In the Slammer With Carol Smith

by Hortense Calisher

  ‘I don’t think maybe you ought to go in there,’ the cop says softly.

  ‘Somebody’s killed the cat?’ She could almost see it, hanging there as once the aunts’ cat had been found, strung up in the barn. No significance the aunts had murmured to one another. A word she had added to her hoard.

  ‘That moocher?’ Jerry says. ‘He’s already in the window of the woman who gives readings. She’s always had her eye on him. Maybe he’ll assist.’

  Cops never spread their arms. Jerry spreads his gut though, to relax him and you; he was once cited by the department for being too fat. It’s still a gut. ‘Well, folks—going off duty. We’ll have the lot fenced in by tomorrow.’ He stares at the airy space above, into which the clouds are sneaking as if long prevented. ‘Betcha the neighbors aren’t organizing any protest.’ He gives her a long look. ‘See you got yourself one of those.’ He flicks the Shelter-Pak. ‘Hmm. Up to you. Anyways, take care.’ He shrugs. ‘Upta you.’ On the way past Mungo’s barrow he seizes a pot, calling back: ‘For the wife.’

  ‘He never respects my inventory,’ Mungo says.

  She says, looking past him, ‘I know who’s in the shed.’

  The bolts are still there, but swing loose on their fittings, as if one of the destroying crew had said at the last minute, ‘Nah, not worth it,’ and had let the shed be. Or else somebody, tripping the set-up of bolts and knocker for one last time, had then wrenched it half out of the weathered wood.

  ‘It’s still a door,’ Mungo says, and pushes in.

  At first she thinks the body there is dead,—shoved up against the wall with its knees sunk to its chin and left there, by the decamping crew. Or by Jerry Guido, who had really gone to meet the squad car. But then one eye opens owlish. Then the other. ‘Don’t come near, whoever you are. ‘I up-chucked. Forgot I was on like an antibuse.’ His voice is tired but still competent, the way it always was, separate from any bottle in his hand. An actor’s voice, no whopper of a baritone, but the thin, dry kind, that tickles one’s ear.

  Both eyes close, open, focus. ‘Carol. Carol.’

  She smiles.

  One scarecrow jerk, then another. He stands. ‘What did you do to yourself?’

  ‘What did you?’

  ‘I said. Fell off the wagon.’ The shapely head hangs. Its haircut is still sharp. ‘After nearly a year.’

  ‘Fell off?’ Mungo cracks. ‘Weigh up, pal. You were never on. Tossed—from one night to the other. Bottle in your britches, dawn to dusk.’

  The long harlequin face lights up. ‘So I managed it then?’

  Mungo’s cheeks puff. ‘Manage?’

  ‘Thought you knew I was playing the fool. An old Aussie like you. You ever sniffed at those bottles, you’d have known it was tea.’ He turned to her. ‘I know I fooled you. I was acting. Acting it out. Like it helped—see?’

  Acting it out—she knows that phrase. That’s what she had done—they said, the docs on the ward. Maybe she’s still doing it? Stage acting is a whale’s distance apart. But she daren’t say. ‘Tea, Alphonse? That’s what they use onstage, isn’t it?’

  He sees what she’s up to. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I’m a good smeller. You don’t smell as if you barfed.’

  ‘Barfed?’ A college word, new to him. ‘Oh. I did it in the bar. Washed up, some. Came back here. And passed out.’

  ‘Because of—that?’ She points. In the open shed, a pyramid of two-by-fours and chunks of cornice rears like an unsigned work of art.

  ‘The club? No, I knew its days were numbered. That’s what made it so special. Never dreamed it would go like this though. Or like with that poor woman, Margaret.’ His voice has deepened. It mustn’t be that he can’t act. He can’t stop.

  ‘No—I was celebrating,’ he says softly. ‘Because—I got a job.’

  When somebody comes out with that it’s like a lens lifting, if only for them. But over their shoulder you too see out of the dog-gray, into the light.

  Of course it’s a division too. She’s remembering how that is. When maybe you and the jobbie are on stools in the diner, side by side. When whoever’s behind the counter offers a coffee, and don’t offer you. So you scrounge an extra paper napkin, in reply. The steam that runs down a diner’s window on a winter morning, it’s not important to most. Coming in from the real outside, it’s like a hearth. Your nose weeps for joy.

  ‘A job, a job,’ Mungo gobbles. ‘Better look sharp.’ He lashed out an arm—as he always had when he gave you something—and dug in his puttees. ‘Here.’ A bottle of his fizz. Then bowing in embarrassment like always, he backed out the door. Only to stick his head in again, the mustache quivering. ‘Stop calling me Aussie if you please. I’m from New Zealand. Auckland.’ The door closed.

  Alphonse had finished the fizz. ‘You off somewhere?’

  ‘Maybe to Philadelphia? Maybe I can get a job giving out those new packs they have?’ She has just thought of that.

  ‘Neat.’ He touches the Shelter-Pak, almost as if he’s touching her. Always thought you had a pad.’

  Will she lie? Not worth it, ever again. ‘I do. Did. Not now. Giving it up.’ She watches him brush himself off. The chinos are still okay. The tee’s armhole gapes. ‘I always thought—you had one too.’

  ‘Buddy of mine, in Jersey, just across the Tube. I want to sit for their kids, I can stay. Not too often. They don’t have the cash to goof off much.’ He slides the empty fizz bottle into his pants pocket like he needs it there. ‘Sometimes I did stay at the Y.’

  Already, even in the torn, stained turtleneck, he looks as if he could. She wonders what the job is. On that thin-limbed body with its lurking sadness what role will be draped?

  ‘That bar I went, Carol—it’s where that go-go girl—remember her? She gave me a coupon for it once. Free drink, lunchtime only. And topless girls. Way down Ninth Avenue. She wasn’t there. But I stayed.’

  ‘You swing?’

  ‘No. No I never. Lived with a girl once; she was on the vino too. But now—it’s like I’m on the antibuse for that too. Like until I get straight for sure.’

  That figures. Even if it makes her feel the weight of the Shelter-Pak. She can’t put it down, not on all that broken glass.

  ‘And you?’ He says. ‘What about you, Carol?’

  ‘I swung—But not now.’

  ‘I figured.’

  He checks his watch, a round one with a simple face. He told anybody at the club who noticed it that it was a Canal Street rip-off. It’s not junky-fancy. And the strap is leather. More like a graduation present from too long ago.

  Shouldn’t she be making off now? But everyone needs some dispensation. He always liked the way she said his name.

  ‘Alphonse?’

  ‘Yes, Carol?’

  ‘I brought your other shirt.’

  Outside Mungo has set the flowerpots with the stiff-standing blossoms at exact intervals that form a diamond pattern over the entire plot before them. The rubble holds the pots firm. If it were springtime those blossoms could be ranunculus, but it is autumn and she a wanderer, who now cannot be expected to know what plants are. Those hold their heads high in the breeze though, as if everyone is saying their name.

  ALPHONSE’S ‘JOB’ is to be a three-time walk-on—as a con man in a street card-game, a bagel-seller and a rube in a Western hat—in an off-off-Broadway production still in rehearsal, that has a big last-act crowd scene, and a low budget. But he may have a chance to replace the understudy of the second male lead.

  ‘The role is a drunk,’ he says, as they sip coffee, looking out on New York Bay from the huge palm garden of the World Trade Center. ‘Good part.’ ‘But the actor doing it just got great reviews in a film. Gossip is he’ll move.’ And the understudy, Alphonse’s friend, will shift up. ‘That’s how I got the tip. He knows me from the AA.’ ‘An actors’ association?’ ‘No—Alcoholics Anonymous.’

  He likes to look at her as if she is the more innocent. ‘It’s a big chance.’ His voice deepe
ns whenever he mentions what she thinks of as being onstage and he calls ‘the theater.’ She sees what a prospect can do—how it hones down the gross details into one gaunt meaning. How it silvers a path.

  Two days and nights had gone by since she had last seen him, parting from him at the curb. Mungo’s barrow had been just rounding the far corner. ‘Odd guy—’ Alphonse had said. At the Cat Club, where all were odd, he wouldn’t have said that. ‘I’m off, then.’ When he’d asked to meet her down here in a couple of days time, surprised that she hadn’t seen this dramatic place, she herself had felt odd—at planning anything that far ahead—but had agreed. As for knowing the city, its new haunts and plazas, that indeed is her obligation. Over the summer she’d grown rusty at it. Behind the two of them, the crooked street had already realigned itself. He hadn’t asked her where she might be off to, with her pack. Standing on the leftover slate steps, she’d waved goodbye at him. Yet she has kept the appointment.

  ‘This Palm Garden plaza’s in the news,’ he says now, swilling his coffee with vigor. ‘As “a democratic anomaly.”’

  The last two words ring like bells from a distant convent. If she lets them into her brain, where words like that had used to rear like fists, they will stretch her mind, the way the tailor’s wooden form had stretched the hat of Milan straw bought for her when she was ten, and every year enlarged. What can she do with such a phrase, in her daily round? He has brought the newspaper with the article in it; he’s enlarging himself, for the job. She sees the phrase like a storefront that sells foreign wares.

  The Garden is wonderful. High as a church, silly with de luxe shops at the sides, and cleansed by the view of the river that comes from the sea. Children of all races sprinkle the stiff rows of metal seats like poppies, in the bright cheapy jackets that could be bought at any mall; their folks, seen when the tots run to them, are not the sort who would buy at the shops here. Outside the great central window, figures stroll the walk as if the painter behind all this has unfrozen them. Tourists chat, lifting their chins. It hurts her to observe these levels; she is used to being solely in one. The barrio had had none too challenging. She hadn’t been for years in the streets of perfection over East. Here, she feels uneasily, the people, all of them, are being challenged by the decor. ‘Where’s that word again?’

  He puts her finger on the newsprint headline. ‘Anomaly.’

  ‘I still have trouble,’ she says. ‘Observing.’

  He nods, not yet thinking that strange. They both will be receding from the Cat Club, she thinks. He in his way, she in hers. She tries to read the newspaper column, but shakes her head. ‘You may need glasses—’ he says. ‘You better check.’ She knows he doesn’t believe that. Maybe he’s being kind. If so—she wants to tell him, it’s all right with her.

  ‘There’s this controversy, you see—’ he says. ‘On whether the buildings around this plaza are allowed to keep the odd people out. Or whether the city must demand that they can stay. Even in the daytime, they’re being shoo’ed. Nobody’ll say who’s doing it. Maybe the city itself is taking advantage, this here says.’ He taps the news-sheet. His nails have always been nice. ‘Now that winter’s near, it’s coming to a head.’

  ‘The dirty people,’ she says. Sorry though, when he turns red. One can’t act that. Or not so quick.

  ‘I’m not distancing myself, Carol. And I could lose the job.’

  Sneakily, they scan the rows of chairs, the tables like their own, the long aisle leading to the stores on the garden’s rim, the bright wind-protected vision up front.

  There. In the second row of chairs. A middle-aged man with a woolen cap; at first glance he might be anybody, even a ringer for the waiter at the Greek restaurant, dawdling maybe before time to go on shift. But the collar of his lumberjack is badly frayed, and the body in it has no outline; you wear the extra blanket; she knows that trick. And the bag on his lap is too plump for groceries. But his feet are decently on the floor, and he is staring rigidly eyes front, as if the view is his defense. No guards anywhere, that she can see. Police? Yes, there’s one lounging near the Restroom’s sign. And there, not too far from him, in the last row of chairs, a girl is sleeping, her feet stretched on a second chair, a bundle in front of her on the elegant tile-stone floor. All in a not too dusty black, she might pass. Some yards behind her, one of the huge bordering vases rocketing with flower-and-fern displays gives her thin figure the background a model might have, in pose.

  As they watch, the cop comes over to her, ambling. He taps her outflung arm at the elbow, his own arm drawing quickly back. When the girl rouses he stands respectfully. Leaving her plenty time to sit up, blink awake. Then he taps the sole of her shoe, signaling her to keep her feet on the ground, that chairs here are for sitting only.

  The girl has an ordinary face. Half a dozen stories might attach to it. A wee old though even for a senior down to the city for the fall break, just off a train and the friends she’s staying with still at work yet. Or saving hotel rent for another kind of splurge. Now that her feet are on the floor though, the posture that made her a model is gone. She nods to the cop, as if he has corrected her manners. Then smiles at him. She has no front teeth.

  When the cop walks on down the row of chairs there’s a kid jumping on one of them, but he saunters on.

  After it’s over, she finds that she and Alphonse have gripped hands.

  They loosen them. She looks down at herself. Still all right, the tan sweater fresh from the launderette, the shoes more than okay. And the blessed haircut, that she had only to shake into order, like a debutante. ‘She shouldn’t have smiled at him,’ she says.

  They scan one another. Dented some, both of them, worn some. She too thin, he too puffy for that fine profile. But no more than any in the true world might be, if temporarily off track? Teeth fine. And together in the public eye a couple, if a little scuffed? Each other’s protection, to a degree?

  ‘Two-thirty curtain—’ he says, on a big inhale. ‘Want anything more?’

  They haven’t eaten here, or together. There are limits to their kind of couple. He had bought her a coffee, then she him. ‘No. But I’ll just run off to the restroom.’ As she hoists her pack she sees he is troubled; does he think she won’t come back? She has done that, to others. ‘I need something in it,’ she says. Women in his family back there in turkeyland, she guesses, as his eyes veil; he thinks he knows what. He is wrong.

  What she wants is to check the mirror, to see for sure whether two nights spent on the outside aren’t already showing. Once on the street, the details begin to blur. Now that she can’t cook for herself, sensible food will be a problem; you can’t get grains and cheap chicken liver when you’re on the run. But for a plus, the food search legitimizes the wandering. The pack holds vitamins, a water-bottle, a flash, and what for the street is a princess’s wardrobe—one complete change, down to the skin. She’s had to sacrifice the bathrobe—leaving it for Gold. Bathrobes are babyland, dorm, Sunday fireplace, Claudette Colbert in a log-cabin, old weekend movie—the pure fluff and sweet of the uncorrupted inside.

  As she enters the restroom, the policeman eyes the Pak.

  Inside—no time for the bodywash she gives herself in sections, in the toilet stall of any washroom she hits that is empty enough and has paper towels. She grabs a couple, wets them, ignoring two women at the sink, and once inside the stall, blots her inner thighs. If you have to wear dungies, a crotch is a woman’s cross.

  First night out she had dossed down in the Park, dangerous but gracious; you could dream poems there and hear grass music. But washing was out. The second night she had slept out on the gay dock, the family dock being under repair. A boy she asked said, ‘Oh doll, where have you been; the public baths are closed, the pubic bath, dear. They left us one on trial for a bit—but you know—life goes on.’ So it was the city shelter, which he wouldn’t advise. ‘I’m dying for a shower myself.’ Summers, he used the swimming pools; there are winter ones, but not that time of night�
�and strict at any time. He sighed. ‘These days, no funny business. No business at all.’ He squinted at her. If he got the idea she might be slumming, he and his pals could run her off. But she passed muster, maybe by her matching squint. ‘Tell you what,’ he said. There was a guy in a basement off Christopher street who rented his shower for sex, but he wouldn’t bother her. When she agreed to go, a boy stretched out at his left rose to accompany them. Threading through the night’s crowd on the dock, some awake and busy, some catching a few winks with their worldly goods under them, she glimpsed several packs like hers. The two boys with her, both in the many-pocketed sharpshooter khaki jackets that the stalls sold in this district, had none.

  In the basement, an older man and a younger had been playing checkers on a card table. At a mumble from the two boys she was shown the shower, off to the side. Clean enough, with a brown-tiled floor drain and a bar of soap, but the backpack couldn’t come in with her. Already she had felt the lion urge to guard it that would entrap her, hamper her, even doom her, in the life ahead. Hanging it on a hook outside the stall, she left the folding door open a crack and showered minimally. Sure enough, as she was drying off with her own towel, she saw the Pak move. Opening the door, she stood there bare-breasted, then lunged for their stealing hands. One of the boys screamed; she had raked his forearm with her strong nails. ‘What’s going on here?’ the older man at the table said, rising. He took it in at once. ‘Scram, chippies. And don’t come back.’ When she was dressed and asked how much, he said, ‘My pleasure,’ and seeing her glance at the board, ‘You play? Go ahead. He always beats me.’ She’d won from the younger man in a few moves. Both men laughed. There was no sun in the room but the checker board trembled with focused light. A breezy camaraderie stirred at her cheeks. This was one of the moments worth the wandering. ‘You off somewhere?’ the two said as she shouldered the pack. She nodded, encouraged that they took her for somebody with a destination. ‘Come back any time,’ they said. ‘Any time you hit town. Pot of soup on the stove, generally.’ She saw it upended now, cleansed and drying. The younger man held the door for her. Up the areaway steps and she hit the slow circuit of male cruisers for which the street was known: men of all ages, beauties and wrecks, down-and-outers and paying gents, carrying their urges in steady line and past all diseases, a line like one saw in early religious paintings, of either paradise or hell. The night above her and them was that bell of blue which colors New York as it gets colder. Back of the moving line, in part of the painting, the two men in their basement pad were a comfortable vision, pursuing their decent, accepting, feline life.