Women and Men

by Joseph McElroy

  t. People coming down off the sidewalks like the light was green, leaving the sidewalk to take up position in way of outer-lane vehicle such as bike so either brake and miss civilian and be hit by truck or in some cases passenger/ pedestrian-to-be stepping off stopped bus. Sidewalk leavers take up position by ignoring oncoming bike, not looking at it and at rider-operator, and turning slightly away from it like you didn’t exist and like they are looking at something else worth looking at too. If you knew any one of these people, you might find they was divorced with children, or was junky, or was former movie or opera star just out walking to buy a present for someone or themselves, or had concealed video gear, or had unseen cancer. People that took up position regardless of themselves and of oncoming bike and messenger and his business and would be unknown quantities except would make you think you better go back to school get some more education, they’re smoking their cigarettes and talking and thinking and not thinking about position they take up in ignorance of oncoming messenger bike, they just take it up.

  Stopped in cold sunlight southbound to check contents of envelope and envelope gave feeling of many days, many weeks, years, and bike leaning against phone booth led to phoning Mother: How you doing? I asked her and she said, How you doing? but did not ask, Why you calling in the middle of the day? and I said, I think I want to go to school and get some more education. She said, You got your own business now even if you didn’t tell me, and you are a man, not a boy, you a real man, Jimmy, and I am proud of you, but don’t you get hurt. If you got your own business you don’t need to go back to school.

  u. Coasted on that one, spiraling back and forth down Seventh like my own daytime streetlamp in the middle of the avenue until cabs on either side hollering straightened me out but I’m still in the middle until I reach a red light and cut over and onto sidewalk. Envelope contains—but social worker’s dream comes to mind, Mother passed it on to son J.B. only yesterday (and where did it go? and who knows why or how? goes song Mother sang in bathtub and at kitchen stove) that in social worker’s dream J.B. didn’t stick to his job at T&W and went to electrician school and met a whole team of new people preparing to go out searching for positions, and J.B. stuck his finger in the Boulder Dam socket and blew out all the colored string of lights one end of the Mississippi River to the next and he was O.K. but the country was in a mess—like a dream could be anything but relates to them not me but never to future because how could it? and the future would be the one thing that dreams do not tell but when the envelope opened while I’m straddling my bike tells what will happen to messenger "then and there" as "preparation" for "what is to come": all this and more in margins of music pages all in pencil and name of music work is Hamletin, and J.B. had seen Lady Luisa penciling one more note when J.B. arrived and was let in and she pulled stuff out of envelope, scribbled, and replaced, but handwriting not all the same and Lady Luisa would never say messenger be liquidated then and there, so this note was someone else’s, so hers must be, for example, "music like venerable Verdi yet original": yet she started to erase in a hurry and then gave up and some of erasing was on backside and in capitals, and read, together with words I recognized from the regular music lines ("And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe But even his mother shall call it accident") various initials across and down such as RS (which could be Ray Spence) and with a U over the S and then an SR (reversing Ray Spence/Santee) and with another U over that S, so you had US and USSR, if you tried, but meanwhile a sharp arrow digging down the margin from the Rs to first PM (which could be afternoon or evening) and actually between the P and the M, and then written in, so you had PRM, but with "Miles" written in, and below it an AM (morning) with above the M a J and below the A a B—which would have strongly indicated a JB for Jim Banks (throw in M for messenger), except vertically down the margin went, then, old familiars

  PM PRM PRP SR

  plus, this time, P (luton.) R (eact.) 1964 / USSR / ABM, plus, then, the words Since there’s no help followed by PM PRM MRM PRP SR, with, then, a big H drawn so it looked like an R and a big R drawn so it looked like an H, and then a big question mark curling around

  if R = H, then MRM = MHM

  leaving little room at bottom of margin for "Delivery Vehicles" and

  UNO

  N S G 1975

  as the margin was needed when the backside of this page was all the time blank unless with invisible ink, and scrawled at bottom, Now at something’s latest breath with a question mark over the "something" which began with L and was certainly not Otto which is Gustave’s last name, but could have been Luisa written small.

  v. Took hold of gooseneck and right handlebar; examined front wheel alignment in front brake pads, greasy dirt in rear chain sprockets; found potential trouble spot in Teflon brake-cable housing slightly bent and scuffed when I upside-down’d bike to check wheel spin before leaving office last night no longer felt to be secure. Though they might be right that "we" know something going on in City no one else does: but wondered what it could be.

  Riding down avenue before turn, recalled twilight some days ago and feelings then and need to act on knowhow.

  Reached warehouse-theater, spotted Senora Wing but would never give her the envelope (which she saw anyway plus bike plus me plus truth that Independent Messenger Unit was in operation but she said nothing and went on in), saw big-man singer spring from taxi making it rock back and forth and side to side so it rocked circular for a second—and swiftly I handed the envelope to him, seeing no rapier at his side and not looking at him but mumbling, No need for receipt, but hearing from him in song-type tone, I am afeard you make a wonton of me & A hit, a hit, a hit—so I would have asked him for tickets if I had not thought him ready to open the envelope.

  So I was gone with his Thaaaaank U, dear boy! lowering after me and Gustave and the office on my mind yet something else—the twilight of some days ago, when I was another man at the same time that I was the one my mother now called a man: for was considering grabbing a free tow on a slow-moving Checker cab practically falling apart: but looking back was diverted by something way high and slipped insanely out into center of evening traffic in Fifth Avenue and brought bicycle to a position of stationary rest and looked back up at the Empire State Building and there were birds circling the Empire State tower devouring moths (I didn’t dream) for that was what they were doing, having studied insects, with the cars sides wiping trousers and bike structure, making own wind, and I answered in my own mind the question my mother asked me and asked in presence once of social worker who didn’t know then that I had a new business, What month is it? can you tell us what month it is? Because looking up at night at the birds circling the Empire State way high near the giant antenna devouring moths, I could say to myself, It’s beautiful, it is a beautiful night.

  w. Until, upon opening door and spotting big Gustave hunched over answering machine and quick craning neck around at me in case I was Spence, Ray, or Ray Santee, I would have asked How are you doing? but heard a man with an accent begin a message with "Mason" and say in no uncertain terms that they had to discuss the messenger service—and then a new message cut in and it was that voice called T.W. saying a direct phone contact was essential and leaving a number I somehow knew but I didn’t know how followed by the words new evidence of trace and a buzz, as if the voice had been interrupted by its own power. And Gustave turned and opened his mouth to start to laugh and his jaw was as large as mine and he held out both hands but did not laugh. He turned machine on.

  I informed him we are in danger and must move the business from this dump, it isn’t our office anyhow. Phone rang and we looked at it and the machine and all the time I listened with my hands on handlebars for sound of steps coming upstairs but none, and on machine came voice speaking so careful it was inside both me and Gustave circling down almost our throat but not throat—only ear and head—and Gustave started to laugh and put his hand over his mouth and his face got like those dogs that have all the skin and t
he voice which was the one called Mason and foreign said: "We are becoming impatient with you and your little operation and it is obvious that you and S.M. ‘s father know the links between this stolen music and much else including the Cuban and time is running out for you and your boys, you little insect, there in your little base of operations"—followed by a buzz like a phone and then nothing and I thought of Amy’s boss and his accent when he spoke kindly in the foundation office, and sometimes stayed in his room and you only heard him.

  I told Gustave we build on what we know and sometime we got to do without knowing. He laughed and was shivering and began taking off his big coat but I said not to. We got to deal with known obstacles in lane-related routes. Forget Santee called me light of his life. Angel. Forget breath of life, coinage of my brain. The business has to survive.

  x. Gustave had a headache. Examined the back of his head where he had blood last week. Loose ends of other people no concern of you and me. Go on what you know. Go on policy. Remember what can happen to messenger with bad news. We got no bad news in us, Gustave—it’s only in envelope. Gustave laughed. I gave him log to read.

  y. Senora Wing came on machine. Jimmy we need you, you better get down here, you lose out. I told Gustave we got to go. Move business. Wipe prints off phone and desk. Took log out of Gustave’s hands. I said we would go see the old lady and old geezer, if he didn’t go on working vacation he said he needed yet. We would watch for them two corners away so Senora Wing or Turnstein not see us. We in danger. We get out of here or we never be heard from again. Machine comes on again with piano music and singing in background, and hammering. I said That’s O.K., we get a new office. Machine voice is a woman talking fast Spanish I didn’t understand except Spence.

  Outside I saw bike rider I thought was white jerk with gray beard and orange headband who looked like my father only white except my father not alive probably, and I told Gustave what Chilean gentleman at foundation said to Amy. I said it to Gustave: ‘The void is the decent interval between exposure to our parents and the time when we can inherit their habits."

  I was surprised I could say it.

  I walked my bike south and Gustave was right with me.

  Other words of the man at the foundation came to me but in bits, but I remembered "structure," yes I remembered that word "structure," and I remembered "small-scale units," and I remembered feeling he was a fine man, a kind man, a gentleman, and how he and the girl smiled when at the end of this bunch of bits that I couldn’t quite remember, he said "as if people mattered." I thought I might take a vacation sometime like the old guy said he was.

  THE CURVE SPEAKS UPON THE VOID

  If it could speak—and he and his new friend were discussing whether it actually could—his heart would have had a thing or two to say about how two older friends of his, Amy and Jim, had acted. Larry’s heart wasn’t going round in circles so much, and had let some part of itself go. He had plenty of heart; he wasn’t cold no matter what his mother had once said about how he kept the lid on, and no matter if his father said Lar’ needed to see Martha and he paid the bills.

  But, O.K., what had looked like danger the other night still might be; but he cared a lot less now. So hosting his new friend Donald Dooley from Economics class in the clear light of a cloudy day, Larry thought of Amy as quite far away, far more than thirty blocks’ bike ride (or walk); an older chick, an older (O.K.) woman, or anyway person; or a government agent implicated in something. She had vanished from her apartment (and she only five or six years older than Larry!), and, that night, had left her things all over that made it look like she had been abducted. Meanwhile, Jim Mayn mattered much more to Larry, who could not understand how on the morning after Amy’s apparent disappearance if not abduction Mayn had emplaned from La Guardia airport on a tristate business trip without knowing if Amy was all right for God’s sake, so maybe he didn’t even care; yet the night before upon learning from Larry that Amy was gone, Mayn had made with him a whirlwind visit to the East Side foundation where she worked (maybe one more interruption before Lar’s life finally began): it was a building and block where nothing was happening at that late hour, no abductions, no light rape (like what Maureen and Grace kidded they would subject a man to someday), no thefts, no cop cars screeching up onto the sidewalks, no execution of babies, nothing at that late hour except a Mexican watchman Mayn knew in suspenders playing a battery-powered electronic game at a rickety little logging-in table, one knee crossed over the other (while, as a bike flashed past exactly like Lar’s old Raleigh and come to think of it with a black kid on it but painted silver—repainted? a bit thickly?—down the street in a closed but brightly lighted shop that sold mainland-Chinese shirts, pants, and trinkets, an Asiatic woman who stayed in Larry’s mind had been sitting on some phone books).

  Anyway (but God! nothing was anyway), the next morning and early afternoon Larry had bothered to check out Amy’s fate, though she was drifting away from him, well always close at heart for he would never change toward her, he’s her friend for God’s sake and prob’ly on some strange parallel trip to hers, meet for a beer some year or cross jaws on some far-future phone waiting maybe just around the rincon if some angel (Hell’s or other or all of the above) hasn’t ripped its hookah out by the roots in anger at the system, drifting ‘way from Lar’ along her own parallel path, but his own orbit had to be his course, which was no-going-in-circles any more but was heady-looking toward unknown new friends, new people, wing out to the West Coast (New York’11 be here waiting) so, then, if, given, a heady orbit into the immediate future, well just a bit of a spin, if skewed—but fuck skew! let it go, let it crawl up Dr. Rail’s blackboard graphed out of someone else’s mind who was controlling the economy if not every day—Amy, Amy, the fine beautiful elsewhere-skew-orbital Amy’s all right—she had come to work at noon, having called in; and Larry had finessed the switchboard lady into telling him that Amy was wearing what he knew to be the same clothes as those in which she disappeared the night before, though then he contemplated her underwear and that upset him, skewed him, he didn’t know why, it was because (yes) he started to take off her clothes only to fear her helplessness. But having finessed the switchboard operator he then spoke to Amy in the flesh and she sort of said she was sorry. Oh she had been summoned on an unexpected research chore— What chore? Lar’ didn’t block himself from asking— Oh a deadline, some music, some ethnic music, they had to get some information on it, her boss needed her, she should have left Larry a— Sure, sure, he said—but she was O.K. And Larry did not seem to surprise her by not pursuing the matter.

  But now four days later, Larry thought he was over Amy, and Larry’s Economics classmate Donald Dooley, a new friend, put his great backpack on the floor of Larry’s room and leaned up against the edge of Larry’s rolltop desk purchased for Larry by his mother shortly before she had split (split? but she was the one who had stayed—or, that is, stayed on in the Long Island house). Donald was agreeing at length, that the heart as a bodily organ had little to do with your feelings, for that was bullshit, though your chest was for sure a key area in the feelings and the heart of course could be affected by the feelings, even a plastic heart, if there were any yet; feelings, whether heart-rooted or not, must never be dismissed, especially your own, and happened to be the basis of most thought (not all) and might be more (than brain) why thought went on and on, though sometimes it was hardly, you know, thought.

  You say "sometimes" quite a lot, Larry said. Actually, Donald and Larry awaited Donald’s girlfriend, who was meeting Donald at Larry’s apartment house in Murray Hill. Larry and Donald were discussing not exactly anatomy or "capital pun." or Mai thus in a Radioactive Era or straight Economics assignments, but reincarnation; God, Donald had brought it up, not Larry, Larry was sure of that, though they shared the view that there were different forms, some in action from moment to moment though Donald wasn’t sure how.