The City Man. Howard Akler
says Polonsky, I frame this bates but good. The kid digs the prat like a pro and out he comes with a tweezer poke but oops – here Polonsky takes a long drag on his cigarette – the poke’s got one of them chains hooked onto the belt loops. Easy enough to unhook but the kid’s just a punk and he panics. Rumbles the mark something awful so the bates starts to beef and the kid scrams. But he forgets to let go of the leather and he runs and runs and rips the chain right off the pants and the pants right off the goddamn leg and this bates don’t know what to do standing there garters and all in the middle of the fucking street and me, I wasn’t made, so I did something I’ve never done before or since: I talked to the mark. I said: Mister, you okay? And he says: This is so embarrassing. And I says: Oh? And he nods and points down to his shoes. Blue socks and brown oxfords.
Daisy snorts and then Mona shows up.
So, she says. What’s new?
Eli does not move. Stands behind the crowd, his view of the accident blocked by the backs of tiptoed gawkers. Up and down they go, anything for a better look. He holds still one minute more, brief hesitation turning into a tilt of the head. He gets a glimpse of the Bathurst Street hill. He puts his right foot forward. Enters the crowd and steadily elbows his way up front. Face to face with a matchstick-chewing constable.
Star man, says Eli.
The constable thumbs him through.
More cops on the other side of the crowd, a good dozen of them scattered around the intersection. Stern postures that sway with the rubberneckers. On the east side of Davenport, Eli eyeballs the smashed vehicles. Guston’s Bread truck dented down the middle where the police car hit, the auto’s sleek lines crenellated on impact. Both drivers’ doors are open and unhinged. Below, two men in white kneel beside the injured officer and lean in until their grimace-shaped spines have no further give. Shattered glass glistens all over the road and in everyone’s nostrils is the smell of fresh bread.
Eli looks around. Spots a man with a bloody nose and Guston’s stitched into his shirt, staring up at the steady gathering of cumulus. Eli walks up to him.
Morenz, from the Star. How’s the beak?
Lotta blood, but the docs said I’ll be okay.
What happened?
Shit if I know, brother. They just came roaring down the hill and smacked into me. Right fucking into me. Boom.
Boom.
Yup. Course they got the worst of it.
Was the siren on?
Yeah yeah, they were in a real hurry, you know? But they came down the hill so fast I didn’t have no time. No time at all.
Wet flakes start to fall. The bread man reaches into his breast pocket for a cigarette. Small splats of blood across the Guston’s logo, crimson serif of the letter S a slightly darker shade.
The bread man exhales a long line of smoke. Shit, brother, this is going to cost my boss a lot of dough.
Eli smiles.
What? What’d I say?
The wet snow comes down and down. Drops of slushy water bounce off the entablature of the Front Street portico, drip down the colonnade onto the scattered hats and heads of the scurrying. Some don’t chance it. Mona stays dry. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other. On her left side, a squat dowager hefts a matronly bosom and sighs.
Sheeeee-eesh.
More people come through the doors of the station. Shove forward so small ripples of movement edge along the bodies, ripple wider until an egress grows ten feet to Mona’s right. She sees Chesler impatiently elbow his way free, turn up his collar and then start across the street. More people leave the portico. Mona strikes a match and blows smoke from a mouth set tight. Whispers of nicotine loosen the jaw and leave her eager for the next drag. One after the other she inhales, until the precipitation comes to a full stop and her fingernails grow patiently yellow.
Chesler pulls his jacket over his head and runs, a hump skirting the slush. His shoes make small splashes that undulate half a foot outward before dissipating near a streetcar stop. Five men get ready to board so Chesler, with lungs burning, picks up the pace and tags on. Six of them now taking tiny steps forward, a procession slower than exhale. Chesler huffs and stares at all the hands that bulge in the kickouts. Britches that jingle. Everyone fishing for change. Another step, another. Chesler grits his teeth because a long day of two-dollar pokes gets even longer during this moment of silver. He takes one more deep breath and then stretches his fingers across a chasm of inches.
He comes home and quickly undresses. Suit and tie hit the floor, clothes that give him a sucker’s anonymity. He crosses the room in an old undershirt, tweed cap pulled low on the face. With a shot of whiskey in his hand, he settles into a big-backed chair. Takes a sip, warmth and release after another day of grinding it up. Day after day after day. Commotion and gesture that coalesce into nothing but small change. He rubs his forearms, massages his palms. Wasn’t turned out to be one of these nickel-and-dime schnooks. Nope. Not like her. The best stall he’s ever seen and still she’s happy with a couple cheap scores. Rag her about it and then she chirps the same sorry tune: Times are tough. So what?
For a cannon like Chesler, the slow end of the whiz comes down the muscles of his forearms, eases up at the cartilage in his fingers. The trepidatious racket gives him a tight grip on the shot glass. He knocks one back, then another.
From his desk, Eli observes the origins of copy. Watches reporters race out of the newsroom and return within the hour, possessed of answers who, what, where, when and, if possible, why. They hastily sit and start to type, cudgelling events into coherence. Some do this in total silence. Others mutter to themselves. Still more pace the floor and badger their fellows with so little restraint that the entire women’s section was seated out of earshot of the four-letter words that leap out, like perverts, from the anxious newsroom.
Shit piss fuck, says Mackintosh, the City Hall man.
Eli looks over. What’s up? he says.
Another protest piece.
Yeah?
Some nut says he’s going to march out front of City Hall for three days straight.
What’s he after?
Fair wage. Same old thing.
Three days is a long time, says Eli. Says he’s got nothing to lose.
Says he’s a goddamned soman ... sonab ... what the fuck’s the word again?
Somnambulist, says Eli.
Says he walks in his fucking sleep.
Ten minutes later. A pimply boy in a peaked cap rips the pages out of Mackintosh’s Underwood and runs them over to the copy desk where Johnson, ancient and hawk-nosed, takes few pains to properly place the modifiers. A snap of the fingers. Another boy grabs the edited pages and descends, one floor down, to the composing room where the type is transformed. Cast into lead. Set onto steel plates. Another descent and plates are affixed to the presses that roar tremendously and spew sheets and sheets and sheets of newsprint. The papers are cut, folded and finally delivered into the denizens’ hands six times daily, seven in summer.
After loitering in the cold, Mona comes home. Upstairs, she steps into steam. Hot water stalks her ankles, thighs, then back. The minutes scald before she surrenders to temperature. She lies deep in the tub. Only her face remains above the surface, a mask of air. With every breath, concentric circles push outward from her head. Grow larger, larger, and then they vanish. She closes her eyes.
Early lessons. She watched the whiz ramble through three rooms on Cecil Street. No rhythm to what she saw. Squabble and arrest made most two-handed mobs tenuous. Her father and a succession of big-hipped, childless women who nurtured the girl with their own kind of instinct. Agnes, the thumb-wrestler, who expounded on tendon and guile. Bella. Her hugs were only skin and bones, but her perfume outweighed them all, a heavy lavender that hung in the air