Forsaking All Others

by Jimmy Breslin

  Later, at the bar review course, Maximo stopped berating himself and began to think of Nicki. The review course that night was on the rules of evidence and as it droned on, Nicki’s voice was in his ear. She was calling him a Spic, and he loved it. He knew the evidence lecture almost as well as he knew the Our Father, and he heard the lecturer’s voice and Nicki’s voice at the same time and he dealt with both and it made the course most pleasant.

  At twenty to five, when Nicki came back from the ladies’ room, her phone was ringing and Galligan, the heavy guy who worked at the desk nearest hers, didn’t touch it. This made Nicki mad. When she had first taken up with Maximo, she had instructed Galligan never to touch her phone and he did as he was told, but now as she walked to her desk, her sense of having everything exactly her own way was offended by Galligan’s refusal to answer her phone. It was clear that Maximo was not calling, so why then didn’t Galligan do her the favor of picking up the phone? When Nicki picked up the phone, the call was gone. She glared at Galligan. If I only had him on final, she said to herself.

  Of the hundred and twenty-five people in Nicki’s department, she had seven on final, which was what she liked the most about the job. In the personnel department steps to firing a person, the informal warning was first, then a formal written warning and then came final, which meant the employee had been warned enough and now any infraction at any time meant that the supervisor on the scene could terminate employment by verbal command. As Nicki was the supervisor with this power, she spent at least part of her time perfecting the verbal command that she was entitled to use. The last time, with some gay named Conrad, she had said, “Leave,” and he had sat there looking at her. Then she said, “Die!” This he understood. So Nicki decided that this was to be her official verbal command from now on. “Die,” she said to herself as she looked at Galligan. But he was only on formal warning and there were at least six months to go before she could get enough on him to place him on final. She glanced over the room and saw Crowley in the back. He was on informal now, and she would have him on formal in a week, she decided. Final? This smelly little bum would be the fastest final the bank had seen in some time. She would see to that.

  She called home to tell her mother that she was going out with Angela.

  “For a drink? What is this drink?” her mother said.

  “We just want to sit and talk over a drink.”

  “Where?”

  “In a bar.”

  “Angela don’t do things like that.”

  “She does once in a while.”

  “No, she doesn’t. Neither do you. If your father catches you sitting in a bar …”

  “I won’t be late.”

  “I don’t know what you’re doing, Nicki.”

  “Ma.”

  “All right. But I’m just telling you.”

  At Angela’s house, she and Nicki drank coffee and smoked cigarettes while the lasagna baked.

  “What has this fellow got?” Angela said.

  “That’s one of those things you’d have to find out for yourself.”

  “Is all that stuff about Spics true?”

  “Every word.”

  “So they’re really six inches when they’re born.”

  “I said, every word.”

  “Niggers are supposed to be even bigger,” Angela said.

  Nicki wrapped the dinner in the same kind of tray covered by aluminum foil that she used for bringing food to prison. Angela tore a slip of paper from a pad at the telephone, wrote the date on it, and put it atop the foil.

  “I don’t want you to feel strange, carrying food with no number on it,” Angela said.

  “There’s enough here to feed a prison,” Nicki said.

  “Does he eat like a savage?” Angela said.

  “No. And he doesn’t have a freezer, either. How long can this last if he just leaves it in the refrigerator?”

  “I don’t know,” Angela said.

  “Half the time he doesn’t get home till late and he doesn’t eat. What if he just leaves it there?”

  “What’s the difference?” Angela said. “Leave it out for three days. He wouldn’t know the difference. He’d think it was Puerto Rican food. Then maybe it’ll poison him. That would be good.”

  They arrived at Pinto Avenue at 9:25. Nicki sat in the car and looked up the street for Maximo. She was not getting out of the car until he was within three yards of it.

  “You got to be careful,” Angela said.

  “I can’t have an abortion with this guy,” Nicki said.

  “You know it,” Angela said.

  “The doctor would see that it’s a nigger baby.”

  Angela began to hum to the car radio. “I hope something good’s on television tonight. You’ll have me staying up till I’m cross-eyed.”

  “It won’t be that late, I promise,” Nicki said.

  “Don’t worry. Just call and I’ll pick you up.”

  By implied agreement, biology was an accepted excuse between them for any transgression, for the idea of young bodies resisting old urges for protracted blocks of time was alien. After this, however, Nicki had another feeling, one of unaccustomed enjoyment at the chance to set new limits to her serfdom. The moment she made an arrangement to see Maximo, she assured herself that it was for physical reasons, but she then immediately found herself eager for the change, to come out of the suffocation of her world and be set free, even for mere hours of a clock, to walk about Maximo’s world. Maximo was a Puerto Rican, but also he was a person who brought to her no ancient chains to ensure the rites of proper conduct when a husband is in prison. And then there was another part of her that was becoming more and more proud of Maximo’s qualifications. Several times on the bus ride home—home to be defeated by another night—Maximo’s position became vivid and comforting. Say the truth, she would tell herself, doesn’t it feel good to know that you could go with a lawyer from Harvard?

  All of which was immediately lost now as she saw Maximo coming down the block, his thin frame—all movie stars are thin—swinging with this marvelous ease, his head as high as an aristocrat’s, the beard giving power to his gaze. She could not wait for his body to be upon her.

  As Maximo walked up to the car, a door slammed across the street and David Robles came out into the night in a Civil War cap and sweatshirt. Over the sandwich shop, a window opened and the mother, Maria Robles, looked out.

  “Ven aqui,” she called, telling him to return.

  David paused. Under the streetlight at the next corner three other young kids could be seen.

  “Yo Chino!” David called.

  “Yo Davey!” one of the kids called back.

  “Ven aqui!” the mother called from the window.

  David turned and walked back into his building.

  Maximo stopped watching him, for in front of him was Nicki, in a red jersey dress, her long legs gracefully fidgeting as she waited for him.

  Upstairs, Maximo settled the dog in a corner while Nicki stood in the small kitchen and unwrapped the lasagna. She was uncomfortable in the presence of unwashed dishes in the sink.

  “Drink?” Maximo said.

  “Aren’t we going to eat?”

  “Let’s relax and have a drink first. I had a tough day.”

  A drink? Nicki thought. If I wanted to drink I could go to a bar. “The food will get cold.”

  “Put it in the oven.”

  Nicki shuddered. She looked at the old heavy oven door. It was closed, but she knew what was inside. Grease. She knew just the smell would kill her. She began to rewrap the tinfoil about the lasagna.

  “Use the oven,” Maximo said.

  Nicki continued to rewrap the lasagna.

  “Here, that’s silly, give it to me,” Maximo said. He took the tray and opened the oven. Nicki held her breath and turned her head.

  “What do you want with the drink?” Maximo said.

  “Water and ice.”

  “Sorry, but I’ve got no ice.”

>   “Then just a little water,” she told Maximo.

  “With rum? You don’t want orange juice?”

  “I drink Scotch.”

  “I’m working only four weeks. I got rum.”

  “Then give me rum and orange juice.”

  He handed her the glass and they walked into the living room. He sat in a chair that had books piled on the floor around it. Nicki sat across from him on the couch. She didn’t like the look of the books to begin with, almost none of them had the neat, bright dust jackets she associated with good books. When her own copy of The Godfather had a tear in the dust jacket, she went into a bookstore on her way from work and grabbed a new one; if there was anything she disliked more than a ripped dust jacket on a book, it was books with no dust jackets. After that came grease.

  “You’re supposed to have shelves for these,” she said.

  “My emphasis now is on getting through the day. The esthetics can be taken care of later. Here’s to you.” He held up his glass.

  “All those law books?” Nicki said.

  “There are all the books that my family has had. A couple of my father’s. The rest are mine from college and law school.

  Oh, stop with this talk, she said to herself. Just sit down next to me and we’ll take it from there.

  As if reading her thoughts, he leaned over and kissed her.

  “I like that better,” Nicki said.

  He walked her downstairs at 12:30 and she was equally as certain, in the light of the phone booth, as she had been in the darkness of bed, that he was the finest thing the jungle ever had produced. She looked up and down the street. “A mess,” she said.

  “Sure is,” Maximo said.

  “All on welfare here, I’m sure,” she said.

  “They’re on welfare just like your father would be if he didn’t sell heroin,” Maximo said.

  “Well,” Nicki said coolly, “you ought to know. Or have you forgotten the wonderful person you were with when I met you?”

  Maximo winced inside. “I don’t see that fellow anymore.”

  When Angela pulled up, Nicki gave Maximo a quick kiss. “You’ll call?”

  “Don’t worry. It was a lovely night.”

  “Say the truth. Wasn’t it?”

  “But we didn’t eat,” he said.

  “It’s in your oven, dear,” Nicki said. She slipped into the car.

  There was the noise of a car pulling up sharply at the corner, a few yards away. Out of the back window of a Mercedes, Teenager’s head appeared.

  “Maximo!”

  Maximo turned. Inside Angela’s car, Nicki dropped her head under the dashboard.

  “Maximo, we’re going out. Dancing girls!” Teenager roared.

  “Maximo’s going to bed,” Maximo said. He waved.

  Angela’s car drove off.

  “Maximo is tired from the woman,” Teenager said. “Who was that woman who just went away?”

  Maximo waved and was gone. Teenager’s car didn’t move for a moment, waiting for Maximo to reappear. When he didn’t the car pulled away.

  A blue Oldsmobile came up and stopped at the corner. The man in the back ran his hand over his face.

  “I got enough of looking for tonight,” Corky, Louis Mariani’s man, said.

  “You don’t want to go around after him no more tonight?” the driver, a young guy in a blue zipper jacket, said.

  “No, I just want to get his habits down and I done enough tonight. He talked to the guy in that building,” Corky said, pointing at Maximo’s.

  “Young guy,” another zipper jacket in the front seat said.

  “The broad got into a car,” the driver said.

  “It got Jersey plates,” the other one in the front said.

  “Imagine we got Spics living in Jersey now,” Corky said.

  “I couldn’t see too good from back there, but she didn’t look like a Spic to me,” the driver said.

  “They fool you,” Corky said. “Sometimes they look the same as the whites, the dirty bastards.”

  “I’m sure she was an all-white broad,” the driver said.

  “If she was, the guy living there must be one of Teenager’s top guys,” Corky said. “No white broad going to go with a Spic unless he got big bucks for her.”

  15

  THE POLICE CAR ROCKED to a stop in front of Ana’s bar. Martin stood in the street, pulled his pants up over his belly and walked first into the bar with Myles and Hansen behind him.

  Luisa Maria watched as the red-haired cop went to the back of the bar and looked around. The second cop, Myles, who remained in the doorway, did not look as mean to her. But she reminded herself that just because this one does not look as if he wants to do something to you, there is no reason you should trust him. For still he must be bad; he is a cop.

  When Hansen walked in, Luisa Maria was outraged. A dirty black nigger. Oh, he has to be a cop, he is with the others, you can see that. And, there, you can see the gun under his jacket. A dirty black cop.

  In the back of the bar, Martin opened the men’s room door to make sure it was empty, tried the door to what appeared to be a storage room, found it locked, stepped around the small pool table, saw no threat anywhere, then stood with hands on hips and ran his eyes over the barroom once more. There were only two at the bar, Benny Velez and Santos Rivera. The presence of police, particularly at an unpredictable hour, late of an afternoon, caused them discomfort; an indictment ran across Rivera’s face.

  “We’re clear,” Martin called out. For Martin, checking the back of a saloon in a black or Latin neighborhood was a ritual, a basketball team taking layups when it first appears on the court.

  Myles and Hansen stepped to the empty part of the bar by the window and Martin rolled in alongside them. “Give us a beer,” Martin called out.

  “Que marca de tipo?” Luisa Maria said.

  Beer.

  “She want to know the brand,” Benny said.

  “Schaefer.”

  “No tengo ese tipo.”

  “She doesn’t have that brand,” Santos said.

  “Then Piel’s.”

  Luisa Maria put out two bottles of beer and small plastic glasses.

  “They don’t bother me, man,” Benny said quietly. He had a pillbox of cocaine in his shirt pocket, but he saw nothing wrong in this, as long as he did not insult the police by using the cocaine in front of them. Rivera, who had two ounces of heroin in a plastic bag in his pocket, decided he needed some sort of protection. He put on large black sunglasses.

  Martin gulped the beer as if in fear it would evaporate. He sucked at the cigarette in the right corner of his mouth and talked to Myles and Hansen out of the other.

  “Scummers,” he said.

  “I think they were in here the same day as me, but I can’t be sure,” Myles said. “The two I remember aren’t in here now. I’d know them anywhere. But these guys here, the trouble is they all look alike to me.”

  “If that’s what you say,” Hansen said.

  Martin ordered a beer, then Hansen bought one and when Myles pushed a five-dollar bill out, he said to Luisa Maria, “Have one too.”

  Luisa Maria seemed not to know what was going on until Santos Rivera spoke to her in Spanish. Smiling, she put up three bottles of beer and then said, “Yo tengo tambien.” She poured herself a shot of Scotch, then opened up a bottle of beer for herself. She took the money from Myles, held up the Scotch, threw it down, smiled and walked away holding the bottle of beer.

  Martin sat with his hands folded in his lap, cigarette dangling, eyes squinting in the smoke. “Smartass,” he muttered. He called out to Luisa Maria, “What does Teenager drink when he’s in here?”

  Luisa Maria glanced at Benny and spoke to him in Spanish.

  “She does not know this person Teenager from this bar,” Benny said. “She is new here.”

  “Then you know what he drinks,” Martin said to Benny.

  “Teenager,” Benny said. His eyebrows came together as if he w
ere in the midst of medical boards. “I try to think, but I do not know this person.”

  “You live with him, scummer,” Martin said. He pointed at Luisa Maria. “You probably sleep with him.”

  Benny told this to Luisa Maria and she shook her head emphatically. “She says she doesn’t know this Teenager,” Benny said.

  “She’s a liar,” Martin said.

  “Fuck you,” Luisa Maria said.

  “She doesn’t know English!” Martin said.

  “I know cop. I know fuck you,” Luisa Maria said.

  Martin roared and threw down his beer, got off the stool and walked to the men’s room.

  Hansen gripped his pipe between his teeth and said quietly, “I sure wish we’d go someplace else.”

  “I like it, I want to try something,” Myles said.

  Hansen shook his head. “I sure wish we’d do this thing more businesslike. You don’t do a job properly when you’re messing around like this.” He made a face. “Personal jibes.”

  Myles motioned to Luisa Maria. “Have another.”

  Luisa Maria, fuming, poured herself another drink. She threw it down and then poured a second, placed the shot glass on the bar and brought up another bottle of beer for Myles.

  “Good luck,” Myles said.

  Luisa Maria threw a glance at the men’s room. “I no like him.”

  “Well, then have a drink with me.”

  “You a nice fella, but I no like him.”

  “I’ll keep him in line.”

  “Fuck him. He makes me mad.”

  “Well, what can I do to make you happy?”

  “You carry a gun?”

  “Right here.”

  “Then you shoot him for me.”

  Myles laughed. Maybe, Myles told himself, that by his warm demeanor he had made an implied agreement with Luisa Maria that they would be able to speak to each other without admitting that they actually were doing so. He took the picture of Chita Gonzalez out of the envelope and put it on the bar.