Bank Robbers (10 page)

All along Sands Street were bars and whorehouses that catered to the sailors, longshoremen, the dockworks, and a gang called the Navy Yard Boys who would roll the drunks who passed out in the street.

They got him drunk, drunker than he'd ever be again. He remembered throwing up in the street, and then laughter and being pushed into a building, into a room where a sad-angry looking woman was.

She took him to bed, telling him to make it fast, and the only reason he got through it was that the vision of Dottie came into his head, and he closed his eyes and got on with it.

And the next morning, dizzy and sick and lying in cold water in a washtub in the middle of the kitchen in the apartment on Rivington, he decided to make his move on Dottie.

So he waited until the weekend, two days later, when Dottie would stay over at the Spinozas'. He'd gotten her to say she'd meet him up on the roof to see the pigeon coops. It didn't matter that he didn't own any of the birds himself. He had sat so still in the dark, waiting for her to come up on that roof.

He remembered the moon was full and big and it almost looked like day out. He was standing behind the pigeon coops and listening to the birds coo. It was soft and breezy up on that roof. It almost seemed pastoral to Arthur.

Or at least it was as pastoral as Rivington Street could get in August.

And he heard the creaking of the rusty iron roof door and pressed himself against the chimney behind the coops and watched her step out onto the roof. He could see her dress, this kind of filmy cotton blowing in the breeze. When she walked in a certain direction it became almost transparent and he could see the outline of her thighs and the whiteness of her panties through it. And when she passed by he'd pulled her against the chimney stack and kissed her as hard as he could.

She pushed him away and whacked him one, right across the jaw.

“Get the hell off me. What are you, crazy?”

“Don't give me that. I see how you watch for me at Nicholson's grocery. I seen you run an entire two blocks trying to make sure you'd be there when I stop by. And I see the smart-ass way you answer me, and how you always lean against me when I'm fixing that radio.”

“Don't flatter yourself. I hate you, Arthur MacGregor.”

“And I hate you, Dottie O'Malley.”

And he'd pulled her into him again and whispered in her ear that he wanted her and how he wanted her and how he cared for her, not that he ever imagined he wasn't going to get whacked again for what he was saying. He felt her begin to shake as he kissed her up and down.

She wrapped her arms around his neck suddenly, kissed him hard, and he knew that it was all right. She shook as if it was the most special thing in the world to be touched by him.

He took a swig and finished his shot of bourbon. He watched the empty space Moe's car had been in. He almost wished the kid would have stayed out there so he could make this short, and not have to think anymore about her.

And, oh, God, that room he had near Chinatown. And the years he'd come in from work and she'd be there waiting for him.

He tapped the cigar ash into the tray, and the image of her lying back in the Murphy bed overwhelmed him. And a ritual they'd had, when he'd get up to run out and get them something from the deli on the corner because the stove in the apartment was too dangerous for words. The ritual went like this:

When he would dress he would glance up at her, startled sometimes to see a kind of resentment. And suddenly, covering his body from her sight seemed to be an act of treason. Her eyes would get dark and flash at him grimly. It seemed unfair that he was performing this perversity in front of her. He'd turn away, and feel oddly ashamed and thrilled at it. Then he'd give her a kiss and leave.

Thud, thud, thud, jumping down three flights of stairs, his feet maybe landing on the center step on each flight, and he'd hit the lobby running. He could make it back to the room in ten minutes flat if there wasn't a line at the deli.

He'd run up the three flights, taking the steps three at a time, and he'd have to pull himself up by the banister on the last flight, he was so winded.

Then he'd stand very still when he got to the third-floor landing to catch his breath because he still had some dignity left, and he wanted her to think he'd taken his own sweet time strolling down to the corner. So he'd stand and breathe, and make sure he wasn't winded and his heart wasn't pounding when he opened the door.

He'd carry in the brown paper sack with sandwiches and beer and he'd place them on the chair by the bed and he'd kick his shoes off and begin unbuttoning his shirt. And he'd wait because he knew it would drive her crazy.

Sharply, he'd hear, “Come here.” And he'd feel an amused grin go across his face at the cutting tone of her voice and he'd obey, and slide back down, fully clothed, into the warm sheets.

He'd watch the top of her head, touch her soft hair, and he sometimes felt as if he were hovering back, behind his own body, staring down at her.

She would have a serious, thoughtful look on her face, as though she were doing some sort of very delicate, close work to which must be paid extraordinary attention as she undid the buttons of his shirt.

“Sit up,” she'd command, and again he'd obey, and she'd pull the shirt off him and toss it scornfully out of the way. Then she would unbuckle his pants, and unzip them with the same serious expression, and sometimes there would be a soft thud from his belt buckle if his pants fell on the rug and sometimes a metallic clank if his pants landed on the linoleum. And if he'd bothered to put on socks and underwear, they would get tossed aside too. She'd still pay close attention, with the serious look on her face, and smooth the sheets out over both of them. And finally, when her work was done, he'd watch a contented smile cross her face, and her head would lift and she'd gaze happily at him, as though she'd washed some unspeakable horror off his body, and he was now clean and decent and pretty.

It was all upside down when they were in that room. Indecency seemed to become decency, and things he'd been taught to be ashamed and afraid of seemed honest and upright and something to be proud of.

It was only when they left the room that life seemed to become one lie after another.

But it wasn't simply sex that he remembered, it was … details. It simply astonished him, for example, the unspoken thoughts that would cross her face. And what astonished him more was that these unspoken thoughts, which would whiz by as expressions, were something that was as plain and understandable to him as if she'd spoken them aloud.

It was amazing that someone, a woman—a female—would feel anything about him at all, but to be so warm and honest and readable was something Arthur decided was very rare. And some days he felt that he knew he was the first man ever to have a woman like this. Just the care she gave to him and the detailed way which she seemed to feel about him from moment to moment was something extraordinary.

He'd listen to other men speak about their women, and it always seemed impersonal. None of them really seemed to take notice of them. There were men who joked about their women, and other men who spoke of them merely as tits or pieces of ass, or the other kind who had a boiling resentment of them, almost as if women were something dark and evil and utterly untrustworthy.

And he couldn't figure out for the life of him why Dottie seemed so different from those women the men he knew spoke of. Some days he suspected it was just that he was in love with her and so all these moods and expressions, no matter how small, were of intense interest to him. And other days he felt, that no, maybe it was that she
was
extraordinary.

It was memories like these that drove him mad for a while.

Because she had made it matter that he was alive on this planet.

There was someone to whom his existence was important. And no one had felt that way about him since he was seven. That was the year his mother died.

And that was a revelation to him, after the years with his father—the drunken rages, and the watching him, from a slightly ajar closet door, as he tore the room apart looking for things that maybe didn't even exist. And the years Arthur'd spent huddled at the bottom of the bedroom closet trying to pretend he was a box or maybe one of the shoes he was sitting on—any inanimate object—so he wouldn't be discovered and get whacked by this madman because there was no one there to stop him.

Until Dottie, he'd thought of himself like that. A piece of furniture, he was, not even a human being. And when he'd grabbed her that night he'd figured maybe God would let him steal a kiss. A kiss that he could have as his own.

And she gave him herself.

And she promised to wait.

And she
lied.

And Arthur was thinking back on all this when the door to the shop opened and he saw her outline as she came through the glass-and-wire-mesh door.

He couldn't help but lean forward as she moved into the soft red light from the neon, almost looking like firelight from a fireplace, and still he didn't let her know he was there, just like that night on the roof.

“Hello?” Her voice was shaky, as she took several steps inside the shop.

He wanted to hurt her.

“Hello?” she said again, and he watched her look around. He could make out on her face that she was frightened.

And he could make out that she still was one of the best-looking women he'd ever seen in his life, and still had a figure he could spend entire days exploring.

Not one of his other women had ever affected him like she did.

And that made him even angrier about what she'd done to them.

“Is anyone here?” Her voice sounded panicky.

He watched her blink, and then her face fell and she turned around and put her hand back onto the doorknob.

“What do you want, Dottie?” he said loudly and sharply and he watched her jump, startled, and spin around.

“Arthur MacGregor?”

“That's me, remember, Dottie?” he said harshly.

He watched her look hurt and back herself into the wall next to the door.

“How have you been, Arthur?” she said after a moment.

“What do you want from me?”

He watched her face stop looking hurt and begin to look angry.

“A gun, Arthur.”

That threw him. He sat still for a moment, watching her. Her eyes didn't waver.

He stood up and walked around the cash register and stared up and down at her, and when he looked back up to her eyes, he realized that she had done the same to him, and that her breathing was shallow as she looked over his body.

He felt good about the dim lights at first but now he wanted to take a good look at this woman who'd thrown him over for a nobody.

He shot one arm beside her to reach the light switch behind her, and for a split second she almost ducked, as if he were going to hit her. He played with it, as if he were having trouble, all the while making sure he was pressed up against her.

She was shaking like a leaf.

Snap. The lights went on and he stepped back from her a foot, and they both blinked at each other in the harsh light.

“I liked it better the other way,” he said nastily and snapped the light off, and he leaned against her just for a second too long, just so she'd get the point, then stepped back.

“I didn't come here for you to appraise my looks. I want a gun, Arthur,” she repeated.

“Why?”

“You ask all your customers why they want guns?”

She had him on that one.

“No.” He walked around the counter, sat back down on his chair near the register. She walked over and placed her bag on the glass counter.

“So?” she prodded.

“So why do you want a gun, Dottie?”

“It's dangerous where I live.”

“It's dangerous everywhere these days.”

“You got a chip on your shoulder.”

“You noticed.”

“I never did a thing to you.” She was jittery. Her eyes were looking everywhere but at him.

He gaped at her.

“You said you'd wait for me. You didn't wait for me.”

“Are you gonna sell me a gun or what?”

“Twenty-four months, Dottie, twenty-four lousy months, you couldn't wait.”

She stepped back and felt her eyes begin to fill. He could see the reflection of the water along the lower rim.

“For what? Until the next time, Arthur? And how many years was the next time? How much time did they give you then?”

“I—”

“Twelve years, right? But you only did one and then you broke out and were on the lam for how many years?”

“I—”

“Five years, Arthur, and then they caught you and they sent you back, with another robbery conviction, which was twelve more years, plus the twelve from the sentence you never finished before, plus two for being a bad boy. Twenty-six years, out of which you served fifteen. And that was what I was supposed to wait around for? Sell me a gun, Arthur.”

“Yeah, that was what you were supposed to stick around for. Maybe if you had, maybe—”

“Oh, don't even say it! I'm not stupid. You'd have given it up? You? You, who have books and articles written about you, of all the crazy things?”

“Maybe I could have.”

“You would've been worthless. And you would've wound up taking it out on me. Otherwise you would've quit when I asked you to that last time. Sell me a gun, Arthur.”

“And I could have become a nine-to-fiver, tax-paying, voting, solid citizen, right? You would've lost interest in me immediately. You like what I do.”

“No, I never did.”

“Then how come you seem to know all about me? You followed it just for the hell of it?”

“No.” She straightened up, and stared at him silently. He could see in her mind she was trying to come up with some explanation for her being able to recite his whole life history with such accuracy. He'd had a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was not able to get those facts as straight as she had them.