got somebody what looks after my interests. A good reliable man who don’t cheat, and don’t gemble. So, denks for thinking of me. But don’t worry. No, you don’t need to worry for mine sake.”

  The phone rang promptly at five o’clock and Sports stared at it helplessly. Rhoda came over to him on the second ring and put her arm around his neck, but he forced her to remove it. It rang a third time. The sweat from the pocket above his lip began to drip, and he wiped it with the back of his hand. On the fourth ring, he lifted his hand, but Rhoda pulled it away from the phone.

  “We’ve got no choice.”

  “I’m sorry, Rhoda. What can I say?”

  “If the police come, what then?”

  “We’re both in it. The lease is in your name, and that makes you just as guilty.”

  Rhoda poured herself a drink and swallowed a pill with it. She went over to the window and stared out at the gray buildings and the empty playing field that lay in the distance. She almost never looked out of the living-room window, even though the view was a good one. Sleet was falling, and it made a sharp ricocheting sound as it caromed off the sides of cars.

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” she said. “It really doesn’t.”

  “We’re being victimized.”

  “Hah, victimized! It’s gonna snow.

  Terry had her hair in an upsweep, and she had her feet up on the settee pillow. The snow was falling, and she thought it looked like wads of cotton sprinkled from the roof of the hotel. In the months that she and Jay had lived in the hotel suite, she had added some homely touches, and the sitting room was, to her eye, agreeable because of the hi-fi and the television, which Jay had bought. The liquor cabinet was also new - a low-slung, angular one that gave the room an ambiance of home. The Vlaminck painting of a farmhouse which she had bought as a surprise for Jay made her feel that the room had a greater permanence. She heard the door in the anteway open and Jay burst in. He had snow on his hair, and his shoes were wet.

  “Hey, if you come into my house with wet shoes I’ll brain you.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Fine. Will I ever housebreak you?”

  “That depends on what you’re prepared to offer.”

  “Oh, take your pick. It could be twins.”

  “Does the doctor think . . . ?”

  “The doctor does not think. He just doctors, and he says I’m a perfectly wonderful specimen of a specimen.”

  “Do you want to go to a movie?”

  “No, not really, unless you do.”

  “Then we’ll stay in. Have dinner sent up and watch television.”

  “Sounds exciting.”

  “It’s snowing outside.”

  “So I’ve noticed.”

  He put his hand on her stomach and rubbed it then kissed her behind the ear.

  “I feel so big today. Just like an enormous animal. A hippo.”

  “You’re gorgeous.”

  “I think that the last six weeks are longer than the other months put together.”

  “It’s your imagination.”

  “I’ve been talking to it all afternoon. Unlike me. But I wasn’t being sentimental. Very Master Sergeantish and ordering it to emerge from its dark, warm valley and give me my figure back. I don’t think it heard me. What are you going to do about it, Jay? I won’t have a disobedient child.”

  “I could get room service to send out for Chinese food.”

  “You’re not paying attention.”

  “I have to see it to belt it. I can’t hit a man smaller than me. It’s unfair.”

  “Yes, I’d like Chinese food. How’d your meeting go?”

  “No problems. We’re increasing the dividend.”

  “I’ll ring my broker to buy fifty thousand shares.”

  “Hey, you’re kidding . . . that’s privileged information.”

  “Well, then, I won’t buy any of your lousy shares.”

  He smiled and sat down beside her, lifted her head and rested it on his lap. She closed her eyes, and he kissed her eyelids.

  “Wake up.”

  “Why? You won’t let me make any money.”

  “Surprise. I bought a hundred thousand last month through my broker . . . in your name.”


  “You aren’t serious, are you?”

  “Sure I am.”

  “We need the money. You can’t pay our hotel bill.”

  “No, but I can manage to buy the hotel and throw all the guests out if you like. That would give us about eight hundred rooms, and you could have a friend stay with us.”

  “Ah, you’re an impossible man, a quite impossible man.”

  At about eight o’clock, the room-service waiter wheeled in a steaming hot trolley. He uncovered it, and Terry lifted the small silver tops of the dishes. Jay had ordered the chicken and almonds, which she had once said she liked. She broke open a fortune cookie and read aloud: “‘He who sleeps heavily will father few.’”

  “Oh, c’mon, I don’t believe it,” he said, yanking the piece of paper from her, while she squealed with laughter. He read it:

  “‘On solemn occasions a man walks softly: women cry and men go to war.’ What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “The Chinese have great dignity and many children.”

  “No, seriously. I don’t get it . . .”

  “It means that unless we eat the spareribs they’ll get cold.” She took a rib and began to munch it. “Hey, I just had a lovely idea. Wouldn’t it be nice to get Neal early tomorrow and all have breakfast together. We can’t go for a drive because of the snow: but we could catch the early show at Radio City.”

  He blinked with surprise. He could not fathom what was behind this new interest in Neal, and yet it seemed genuine. The weekend he had broken with Eva, Terry had insisted on writing a long explanatory letter to Neal. He had been against it, but after considerable persuasion he had relented. “No one tells the kid anything. He’s always being knocked off balance. For example, Rhoda and Sports coming up to camp - completely out of the blue - and informing him that they got married. How do you think he felt? And even though he didn’t much like Eva, he still thinks that you’re together. If we try to spring it on him - that you’re finished - he won’t have much regard for me. He’s got to respect us, and he’s got to be persuaded that what we’ve done is best for us - and him in the long run - because it’s built on love. If he learns that one single human lesson, he won’t go wrong.” Jay had read and reread the letter half a dozen times before she had sent it. “I don’t care about what anybody says about us, but as far as Neal is concerned, the letter will be our passport to respectability and it’s essential that he back us up because when Mitch gets through with us we’ll be knee-deep in filth and Neal won’t know what to believe unless we’ve laid a foundation.” After posting the letter, he realized that her logic was irrefutable, and he wondered if she was using Neal for a sounding board for the time when she had to face her own children. It had worked miraculously, for when the three of them did meet at the end of the summer, Neal was thoroughly captivated by Terry. Jay had expected their first meeting to be unrelievedly awkward and embarrassing and before starting out he had needed a drink, but she had forced him to put the bottle down. “If he smells liquor on your breath, he’ll think you didn’t have the courage to face him on his own terms. He’s probably more nervous than you are, and if anybody needs a drink it’s him, but he’s only a kid and that makes him ineligible.” She had kissed Jay affectionately on the cheek. “Therefore be bold, my sweet.”