Park Avenue Tramp

by Flora, Fletcher

  After she was gone, he continued to lie in bed, not because there was any possibility of his sleeping again, but because there wasn’t anything he could think of that was worth getting up to do, and after a few minutes he began to listen to his heart. He couldn’t actually hear it, of course, but by placing his right hand flat on his chest above it, he could feel it beating in his palm. By the beat of it, the feel of it, he achieved a sense of the sound of it. He often did this. It prompted in him a morbid speculation, which had also become a kind of morbid pleasure. The speculation was on how many tens or hundreds or thousands of beats were left to go, and the pleasure was derived from his pride in having learned that he could speculate on this without fear of self-pity. It had occurred to him once that it was rather like testing a car for mileage. You put a certain amount of gas in the tank, and then you ran the car until it quit running, and as the mileage meter came closer and closer to what you thought would be the end, you kept waiting more and more expectantly for the cough, the missed beat, the silence. The analogy was adequate only to that point, however. When the car engine stopped, you just gave it more gas and started it again.

  • • •

  Another thing he often did while listening to his heart was to go back over his life and try to find something, a direction or a pattern, that would convince him that he had been significant or essential to some plan or purpose, but he could never find anything. It was not that he felt that his life was a waste, just time pulled for nothing, but only that the most you could say about any ordinary life was that it had been lived. He was only a fifth-rate piano thumper, of course, but this was not the point, for practically everyone was a fifth-rate something or other, and if there was any plan or purpose, the fifth-raters were as much a part of it as anyone else. He was not especially bitter about anything, he decided. It was better to live a short time than no time, and he was glad to have been what he was, since he couldn’t have been anything better.

  Once he had tried to be. He had wanted to be a really good pianist, if not concert at least jazz, but he didn’t have the big talent that it took, and he had accepted this, once he was convinced of it, as readily as he had accepted the later understanding that he was going to die before he had lived very long, as average lives went. After high school, he had worked his way through three years of fine arts in college, piano especially, and it was then that he had accepted the reality of what he wasn’t and would never be, and he had left after the three years and played around the country with a fair dance orchestra that finally got to New York in a small spot. In New York, after a while, he began to feel the pain in his heart, and it reminded him for the first time in many years of the pain he had used to feel in the joints of his arms and legs when he was a boy.

  He went to a doctor, who examined him and made an appointment for him at a hospital. At the hospital he was examined more thoroughly and asked detailed questions about the diseases he had had as a boy and as a man, but particularly as a boy, and then he returned to the doctor he had consulted originally. Previously the doctor had been noncommittal, but this time, his tentative diagnosis verified by the hospital, he was as clinically precise and as sympathetic as professional detachment permitted him to be.

  “You have rheumatic heart disease,” he said. “It’s caused by fibrosis and scarring of the valves. Usually the mitral valve is affected. Sometimes the aortic valve is also affected. This is true in your case.”

  “What does that mean?” Joe said.

  “It means that your heart’s been working too hard for too long to do its job.”

  “And now it’s wearing out, breaking down. Is that it?” “That’s it.”

  “How long will it last?”

  “That’s hard to predict. Cases vary, of course. Average expectancy from the time of the damage is thirteen to fifteen years.”

  “You mean this was caused by the sickness I had as a boy? The time I had the fever and the aches in my bones?”

  “That’s right. Rheumatic fever.”

  “I’d almost forgotten it,” Joe said.

  • • •

  He went away and began to think about what he would do. He knew he was not living the right kind of life for a heart cripple; there was too much tension and too little rest. Too many late hours and too little sleep. Too little eating and too much drinking and smoking. Too much of all that was bad for him and far too little of what was good. But playing the piano was about all he knew, the only way he had to earn a living, and he decided deliberately that he might as well go on with it for all the difference in time it would probably make. Not with a dance orchestra that was always moving around, however. He wanted to stay put, to get used to a place to die in, and New York, so far as he could see, was as good a place as any other.

  He started off playing for living expenses in a couple of different bars in the Village, and then he met Chester Lewis, who had just come out of a special kind of hospital where he had gone to get a monkey permanently off his back. Chester was a pretty good drummer who needed a job drumming, and they’d got together, mostly just for fun in the beginning, and developed some of the little conversation pieces between the drum and the piano, and they’d been surprised and delighted by the things that could be said in this way. They’d tried it on the customers one night in the bar where Joe was playing, and it had gone well, and later they’d moved to a better job in the club where they now were, which was about as far from Sheridan Square south as Joe’s room was from Washington Square north.

  This was just the outline, of course, the stripped pattern of his life as he saw it, but it was the pattern that would mean something if anything at all meant anything worth knowing, and nothing seemed to. It gave him a very strange feeling to think that he had been dying since he was twelve years old, when he’d had the fever and the aches, but it wasn’t really so strange after all, when you thought about it a while longer, for everyone started dying the instant he was born. The only difference was that Joe Doyle had only been dying a little faster than most others. Anyhow, he had already passed the average that the doctor had mentioned, the thirteen to fifteen years, and this was somehow a monstrous deception, a kind of preternatural con trick to assure him that he was living, from a special point of view, a long life instead of a short one….

  And now, lying in bed after the departure of Charity Farnese, he was thinking too much and becoming depressed. Getting up abruptly, he showered and shaved and dressed and went downstairs. He had not eaten since the middle of the afternoon yesterday, and it was past time to eat again, but he was not in the least hungry and knew that the sight and smell of food would only make him sick. What he needed was a couple of ounces of rye, after which he would feel better and possibly able to eat at least a sandwich, and where he might as well go to get both was the club where he worked. Besides, Chester Lewis would probably be there, or would come in later, and they could make a little talk with the piano and the drum before the bar opened at four.

  When he reached the club, Chester wasn’t there yet, but Yancy Foster, the superior bartender, was. Joe sat down on a stool at the bar, and Yancy looked at him sourly.

  “Hello, beautiful,” Yancy said.

  “That was last night,” Joe said.

  “You said it, it was last night,” Yancy said. “Did you find Milton?” “Not a trace. I think Milton was someone who happened to her some other night.”

  “Lots of others have happened to her other nights. Lots of others have been left over.” “Sure, Yancy. Sure.”

  “Oh, she had something, all right. Something special. I admit that. She drifts in here out of a black fog, looking like a delinquent angel and talking like a schizy intellectual, and you keep watching her and talking with her and wondering what the hell will finally become of her, and you wish that it wouldn’t.”

  “Yeah. That’s right, Yancy. You keep wishing that it wouldn’t.”

  “A man’s a fool. He thinks he’s got his immunity built up, and then some little tramp co
mes along and starts a fever in him.”

  “You talking to me or yourself, Yancy?”

  “I’m just talking, sonny. Anyone can listen who wants to. Probably nobody will. Not even me.” “I’m listening, Yancy. Hanging on every word.”

  “I can see you are. I can see you’re real interested. Well, what I say is, they’re all a little different from each other in one way or another, but the difference isn’t important, whatever it is, and what’s important is the way they’re alike. These fancy, crazy dames! They come here on the prowl from their plush nests on MacDougal Street or Park Avenue or wherever they happen to live, and they may have different faces and answer to different names and have different fancy names for the crazy things wrong with them, but what they all are without exception is more trouble than any man with any brains would ever want”

  “You’re eloquent, Yancy. You should have been a missionary or something.”

  “Sure, sure. I know. You mean I should go to hell.” “No, Yancy. What I mean is, I was with you before you started. I don’t need the lecture.”

  “You don’t think so? Well maybe not. You need something, though, sonny. You look like the wrath of God.”

  “I need a couple ounces of rye, Yancy. I’ve been trying to tell you”

  “Like hell you need a couple ounces of rye. What you need is food. How long since you’ve eaten?”

  “I don’t remember, Yancy. I eat when I’m hungry”

  “There’s some good beef. I’ll fix you a sandwich.”

  “All right, Yancy. While you’re fixing the sandwich, I’ll drink the rye.”

  Yancey poured the rye and handed it to him, and he sat hunched over the bar with the strong fumes rising into his nostrils. He looked ahead into the mirror at the reflection of the room behind him, the oppressive litter in stale shadows of tables and chairs on a worn tile floor still wet in spots from mopping, and it didn’t seem at that moment a particular misfortune that he was going to die before long.

  CHAPTER 6

  The morning of that day, Oliver Alton Farnese got up at eight o’clock. This could have been predicted by anyone who was aware of his habits. He got up at eight o’clock every day except Saturday, when he got up at nine, and Sunday, when he got up at ten.

  After rising, he shaved and bathed and dressed. His clothes had been laid out for him in a particular place in a particular order, and he not only knew exactly what they would be for every change he made during the course of the day, but for every change for every day for the rest of the week, for he composed every Sunday night a detailed list of what he would wear for every occasion of the week following, and this list was deviated from only in emergency, and not even in emergency without specific authorization.

  After shaving and bathing and dressing, he went to the dining room. On the way, he stopped in the hall outside the door of the room in which Charity sometimes slept, and he waited for about thirty seconds for the sound or sense of motion or static life in the room beyond the door, but nothing was heard or sensed, as he had suspected nothing would be, and then he went on to the dining room and sat down and had his breakfast of orange juice and bacon and toast and marmalade and coffee, which was served to him by Edith, the maid. He knew that his breakfast this morning would consist of these things, and that breakfast tomorrow would consist of certain other things, and breakfast of the morning of the day after tomorrow of certain others, for he planned his menus, as he planned his wardrobe, precisely and obdurately, every Sunday night, for a week to come.

  “Did Mrs. Farnese come home last night?” he said to Edith. “No, sir.”

  “Did she leave any word for me?” “No, sir.”

  “Did she say where she was going?” “No, sir. Mrs. Farnese never tells me where she’s going.” “That’s right. She doesn’t. Do you know why, Edith?” “Yes, sir.”

  “Of course you do. It’s because she despises you. She thinks you’re an informer. Are you an informer, Edith?” “I know where my first obligation is, sir.”

  “That’s nicely put, Edith. Very delicate. You have no idea how much I appreciate your loyalty. You also know where your first advantage is, don’t you, Edith?” “I think so, sir.”

  “You are never a disappointment to me, Edith, You always say precisely the right thing. You know exactly when to lie and when to tell the truth.” “Thank you, sir.”

  “Tell me, Edith. Where do you think my wife spent the night?” “I assume, sir, that she spent it with a friend.”

  “Precisely, Edith. There is no doubt in the world that she spent the night with a friend. Can you tell me what a friend is, Edith?” “No, sir.”

  “Oh, come, now. Surely you can. Is a friend someone you have known well for a long time, or is it possible for a friend to be someone you merely meet in the course of a night and decide to be friendly with?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I’ve never had a friend.”

  “Edith, Edith, I adore you. I really do.” He laughed softly, a sibilance with no sound of a vowel. “Go away, Edith. Please do. You have been perfect, absolutely perfect, and if you stay another moment you are liable to say something that will spoil everything.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  She went away, and he poured himself a second cup of coffee and glanced at a morning paper while he drank it. He was hardly aware, however, of what he saw. He was savoring, instead, the aftermath of Edith, and the aftermath, constantly recurring, was the substance of anticipation. He was a rich man, incredibly rich to the cold and avaricious bitch who served his table and told him tales, and it amused him enormously to see how she served him and cultivated him in the design and expectation of an eventual expression of gratitude. It would be a truly delectable pleasure when he decided to make it plain, in due time, that he had despised her all along as much as she had ever been despised by Charity, or by anyone else.

  He allowed himself a half-hour for dressing and a half-hour for breakfast. At nine, he left the table and walked through the living room and the foyer to the door. Edith, who knew his schedule perfectly, was waiting at the door with his hat. He took it and put it on his head while she opened the door to let him out. On the way into the hall, just before the door closed behind him, he said, “Good morning, Edith,” and she said, “Good morning, sir,” and the last word, the subservient sir, was amputated in the air by the door’s closing. It was always this way. This way exactly.

  • • •

  At the elevator, he pushed the button and stood waiting briefly with indiscernible impatience as the car climbed its shaft in response to his summons. He was not impatient because he was in a hurry or had any place to be at a certain time, although it was part of his schedule to be certain places at certain times, but simply because he felt that his waiting was somehow improper and unnecessary, and that the car should have been waiting, instead, for him. He arrived at the elevator at this minute of the hour five mornings a week, give or take thirty seconds at the most, and it was in effect a personal affront, a deliberate indifference to the reservation he had made of time and space, that the operator did not wait with the car as Edith waited with his hat.

  When the car arrived, its door slipping open with a soft gasp after its breathless ascent, he stepped inside and said, “Good morning,” in the identical tone he always used at this time to greet the operator, and the operator said, “Good morning, Mr. Farnese. Beautiful day outside,” and this was an example of another minor irritant that had acquired the cumulative quality of a threat from being repeated so often. The operator always seemed to find it necessary to append a comment to the simple greeting, which would have been tolerable if it had been regularly repeated, but it wasn’t. Sometimes it was a comment like this one, pertaining to the kind of day it happened to be, and sometimes it was something altogether different, pertaining to a current event or something of the sort, and it was impossible to anticipate with any accuracy what it would be on any given morning, and this was disturbing. People who performed repea
tedly the same services should say repeatedly the same words and should look consistently the same way. When they did not, it was a violation of the order of things and therefore threatening.

  Leaving the building with a word for the doorman, he found that his black Imperial had been brought around from the garage as usual. Getting behind the wheel, he drove by a particular route to the office he maintained in a building on Fifth Avenue, and it was, when he got there, a particular time. Crossing the outer room, he said, “Good morning, Miss Carling,” to the woman he called his secretary and who was actually nothing necessary at all, and went into the inner room and sat down at his desk, and after that there was nothing especially to do.

  He didn’t need the office. He didn’t need to go there. Except that the office and his going there were necessary to the survival of the flesh and blood and bones and nerves that existed in the unique identity of Oliver Alton Farnese. Some of his mail was directed there, and this he opened and read and disposed of, and sometimes he even dictated to Miss Carling a reply to one or more of the letters. Now and then he made or granted an appointment with someone, and these appointments were scheduled as strictly for definite times as if he had a full agenda. If a person who had an appointment arrived early, he was kept waiting until the scheduled hour, and if he arrived late, he was advised by Miss Carling that he could not be seen and would have to make another appointment, if he wished, for another day.

  Much of the time, after and between the mail and the appointments, if there were any of either, Farnese passed in reading selected newspapers and magazines related to investments and industry and certain sports. He did not handle his investments, nor did he engage in industry or games, but some attention to these matters seemed appropriate to his position, and they bored him somewhat less than art and literature and politics and social affairs. The truth was, he could not possibly have survived the pressures and tensions of any competitive activity whatever, and his father had recognized this and had left him the bulk of a huge family fortune so legally restricted and secured that he really had very little to do with it, except to sign documents occasionally and live richly off the income.