Ladies and Gentlemen

by Adam Ross

  “Where are we going?” Zach asked.

  “First I need a haircut. Then I’m going to look for work.”

  “You mean like a job?”

  “That’s right.”

  He could tell there was an odd novelty to this that the boy relished: so this was how adults found work. They went to a barbershop on 48th Street, where Applelow had his hair trimmed while Zach skimmed the magazines. Then he canvassed every restaurant in the neighborhood, Zach waiting outside while he filled out the applications (Availability: Immediately). At first the boy was patient, even curious, asking every time Applelow emerged, “How did it go?” or “Did you get the job?” or “What did they say?” But after an hour he grew impatient, distracted, and was dragging so annoyingly far behind that finally Applelow stopped at a market and bought him orange juice and a bagel.

  “Is this all I get?” Zach said.

  “I don’t know. Do you have money to buy something else?”

  The boy’s face darkened, and he dawdled a good ten paces behind until he had to wait outside another restaurant. “Just so you know,” Applelow made sure to tell the managers he was able to meet with, “I can do anything. I can host. I can wait tables. I can bartend. I’ve even done some cooking” (this last a lie). Most of them were kind—business was bad, they told him—but they’d keep his résumé on file. Others were openly dismissive, and at these moments he allowed himself to fantasize about a total success on Monday, the job offered on the spot, and this possibility fortified him. “Thank you for your time,” Applelow told each one with an impregnable appreciativeness. Then, going out the door, he dreamed of stopping by for lunch next week with Ms. Samuel.

  “Can we get some food now?” Zach said.

  He sat slumped on an apartment stoop, head hung between his shoulders as if he’d just sprinted four hundred yards.

  Applelow couldn’t help but feel disappointed; he’d overestimated the boy’s character, and now understood Marnie’s concerns. “There’s a pretzel man at the corner.”

  “I don’t want a pretzel,” Zach said. “I want real food. And I want to eat inside.”

  “Then go eat somewhere. We can meet at the apartment later.”

  “I can’t,” Zach said slowly, “because I don’t have any money.”

  The street was busy. Applelow sat next to him and looked him in the eye. “And how does that feel?”

  “What?”

  “To have nothing. To have to ask a stranger for help?”

  “You’re not a stranger.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “So what’s my last name?”

  The boy looked startled, then turned away. His teeth began to chatter. “I just want to eat,” he said. “I don’t want a lecture.” He crossed his arms and stared straight ahead.

  “All right,” Applelow said. “We’ll eat, and then we can go home.”

  “Thank you,” Zach said, immediately brightening. He got up and started quickly down the sidewalk. “There’s a Greek place I saw up the street.”

  At the restaurant, Zach ordered the dolmades (Twenty-two dollars! Applelow thought) and attacked it the minute the food arrived, shoveling it in his mouth and sitting back to chew between bites as he watched people walk by through the window. After finishing his stuffed cabbage, he filled his pita with rice and scarfed that down too. Then he pushed the plates back, slid down in his seat, and put his feet up on Applelow’s side of the booth. He wiped his mouth dramatically, crumpled his napkin, and tossed a gentle hook shot that landed it in his water glass. “The crowd,” he said, “goes wild.”

  Applelow pushed his soup bowl aside and, much to Zach’s amazement, pulled another fresh hundred-dollar bill from his wad when the check arrived.

  “What’s up with all the coin?” Zach said.

  Applelow shrugged. “I’m more comfortable when I have cash on hand.”

  “At least you’re prepared for a rainy day.”

  He was so furious at the meal’s cost he couldn’t bring himself to look at the boy. “Yes, well, it’s important to think about the future,” he said.

  The two of them sat quietly for a time, Zach flushed from eating so quickly, staring into space in what seemed like a trance. Applelow wanted to be rid of him, to have some time alone, but he recalled admonitions about anger. “So,” he said, “what’s next?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “For you. After this visit. What’s your plan?”

  Zach made a huge, cartoonish shrug and wiped his nose with the back of his hand, snorting. “I’ve got a friend in Los Angeles whose dad owns a painting company. They paint houses and shit. He said I could get a job there if I came out. So that’s what I’m thinking. Might leave soon, on Monday or Tuesday.”

  “I liked the crab-fishing idea better.”

  “Yeah, but … I don’t know. Where do you start?”

  “By finishing school.”

  “Please.”

  “Get a job and save some money.” He sounded just like his father, speaking in the paternal version of cliché. All of it true, of course.

  “Since you bought me a good lunch, I’m pretending to listen.”

  “How will you get out there?”

  “LA? I guess the bus. Do you know how long that’ll take?”

  “I mean how to pay for it.”

  “Mom will help me. She hates the idea, but she’ll cave. She always does.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yup.”

  “Lucky you.”

  Zach pressed a finger to some spilled rice on the table, then flicked the grains away. “Never been to LA, though,” he said. “I’ll need to learn my way around. Probably need a car, too.”

  Applelow, now in a trance himself, watched people strolling by on the sidewalk. It was Saturday afternoon, the traffic on Seventh Avenue light, men and women singly or in pairs heading to a matinee, perhaps, or to nowhere in particular, Monday seeming so far off. What would that be like? he wondered, to have no pressing worries or obligations?

  “Did you finish school?” Zach said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “College.”

  “Yes. In St. Louis. I’m from there.”

  The boy nodded. “St. Louis,” he said. The place obviously meant nothing to him. “When did you come to New York?”

  “When I was twenty-three. A little older than you.”

  Zach pressed more rice against his finger, rolling the grains into a small ball. He regarded this creation as if it were fascinating, then glanced up. “What was your first job?”

  Applelow turned to the side, crossed his legs, and stared at the boy, who again was examining his rice ball. There was something animal in Zach’s hesitance, he thought, a sense of random malignancy so strong it was almost palpable. Was this what Love meant by auras? Or his sensitivity to others an example of latent ability? He tried to detect a color emanating from the boy, but there was nothing.

  “I was a park superintendent,” he said at last.

  “What’s that?”

  “I was employed by the city’s park service to open and close a playground on the Upper West Side.”

  Zach appeared as impressed with this as he would’ve been if Applelow had just said he was an astronaut. “You serious?”

  “Very.”

  “A park?”

  “That’s right. A park surrounded by a high fence, with a couple basketball courts and a baseball diamond painted on the concrete. There was a jungle gym and some swings, with black rubber safety mats beneath them. And a see-saw, too.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I told you. I opened and closed the park. I unlocked the gate in the morning, then sat down on one of the benches and watched the place. The park service gave me a tan uniform with a patch on the sleeve and a whistle to blow if I needed help or thought the kids were playing too rough. But I never did. Nothing ever happened there.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”
>
  “That was it?”

  He cleared his throat. “They gave me a log to record the number of people who visited each day, and to list any repairs that needed to be made month to month. Also, I had to turn a sprinkler on at ten in the morning and turn it off at six, unless it was raining. I had a small office next to the bathrooms with a desk and a chair, and that’s where I sat when the weather was bad.”

  He could see Zach picturing himself as a park superintendent, with the hours, days, and weeks passing by relentlessly.

  “But what did you do all day?”

  Applelow took off his glasses and cleaned them. The shame was making his head throb. “Mostly I read. I sat on the bench or sometimes in the office, though it got very hot in there. I packed a lunch every day and brought books I took out from the library and read from the moment I got there in the morning until I left at night. I don’t think I’ve ever read so many books in my life.”

  “What kind of books?”

  “Good books. Great ones, actually. Shakespeare, Conrad. Homer, Virgil. Austen and Chekhov, Brontë and Bellow.” The boy was listening intently. “I had a notion that summer to read all the classics. The five-foot shelf.” Putting his glasses back on, he could see Zach had no idea what he meant. “Have you ever read Shakespeare?”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Well, I liked him. So much that I read all of it. Romeo and Juliet. King Lear. The Merchant of Venice. Richard III. Richard II.” He shook his finger at the boy, thinking of The Peanut Gallery’s production. “Now there’s a great play. Anyway, there was usually a terrific racket in that park, but when I was reading that summer I could concentrate better than I’ve ever been able to. It was uncanny, actually. It was like the words were life and death to me.” Remembering, he spun his spoon around once, then looked at Zach. None of this was making any sense to him, though Applelow could tell he was still listening. “So after a few weeks, I got so involved with the reading that I stopped keeping my log. I just made the numbers up. Not that anyone checked. Which is my point. No one checked. Do you understand?”

  “No.”

  “I had a free pass that summer,” Applelow said. “I had time, and that’s a rare opportunity. Like the one you have now. Because I could’ve been doing something for myself. Studying for the LSAT or becoming a CPA, even joining the military. I could’ve done something practical. Gotten something solid under my feet. No one ever does that for you.” He shook his head, frustrated at his inarticulateness. “But it didn’t occur to me. Do you understand?”

  Zach stared at him, waiting. “No,” he admitted.

  Applelow steepled his fingers, rested his chin on his thumbs, and, after a moment, spread his hands wide. “I threw myself on the world.” He watched Zach after he said this to see if it registered. He wanted to reach out and grab his hand or hold his face and make him look into his eyes until he admitted that he understood. But that would only scare everything Applelow had said straight out of his mind.

  “So what happened?” Zach asked after a while.

  “What do you mean?”

  “With the job?”

  “I quit,” Applelow said. “I got tired of reading. It started to make me anxious—just words, words, words. One day I suddenly couldn’t concentrate at all. I don’t even know when it happened. I hit some kind of wall. It got so bad I couldn’t bring myself to read another thing.”

  Zach nodded seriously. “I’m like that,” he said.

  “So one evening at the end of the summer I just left the park open and didn’t go back. And I got paid for two months after that. It took them that long to figure out nobody was watching the place.”

  Zach’s mouth dropped open at this. “That’s awesome.”

  “No,” Applelow said. “It was like being invisible. It was like not existing. I didn’t even cash the checks.”

  “What?”

  “I couldn’t bring myself to.” For a moment, he thought about this. He wished he had those checks now.

  “But you got paid for doing nothing,” Zach said.

  “That’s right.”

  “I want to get a job like that.”

  Applelow uncrossed his legs and turned to face him, folding his hands on the table and leaning forward. “If you’re not careful,” he said, “you will.”

  Back at Appelow’s apartment, Zach changed his clothes, then nodded toward his mother’s place across the hall. “The moment of truth,” he said, and held out his hand. “Thanks for feeding me, for letting me sleep here, for rapping. Thanks … Applelow.”

  Laughing, David clenched his fist, which Zach appreciatively bumped with his own.

  “I checked the name on the buzzer when we came in,” Zach said, then let himself out.

  Hearing him knock on Marnie’s door, Applelow couldn’t help looking through the peephole. The boy was hanging his head even before the door opened, and when his mother opened the door and regarded him, Applelow could see her react to his expression, mimicking it by turning down her mouth. Then she spread her arms and pulled him to her chest, kissing his hair.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” he said. “I’m really sorry.” At this, he felt something stir inside him, and he quietly slid the peephole closed.

  He prayed on Sunday before going to bed. Though it made him self-conscious, he folded his hands and bowed his head and said in his mind: Lord, please give me this job, whatever it is. Please, give me this job and I will work to improve myself. I will live from here on out in a straight line and never subject myself to uncertainty and promise You not to fail myself. I will work harder than I have ever in my life and will address all my weaknesses if You grant me this. Please, I have things to contribute if I could only break through to a place where I can. And I promise to if You will let me.

  Then he took the money down from the book on his shelf and counted it out. He had just over $1200 left, having spent less than ninety dollars this past week. He left two twenties in his wallet and replaced the rest. He got his coffee ready for the morning and set three alarms: his digital watch, his clock radio by the bed, and another in the kitchen just in case. He picked out his tie and spit-shined his shoes and hung the outfit on the door, imagining himself in it. Looking into the mirror he said, “So good to see you again, Doctor. Ms. Samuel, you look wonderful as always.” He thought this struck the right note—someone who’d be a pleasure to work with. “I’m sorry?” he asked. “You were saying?”

  The next morning, while he was shaving, Zach knocked on the door. Applelow greeted him with his face still lathered, wearing only the towel wrapped around his waist.

  The boy had his down coat on and a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. “I’m catching a bus in a few minutes.”

  “Come in,” Appelow said. “I’ll be out in a second.”

  Zach sat down on the couch while he went back to the bathroom and, embarrassed by his flabbiness, closed the door.

  “You got the suit out,” Zach called. “Big interview?”

  “The biggest,” he answered. The clock radio was blaring away, and on the Today show Couric was interviewing a pair of amputee soldiers from Iraq, thanking them for their service and their sacrifice—and it occurred to him that this could become part of his morning ritual: the world’s information streamed from dual sources, a quick check on the markets, the weather, the terrorist alerts. He would pick up the Times and the Wall Street Journal at the newsstand on the corner. What he didn’t finish reading in the morning he would save for later in the evening.

  “I came by to thank you,” Zach said when Applelow emerged from the steaming room.

  “You thanked me yesterday,” Applelow told him, walking into the bedroom and closing the door so he could dress in front of the mirror hanging on the other side of it.

  “I wanted to thank you for setting me straight,” Zach called. “Seriously. I had a long talk with my mom.”

  Applelow had changed his mind about his shirt, and went for the blue one in his closet.

 
; “She said you were right. I shouldn’t just go and throw myself on the world like I was thinking.”

  “Good for you,” Applelow barked at the door, wiping his hand over his forehead, still sweaty from the shower. It was warmer today, spring in the air, and he opened his window, letting the icy breeze cool him down before he put on the shirt.

  “So I’m back to the military thing,” Zach continued. “But after I finish college, so that I can do officer training. I’m going to commit to it, get something solid under my feet. See what it leads to.”

  “Outstanding,” Applelow called. It was a joy to put on these clothes, he thought, his shirt starched enough to feel like chain mail, protective but soft. He got his tie right the first time, the knot snug and Windsor-fat and serious, the tip hanging to the middle of his belt like his father had taught him to do when he was a boy. He sat on the bed and pulled on his socks and shoes—the jacket could wait till last—and went into the living room. Zach was standing there, bag in hand.

  “Good man,” Applelow said. His sense of having helped the boy furthered his confidence about the interview. Blackness could negate blueness if you weren’t careful, he thought, and by giving unconditionally to someone in need he’d also imparted his own best aspects to him: an ability to flow with things, instead of darting from place to place … and then he pressed his finger to his pursed lips and shook his head, suddenly understanding the point of Love’s assignment so completely that he looked at Zach and laughed.

  “So I’m gonna go now,” the boy said. He seemed to want to say something more, then changed his mind. “So, seriously. Thanks.”

  “Thank you.”

  Zach started to back out of the room, then turned and opened the closet. “Wrong door,” he said, laughing awkwardly as he hurried out and pounded down the stairs. Even over the radio and TV, Applelow could hear the front door slam shut.

  He stared at the door for a moment, thinking about the next time he and Zach might see each other, and how much could have changed for the both of them by then. He imagined Zach in a military uniform, himself in a better suit. Then he went into his bedroom, put on his coat, stood in front of the mirror, and ran a palm over his lapels.