Seventh Avenue (13 page)

“And who are you?”

“Warner.”

“Broker?”

“No, I’m a concert pianist.”

“Well, I’ll tell you something, Warner. I didn’t come here to have a shitassed rent collector ask me if I was a joker. I’m not one of the people in your tenements who’s come to ask for a paint job. “Clear?” he said politely.

“Now just a second” - Warner was on his feet and the egg salad fell on his shoe – “I don’t have to . . .”

“Sit down and wipe the egg off your shoe. We’re just using the office to discuss a lease. We could’ve discussed it anywhere - in the park. You get your commission from him, and he rents it at the price I’m prepared to pay, so your contribution is exactly nothing. So if I were you, I’d get back on the phone and dun a few old ladies for rent.”

At that moment, Douglas Fredericks entered. He was a tall, spare man wearing a pearl gray suit and navy suede shoes, with a black homburg under his arm.

“Would you be Mr. Blackman?”

Jay stood up and offered his hand.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“We spoke on the phone.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Good, then that’s settled. Can we pull up some chairs, Warner?”

Warner picked up two chairs and dragged them over. An errand boy, right approach, Jay thought.

“Now, have you seen the store?”

“I had a look through the window. It’s in a bad way.”

“That’s the tenant’s concern,” Fredericks said, smiling. “The location is excellent for the right type of business. About two hundred thousand people pass by there each day. And as it’s a six-day street - well I’ll leave the arithmetic to you.”

“All they do is pass by,” Jay said. “The store’s got no frontage. In fact, it’s almost invisible to the naked eye.”

“If you’re selling the right thing, people manage to find it.”

“You’ve got all the big department stores fifty yards away,” Warner tried to get in his two cents.

Cut his head off first shot, then he’ll keep quiet, Jay thought.

“Look, don’t tell me what’s obvious. The fact is the store’s small, difficult to see and is at the wrong end of Fourteenth Street. People cross the street - they don’t pass by the store. They wouldn’t look at that store if it had a fire going in it for a week. I’ll be honest with you: I had a talk with the present tenant.”

“A poor businessman.”

“To have taken the store?”

“Hardly that. He just doesn’t know how to run his business.”

“The shop’s a big gamble. Everyone who’s had it has gone bust.”

“So why do
you
want it?” Fredericks said.

“I’m a gambler. I think I might be able to make a go of it.”

“With what?”

“Dresses.”

“That’s a laugh,” Warner interposed. “The big guys’ll cut your throat in a month.”

“It’s a risk I’m prepared to take.”

“The price is $600 per annum,” Fredericks said.

“I’ll give you $480 and you paint and put in a new window. You haven’t got the frontage in width so it’ll have to be eight feet on both sides in depth. That’ll give me 16 feet for window displays.”

“Your offer is out of line,” Fredericks said, a bit heatedly. Warner smiled.

“It’s not an offer, it’s a fair price. The store could be empty for six months. If I have a three-year lease at my price, you break even in terms of actual money, and you increase the value of your property by having it rented. If I build up a successful business, the value of the property can increase three or four times. If I go bust, you still haven’t lost anything. It’s entirely up to you, but remember one thing: we’re having a depression, and people are going out of business, not starting new ones. I can get a store anywhere in Manhattan, by just giving two months’ security, and they won’t even ask me to sign a lease. So what I’m offering you is security.”

“Get us some coffee,” Fredericks told Warner.

“Black for me, no sugar,” Jay said.

Warner glared at him, then left the room. The two other brokers eavesdropped on their conversation between phone calls and looked at Jay with a mixture of anxiety and contempt. He was so young, so able to spot weaknesses in arguments, pouncing like a beast of prey.

“You’re pretty tough for such a young man,” Fredericks said. “That’s a compliment.”

“Depends which side of the desk you’re sitting on.” Jay didn’t like the ironic tone and Fredericks’ patronizing manner. “I’m sure you’re a very clever man, Mr. Fredericks, but I don’t really think there’s much you can tell me about myself.”

“It’s a convincing performance” - Fredericks tapped Jay’s hand affably – “but it becomes obvious after a while.”

Jay got up.

“Sorry we’ve wasted each other’s time. Good luck.” He walked to the door.

“Oh, do sit down.”

Jay concealed the smile on his face, and when he turned around, he appeared surprised and impatient.

“I thought we’d finished,” he said.

“Want a job?”

“Doing what?”

“Managing my property.”

“I’m not a rent collector.”

“You wouldn’t have to be one. Seventy-five a week to start with and after the first six months I’ll up you to a hundred if you’re satisfactory.”

“I only work for myself. I’m through knocking my brains for other people. If I don’t become my own boss right now, I never will.”

“You won’t make as much working for yourself.”

“Not at first, but if I can’t make a hundred a week after a year then I’ve got no business being my own boss and I’ll know I’m just like everyone else - a strictly no-talent zombie. Have we got a deal on the store?”

“For five and a quarter.”

“Fifty bucks a year won’t make any difference to you.”

“It shouldn’t to you either if you’re going to be such a big man.”

“It’s a question of principles.”

Warner set down the coffee and squinted at Jay.

“What would you know about principles?” he said.

“I’m not talking to you and anyway you’re not exactly an expert yourself.” Fredericks shooed Warner away as he would a fly. “Five hundred, that’s it.”

Fredericks extended his hand, and Jay shook it warmly. He rather admired his calm, easygoing manner, tricky without being obvious. That was the way the successful played at business.

“I’ll send you a lease at the end of the week. Have you got a lawyer?”

“No . . .” It hadn’t occurred to him that he might need one.

“You can use my man. He’ll look out for your interests.”

Jay nodded and smiled.

After he had left the office, Warner tried to make out a strong case against Jay, but Fredericks remained unmoved.

“He’s a bastard, with a real nasty streak,” Warner concluded.

“Probably be a millionaire in ten years. He’s an operator,” Fredericks said, amused. “I think he’ll increase the value of the property.”

Dobrinski, splayfooted, and whispering to himself, stood in his freshly pressed morning suit in front of the
schul.
It was brisk, and he shivered a bit, as he doffed his top hat to the women who entered. When he saw Myrna, in a green velvet dress, he embraced her warmly and brushed the back of his hands over the exposed part of her bosom.

“It should be you next time, please God. The prettiest maid of honor I’ve seen,” he testified.

Myrna disengaged herself from him.

“He shouldn’t happen to a dog.”

“You shouldn’t say such things.” Dobrinski sighed. His belt was too tight. “God looks after his children.”

“Rhoda’ll need more than God.”

“Why shouldn’t they be happy?” He quoted some percentages he had worked out: women who had gone into marriage pregnant and had happy lives with their husbands, and he showed Myrna some tables he had entered in a little leather notebook that verified this.

“Better show them to Jay,” she said and walked past him.

About fifty people had turned up to witness the spectacle of Jay and Rhoda’s wedding. Finkelstein, about one hundred dollars lighter after his foray into Lakewood’s pinochle league, had, in Rhoda’s honor, kept the store closed to mark the blessed event. Thoroughly discomposed from so much nodding and handshaking, he sat reading a newspaper on one of the back benches. Jay’s two sisters, Sylvia the eldest, a slim woman in her early thirties with a beautifully molded face, sharp brown eyes, a firm jawline and prematurely gray hair, held the hand of her sister Rosalee, six years her junior, whose features did not have the same fineness as Sylvia’s and whose face was dominated by a large nose that hooked slightly and gave it a fugitive hunted aspect. Her hair was also speckled with gray, but it lay hidden under a henna rinse with too much red in it and seemed to belong to the maroon family under direct light.

“It’s hard to believe, little Jay getting married,” Sylvia said.

“Best thing that could happen to him. Poppa’ll be glad to see the back of him. He’s caused him nothing but aggravation,” Rosalee said.

“Two sides to it,” Sylvia replied, a bit tartly. She didn’t like her sister very much.

“I know whose side you take.”

“I don’t take any, but it’s always been obvious that Poppa prefers Al to Jay, and it would make anyone bitter.”

“Look” - Rosalee abruptly pulled her hand away from Sylvia – “let’s not go into it now.” She pointed at the Gold family’s representatives. “They look real
dreck.”

“How do you know?”

“I met Rhoda a few times. Jay brought her around.”

“I liked her,” Sylvia said firmly.

“I guess Jay did as well. He knocked her up.”

“Must you be so crude?”

“I’m a crude person.”

“You convinced me of that a long time ago.”

“And you’re a regular lady. You and your husband always so damned snotty.”

“We’ve tried to elevate ourselves. You could do the same thing.”

“No thanks, I prefer us as we are. Herman and me don’t try to make impressions. He’s good enough as he is.”

Sylvia was afraid it might turn into an argument.

“Someday the truth’ll come out about Jay - that’s what Herman says.”

Sylvia turned away from her sister and stared straight ahead of her at the panel where the Torah was kept.

“Herman is a butcher; he ought to keep out of things he doesn’t understand.”

“So it’s out at last, your true feelings,” Rosalee said. “I always knew how you and Harry felt about us, but I’m glad to find out that I hadn’t been imagining it. In my book, the both of you are phonies. And your well-educated husband is more of a shit than anybody else in the family. What is he, after all?”

“A fine, decent man!”

“A two-bit arithmetic teacher, dearie, not Einstein.”

“We’re in
schul,
don’t you have any respect?”

“Not for you I don’t.”

Sidney Gold watched the two sisters angrily talking, and he was happy that his wife had been unable to come. She’d meet them all at the reception afterwards, and that was, from his point of view, bad enough. He already detested Jay’s family and would be glad once the day was over so that he would be free of them. They were like a pack of wolves who could not find food, so had begun to attack each other. He retired to a little dressing room in the back of the synagogue that was occupied by Rhoda and Myrna.

“Some family!” he groaned. “They heving arguments already and you’re not even married.” He put his arm round Rhoda affectionately. “You’re a good girl. Such a good girl. What am I doing to you?”

“Shush, Poppa, it’ll be okay. Everybody gets nerves,” Rhoda said, trying to calm him.

“Everybody but the bride,” Myrna said. “You should be reassuring her,” she turned on her father angrily.

“I don’t even know if I’m alive . . . such confusion.”

Dobrinski knocked on the door and opened it before waiting for a reply. “The Rabbi’s ready.” He smiled at Rhoda. “Oh, you’re a beauty,
mein kind.
Five minutes, then you come out. I’ll tell you when.”

He scurried next door to a small, drafty room that was used as a classroom for the Hebrew School.

“Ey, you’re in
schul,
so put out the cigarette,” he admonished Jay.

Jay made a threatening movement, and Dobrinski ducked his head as if dodging a tomato. “I’m not joking, I’ll make them stop the wedding,” he threatened.

“Respect,” mused Morris, “he doesn’t know what it means.”

Jay killed the cigarette and sat down at a desk.

“He’s excited,” Celia said. “He can’t help himself.”

“I’ll be back in a couple minutes.”

Barney Green strode into the room.

“Geez, Jay, I almost didn’t find it.”

“You wouldn’t’ve missed much.”

“I never been a best man.”

“Hello, Mrs. Blackman, Mr. Blackman.”

“So he’s got a friend,” Morris said.

“Oh, sure, plenty of them.”

“Like you?”

“Lay off him, Poppa.”

“Whatsa matter he couldn’t heve his brother Al for a best man? What for he needs you? A gengster.”

“Who’s your friend?” Barney said.

Celia began to cry, and Morris held her shoulder.

“See, you’ve made Momma cry.”

“Not a happy day has she had from you,” Jay cried.

The next half hour was a nightmare for Jay. He went through the rituals, repeated the prayers in Hebrew, drank the wine, put the ring on Rhoda’s finger, broke the glass, and at last, and with some reluctance, after three cues, kissed her, thereby sealing the bargain and, he thought grimly, his fate. He had never had a serious illness, but suddenly he felt as though a fever had come over him and was drawing his life away, relentlessly. His mother, tears streaming down her face, moaned like someone bereaved during the entire service, and when he was told to walk down from the small platform, he broke away from Rhoda, dropping her hand the way he would a cigarette in the gutter without thought or interest, and he went to his mother and held her tightly in his arms, shutting his eyes the way he did when he was a child and was trying to imagine what life would be like when he became a man. He had made a mistake, married the wrong woman; he should be leaving the synagogue with his mother by his side - one person now in the eyes of Jews and the law, their destiny recognized, irrevocable. She released her hold on him and pushed him towards Rhoda, who stood stock still where she had been abandoned, waiting hopefully to begin her married life.