“Sure. As long as it’s not on Avenue C.”
She was laughing as she slumped into a kitchen chair. “Oh, Angela.”
Angela, face straight, put out two cups of coffee, sat down and lit a cigarette.
“Avenue C,” Nicki said. Her laughter reached a high pitch.
“Nicki, that’s me you’re laughing at,” Angela said evenly. “Let’s talk about something else. Tell me what’s doing.”
“I want to talk about stupid Avenue C,” Nicki said. She stood up. “Let me go look and see all the other waste of times you colored in.”
She started out of the kitchen. “Nicki, leave it alone,” Angela said. When Nicki did not stop, Angela got up and walked briskly after her into the bedroom, then grabbed the map, which was atop the dresser.
“I want to see some more,” Nicki said.
“Nicki.”
“I want to see all the stupid places.”
“Nicki, I happen to have something here I like. If you think there’s something the matter with it, that’s your business. But please, don’t make fun of a friend.”
“What am I supposed to do when I see somebody color in Avenue C?”
“You’re supposed to be a friend.”
“But I am being a friend when I tell you you’re doing something stupid.”
“Nicki, if you feel that way, then why not just leave me alone?”
“No, I want to see some other streets.”
“Let’s forget about it,” Angela said.
“I don’t want to.”
“I’m sorry, but I do.”
“What’s the matter with you, Angela?”
“I am sure I don’t know,” Angela said. “I’m also sure that if you don’t mind, I’d like to be alone for a while today.”
Nicki laughed. “Angela, come on.”
“No, I won’t come on. If it’s all right with you, I’d like to be alone.”
Nicki stopped laughing and walked through the strained silence to the door and left without saying anything.
That next week, at three o’clock on Friday afternoon, Nicki sat at her desk, with her face reflecting the hollowness inside her, and she abruptly compressed her lips, grabbed the phone as if it were a person to strangle, and dialed Maximo’s office. He wasn’t in. She asked if he could be reached. The woman on the phone said she knew he would be in much later, at four-thirty.
“You’re sure?” Nicki said.
“Oh, yes. He has an appointment with the director.”
Nicki hung up, lit a cigarette and stared through the smoke; it was the first day that she could remember having no interest in what was going on in front of her in the office. She was interested only in time dying as rapidly as possible, so she could be at this office where Maximo worked.
At this hour, twelve blocks away, Maximo Escobar stepped off the elevator at the thirty-second floor, the executive office floor, of the Mobil Oil Company.
A security guard with his hands folded behind him stood in front of double glass doors leading to a reception area. When the guard saw Maximo coming off the elevator, the hands swung out from behind the back. Maximo smiled at this.
“Help you?” the guard said.
“Mr. Watson,” Maximo said.
“And?”
“I’ve an appointment to see him.”
“You say to see him?”
“That’s right.”
“What’s your name?”
Maximo gave the name and watched as the guard called it over the radio in a skeptical voice that gave way to surprise when the voice in his ear told him, yes, this Puerto Rican certainly is expected. The guard went to the glass doors, waited until there was a buzzing sound and then pushed one in and nodded for Maximo to enter.
As Maximo’s foot had the unfamiliar sensation of sinking into carpet, tight gray hair looked up from a reception desk and a small female mouth pursed and a detached voice said, “Yes?”
“Mr. Watson.”
A hand started to come out to accept the package that the Puerto Rican carried, but then the tight gray hair realized that he would not have got this far if he did not have some mission more advanced than delivery.
She picked up the phone and dialed a number. She asked Maximo for his name and then announced it into the phone. Once again, Maximo watched the look of surprise cross a face as it learned the Puerto Rican was not there to kill.
Another gray-haired woman soundlessly appeared in a doorway. Her hands were clasped in front of her black skirt and her smile was too sweet for the eyes.
“Mr. Escobar, would you please come with me?”
She led Maximo down a hallway lined with hotel room paintings of mallards sitting among frozen reeds. At the end of the passageway, there was a heavy wooden office door that was open, and standing in light of such intensity that the windows it was coming through had to be high and wide was Bo Watson.
“Well, it’s good to see you,” he called out to Maximo. Watson smiled and the gray-haired woman in the black skirt smiled too. Both smiles were those of people on a charity committee whose role at this time called for them to actually mingle with the urchins they had been extolling at midtown luncheons.
“Nice to see you,” Maximo said to Watson.
“I hope you’re not just here paying a visit,” Watson said. He laughed and the gray-haired woman laughed.
“I guess I’m not,” Maximo said in a flat voice. Watson’s arms extended in invitation and Maximo stepped into a small reception room and then into a large office with high, wide windows. He kept noticing how his toes dipped into the thick green office carpet. I guess this is what they mean by feet on the ground, Maximo told himself. He sat in a high-backed easy chair, which bothered him because it felt so comfortable.
At the end of the day, he was back in his office in the Bronx. At four-thirty he would go in and tell the director that he was leaving on vacation and would not be back. He was bent over, cleaning out the bottom drawer of the desk, pausing to read a note that said, “We have not recieved heat,” and throwing it away, defeated by both spelling and the fact he could spend two days getting heat for them, while two hundred thousand others froze, and now he heard deliberate steps of high-heels entering his cubicle.
“I’m just here to see you for a minute,” Nicki said. She stood in the doorway with a face that showed nothing. When she saw Maximo’s surprise, her eyes smiled.
“How did you get up here?”
“I got here. Isn’t that all that counts.”
“I guess so,” he said. He stood up.
“Sit down and do your work,” she said. “I don’t have any time. I want to ask you one thing in person. I want to know if I can see you again.”
“Sit down for a minute,” Maximo said. “I just have to go in and tell the boss what I’m doing. I’m leaving.”
“Oh, I’m sure you can leave all your wonderful people. I don’t have time for that. I just want to know if I can see you again.”
Her old insulting style caused Maximo to smile. “It’ll only take me a couple of minutes,” he said.
Lefkind, the director, stuck his head in. “You had something on your mind?”
“Sure do,” Maximo said.
“Can we do it now?” Lefkind said. “I’ve got to get out of here.”
“Sure,” Maximo said. Lefkind was gone.
“I’ve got to get out of here too,” Nicki said. “So answer me. Am I going to see you?”
“Yes, but why don’t you wait?”
“I said I can’t.”
“When am I going to see you?” Maximo said.
“When belongs to me,” she said.
“So what does that mean?”
“Just don’t try to call me and don’t try to call Angela. You’re still home?”
“Of course.”
“Good. That’s where you’ll see me.”
She walked out. Maximo, shaking the surprise out of his head, went inside to tell Lefkind that he was finished working.
Outside, as Nicki walked to her mother’s car, a young guy sitting on an iron railing said, “Loose joints, lady?”
Nicki stopped. She hadn’t done this in months. She started to go for her purse and then quickly backed away, frightened that the kid was looking to steal her purse rather than sell her anything.
“Relax, lady, loose joints only,” the kid said.
“How much?” Nicki said.
“Dollar.”
She bought the joint, put it in her purse and drove home. When she walked into the house, she was reaching for her cleaning clothes. Later, she was in bed unable to sleep, but immediately pretended to be when her husband came home at five o’clock. He got into bed wearing his underwear. Nicki waited until she was sure he was asleep, then she looked at him and started to go over their life together, and became confused at this. She put her head back and went to sleep.
In the morning, they both were in bed when Nicki said, “I can’t make it.”
“You told me that,” her husband said.
“No, I really can’t make it. I want to leave,” she said.
He did not answer.
“Not to have anything against you,” she said.
“Well, what is it then?”
“I told you, I don’t know. Something died when you were in jail.”
“I know I’m not leaving here,” he said. “I need the apartment for the fucking parole guy. Stable living environment. Some bullshit.”
“And you just give me the car and let me use it to try and clear out my head. Who knows what could happen? Oh, I’m so confused.”
He shrugged.
She got out of bed and started cleaning again. When he got up, she was scrubbing the bathroom. She put everything down and ran to the kitchen.
“What do you want to eat?”
“Nothing this morning.”
“You’ve got to eat.”
“I got no time. I’ve got to go meet somebody.”
“At least have juice.”
“I’m going. I’ll see you.” He started to walk into the kitchen to kiss her, but an ancient strategy, in his blood at birth, caused him to smile and walk out on her.
She cleaned the house until midafternoon. Then she went into the bedroom, reached into her closet and pulled the Times out from under the shoeboxes. She folded it and put it in her large shoulder bag. Her hand reached into the bag to feel the bankbook. Then methodically, she cleaned her clothes out of the closet and drawers, piled them on the bed and waited for darkness, so nobody would see her carrying the clothes out to the car. The last things she carried out were two clean orange towels.
It was eight-thirty when she was going along the road on the Palisades that led to the George Washington Bridge. Up ahead, high over the tops of the houses, the bridge towers were powder blue in the spotlights playing on them. She thought of Maximo, just on the other side of the bridge, and the excitement of going up the stairs to his door. She drove until there was a diner, and alongside it an access road to the bridge going to New York. She drove past the diner, past the entrance to the access road, onto an overpass and then onto another access road that took her onto Route 4 and the drive to her father and mother.
Her mother stood in the kitchen door and watched her carry clothes down the hall to her room.
“You’ll end up alone,” the mother said.
Nicki said nothing and went to her room, dropped the clothes on the bed, then turned around and went back out to the car.
When she came back in with the second armful of clothes, the mother said, “You’ll have no babies. Do you realize that?”
Nicki carried her clothes to the bedroom, threw them on the bed, turned and went out for more. She was upset as she came into the house this time. She was carrying her beige silk dress, still in the plastic from the cleaners, and it had uneven creases across the front from being carelessly thrown in the car. The dress and the shirt beneath it would both have to be pressed again without being worn.
“Look at this,” she said to her mother.
“You got a right to be more careful with your clothes,” her mother said.
“I just got it out of the cleaners,” Nicki said.
“You got a right to be more careful with your clothes.”
Nicki walked to her room before the mother could right herself and return to talking about babies.
Maximo threw his clothes on the floor and, thinking of her, picked them up. He hung the pants on the hanger and put his shirt and underwear in the bathroom hamper. The shower was warm rain on the back of his neck and he leaned against the wall, closed his eyes and stood for many minutes, and then suddenly he turned the water off and got out. When he came out of the shower and reached for the towel, its bright orange caused him to feel that she was in the apartment with him, waiting right outside the bathroom door. He put on his denim courtroom suit and a new yellow shirt he had bought at Eddie Hernandez’ for twenty-five dollars. A courtroom suit for courting, he said to himself. Smiling at the pun, he fed the dog and went downstairs.
It was almost six o’clock now and he was going out, just going out to see what women looked like, and he had no idea of where he was going, but he was certainly going to be out and about, maybe even downtown, for that was where he would wind up living, he knew that, and as he passed the phone booth he stopped and for some reason, in his mind he did not want to do it, his hand went for the phone. Again, Angela’s phone did not answer. After a while, each unanswered ring caused a small pain somewhere inside Maximo. He decided to walk over to the subway and go down to the Corso Ballroom on 86th Street. He walked to the kiosk on 138th and picked his way through the rush hour crowds, ducking his head in case there was anybody left across in Ana’s Bar who would recognize him. The phone booth was at the foot of the stairs and he ran up to it without thought and found he was nervous as he dialed Angela. When there was no answer again, he slammed the phone down, angry at her, at Nicki, at himself for being so vulnerable. He walked to within a couple of steps of the change booth, changed direction and pushed on a metal door in the wall. Music and laughter came through the open doorway and into the dungeon of a subway station. Maximo walked into a room of gold.
A woman as wide as a piano, a grand piano, not an upright, a woman so short that her head barely came over the top of the bar she was behind, poured rum in a room that was covered with colored lights that splashed on the rows of bottles behind the bar. Her black hair was twisted into a spike on the top of her head. She wore a sweater buttoned to the neck and served rum to several people who sat on stools.
“Cierra la puerta,” she said to Maximo.
A scarred train was roaring into the station. Maximo closed the door and shut out most of the noise of the subway train and allowed the music from the juke box to be heard.
“You want to drink?” the woman behind the bar said.
“Rum,” Maximo said.
The woman poured rum into a plastic glass and held the bottle high and started to put it back on the shelf and then stopped her arm in midair, shrugged, and brought the bottle down to the bar and filled her own glass to the brim. She took a great slug of the rum before putting the bottle back. She reached under the bar and brought up a small bottle of beer and placed it in front of Maximo as a chaser.
Maximo swallowed half the rum, swigged from the beer bottle and, carrying it in his hand, went to the juke box. He played a song called “Elena,” and drank the bottle of beer and listened to the singer, Miguelito Antonetti. He was a very good singer, Maximo remembered seeing him once at the Bronx Latin Casino, and Maximo drank the beer and first hummed and then began to sing along with the record.
He put in money to play the record three more times and he went back to the bar and ordered another rum. As the woman was pouring it, Maximo took a dime and opened the door and went out on the subway platform and called Angela. Women coming from work brushed past him. Six rings this time. He went back into the bar.
“What time is
it?” he asked the woman.
“Ten after six.”
This made Maximo feel better. He thought it was half past six already. “Yo, Maximo, you’ve got plenty of time,” he told himself.
“Que?” the woman behind the bar said.
“Talking to myself,” Maximo said.
“You must be crazy,” she said. I am.
“That’s good,” she said. She laughed. “We like all crazy people.”
Maximo looked at his rum and sang to the juke box. He started for the door with the beer in his hand.
“Put down the bottle,” the woman said.
On the platform, as he dialed, he felt the warmth of the rum. Too quick, he told himself. When there was no answer he slammed the phone down.
“You want another drink?” the woman said to him back in the bar.
“No, I better take it easy,” he said. “I’m starting too fast.”
“Did you eat?” the woman said.
“No.”
“That’s good. You get drunk on an empty stomach.” She poured Maximo more rum and the others at the bar laughed.
He drank the rum slowly this time. Alongside him at the bar, a lanky guy Maximo knew as Angel talked to a chubby guy who worked at Cutti’s Superette.
“You are wrong,” Angel said.
“No, I am right,” the chubby guy said.
“Jose Torres never was knocked out before he became champion,” Angel said.
“Florentino Fernandez knocks him out,” the chubby guy said.
“Never.”
“Don’t say that to me. I was there. In San Pedro. He hit Jose Torres with a hook and then the referee stops the fight.”
“After he was champion he was knocked out. Never before,” Angel said.
“Hey, man, I was there, man,” the chubby guy said. “He fight Fernandez in San Pedro. In 1961. The fight was at Sixto Escobar Stadium. Five rounds it went.”
“You were there?” Angel said.
“I can prove I was right in that place,” the chubby guy said. “I take you to that place right now and show you the whore that gave me the clap disease that night.”
“I cannot say no to you now,” Angel said.
Forsaking All Others Page 43
