Never Love a Stranger (26 page)

I was up early and on Sixth Avenue at seven-thirty in the morning. The agencies were crowded as usual and nothing seemed to turn up. I was sent on several jobs but when I got there, they were either taken or the boss had someone else in mind. I ate in a cheap restaurant on Sixth Avenue near Forty-sixth Street and had large franks and beans and coffee for thirty-five cents. I went back to the hotel and took a bed in the semi-private room. This room I shared with about ten other men. They were mostly a different type from the men down at the Bowery flops. These were men who as yet had not hit the extreme bottom. A few of them were playing cards. I watched them awhile and went to sleep.

The next day I tried the wholesale market section. I was lucky. I went into the warehouse of a small retail grocery chain store and was hired almost immediately. The delivery boy had just quit in a store on Columbus Avenue and Sixty-ninth Street.

The supervisor looked up at me from the desk. “What do you want?” he challenged rather than asked.

“A job,” I replied simply.

“I haven’t any,” he said shortly. Just then the telephone on his desk rang. He picked it up and barked into it. “Rayzeus talking.” A voice hummed excitedly through the earphone. I stood there waiting.

A few seconds ticked by. The supervisor didn’t speak, just listened to the voice crackling electrically through the phone. I don’t know how I knew that this meant a job. Whether he glanced at me, or told me to beat it, or the way he listened—I don’t know. But suddenly my hands were sweating, my heart began to hammer excitedly. I just knew there was a job and I wanted it.

The supervisor hung up the receiver. A truck-man came up to the desk and showed him a bill of lading. They spoke a few minutes and then the truck-man walked away. The supervisor looked up at me. “What are you hanging around for?” he snapped.

“A job,” I said again.

“I told you I haven’t any,” he replied.

“You just had a call about one,” I ventured.

He looked at me questioningly a minute. “Got any experience?” he asked.

“Some,” I replied. “I worked in a big food market in San Diego.” I didn’t tell him I only lasted two days.

This time his glance was appraising. “How old are you?” he shot at me. “Twenty.”

“You wouldn’t want it,” he said, turning back to his desk. “It’s a delivery boy’s job— pays eight dollars a week.”

“I’ll take it,” I said.

He looked up at me again. “It pays only eight dollars a week,” he repeated.

I put my hands in my pockets so he wouldn’t see them trembling. “I’ll take it,” I told him. How I hoped he wouldn’t turn me down! I never wanted anything more in my life.

“You wouldn’t be satisfied on eight bucks a week,” he said to me. “You’re not a kid.

You need more than that to get along on.”

I still kept my hands in my pocket. “Look, mister,” I said, the tension cracking my voice a little: “I got to have a job. I need it bad. I’m flat. I worked on the snow about six weeks ago, and that’s the last work I’ve had. Eight bucks a week is a lot of dough to me.”

He tilted back in his chair and turned a little away from me. “Do you live with your folks?” he asked.

“No,” I said, “I haven’t any. I live at the Mills Hotel right now.”

“Why do you want to work for eight bucks a week?” he asked. “Surely a big, strong young man like you ought to be able to get something better paying.”

“I tried to, mister,” I said desperately. “Honest, I tried, but there isn’t anything. A man’s got to have something.”

He was silent for a while. I was going crazy. This cat-and-mouse business was driving me nuts. Suddenly he turned his chair towards me. “O.K.,” he snapped, “you got it.”

I felt weak. I sank into a chair near the desk and took a cigarette from my pocket. I put it in my mouth and tried to light it, but I couldn’t strike the match; my hands were trembling too much. He struck a match and held it towards me. Gratefully I accepted his light. I dragged deeply at the cigarette. “Thanks, mister,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

For a minute I felt dizzy. I thought I was going to be sick. My stomach heaved and the bitter taste of gall came into my mouth. Desperately I swallowed. Not now, please God, not now! I put my head in my hands. He got out of his chair and came around towards me. He put his hand on my shoulder. “It must have been pretty bad, son,” he said. His voice didn’t have that aggressive snap to it now.

I nodded, my head still in my hands. I felt better, the flash of nausea had gone. I looked up at him.

“You all right now?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” I said, “I’m O.K. It was just the … well, you know what I mean.” He nodded.

I continued: “When do I start and where?”

He went back to his desk and sat down. He wrote out a slip of paper and handed it to me. I took it and read the address.

“You can start now if you want,” he said.

“I’d like to, sir,” I told him, “if it’s all right with you.”

He took another sheet of paper from his desk. “What’s your name?” “Frank Kane, sir,” I replied.

He wrote a few words on the paper and gave it to me. “That will do it.” He smiled. “Give that to the manager of the store, and if he has any questions tell him to call Rayzeus at the office.”

“Thank you, Mr. Rayzeus,” I said. “Thank you very much.”

“Good luck, Frank,” he said, getting up from his chair and holding out his hand.

I shook hands with him and went out into the street. It was a wonderful day. I felt different already. A job made all the difference in the world how you felt. I swore to myself that I’d make good. I couldn’t let a right guy like Mr. Rayzeus down. I looked at the note in my hand. It was the most beautiful note I had ever seen.

It said:

Harry—

This will introduce Frank Kane. Put him to work. He will get $10 a week.

J. Rayzeus.

I just couldn’t fail the man now. An extra two bucks a week! I’d cut off my right arm at the elbow for him! I walked to the subway at Franklin Street whistling.

Chapter Eight
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I
LEFT
the subway at the Sixty-sixth Street station and walked over to the store. It was about noon, and the sun cast queer, irregular-shaped shadows from the El onto the street. I walked up to the store and stopped in front of it. It was a small store with one window. Over the front of the store hung a grey-and-black sign. “The Wonder Tea and Coffee Stores.” The window had a small display of groceries, and people walked by, not even looking at it. The store was set in a renovated house a little way from the corner. Next to it on the corner was a drug-store, and on the other side of the grocery store was a malt-and-hop store. Down the block a little farther an ice-cream parlour and a vegetable market and a butcher were all lined up to make this a marketing section. Upstairs over the store was a club. On its windows there was imprinted “Workers’ Alliance”.

I went into the store. There was a customer picking some canned goods from a small display in the store; a man, white apron tied around his middle, was waiting on her. I waited until she was through and had walked out before I went over to him. “Mr. Rayzeus sent me down from the office,” I told him.

“Fine!” he said. He seemed to be expecting something.

I gave him the note. He read it and put it in his pocket. “O.K.,” he said, smiling, “I’m Harry Kronstein.” He held out his hand.

I shook it. “Glad to know you, sir.”

He reached under the counter and grabbed an apron and gave it to me. “Here, put this on. The first thing you can do is sweep out the place. My boy didn’t show up this morning.”

I took the apron from him. There was a broom in the rear corner of the store. I went back to it, took it, and started to sweep. I swept from the front of the store, starting at the door, sweeping down in front of the counter to the corner of the back room, and then swept down behind the counter to the corner. I used the end of a cardboard box to gather up the dirt, and dumped it in an empty box just inside the back room. Then I came out. “What next?”

Harry looked at me approvingly. “Where did you learn how to sweep out a store like that?” he asked. “Most guys don’t know where to start.”

“I worked in many stores,” I told him.

There were many cases of canned goods lying on the floor in front of the counter. The truck had just left them there. He pointed to them. “Unpack those on the shelves where you can and take the rest in the back,” he told me.

I looked around at the shelves. They were pretty well filled up, but certain items seemed low. I looked at them to see what they were, then looked for a case of the stuff. When I found it, I put the case on the floor near the shelf. In a little while I had quite a few of the cases spread around the floor. The rest I couldn’t find a place for, so I took them in the back room and stacked them up. Then I came out and started to unpack

some of the cases. I had to ask him where a ladder was, so I could reach the top shelves. When I had emptied about three cases on to the shelves, he stopped me.

“Come on,” he said. “We close for lunch.”

We went down to the ice-cream parlour for lunch. We sat in one of the booths there and talked. I had a good chance to look at him while we sat there. He was about five-six, about three inches shorter than I. He had watery blue eyes almost hidden by thick, heavy-framed glasses. He was bald with a fringe of reddish-brown hair around the sides of his head, and a red moustache covered his rather full lips. He had a long, round chin that came almost to his Adam’s apple. He spoke slowly, moved casually, and smiled carefully. His smile was warm, but it never had the air of spontaneity I ordinarily associated with laughter.

He spoke quite a while. I told him of some of my recent experiences and I learned from him that the store had no clerk. I was to be both clerk and delivery boy. I had a sandwich and a cup of coffee for lunch, and then we went back to work.

About four o’clock I had finished unpacking the canned goods. By that time he had accumulated a few orders, which I delivered. I got about forty cents in tips, and when I got back to the store, he told me to start emptying out the window. The window was on a display made of empty egg crates. It was a small window and I emptied it quickly. Then I removed the window signs and washed the windows, inside and outside. I remembered washing the windows at Keough’s. I wondered what the old bunch were doing now. When I went inside, he took me over to the icebox and showed me the different cheeses and butter and told me how to cut them. He then unpacked some eggs into the display case, showing me how to do it.

I thanked him for showing me how. He smiled slowly. “The quicker you learn the better. You’ll be more useful around here, and I’ll need all the help I can get.”

“If there’s anything more I can do, Harry,” I said, “just tell me. I want to be all right here. I need the job.”

“You’ll be all right,” he said. He took out his watch and looked at it. It was seven o’clock—time to close up and go home. We took off our aprons and went out.

I walked over to the hotel and took a private room again. Then I went out for supper. After supper I felt better, so I took a little walk around the neighbourhood and then turned in for the night. I asked the desk to wake me at seven in the morning because I hadn’t an alarm clock and I didn’t want to be late for work.

The next day I was waiting outside the door of the store for him to open up. He came walking up the street slowly and said good morning. We went in and I swept up. He sent me over to the ice-cream parlour for coffee. I got a container of coffee and we had coffee and buns. About an hour after we had opened at eight o’clock, Mr. Rayzeus came in. I was washing the front of the counters. I looked up and said good morning to him. He nodded and walked on back to the register where Harry was standing.

They talked for a while and I heard my name mentioned a few times. Later Mr. Rayzeus went out and got in a car and drove off. I had finished the counters and Harry told me to bring out certain cases of canned goods. We were going to dress the window.

We finished dressing the window before lunch time, and we went to the ice-cream parlour for lunch. After lunch we went back to the store and I delivered a few orders. I got about twenty cents in tips. Our trade was a mixture of the very poor—those on home relief—and the middle class—those making about twenty or thirty dollars a week. We carried a cheap line of groceries and always had specials to sell. To bolster up our weekly business, Harry had a few restaurants we called wholesale customers. They bought a case of eggs, a bag of sugar, cases of cheap canned vegetables. He sent me out to see them and pick up their orders. At seven o’clock I made ready to leave. He stayed open a few minutes later. I waited until he closed, then I had supper and went back to the hotel. The next day was Saturday. It was a long day, according to what Harry had told me.

We were to be open until twelve o’clock at night. Saturday, Harry had decided, would be the first day I would wait on customers, and I looked forward to it. It was also pay-day.

The day dawned bright and clear. I was at the store early again and waited for Harry to come ambling up. We opened and had our coffee. Then I stacked away the bottles of milk and cream in the icebox and waited for customers. About nine o’clock a few drifted in. Harry nodded and I went forward to wait on one of them.

She was a tall, dark, Italian woman, who spoke with a harsh-sounding voice that seems to be a characteristic of the poorer-class Italians. The first few things she asked for were fairly simple. Then she asked for some cheese; I turned to the icebox and took it out. She wanted half a pound; I cut a little more. On the scale it weighed almost three quarters. At forty cents a pound, I thought, this piece was thirty cents. I started to tell her the price, but Harry came up behind me and whispered: “Thirty-six.”

I took the cheese from the scale and told her the price that Harry had given me. She said it was all right and I wrapped it up. She bought a dozen of the cheapest eggs and a pound of the cheapest coffee. I took out a large bag and started to write the prices down on the bag. I totalled them when I had finished listing them. It came to $2.38. Harry had been standing near by as I marked down the prices, checking me as I ticked the items off. I had an idea he might like to check my addition, so I passed the bag to him. He ran his eye quickly down the column of figures and handed it back to me without comment. I knew it was correct. I packed the bag and the lady gave me a five-dollar bill. I placed it on the register and called out: “Two thirty-eight out of five.”