Seventh Avenue (20 page)

Jay tapped the milkmaid on the shoulder, and she turned on a buttery smile; definitely her night.

“Hey, what are you selling, cancer?”

“What wuszat?” The smile congealed, and hard-knock exasperation took its place. “You a wise guy?”

“You see that?” Jay pointed to a table near the door.

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, that’s first base. Now why don’t you show us how fast you can run around the bases.”

The blonde got up, clenched her fist in Jay’s face.

“Vince,” Jay said, “throw this douchebag out.”

The bartender indicated the street with a jerk of his thumb and Jay took her vacant stool.

“Thanks,” Fredericks said, “I didn’t want to embarrass her. Actually, I would have preferred the St. Moritz.”

“Next time. I had to go to King’s Highway tonight. What are you drinking?”

“Bourbon.”

“Vince, two C.C.’s and ginger and bourbon and Coke.”

Fredericks looked faintly surprised.

“I’m with . . .”

“Me,” Eva said. “Just had to powder my nose.”

“Your . . . ? No, it wouldn’t be,” Fredericks said, stretching his suntanned neck around and tensing it so hard that the white creases showed.

“Eva Meyers, Douglas Fredericks. We’re . . .”

“Engaged . . . to wait,” Eva replied.

“That sounds very pleasant.”

“See, Eva, he’s impressed. Even millionaires have pipe dreams.”

“Are you in the same line of business?”

“I work for Marty Cass.”

“I know his father-in-law. He thinks Jay’s pretty sharp.”

“I buy most of his rags and pay promptly on the tenth, so he loves me like a son. If I’m two days late, he’d send the collection agency down to see me, which only goes to prove that money’s thicker than blood.”

“Are we going to eat?” Eva asked.

“Only if you promise to kiss me with garlic on my breath.”

“Ah, Jay, have a heart.”

Jay wrapped his arm around her and pecked her on the cheek.

“I love her. What can I do?”

“You don’t need my advice.” Fredericks gave a deep, throaty, Hershey syrup chuckle.

“Hey, Topo,” Jay called, catching sight of the manager. “Hey ladrone.”

“Ey, Jaya.” Topo walked across the room with his hand extended. The creases on the back of his neck were like the inspiration of a mozarella cheese sculptor. He removed his tinted steel-framed glasses, gave them a blow and reached for a cocktail napkin to wipe them. “Ey, Jaya. Good to see yuh! Wha kin I do?”

Jay introduced him to Fredericks and Eva, forced a drink on him, and he sat down next to Eva.

“Topo, fix us something beautiful to burn our
kischkas
out, Mr. Fredericks’s got an ulcer, and he wants to play Russian Roulette with it.”

Topo rattled off a menu of Palermese comestibles that could blow a safe.

“And two bottles of Chianti, but not the stuff you dilute with vinegar.”

“Ey, Jaya. Would I do that to yuh?”

“I’m kidding. We’ll have the back table.”

Eva watched him move a couple of after-movie diners, spaghetti and all, and under protest, to another table.

They had three more rounds of drinks, exchanged pleasantries, accepted an invitation to go to Miami and spend a week on Fredericks’ yacht. They nibbled hot breadsticks until the shrimps diabolo and clams à la casino were placed before them.

“It’s marvelous,” Fredericks said, “if I survive.”

“I’ll bet you’re wondering why I wanted to see you?”

“To ask me to be the best man at your wedding?”

“Apart from that?”

“You like my company.”

“I love it. With the single exception of F.D.R., there’s no one I’d rather be with. I’ll tell you. You’re building, Doug. In Long Island and Westchester. You’ve got five sites altogether.”

“You’re pretty well informed.”

“I gave Warner fifty bucks.”

“I’ll have to get rid of him.”

“Whoever you go to, I’ll get to, so he’s just as useless as the rest.”

“So we’ve ascertained that I’m building.”

Jay squeezed Eva’s hand under the table and rested it on her thigh.

“Anyone ask you about stores yet?”

Fredericks gulped a clam down, smacked his lips approvingly, poured some wine for Eva, and said:

“It’s a great way to die.”

“That’s really why he brought you here,” she said.

“C’mon, Doug.”

“What makes a potentially nice young man such a hard nut?” he asked Eva.

“Who do you mean? You or Jay?”

“My protection,” Jay said.

“I can see that I’m in for it. Walked into a trap. Old Douglas Fredericks walked into a trap. I didn’t make that mistake when I was younger.”

“You’ve made too much money, Doug.”

“So here I sit in Brooklyn, getting my brains picked by a youngster. Let me tell you something, Jay. The Fourteenth Street store didn’t mean a thing to me. I could have let it stay empty for ten years without its having any effect on my affairs, but I liked you, so I gave you a chance. You’ve improved the property. That goes without saying. But what we’re talking about now involves quite a substantial investment. We’re not talking about $500-a-year rent and split the difference. The properties you’re referring to can bring in something like a quarter of a million a year in rent, and quite frankly with all due respect to your business acumen, the type of operation you run hurts the big boys. In every one of these sites, there’s accommodation for a department store. They wouldn’t be interested for a minute if you came in. And I don’t want to break one large store into a dozen small ones. So I’m afraid you’re out.”

Jay grasped Eva’s knee tighter. He drained his glass of wine in a single gulp and refilled their glasses while the waiter put down an enormous platter of chicken cacciatore.

“I hoped,” Jay said, “that you would’ve had more faith in me.”

“Why, I’ve got all the faith in the world in you, but this isn’t your kind of deal.”

“I’d like it to be.”

“Well, possibly in the future we can do something together.”

Topo strolled by with another bottle of Chianti, and Jay beckoned him to sit. Fredericks gave him a supercilious smile and told him how good the food was. Topo agreed.

“Maybe you come again?” he suggested.

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”

“Did you know that Topo’s quite an expert - if you’ll forgive me mentioning this at dinner - on sewerage problems?”

Topo shook his mozarella head, speared a cold shrimp and sipped a glass of wine with the aplomb of a Roman count, Fredericks glanced from one to the other, somewhat nonplussed, and said to Eva: “Jay’s really rather extraordinary.”

Somewhat in a quandary herself, she turned to Jay.

“What’re you talking about, Jay?”

“Well, I’ll explain. You’ve gone into the property business as of this afternoon, Eva.”

“Is this some kind of joke?”

“No, you’re going to build shopping centers in Hempstead, Larchmont, Rockaway, White Plains, and Great Neck.”

Fredericks shoved his plate away angrily and rose.

“I think this has gone far enough. If you’ll excuse me.”

“Doug, relax. You haven’t heard the whole story, and as so much is at stake, you ought to want to listen. You see, I’ve got some bad news. Your building permission is going to be refused. Something about inadequate sewerage on those sites. The State Building Commission will have to look into the matter and official bodies can be terribly slow, but in any case they’ll probably decide in your favor with the proviso that you bear some of the costs, probably the bulk, of providing new sewerage. Do you know much about sewerage contractors?”

Fredericks’ face was a study in burnt ash: “Okay, get on with it.”

“Well, a firm that calls itself Topo Contractors are the biggest in the business.”

Topo tittered and Fredericks glared at him.

“Do we have to discuss this in front of a restaurant waiter?”

“Manager,” Topo, a bit hurt, corrected him.

“Well, Topo Contractors is Mr. Topo, so I thought it might be a good idea to bring you two together to see if we could all iron out our differences.”

“Mr. Fredericks, more wine?” Topo said, all affability.

Fredericks sneered at him.

“What the hell’s this all about?”

“Jay, I don’t get it,” Eva said.

“Simple. The sites that
you’ve
taken an option on, or rather that I’ve taken in your name, have, according to Topo Contractors, adequate sewerage, which means you can build once you provide plans. Doug isn’t so lucky with his sites, so he’ll just have to wait. And when he finally does get the go-ahead, he’ll have to use Topo Contractors because nobody else will tender for it. Most of the other firms don’t feel they could compete with Topo, and he’s got an awful lot of work on his hands so it might take him five or six years to do the job.”

“That’s ridiculous; they’ve got to be ready in twelve months at the latest,” Fredericks said hotly. “I’ve committed myself.”

“That’s why I thought we ought to meet over a drink and dinner.”

Fredericks pushed the table away from him and slid out.

“You’re not going to get away with a goddamned stunt like this. I’ll see you in hell first.”

“If I’m not there, start without me. In the meantime, let’s make it Rumpelmayer’s at the St. Moritz tomorrow about one. Give you the night to think over the situation.”

Fredericks tore out of the restaurant and Jay rolled his head from side to side, laughing triumphantly. Topo clasped Jay’s hand as though it were a pearl and grinned through brown-stained crooked teeth.

“He’s such a smart boy. We gonna make money.”

“I don’t take any credit
-
your people did all the work.”

“But issa
your idear.”

They parted without kissing, but Topo was under his spell.

They sat in the car under a lamppost opposite Eva’s apartment. The light in the living room was still on, and every now and then they saw Herbie come to the window, survey the street, and finding it deserted except for the drone of a lonely car unsettling the quiet, he would shrug his shoulders and return to the
Saturday Evening Post
to pass the time. They sat for fully half an hour without talking, for Eva was both puzzled and shocked by Jay’s tactics. She had no sympathy for Fredericks, but something inside her, a small voice, which her physical passion for Jay could not silence, told her that she must speak up. It wasn’t so much that she was outraged, but that she had been forced to wear moral blinkers; although she could justify the deception she had perpetrated against her husband on the grounds of love - and she wondered vaguely if it was simply sex, but this was too painful to accept - there seemed something particularly odious about Jay this evening; not only a total divorce from the simple plane of human emotion, but also some uncontrollable lust that could be fed only by using other people.

“It’s late,” she said finally.

“Huh?”

“Busy counting your money?”

He laughed: he could afford the luxury.

“No, just trying to figure out what I’d do in Fredericks’ position.”

“You’ll outsmart yourself.”

“He’d go to see his lawyer, and his lawyer is my lawyer. He made the marriage.”

“You’re really having a good time tonight.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Not important.”

“Sure it is. Come on.”

“Would it matter?”

He put his arm around her and forced her to him. He was a bit surprised when she resisted, and he kissed her against her will.

“Good night.” She opened the door, and he reached across her lap and forced her to close it. “I want to go . . .”

“That sounds awfully final.”

“Okay, if you want to know: you made me sick tonight. The way you treated that man. And why did you have to involve me?”

“I had to take the options in your name.”

“Why didn’t you ask me about it?”

“I wasn’t interested in your opinion and I thought there was enough between us for me not to have to ask. It was business in any case. Maybe not very nice, but then again Fredericks isn’t a very nice man. He didn’t get where he is by winning popularity contests. He’s cut plenty of throats in his day. Today he doesn’t have to.” He loosened his tie and had difficulty catching his breath. “Christ, look at me. A little while ago, I was a bum living on the East Side, and now I’m a somebody, or starting to be one. I come from nothing . . . no background, no letters of introduction, no special favors. All by myself. You wouldn’t have talked to me, then.”

“You’ve got a lot of excuses for yourself. I’m not God, so you don’t have to defend yourself to me. What I’m worried about is the kind of effect it’s going to have on us - this callousness of yours. It’s as though every decent emotion you have dies inside and what comes out is hate.”

“Eva . . . Eva . . . Please, please, don’t say that to me.”

She couldn’t believe what was happening: he was shaking.

“Jay! Jay! Stop, darling, stop.”

“I love you. I’ve never had this kind of feeling. It eats me up.”

Her momentary revulsion was displaced by a wave of sympathy, part of it exclusively for herself. She had been drawn into his life by a force greater than herself - the irresistible impulse to destruction that had been created by his cannibalistic hunger for her - and she recognized this from the first afternoon that he had taken her, against her will, but not against her inclination. In her husband’s bed - a bed that had never been a theater of love or desire, but still a bed, in which two people shared a hostile intimacy; Jay’s sperm had stained the sheets of an unsuspecting and defenseless creature whose only desire had been to make her happy. She had felt afterwards as though she had been eaten by worms and after that she had grown to like the feeling because the terror of it - the worms on her breasts, tearing away at her nipples - had made her feel dynamic, a well of infinite depth and darkness that
was
life. She cradled Jay’s head in her arms and soothed him. Then with a clairvoyance that amazed her he said: “How do you think I feel when you go back to him? To his bed . . . ! Stealing my manhood.”