Ladies' Man

by Richard Price

  THURSDAY

  The locksmith was a young dude about my age but he had shoulder-length hair and tiny round glasses that reminded me of one of the artists I sold the stuff to on Spring Street. He had my door open in three minutes, changed the cylinder in another five and gave me new keys. Set me back thirty-five bills. I invited him in for a cup of coffee but he declined. After he left, I got the first solid night’s sleep in a week.

  Thursday morning came on like the weatherman remembered it was February. The wind was a sidearm bitch and as I made coffee my windows were moaning like kazoos. When I got downstairs the bus stop and parking regulation poles were jerking back and forth like they were in a tug of war. Loose trash and newspapers skipped down the street faster than taxis.

  I took a bus down to the diner and did some oatmeal with the boys. Al lent me an extra case for the day. I laid on them the story of my two-hundred-dollar sale in the loft and I got back the expected barrage of Daily News-mentality comments on long hair and artists. At first I got into my attitude about being the wise owl among the birdbrains and feeling sorry for myself, but then, I figured, I knew how they were going to respond before I brought the whole thing, up, and then when they did I wound up down on them and sorry for myself. So, question—why did I bring it up to begin with? What was I trying to prove? These guys were clods, artists were from Saturn, and in the middle was me, a man without a country. Poof me.

  The free sample of the day was a small, round, rubber-spiked scalp massager that fit into the palm of your hand.

  Due to the wind-chill factor I decided it would be a good day to find an enormous building that would take from nine to five to go through and picked a twenty-story affair on Charles Street. I had worked it before; it was decent enough. The only problem was that it was a doorman building. Technically doormen weren’t allowed to let solicitors inside but some you could slip two, three dollars to and they would go for “coffee in their minds. Once I swung a bribe with a doorman I never” forgot his name. When I came back six months later I could greet, him like a long-lost friend, kibitz, laugh, slip him his money and get down to work. Heavy warmth always blew people away and if you came on friendly to most people, they would walk your dog through a minefield for you.

  The doorman at Charles Street was an Irish dude named Phillip. The last time I was there he showed me the Silver Star he’d won at Okinawa, told me about his family, half here, half in Ireland, and after we bullshat for a while hipped me to which tenants were more likely prospects than others. He even hipped me to which tenant would probably give me a blowjob if I played my cards right. What he failed to tell me about that tenant was that he was a guy. I had gone through the building savoring and saving 10J for last and when I knocked on the door some dude answered who looked like my barber.

  After breakfast, I took a ride with Jerry, and he dropped me off on his way to the Lower East Side. Before heading for the building I slipped into a luncheonette on the corner and bought a coffee to go.

  “Hey, Phillip!” I grabbed his hand while he was still trying to place my face. “Remember me?”

  Phillip was thin, fiftyish, wore a dark blue uniform and tortoise-shell glasses.

  “Oh! Yer the Bluecastle House fellah!” He gripped my hand harder. “Yes the guy ay sent up to Ten-J.” He laughed. His voice had a high biting leprechaun inflection like a voice-over on a TV ad for Irish tourism.

  “Yeah, yah bastad.” I lightly punched his arm. “But I’ll tell you, you were right on target.” I winked and for a second a saints-preserve-us look crossed his face. “Hey! I’m kiddin’!” We both laughed. Me in reassurance, him in relief.

  I handed over the coffee. He took it like a gift for Father’s Day. “Here you go, it’s cold outside.”

  “That’s kind of you.” He smiled, bobbing his head in thanks as he placed it on his small lobby desk next to a miniature TV.

  “Okay, Mr, Phil, I’m gonna get to work.” I clasped his hand again with both of mine, slipping a five into his palm, and walked toward the elevator.

  “Oh!” I backtracked and took out a scalp massager from my pocket “Here.” On the back was a plastic loop to slip around your middle finger for a better grip. “You see, you slip in your sazeech like this”—I put my pinky in the loop, then flipped over the massager to the rubber-spiked side—“so when you’re schtupping with the old lady she’ll come like summer rain.” I left him examining it in his hands.

  It was another good day. I averaged a sale a floor for the top ten floors and by noon I’d totaled sixty dollars. I did some lunch in an egg restaurant, then took a cab the four blocks to a high-rise on Fourteenth Street and by four o’clock I’d collected another fifty dollars’ worth of orders.

  When I got home, the Post was curled up in its spot on the doorknob like a daily reminder of “Whatcha gonna do tonight, Kenny?” The apartment was dark even though it was twenty minutes shy of five o’clock. I hung up my suit, put on dungarees and a sweatshirt, flopped on the bed with the paper and turned on the cartoons.

  Beach Red was still playing at the Little Carnegie, but The Loves of Isadora was gone. Instead the second feature was Anzio. Now that made sense at least. I laid on my stomach and watched cartoons with one eye. I buried one side of my face in my pillow. My arms were straight down my sides and I felt a trickle of drool slip over one corner of my mouth and spot my pillow. Sit-ups. Go do your sit-ups. You go do your sit-ups. The phone rang and I almost slammed my head through the wall. La Donna. Parents.

  “Kenny?” A familiar male voice but I couldn’t place it.

  “Yeah?”

  “Hey, it’s Donny.”

  “Donny!” I jumped up and clicked off the TV. “How you doin’, man?”

  “Pretty good, pretty good. Whacha up to?”

  “Not a thing,” I blurted.

  “Listen, Kenny, they painted my crib this morning an’ these fuckin’ fumes are makin’ me nauseous. I can’t open the windows cause a the cold an’ the fuckin’ heat’s on like full blast.”

  “Hey, you wanna come up?” I would have begged Trim to come up.

  “Well, I was thinkin’ maybe you could invite me up for dinner if you were a real nice guy and not a fuckin’ prick, or even if you were a fuckin’ prick maybe we could at least eat out someplace.”

  “Hey, Donny, come on up.” I was grinning and my skull was pounding with joy. “You know where I live?”

  “You sure it’s cool? You think you better check with your old lady?”

  “She ain’t here, it’s no problem. You got the address?”

  “Yeah. Listen, I’ll pay for the food.”

  “Get fucked. You know how to get here?”

  “What, the uptown local?”

  “Seventy-ninth Street, walk down to Seventy-seventh, I’m three buildings up from the deli on Broadway. Two ten West, apartment ten B.”

  “What, in about two hours?”

  I squinted at the digital. “It’s ten after five. Figure seven, okay?”

  “You got it.”

  “I’ll make nice… You like chicken?”

  “Hey, do beavers piss on flat rocks?”

  “Maybe after we’ll go downtown, do a movie, get laid.” I winked to the phone.

  “Sounds good, my man.”

  “Awright! At seven, Donny.”

  “Hang in there, kid.”

  I hung up, snapped my fingers. “WAAO!” I yelled and started dancing with my shoulders. I felt like a million big ones. I ran into the kitchen. I had plenty of vegetables but the chicken was frozen. I would have to run down to the supermarket. I turned on some lights. I couldn’t help dancing. I ran down the foyer in my stockinged feet and slid into the front door, did an about face and slid into the living room. Isaac Hayes on the machine. I held my fist in front of my mouth and did the whole midnight show. Then I straightened up the living room. My joint was always neat so in fifteen minutes I was heading out the door. I felt so goddamn good I didn’t even feel the cold. It was like the fir
st few weeks with La Donna. I picked up chicken thighs, a can of bread crumbs. Next door at the liquor store I got a bottle of Bolla Valpolicella. I hated wine but it seemed like an adult purchase for a dinner. I wasn’t sure I had a corkscrew so I bought one at a hardware store on Broadway. By six I was whacking up a salad in the kitchen and double-dipping the chicken thighs in bread crumbs and eggs. By six-thirty the salad was covered and in the refrigerator, the breaded chicken was laid out in a baking pan in the unlit oven, the salad dressing was sedimenting in an old fashioned glass on the counter and the dining table was set like a window display for tableware in Bloomingdale’s. I put a package of frozen broccoli in the sink, washed up and slipped into some leisure threads which would show off the fantastic shape I kept myself in. I put John Coltrane on the changer. Even though I only had a slight interest in jazz, it seemed to me, like the wine, the thing to do.

  At ten of seven the downstairs buzzer rang. I buzzed Donny in and hit the change button on the record player. “A Love Supreme” soundtracked the apartment.

  “Hey, ya fuck!” We slapped palms in greeting at the door. Donny’s face was death white blotched red from the cold.

  “Here you go.” He handed me a bottle of Mateus, my sample case and draped his ski jacket on the doorknob of the foyer closet.

  “You couldn’t forget this?” The case slid from my middle finger to the floor. “Lemme get a hanger.”

  “Nan, nan, c’mon, c’mon.” He pushed me down the foyer into the living room.

  “I don’t have brandy. You want a Scotch?”

  “Anything, man.” He rubbed his hands and shivered while checking out my living room. “Nice, nice, very nice. Whata you pay here, three?”

  “Two seventy-five.” I poured a Chivas. “Water?”

  “A little. Last week I had to check out this guy’s apartment, over one block on seventy-sixth? He had the corner roof apartment, nice view. His ceiling: saved in during a rainstorm and he got a concussion from falling plaster. Also, the guy had a five-thousand-dollar stamp collection ruined. Very nice.” He admired the kitchen.

  I showed him the bedroom, and he immediately noticed the paint blisters on the ceiling.

  “When you get painted last?”

  “Six months ago.”

  “Cocksuckers. You can get another paint job. They used a shit grade of paint. What they give you, one coat or two?”

  “Hey, Donny, I’m not a building inspector. Relax, hah? Drink your drink.”

  “And I hate that fucking job, too, Kenny, that’s the funny thing about it.”

  “C’mon, let’s just sit down for a while.”

  We sat at the dinner table and sipped our Scotches. “Kenny, Kenny, Kenny,” he droned.

  “Donny, Donny, Donny.”

  “Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit,” he responded, and we clinked glasses.

  “Lemme put on the chicken.” I turned on the oven, ripped open the broccoli package and slipped the frozen rectangle of greens into a wide pot.

  “Fuckin’ Candyman, huh?” I shook my head. “Candy’s Candy.” Donny drained his drink. “He made me feel like shit yesterday.”

  “Ah, he does that to me all the time.” He refilled his glass two fingers.

  “So why do you run with him?”

  Donny shrugged. “I don’t run with him that much. Sometimes I stop in, that’s all.” He looked embarrassed.

  “Lemme ask you something, Donny.” I squinted to signify a bottom-line question coming up. “You think he’s right about the kids an’ all?”

  Donny hunched his shoulders and winced. “I swear, I don’t know, Kenny, I don’t know anything anymore.”

  “Well, different strokes, right?” C’mon, Donny, help me out here.

  “I guess.” He rubbed his mouth distractedly. He was a big goddamn support.

  “So there’s your old lady, Kenny?”

  My got sank. “She’s visiting some people.” I wanted to crack to him, but it felt too painful right then.

  “She nice? You got any pictures?”

  “You know something, I don’t think I do.”

  Coltrane clicked off. Donny got up. “You mind if I find something?” He motioned to the records in my wall unit.

  “Be my guest.” I started slipping into a trip around La Donna. La Donna seemed like such a beautiful and unique name.

  “Play this!” Donny sat cross-legged on the floor facing the wall unit. He held up my Murray the K’s Boss Golden Gassers—1962. I joined him on the floor. The Scotch gave my nose a little glow like a two-watt bulb. “Soldier Boy! Whew! Do you fuckin’ remember that?”

  “I haven’t heard this album since high school.”

  “It’ll probably destroy your system. Whata you got here?” He twisted around, searching my walls for speakers.

  “JBL decades, a Sansui seven seventy-one and a Garrard box.”

  “What that run you, six?”

  “Eight.” I scanned the songs on the album. “Hey!” I pointed to a title.

  “‘Sixteen Candles.’” He frowned, then lit up. “Oh ho!”

  “Remember that?” I raised my chin and winked.

  “Barbara Abbadabba.”

  “Barbara Abbadando,” I corrected with significance.

  “She fuckin’ took ‘Sixteen Candles,’ remember?”

  “Well, she took two candles that are sittin’ here right now!” We slapped palms again.

  “Bad Barbara.” I put the golden oldies album on, but it was so scratched I took it right off.

  Legend had it that this chick in the projects, Barbara Abbadando, would fuck anybody in high school if they got her alone in a room and played “Sixteen Candles” for her. I know I never fucked her and I doubted that Donny did either.

  “No offense, Kenny, but I hate jazz.”

  “I know what you like.” I got to my feet and opened La-Donna’s closet While trying not to notice her boots and sheet music, I grabbed two record boxes from the hat shelf, then kicked the door closed. “Into the vault!”

  Donny opened the boxes, glowing with reverence like a kid being handed a complete set of baseball cards.

  He gingerly extracted a half-dozen old 45s, looping his finger through the holes. “You saved yours, hah?” His voice was a hush.

  “Every one.” It was one of the proudest moments of my life.

  “Aw shit! ‘Wooly Bully’! You remember fuckin’ Wooly Bully’!” He laughed.

  “First time I heard ‘Wooly Bully,’ Donny, I almost ruined my father’s car. You remember my old man’s Fairlane Five hundred? I had Diane Fishman in the front seat and we were parked over the Safeway on that hill by Burke Avenue. I was on top of her, grinding. I had the motor off but I left the radio on for atmosphere. When ‘Wooly Bully’ came on I went batshit. I almost humped her to death. Ten minutes later I go to start the car, it won’t start.” I shrugged. “Plus! It stinks like gasoline. You know what happened? When I was humping her I had my foot on the accelerator for leverage, you know, and every time”—I rocked back and forth on my ass, grinding my hips—“every time like that, I flooded the engine.”

  “Oh ho! ‘My Girl’! Whata fuckin’ song! You got a disc, Kenny?”

  -. We put it on, singing along and I felt the years slip by my closed eyes, as if I could lose my present life in the sweetest of sweet amnesias…

  “Nice, right?” I smiled.

  “You know who used to go berserk over ‘My Girl’? Maynard.”

  “Maynard? I thought he only, dug like Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger and Library of Congress Chain Gang recordings.”

  “Nah.” Donny chuckled. “That was an act. Maynard knew everybody expected him to be like that, protest and shit, but he dug the same stuff you did. He just did it privately because he didn’t want to blow his image. Maynard was a complicated dude. Hey!” Donny brightened, holding a record to my face; ” ‘Walk Like a Man’—who’s that?” he quizzed me.

  “Oh.” I snapped my fingers in frustration. “I got the face, I got the
face.”

  “Mikey,” he hinted.

  “Mikey Feeny!” I blurted. One summer night about thirty guys hanging out in the park rechristened themselves with the title of a rock ‘n’ roll song they particularly identified with. If the title was too long the guy just did a variation of the first word. Michael Feeny chose “Walk Like a Man,” so he was dubbed Walker. In most cases those names stuck only until school started again.

  “You remember your name, Donny?”

  “Shit yeah, Gypsy. ‘The Gypsy Cried.’ You were Speedoo, right?”

  “You got it. Remember Candy’s?”

  “Fuckin’ Duke, right?” He laughed. ‘“Duke of Earl.’”

  “Duke of Shit.”

  We sat in silence, nodding and chuckling. On the one hand I could have just kept rifling and dredging up names and memories all night. On the other hand I started feeling tired. Not sleep tired, more like slack-jawed. That part of me couldn’t riff anymore, refused to do the stroll down memory lane.

  “Hmph,” Donny snickered, staring at my shoes, “Duke of Shit.”

  I could sense him knotting up with the silence. His eyes were all over the place but never more than three feet off the ground. I could have helped him out, said something funny, but I was absorbed in watching his desperation, my desperation. His brain was cooking for a riff. The fact that I wasn’t doing the same almost made me feel as though I had floated out of my body and was watching both of us. Ever since I was a kid I always felt the need to explode into a ball of entertainment whenever I was with a group of people. When I was ten I remember being over at Donny’s house watching TV with his parents and seeing him erupt into compulsive joke after joke. Even though I couldn’t put it into words I knew exactly what was going on in his head even then. If we were at my house I would have done the same.

  “Hey, did you know Mikey’s brother Ernest?” he blurted, cocking his head at me.

  “Nah, I never ran with Mikey.” I felt sorry for both of us.

  “Oh, so you don’t know Ernest, his sister Linda, none a them?”

  “Nope.”

  “So you never heard about that game between Our Lady of Sorrows and Sacred Cross?”