Arthur McCann 0cm

by Leslie Thomas

  It was a joyless place, so I put three dimes in three separate machines, all in a line, and moved from one to the other, peeping from a bosom to a bum to a beguine, and then back the other way. I missed, of course, two thirds of each performance, so I inserted another three dimes, and then another three. On this third run I was dancing from one observation machine to the next when I collided with a greasy old man coming the other way. We disentangled and he leapt greedily at the eyepiece I had just vacated. Then the youth in the pulpit, who must have been watching all the time, droned into his microphone: 'Numbers Eight, Nine and Ten. No loitering on these premises.'

  I went out into the warm two-thirty air, into the rudely flashing lights, wondering how I could have been loitering. Not that leaving that establishment worried me, anyway, for they were only moving pictures, ghastly ghosts compared to the living flesh of Mrs Nissenbaum.

  Miserably I walked under the lights and among the people. What were all these persons doing in the middle of Times Square in the middle of the night? None of them were up to any good, that was certain. Except for hobos and vagabonds, who had nowhere to go, they were all seeking to find or to give something that was illicit. Why did they all ignore me? Why couldn't I join in? Did it have to be that my adventures would be confined to a mad, queer, mate in an open boat in an open ocean?

  At the entrance to the Dime-a-Dance Palace, where I had already experienced rejection, was a Negro lady wearing a fur coat. The very fact that she had such an acquisition and was clad in it on a night when the temperature could not be below seventy Fahrenheit, drew me towards her.

  Casually I stood at her side, two feet away, observing the people just as she was observing them. Every now and then she made a greeting to a man which was either returned or ignored. But none of the men approached her. After she had said 'Hello there' at least twenty times I swallowed hard and without looking at her said jauntily:' You seem to know a lot of folks around here.'

  'How old are you, honey?' she inquired lazily without even glancing at me.

  'Nineteen,' I said brazenly.

  'You're pretty fucking small for nineteen,' she rejoined.

  'I'm from England,' I said quickly. 'We're small because of the war. Not getting enough to eat.'

  'Nineteen?'

  'Yes. I'm just small, that's all.'

  ' It's against the state law to screw minors,' she warned.

  ' I didn't come down here to buy a funny paper,' I said. I was overwhelmingly pleased with that and it seemed to impress her too.

  'It's ten dollars, plain,' she said.

  'I'll have you twice,' I boasted.

  ' Get a cab then,' she said. Then: 'No I'll get it. He maybe won't see you.'

  In the cab I sat at her side sweating with excitement and embarrassment. I wondered whether I ought to hold her hand. Eventually she said: 'You sure you're how old you say? You don't look it.'

  'I am,' I insisted in the dimness.

  As though finally convinced of my qualifications she half-swung on the seat and pulling open the front of her fur coat she said: 'Want to take a look, honey?'

  She was naked under the coat; black and naked. The lights of the streets, reds, yellows, blues, greens flashed across her stomach and her breasts. I stared at her as though I were staring into our coal cellar at home. Then my eyes travelled up to her face, split with a grin, seeking approval.

  'That's very good,' I said inadequately.

  'Sure is, honey,' she said. 'You got plenty of money?'

  'Some,' I answered cautiously.

  'Give me two dollars for the cab,' she said. 'And two more for me and you can get your little Limey head right in there.'

  I gave her a five dollar note and waited for the change. None was forthcoming. But she reached out with slim black arms and pulled my head into that dark hothouse. She wrapped the fur coat about my ears as though protecting me from the world, and my mouth and my nose were thrust against the hot damp flesh of her upper body. The scent in there was sharp, overpowering, not like Mrs Nissenbaum's flowering perfumes around the rooms of the house. She forcibly rubbed my face into her breasts as though she were polishing them, her stiff nipples running across my cheeks and my nose, my mouth gasping open. Abruptly she pushed me out again into the open air and I was not entirely sorry for I thought I would have drowned or suffocated before long.

  ' Home sweet home, baby,' she said. She paid the taxi and we went into the entrance lobby of a block of apartments. A porter sat in a morose glass case, nodding towards sleep. He saw me and woke up.

  'It's okay, Joe,' she called. 'Just a relative visiting.'

  ' He don't look like no relative to me,' grumbled the porter. 'He ain't even the same colour as you.'

  'Poor guy's been sick,' she rejoined.' Gone pale.' She was almost at the elevator door. She turned to me: ' Give Joe a dollar, uncle,' she suggested.

  I gave Joe a dollar. 'Okay uncle,' he shrugged. 'Welcome home to the family.'

  In the little box of the elevator she giggled and opened her coat for me to put my head inside again. When we reached her floor she gave my hair a little tug and said: 'You can come out now, baby.' She opened a door directly opposite the lift and standing directly inside in striped pyjamas was a small Negro boy. He stared at us with full but completely comprehending eyes.

  'Another uncle to see you, Rufus,' she said patting him on the head.

  'Sure, sure,' nodded the child with bored understanding. 'Another uncle. How come I got so many white uncles? I don't have no uncles the same as me at all.'

  'Every family has its problems, honey,' she said. 'Ain't it time you was in your bed ?'

  'I was,' said Rufus. 'I just heard you and I came out to see what this uncle was like. And he don't look much good, mammy.'

  'This uncle's a real nice uncle, honey. He's from England.'

  Rufus regarded me critically. 'Gee,' he sniffed to his mother. 'You ain't tellin' me you been all the way to England and come back with him.'

  She smiled fondly at him, but, to my relief, opened the door to a bedroom and nodded to me to go in. It was all pink and black and gold and well used. Her clothes and shoes were on the floor and there was a mangy towel hanging like a rope over one side of a wash basin. I wanted to go back to Mrs Nissenbaum's lovely home.

  But she stood in front of me and peeled back her coat, noting my eyes as she did so. 'I ain't told you my name,' she said. 'It's Judy. What you called ?'

  'Arthur,' I said hoarsely staring at the black, steaming body that had emerged from the coat. I could count her ribs, but the breasts above them were full and tight. 'Arthur McCann.'

  'Take your clothes off, Arthur,' she invited. 'You and me, we're goin' to have a real cosy time. Just Judy and Arthur.' I began to rummage with the buttons of my shirt. 'Take it easy,' she smiled. 'Real easy.'

  When I was standing undressed, she took one animal step towards me, her hand catching hold of me low down. She tugged and there immediately came the brisk ring of a bell almost as though her action had occasioned it. She stopped and apologised with a shrug. She went over to the telephone and picked it up.

  'Christie!' she exclaimed joyfully, her breasts bouncing. 'Gee, great, honey! When did you get in?' She glanced at me intimately indicating that she would soon get rid of Christie, but she didn't. Christie went on and then she went on, one laughed, so did the other. Then they started talking about when they were going to meet up and the things they did in August, then what happened in September and October. As this was only May I thought I might have a long wait, standing there, nude, with a gradually dropping dick at the bottom of her bed.

  Then the door was pushed timidly and in walked Rufus holding a bright yellow American football. He regarded my naked state with no surprise.

  'Wanna play, uncle?' he inquired. He nodded towards his mother. 'She takes a long time.'

  I gaped at him, but the next moment he had thrown the ball and I caught it against my stomach. With a despairing look over my shoulder at that long s
eal-like woman, stretched out across the bed, her backside shining black in the lamplight, I tossed the ball back to the boy. He was delighted and made a little dodge across the floor before returning it. I threw it back again. The phone conversation stopped for a moment and she said: 'That's right, have a ball game for a coupla minutes. This friend, she just blew in from nowhere. I won't be long, honey.'

  Into the phone she said: 'Sure he's playing a ball game with Rufus. Ain't that cute?'

  Rarely have I felt so frustrated and utterly stupid as I did throwing that yellow object to and fro across the bedroom. Rufus was enjoying it and kept making dummy passes or going into a one-boy huddle and discussing the next tactic with imaginary team mates.

  My penis had now predictably collapsed entirely and I was punting the ball to him with my bare toes. He laughed and I laughed dolefully too. Suddenly I was back in Wales again," in school, running through the mud along the wing with the ball under my arm, knowing that I would never reach that line before Hefty Edwards had me down. I could feel again his hot snorting behind me and the heavy grasp and tackle and over I crunched and everybody groaned and accused me of buggering it up again.

  We dodged around the bedroom and then out into the hall, me stark, him pulling up the trousers of his striped pyjamas with one small dark hand while fielding the ball with the other. We didn't even hear her put the phone down. Then her head came around the door and she said: ' Okay Rufus, that's enough. Uncle has to rest now. You go and rest too.'

  She led me into the room by the hand, and closed the door on the hurt black face of little Rufus, still plaintively holding his ball like a watermelon. She lay on her side on the bed and motioned me to go to her. I went to the opposite side and sidled across, my anticipation growing apace again. Her long arms moved out to meet me, caught me around the neck and guided me on the last knee-crawling part of the journey. My body was warm from the game with Rufus, but it felt cool against hers. She seemed to give out her own heat. I closed against her like a man hugging a hot water pipe.

  'That fuckin' Christie,' she mumbled.' She ain't no good anyhow. I sure don't care if I never sees the ugly face again. She double-crossed me in August and she double-crossed me in September, and in December she sure double-double-double crossed me. So I don't care whether she scrapes her ass on a rusty nail. No Sir.'

  While this incantation was going on she was adroitly putting a contraceptive on me - my first fitting - and manoeuvring me between her legs. I was almost stifled with the excitement of it. She lay back with a sweet little groan and began to move beneath me. Then the phone rang again. The movement broke and she looked at me apologetically. Her slim arm went out to the receiver and she picked it up. Her face switched on with delight.

  'Christie, honey!' she exclaimed. My soul became dark. 'Jesus, Christie, that's great! I'm so glad for you, baby. Now you just listen to your Aunt Jemima. When that Leroy starts playing those tricks again, you do like I told you. Get it?'

  Christie was getting it. But I wasn't. I lay dumb as a log. I made a few hopeful forlorn movements, but far from responding she shook her face at me indicating that she didn't want me to carry on without her.

  I began to feel chilly. The night was cooling off, the window was open, and horizontal breeze was sliding into the room. Inevitably I began to think of Mrs Nissenbaum again, of her voluptuousness and her home comforts. The telephone conversation went on while I used one of Judy's breasts as a pillow and studied the topography of the other. It was like the slag-heaps in the valleys back home.

  Eventually they had finished. The fond goodbyes took another couple of minutes, but then she replaced the phone and wheezed a happy giggle. 'Oh boy, that Christie,' she said. 'She ain't nothing but the greatest! Wow, what's going to happen now she's blown in!'

  'I thought you didn't like her,' I spitefully pointed out.

  She seemed amazed. 'How the hell do you know?' she demanded. 'You ain't even seen her. We're like lovin' sisters, Christie and me. I ain't never been one to keep a grudge . .. and what she gone and done to that Leroy .. .' Suddenly she seemed to come aware of our positions and my doleful expression.

  'Aw, baby,' she apologised softly. 'I left you all on your ownsome. That woman would only call me because she knows I got a man here. She's just trying to ruin my technique and my reputation, boy, and she ain't getting away with it. Sly, idle, asshole of a horse that she is. You just come here to your mama, and she'll put you just right.'

  Not in my most erotic and co-operative mood could I imagine her as my mother, but I let my sulkiness slide away as her hands lay flat on my buttocks again and she began to roll them with the practised finesse of an old-fashioned baker. The feeling flowed again and I groaned in chorus with her professional agony. Then the phone went again.

  'Let it ring, darling,' she said. 'WW11 just let it ring.'

  Whoever it was they knew we would have to answer it no matter how long it took. Eventually its insistence had got us all out of time and pace. The enjoyment dwindled like a record running down. We stopped and she reached out and picked it up again.

  'Leroy,' she breathed. 'Oh, Leroy just great! When did you get in from Big B.R. .. . And Christie! Sure she's here ... right here in New York . .. and I want to tell you one thing baby, she's sure out to gun down that Clement. Boy, you should hear what she's got to say about him ... What, he's going to call me? Clement? That shit. Oh, sweetie, you just wait until he hears what I've got to put into his mother-fuckin' ear . .. You tell him to call me right now ... Just as soon as you've put down the phone. And I'll tell him what Christie said. Oh boy, that poor Christie. Leroy, can you just imagine ..."

  I could imagine no more. What was Big B.R.? My eyes were full of boyish tears and I longed for my bed in Mrs Nissenbaum's safe and scented house. I had shrivelled, within and without, and the wind was blowing cold on my rear. My body ached and my eyes drooped. While her telephone conspiracies went on close to my ear, I did not hear them because I had drifted to aching sleep.

  She woke me with a nasty nudge of her stomach. I blinked at her. I felt stiff all over my body, except in one place. Her eyes glared at me in the half light.

  'Jesus,' she said. 'You ain't gone off to sleep?'

  'Just a nap,' I mumbled.

  'A nap! Jesus Christ, nobody ever fell asleep on top of Judy Winton-Brown before. Nobody!'

  'Well, you were talking on the phone.'

  'Don't give me that crap!' she exclaimed. 'You just get out of here English boy, and don't you come places insultin' hard-working girls. This is a body not a fuckin' bed.'

  'I haven't had it yet,' I complained.

  'You ain't had what?'

  'What I came for. In fact, I didn't come.'

  'You came when you was asleep, buster. Real quiet. I know it even if you don't. And that means you got what you paid for.'

  'I didn't have anything,' I insisted, but not caring anyway now.

  I groped my way from the bed and she turned and buried her face in the pillow like the purest lover suddenly scorned. Getting some of my clothes on and carrying the rest I went to the door. Standing outside was Rufus, round eyes, pleadingly holding the ball in front of him.

  'You wanna play, uncle?' he asked.

  'Go and play with your mammy,' I said, a remark meant innocently enough but sufficient to arouse a terrible scream from the bedroom accompanied by accusations of encouraging incest and violation of innocent children. From the hall I heard her spring from the bed, so I got out quickly. The elevator was, thankfully, standing with its door open like an emergency exit. I stumbled in. She appeared at the apartment door and threw the yellow football at me. It was a good throw and it came into the elevator, beating the closing doors by a fraction. It struck me on the nose and bounced crazily from wall to wall as I descended. I could hear her screaming abuse from the top of the shaft.

  I walked into the lobby with the ball under my arm causing the porter Joe to raise his tired head, then raise his eyebrows.

  'Have
a nice game, uncle?' he inquired.

  I realised I was carrying the ball. Walking over to him I put it on his desk and went out without a word. I got a cab back to Riverdale and arrived at the end of the trees in the street when it was nearing daylight. Thank God I still had the key. I let myself in and went wounded to my room, pulling the sheet about my head to hide me from all the injuries the world would inflict upon me.

  At nine o'clock Mrs Nissenbaum, wearing her pink robe and her lovely white smile came into the room, Errol Flynn running behind her. I peeped at her nervously over the hem of the sheet.

  'It sure was a hot night, Arthur,' she observed.

  'Yes, it was Mrs Nissenbaum,' I agreed.' I couldn't sleep.'

  'Nor me.' She sat in her familiar way on the side of my bed.

  'It was hot,' I said again.

  'I couldn't sleep at all,' she repeated.' But I don't have any appointments today, so I think I'll lie-in this morning. Maybe you would like to lie-in as well.'

  At that blinding instant I knew it was going to happen. I waited for it and she said:' Maybe we could rest together.'

  And Mrs Nissenbaum, lovely, big, sweet-smelling, Mrs Nissenbaum, put her strong arms under me, lifted me, and carried me like a joyful prize to her bedroom.

  I was glad, in my boyish way, that I had saved myself for her.

  Eight

  From the summer the war ended, after I had returned from America, from the embrace of Mrs Nissenbaum (and the terrible and unique death of her little dog Errol Flynn,) until she left me on the municipal putting green last October, Pamela, my wife, was always somewhere in my heart. It was the very last day, the last hour, the last minute, that the putting green was open for that season. There was a tall, white old man (one of the tallest, whitest, oldest men I have ever seen) in charge of the putting green. He made it dramatically obvious that he was anxious to go because as Pamela and I putted each hole, he followed immediately behind us grumpily uprooting the little red flags and putting round stoppers like jam pot lids into the holes. All the time we were arguing and he was gummidging and the day was falling apart around us. He could not have realized, of course, that while all he was doing was wrapping up a harmless amusement for the winter we were wrapping up years of marriage. And, sorry as I was that he was injured in the ultimate painful scene, I cannot help thinking, even now, that if he had not been so anxious to bugger off I might be a securely married man today. It was the final ridiculous rowdy business that made Pamela turn and run out of the gate, more frightened over the immediate crisis than angry over the culmination of failures attached to our union. It was not our own divisions that broke it up for ever. It was an old fool's screams.