The Duplex

by Lucky Stevens

  Work was terrible. I could not concentrate and ended up thinking about Dot all day anyway. I just kept asking myself, Why? When my boss, Mr. Mayfield, asked me if everything was okay, I just told him that I had trouble sleeping last night. Naturally, as always, I steered clear of any problems that he might see as being a woman’s matter. I never wanted to give him a reason to regret hiring me. But still, I was sure he wondered about my marital situation and whether or not I might go back on my promise—and condition for being hired in the first place—to not have children for at least ten years.

  In any event, Mr. Mayfield came through. He told me what a bang-up job I had been doing. How he had hoped that I would remain with the firm for years to come. And finally, he expressed his desire that I take a vacation. I resisted, of course. Partially out of office politics—When in Rome—and partially because I really did not want to sit around brooding over you-know-who.

  “Nonsense. Everyone needs to recharge his batteries every once in a while. Or, her batteries, as the case may be,” he said with a grin. The older he got, he said, the more he came to believe this was true.

  “Your job will be waiting for you, Mrs. Ripley. Don’t you worry. Now, enjoy some well-earned rest and relaxation.”

  “Yes, Sir,” I said. I nodded to him and began to read over some briefs.

  He cleared his throat and looked down at me and gestured with his chin toward the door.

  If it was not evident before that this guy meant right away, it certainly was evident now.

  With no work to do, I had all the time in the world to think about Dot. I cleaned the house from top to bottom, looked at television, listened to the radio, and read. My motivation, however, was the pits, and my ability to concentrate was worse. I turned down invitations to lunch and dinner and felt about as crummy as I ever remembered.

  Edith, Mrs. Wallace, our neighbor, the one who was offended that we did not invite her to our party—which, of course, would have shocked her out of her girdle if she had attended—got wind of my “vacation” and now wanted to visit with me daily. She is, of course, a very nice person, but I just was not up to seeing people—not with my heart still being run through the meat grinder.

  The one time she did get her claws into me did not particularly go well. She could tell something was wrong, leaving me in the position of trying to convince her that everything was fine. And leaving her in the position of telling me how much a couple of tablets of Methedrine per day has done to pep up her disposition. Despite her sounding like a pretty convincing advertisement, my spirits were too low to try any.

  Adding to things being out of the ordinary, was how overnight everything in our little duplex had been upended. Dot was gone, of course. But so was Jerry, it seemed. And I hardly ever saw Cliff. I hoped I had not hurt Jerry’s feelings the other day. That mixed up kid. I know he was just trying to help.

  And then came the telegram that put me on a plane back to New York.

  When I came out to L.A., I said I figured the only way I am ever going back to Brooklyn is if the Dodgers want me to play center field. And with the way the Duke is playing out there, this does not look likely anytime soon. That was eight years ago and I said it to my cousin, Theresa. I remember thinking, I may actually never see the Dodgers play in person again. For me to attend a game they would have to follow me out to L.A., and we know that is never going to happen.

  It had always been a great regret of mine how things had ended with my father. And I sincerely believed that I would never see him again, but everything changed when Western Union came knocking. The telegram was direct from my cousin. My father was dying.

  This would be my last chance to see him, and I had no idea if he would want to see me or not. Or if he would beat me up again. But I had to try anyway. I had to pay my respects to a man who, despite it all, meant the world to me. I still loved him. Still respected him. And I hated like hell that my last memory of him, a man who was usually calm and soft-spoken, was that of a boiling cauldron of anger and disgust.

  The plane touched down at La Guardia around 3:30 in the afternoon. I took a cab, but after a few miles, I told the driver to pull it over so I could take the subway. At the time I had decided on the subway for old times’ sake, but looking back, I think I wanted to stretch the trip out a little longer. Give myself more time to think. It is funny. I had just spent ten hours and a small fortune flying across the country, and now here I apparently wanted more time to think.

  As I headed for the subway, I thought about what had gotten me into the position I was now in—namely, being a visitor to Brooklyn instead of a lifelong resident.

  I suppose it all started with my contrarian nature. Red was blue, blue was black. When I was a teenager, my dad, who was really proud of his ancestry, sensing my apathy, I guess, says to me, “Aren’t you proud of your heritage?” I said, “Pop, I am proud of the things I have accomplished. I will let you decide whether or not my heritage and my well-thought-out decision to be born to mom and you are accomplishments or not.” I remember him turning red, seething with anger. Ehh, I should have just said ‘yes’ to his question. Why not? Anyway, what can I say? It is just the way I think. I guess becoming a lawyer was a good choice. Now I get paid to be a professional jerk.

  The doors on the train parted, and I entered, the whole experience so familiar but distant. And I rode the subway in a way that I never had before—with an incredible eye for detail. The mundane way I had approached these rides in the past was traded for the keen perspective of some tourist archiving his observations of New Yorkers in their natural habitat. I noticed everything. I studied people’s faces, clothes, their mannerisms and the advertisements on the car’s well-worn walls.

  I took note that not a single one of the passengers was a blonde. None of them looked remotely like Dot, which made me think of none other than Dot. The hole in me was still there. Gaping. And so was the anger. Thoughts of her were like a hollow persistent fuzz in the back of my mind that seemed to cloud everything I saw and thought about.

  I got off at the President Street Station. From there I made my way down Bedford, which gave me the opportunity to walk past Ebbets Field and a few other old haunts before landing on the stoop of my family’s apartment house on Franklin.

  A few kids were playing stickball in the street, and I felt an errant Spaldeen hit my lower leg.

  “Over here, lady,” yelled some kid with a beanie. I tossed him the ball.

  Then I took a deep breath before reaching out to ring the bell.

  “Hold on. Hold on. Barbara, is that you?”

  The lobby door came swinging open. It was our neighbor since forever, on her way out. She looked the same as when I was a kid—matronly, to be kind.

  “Mrs. Carnsey. How are you?”

  “I’m good. Look at you. So, I heard you moved out to Hollywood to become a big time lesbian or some such. Watcha’ doing back here? Slummin’?”

  “It’s pronounced thespian,” I said. The reality was she could have meant either one. Clarifying it with her would have taken two aspirins and too much of my time.

  “Well, it all sounds pretty hoity, not to mention toity, to me. Tell Clark Gable I say hi.”

  “Well, I am not due to see him until next month, but I will try to remember.”

  Before I could get my last word out, she was already walking into me as if I was a ghost. I stood where I was as she scraped around me, behaving as if there was not enough room on the stoop’s landing. What a slice of heaven this one is. Ehh, some things never change.

  Mrs. Carnsey did not do a good job of shutting the lobby door. Like I said, some things never change. But I was happy that I did not have to buzz up to my parents’ apartment anymore. I guess it would have killed me if they refused to buzz me up. I conveniently put the potential alternative of having their apartment door slammed in my face, or being slapped and cursed, out of my mind. At l
east I would get to see my parents in person.

  I made my way up the familiar staircase of our six-story walk-up. The iron hand rails and spindles and the tiny black and white tiles on the floor felt like home. Even the faintly musty, potato-y smell in the hallways felt like home. Fortunately, we were on the third floor, so the climb was not too arduous. Even so, it is a lot harder in heels and lugging a suitcase than when I was a kid, and I would race up and down these staircases for the fun of it. I did not notice the tile pattern much back then. But I guess it must have sunk in, and at that moment the whole picture felt perfect to me. Better than California palm trees, sunsets, and the Pacific Ocean. I guess what they say is true. You can take the girl out of Brooklyn, but, well, you know the rest.

  Thirty-three, Thirty-four, here it was, apartment number 35. I could have found it in the dark. Number thirty-five. I remember telling my father that one day I would be as old as this door—thirty-five. He laughed and told me that the door was probably fifty years old already, but that it didn’t matter. I would always be his little girl. Of course, that was years before he beat me up and threw me out of his house for doing what he had always taught me—to be myself and to never give up.

  I looked at the door for a moment. It looked the same as I had remembered it. And this is when I told myself to snap out of this nostalgia kick I was going down. Of course, it looked the same. How much is a door going to change in eight lousy years? Gee whiz, it was good to be back, but it was then that it hit me that I was memorializing everything as if it was made of precious gold. Or maybe I was just dragging this thing out because knocking on that door was going to be a lot harder than walking up a few flights of stairs.

  So, I stood up straight, faced forward, and knocked on the door. Hard, nothing mousy. A moment later, the door cracked open. It was my mother’s face.

  Jerry Ripley

  Straight ahead was another door. I seemed to be in a kind of small room, almost a foyer, that was blocked off from the rest of the building. The walls were dark. To my right was a man behind a counter inside a kind of cage. I took it in quickly and realized the cage was actually a place to check out tools, or at least had been at one time. A tin sign next to an opening in the wire read: Place Tools on Counter Wait For Approval.

  Before I could look around, the man inside the cage, who was calm just a second earlier, jumped up quickly. He looked average in every way. His height and build. Even his face was average. And his expression seemed frozen. Hanging on the wall over his right shoulder, was a bell—pretty good size.

  “Can I help you?” he said. He looked suspicious.

  “Yes. Um, where am I? What is this place?”

  “You from around here?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Whereabouts?”

  What the heck was going on?

  “I used to live over on Walnut Street. My folks still do. I moved to Los Angeles, and I’m back for a visit. I was taking a walk, and I saw your light.” I figured I’d get it all out there so we didn’t have to keep on going back and forth. I wondered if I had given this guy enough information.

  The next thing out of my mouth was going to be that I was unarmed, I came in peace, and that I was not a communist. That’s what was brewing in my mind, but I wondered if I would have sounded too much like a smart aleck if I had actually said it.

  He looked at me a moment.

  Then the door from the main area of the establishment flung open, and a tall man rushed into the foyer. His hair was slicked back, and he wore a nice suit that looked moderately expensive. He looked familiar.

  “Oh, excuse me,” he said, as he whisked by me. Then he turned back. “Jerry?”

  “Yes?” I said. He smiled and put his palms up. He ticked his head to the side like he was surprised to see me. My mind was trying to place him. I sputtered a moment. “Howie. Howard, uh—”

  “Stanton.”

  “Stanton, right,” I said, honestly not remembering his last name.

  It turned out we had gone to school together. But it only took me a second to remember that we had moved in different circles and had never really had much in common.

  After a very brief catch up, he told me he had to leave early tonight. He only had time for a quick stop, but now he was late and really had to hit the road. I barely got a word in edgewise. He then turned to the man in the cage and gestured with his chin. “He’s okay, Cal.”

  Howard and I shook hands, and he left. I glanced at the man in the cage whose face looked like it was made of stone. He jerked his head toward the main door, his way of telling me to go on in, I suppose.

  I shrugged. What the heck. I guess I can take a peek at least.

  I stepped forward and noticed the ancient and faded words painted on the wall to the left of the door. They read: Men Must Wipe Boots Before Entering Shop Floor Pilferers Of Tools Will Be Flogged Spitting On Floor Is Strictly Prohibited Watch For Flying Debris

  “I heard their dental plan was the best in the city, though,” I said.

  Right after I said it, a feeling came over me, and I wished I would stop persisting in trying to be friendly or funny with people who obviously wouldn’t appreciate it and probably wouldn’t even respond. I bet Cliff wouldn’t do that, I thought. And then I realized, yes, he would. He’d say it purely for his own amusement, not caring what the other person thought.

  But Old Stone Face, the cage guy, did respond. He smiled and followed it with a chuckle. “Have a good time,” he called out after me. I turned back and smiled and opened the door.

  After the mysterious interactions with both him and Howard, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I didn’t know if it was a casino or a brothel or a speakeasy run by the ghost of Al Capone, or what.

  Well, when I opened the door, it turned out to be nothing more than a bar. An unusual one, but still a bar. It looked like they had reused everything they could from what I already knew was once a machine shop. Shiplap on the walls, which, of course, was just the other side of the shiplap on the outside of this place. Work benches doubled as bar counters, old tool cabinets that now held liquor, stools that no doubt were used by workers a century ago, a few old machines moved into the corners, and wheels, belts, and gears hanging in various locations throughout. Despite all this, the place was clean, comfortable, and pleasant enough. I was used to a more modern upscale look, but I liked it anyway.

  I was so distracted by the strange look of the place, it wasn’t until I saw two men kissing that it all hit me. Oh. And it all made sense. I felt excited right away. In Kansas? In Independence? I had this strange feeling of wanting to spread the news, which, of course, would be the last thing I should do. But still, the feeling was exhilarating somehow. How long had this been going on for? Homosexuality in Independence, Kansas. I wasn’t the only one? I wasn’t the only one!

  Of course, I wasn’t the only one. I already knew that. But now I really knew it. Incredible.

  I approached the counter and found an empty seat. “Can I get a beer, please?”

  “Beer? You got it,” said the bartender. His smile was wide and had a down to earth, genuine feel to it.

  “No, wait a minute,” I said. I always got beer. “How about a gin and tonic instead?”

  “Coming right up. And you have all the way until I get over there to change your mind again if you like.” He had said it without the least bit of irritation, and he smiled again. I laughed and watched him mix my drink. While he did, he talked to other customers and other employees too, every time with the same easy-going manner.

  The bartender put down a coaster, a napkin, and my drink. He told me his name was Fats and that if I needed anything, I should let him know.

  “You must have gotten that nickname a long time ago. Or your parents were near-sighted.”

  He laughed and winked at me. “Thanks.”

  I watched him for a minute. He was
always smiling, even when one customer accidently knocked over his drink.

  “Is this seat taken?”

  I looked up. His hair was dark, and his eyes were blue. His name was Jeffrey, and before I knew it, we were deep in conversation. I was amazed at how easily the conversation flowed with this perfect stranger. I ordered another gin and tonic and a martini for him.

  When Chances Are came on over the jukebox, we both raised our eyebrows a little, and the next thing I knew, we were dancing. I noticed a lot of people coupling up for that one.

  When we returned to the counter again, we began talking to a few other guys, and soon our two-some was a lively six-some. I looked at Jeffrey to see if he minded, but he seemed to be rolling with the punches like everyone else, including me. I realized I knew one of the guys from school. His name was Donald, and I remembered him from the wrestling team. He had a strong build, sandy blond hair, curly. And greenish eyes that lit up his whole face.

  “Did you ever wonder about me? Ever think I might be gay?” he asked.

  Two of the other guys were talking to each other but most were listening to Donald.

  “Back then I didn’t think anyone else in the world was gay,” I said, and everyone chuckled.

  Next, he told me he had had a crush on me all throughout junior high.

  I was beaming inside, but I didn’t show it. “And what happened after junior high?”

  He paused a moment. His eyes were dancing. “High school.”

  I loved how he said it, and we all laughed, including Donald.

  Then, feigning rejection, he added, “And then I gave up on you and joined the wrestling team.”

  “Yeah, I remember you lost every match.” I wasn’t sure if it was true or not, but I said it anyway, smiling. “I wonder if that’s a habit you still employ when you wrestle guys today.”

  He grinned and gave me a wink. After that, he paused a moment, but the grin remained. “Come on,” he said.

  I took his waiting hand. “Where to?”