All the brothers at the bar stood at attention. Carmine, the owner, put his hands to his sides and squared his shoulders and stood like a sentry. A sound of static came out of the juke box. The record came on the same way it has been coming on at Carmine’s during every afternoon for years. Kate Smith, in that great American voice of hers, began “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
The lawyers in the booth did not get up. “I said everybody up!” Jack Sheridan yelled back at them. The lawyers sat in the booth and looked at each other and pretended not to hear Sheridan or the music. They were lawyers.
The bartender bent down and turned the key that controls the juke box volume and he made the record so loud, and everybody sang louder because of it, that it was hard to hear Sheridan when he yelled out, “Get up, you fuckin mockies,” but it was one of those things you could feel being said rather than actually hear it being said. Dermot touched Jack’s hand to calm him down.
Everybody was up to “ … And the rockets’ red glare …” The voices trailed off badly but that was because the national anthem is harder to sing than “God Bless America.” All along the bar the brothers were standing motionless, a few of them with their eyes shut, and Kate Smith’s voice filled the room and her voice was louder than all their singing together. Sheridan’s shoulder and Dermot’s shoulder pressed into each other while they sang. Somebody’s arm touched Dermot on the other side. He could feel the gun in his holster. He had never felt warmer or safer in his life.
The national anthem ended and everybody yelled out “Yea!” and reached for a glass. Jack Sheridan stepped back from the bar. He called out in that big voice of his, “Fuck all commies, niggers, and liberals.”
Dermot put his glass on the bar and hunched over it and began staring into it. The letdown was on, and some of the others were leaving. The small glass of Scotch and ice in front of him looked greasy instead of cold. His mouth was hot from cigarettes.
He waited through half of the next drink with Sheridan. He went to the men’s room and he grabbed his change and coat and went out of the place.
He stopped in a pay booth at the corner. He dialed the number.
She answered on the second ring.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Well. And where are you?”
He had a little dry patch in the back of his throat. The whisky had hit him. “Oh, I’m around,” he said.
“Around?”
“What are you doing?” he said.
“Nothing.” She spoke very softly.
“What would happen if I came up?”
“Why don’t you come up here and see what would happen?”
“A half hour,” he said.
“A half hour,” she said.
He hung up. He felt like a baby and he took one deep breath. The apartment house where she lived was straight down Queens Boulevard. It was across from the courthouse in Kew Gardens. It still was only a little before four. That gave him four and a half hours until he had to be at the airport. With the liquor from the afternoon wearing off, he felt tired. It was the kind of tired where you fall asleep with your head against the window of a subway or a bus and wake up feeling sweaty and dirty.
She had on a dark-brown dress with a gold watch hanging around her neck on a gold chain. Thick, long light-brown hair that was almost blond against the shoulders of the dress. The hair was always brushed until it glistened. It smelled of perfume, not a lot of perfume, just enough to let you know it was there. She had the door shut when he put his finger into that thick hair and they pressed into each other. He put his hand on her back and walked her to the bedroom.
At the doorway, her mouth came up at him. She kept her lips an inch or so away from his.
“You’re right on schedule,” she whispered.
“I said a half hour and that’s what it was.”
“No, your schedule is every five weeks,” she said.
“What do you mean, every five weeks?”
“After four years, you don’t think I know you? I hear from you every five weeks. I knew I’d hear from you today.”
He leaned against the closet door and took off his shoes. She pulled the bedspread down. She stood by her bureau and lifted the dress over her head.
“You’re lucky, we got through early today,” she said.
“Uhhuh.”
“At first I thought we were going to have to type the whole day’s testimony. We would’ve been across the street until midnight.”
“Uh huh.”
“But at lunchtime they must have changed their minds. Somebody came upstairs and said we wouldn’t have to do it. So I knew enough to leave early so I could be here for your call.”
“Uh huh.”
“What time is your plane?” she said.
“What plane?” he said.
“The plane you’re going to Ireland on.”
“Who told you that?”
She put her hands on her hips. “Dermot, please. Half the police in New York are in the building where I work. How wouldn’t I hear what somebody I know is doing?”
“How do they know to bring up my name when you’re around?”
“Oh, Dermot, grow up. People know.”
“You must tell them something,” he said.
“I don’t say a word. But after four years, what do you expect?”
“Well, I don’t want anybody to know anything.”
She had her hands behind her back unhooking her bra. She took it off slowly, the shoulder dropping and one breast appearing and then the other shoulder dropping and he took her into bed on top of him, with the breasts pressing into his chest. Her body on top of his was soft and warm and with a form to it. You forget how good it is to run your hands over the hips of a woman who doesn’t have maternity-ward fat billowing from her ribs to the tops of her thighs. He ran his hands through that thick hair. One of her hands, just the fingernails, glided along his legs. Her green eyes were looking right into his. She had a little smile.
“I love you, Dermot,” she said. The words smothered him.
“Say something,” she said.
He was silent.
He touched her on the top of her thick hair. A light touch. All she ever needed from the first time he did it was this light touch on the top of the thick beautiful hair. She was kissing his chest. She brushed against the rest of him and she nestled between his legs with her hair draped onto the insides of his thighs and he couldn’t tell the difference between lips and her tongue and then she brought this soft warm mouth completely over it. There was an instant before he came when he wanted her down farther and then there was this rush through him. Right away he pushed at her hair to get her away. Her head pressed against his hands and he felt her body rustle while she tried to stay there. He pulled himself away and pushed her head up in the same motion and she fell against his chest and he could feel himself spreading over her belly.
Now he could hear the sound of traffic from Queens Boulevard. He buried his face into the pillow.
“Why didn’t you let me?” she said.
He kept his face in the pillow.
“I wanted to,” she said. “You never let me. I love you and I wanted to.”
He said nothing. “Oh well,” she said. She lay down alongside him. He got up on an elbow and looked at her clock. It was four-twenty.
“I got to run. I’m so late I’ll be dead.”
“I knew it,” she said.
“I got to go,” he said.
He swung out of bed and took his clothes into the bathroom. He turned on the shower and leaned against the wall while the warm water came over him. He dressed quickly and came out looking for his shoes and pretending he was in trouble for time. She was putting on a robe and he had the coat in his hands and she started for the door.
“Can you at least let me open the door for you?” she said.
“I’m late as hell,” he said.
At the door he had to look at her. He couldn’t kiss her good-by. So he reached out and tw
eaked her nose. She smiled.
“Take care,” he said.
“You too,” she said.
“Don’t you tell anybody I was here,” he said.
“No, don’t worry, I won’t tell people your business,” she said. She said it a little bitterly, but he was telling himself this would be the last time he would ever be there.
It was only seven o’clock and the kids were in bed. His wife’s aunt came down the block to babysit. He did not have to be at the airport until eight-thirty. Dermot decided to drive his wife and her mother to the Maspeth Bingo Game. He showed his badge to the two men in American Legion hats who were at the door.
“You got to pay for your cards, though,” one of them said. He had his arm on a stack of thick cardboard bingo cards folded in half. Dermot’s wife and her mother had already bought their cards from the guy in the Legion hat.
“I’m not playing, I’m just going to sit here for a few minutes with them,” Dermot said.
“You could sit all night, you just got to pay for the cards.”
The Maspeth Bingo Game is in an old moviehouse on Grand Avenue. Usually Phyllis and her mother play in the bingo game at the old RKO Keith’s, on 117th Street, only nine blocks from the house. But for the last two weeks they had been going to the Maspeth Bingo Game. The Maspeth Bingo Game runs every night at seven-forty-five. The inside of the place is green cinder-block walls and, high up, a black ceiling. Long rows of fluorescent lights run across the hall. It looks like an old fight club. Bright lights on dinginess. When you get inside the place there are three more men in Legion caps sitting at a table with Phillies cigar boxes in front of them. They sell the super jackpot, the sheets for the special prize games they have during the night. You buy your regular cards at the admission door and then you pay extra for the supers inside.
“The big super here pays a hundred seventy-five dollars,” Phyllis’s mother said.
Every night, a thousand people come to the Maspeth Bingo Game. Women mostly, a few old men wedged among them. Dermot’s wife and her mother went to a table along the wall. The moment they sat down they started unloading a big purse. Five little plastic bottles of Speed Dot Bingo Ink Marker. “Girls in Brooklyn get three for a dollar,” his mother-in-law said. “Big, big bottles too. They sell here for sixty-five cents each. Isn’t that something?”
Plastic margarine containers filled with metal chips to use as markers. Three small silver-foil ashtrays that looked like miniature pie plates. Cigarettes, matches, super sheets, regular bingo cards. Dermot’s wife and mother arranged everything in front of them. Across the table from them a tall woman, chest sagging in a tight short-sleeve wool sweater, unwrapped a sandwich. The woman had thick lipstick on and a cigarette sticking straight out of her mouth. She closed her eyes against the smoke. An old lady got into the seat next to her. The woman in the sweater said hello out of one side of her mouth.
Dermot’s mother-in-law got up. “Have a cup of coffee?” she said.
“Uh huh.”
“You, Phyllis? You want a cup of coffee?”
“I’ll get it, Ma.”
“You sit and talk to your husband. After all, he’s going away. Jesus, he’s got to go in an airaplane.”
“Why don’t you come along?” Dermot said.
“Oh, Jesus, not me. Not me in an airaplane.”
The mother-in-law walked to a sandwich stand set up along the wall.
Dermot looked at his wife. She took a drag on her cigarette.
“Well?” he said.
She exhaled slowly. “One way it’s good you’re going,” she said. “The bathroom is going to be a mess. There has to be a leak inside the wall. Remember I told you I was sure the leak had to come from inside? Well, Bob came over and he said he’s going to have to take all the tiles down and go right inside the wall at the pipes.”
“When is he coming?”
“He works eight-to-four. I called Estelle. She said he’d be here Saturday morning.”
“What else?”
She took another drag on the cigarette. She gave her head a little cock and said nothing.
He reached in front of her for a match.
“Here’s coffee,” the mother-in-law said. She had a small tray with three white plastic containers of coffee and two apple turnovers in plastic wrapping.
“I was just talking to Mrs. Shaffer,” the mother-in-law said, “and she was telling me her sister had open-heart surgery.”
“How is she?” Phyllis said.
“I’m telling you. Oh, brother. They really cut her open this time. Cut her from the neck down and spread her all out like a chicken. Here, have an apple turnover. Dermot, do you want an apple turnover? Do you know what they did? Took out two arteries this time. Do you know how long it takes the doctor to replace a heart artery? Seventeen minutes for an artery. Can you believe that?”
“I thought it would take hours and hours,” Phyllis said.
“Only seventeen minutes for each artery.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
“That’s only the heart surgeon, dear. Somebody else had to prepare her first. I don’t know how long that took. They had her spread open like a chicken.”
“Uh huh.”
“That’s how it is. When something is old and rotten, you just have to cut it out and throw it away.”
The old woman across the table stood up. “There’s that one,” she said.
“Who’s that?” the woman with the cigarette in her mouth said.
“She plays twenty boards at once, she doesn’t put a marker on a board. Keeps it in her mind.”
“No chips at all?” Phyllis said.
“Not a one,” the old woman said.
“This I admire,” the mother-in-law said. She took a bite of the apple turnover. “Yick,” she said. “Soggy. Ain’t it soggy, Phyllis?”
“It is, Ma,” Phyllis said.
“Here, give it to me. I’m going right back with them.”
She gathered everything into one plastic wrap and went back to the counter.
Phyllis sat with a thumb against her teeth.
Dermot got up. “I’ve got to get to the airport,” he said.
“You put the car in parking lot two,” Phyllis said.
“That’s right. Right across from the Aer Lingus terminal.”
“That’s the International Building,” she said.
“That’s right.”
“I’ll have Ma drive me over tomorrow when we go out shopping.”
“You’ve got the keys?”
“Yes.”
“All right.” He almost leaned over and kissed her. “It’s only two weeks,” he said.
She nodded.
“I’ll see you.” He brushed his hand against her arm.
“Sweaters. I can put them away for the kids for the fall.”
“Fine.”
He reached out and brushed his hand across her arm again. He walked away from the table and she sat with her thumb against her teeth and stared out into the smoke that was starting to form in the hall.
His mother-in-law was arguing with the man at the counter.
“Look, baby,” he was saying, “it just came in this wax paper. That’s moisture inside. That’s good. Why are you telling me it’s bad?”
“Eat it, it tastes awful,” his mother-in-law said.
“Don’t tell me it tastes awful.”
“You eat it, then.”
“Baby, I only sell fresh. Despite what you say.”
“Goddam cake is no good,” she said.
Dermot touched her arm. “I’m going,” he said.
She turned around. “Oh, Jesus, have a safe trip.” She shivered. “No airaplane for me. You’ll take care of yourself now?”
“Only two weeks,” Dermot said.
“It’ll be good for you to get away. She’s got so much to do with the bathroom.”
“I know.”
He turned to go. The counterman was telling other people, “Telling m
e it tastes awful.”
The mother-in-law turned to the counterman again. “Goddam cake.”
As Dermot went out the door, past the men in the Legion caps, he looked back into the Maspeth Bingo Game. It was seven-forty now and getting crowded. He had to look past a sea of gray hair and curlers to see Phyllis, sitting with her thumb against her teeth, looking out into the smoke.
A little girl, rubber pants showing, stood on top of the waiting-room stairs in the Aer Lingus terminal at the airport. She held a plastic bottle of milk up like it was a trumpet. She started to come down the stairs. Dermot was afraid she’d topple and he started to run up the stairs to get her. The girl’s father reached out for her. He was flat-faced and had short hair. He might as well have had a sign saying COP hanging around his neck. Dermot was wondering why the guy brought a kid along for a trip like this. When he got to the top of the stairs, Dermot found a nursery. Babies, screaming, sucking, drooling, were being jiggled on laps all over the waiting room. Older babies stumbled around the room. A little boy was running and yelling. He tripped over a foot and fell. He lay on the floor screaming. Two nuns smiled as the boy’s mother picked him up. The nuns were with a crowd of women. More nuns were on the other side of the room. Priests were everywhere in the room, which was so crowded there was no place to sit. The charter had a hundred seventy-five booked. There were about five hundred people in the waiting room. As Dermot edged off the staircase, he had to walk around a group of about twenty people, sitting and standing in a circle around a big cooler. The cooler had ice inside it. Everybody held out a plastic glass. One man had a fifth of rye and acted as bartender. Somebody turned around with a glass in his hand and bumped into Dermot, spilling some of the drink onto his sleeve.
“Oh, Jesus!” the man said. Pouches over and under the eyes, red dashes through the cheeks, and a suit jacket and pants that did not match were as good as a neon sign saying OLDER COP.
The Monsignor sat with a nun and an old inspector named Horace Mulligan. “Mayo,” the Monsignor was saying. “It’s such lovely country. Ah, it’s good to go home. It’s good for you lad to come, too,” he said to Dermot.
There was loud laughing at the staircase. Johno was standing with the ones who were drinking whisky. Dermot gave Johno the eye. When one of the drinkers held out a plastic glass, Johno shook his head no. The Monsignor saw Johno turn down the drink. The Monsignor waved to Johno. Dermot felt good. The fat bastard, now he probably thinks I’m Jesus Christ.
World Without End, Amen Page 12
