Spitting Off Tall Buildings Part 7

'Yeah,' I said. 'Sure. f.u.c.k 'em.'

We smoked cigarettes and pa.s.sed the jug back and forth until it was gone. Flash talked and talked. For him, at least a week's worth of words. Maybe two weeks'. I was content to drink and listen.

'Well?' he said when the jug was played.

'Well,' I said.

'Okay?...Ya know?'

'Yeah.' I said. 'Okay.'

'You gonna s.h.i.+tcan this deal or stay workin' with me?'

I thought about it. The Mad Dog had re-adjusted my perspective. 'I'll stay workin' with you,' I said.

Chapter Thirteen.

THAT FRIDAY AFTERNOON started a long weekend holiday. President's Day. The changes, the new job, sleeping no more than an hour or two at night had made the voices in my mind too loud for too long. I lied, told Flash I was sick, then borrowed fifty bucks and went home early to get drunk.

The run lasted three days. Wine only.

Late that afternoon, high on Mad Dog 20-20, I stopped in at the luncheonette on Eighth Avenue around the corner from my rooming house.

LaVonne was behind the counter. Her s.h.i.+ft was the afternoon and dinner s.h.i.+ft. She was young, nineteen, supporting a two-year-old kid with the waitress job. Pure black dancing Afro/Puerto Rican eyes and s.h.i.+ny hair down to her a.s.s when she let it down.

We'd talked quite a bit. About human nature and jobs and this kind of boss versus that kind. She loved movies too and was a big fan of every film Harrison Ford ever made.

I had come in a little drunk many times because I was frequently a little drunk. But this time when I came in it was different. I was very drunk.

The luncheonette was empty except for two neighborhood women at the corner table by the window, and Mister Dave, the owner, in the kitchen frying liver and onions.

I was on the end stool which is where I always sat. I'd been wanting to ask LaVonne on a date for over a month. Out for a walk or for coffee or to the movies. Being drunk helped me make the decision that now was the time.

She had just refilled my coffee cup, then smiled, with her even beautiful teeth that looked as white as a priest's collar. Spinning away, holding the half-full pot, she was about to start in the direction of the two women customers at the table. I tried to speak, to catch her attention, but the words were slow in coming, derailed at some remote cerebral switching station. So I tried something else, plan B, spontaneously lurching a hand out to stop her. That didn't work either because somehow the hand collided with her arm, the one carrying the gla.s.s pot. It fell and broke on the floor.

LaVonne jumped back. Surprised.

Then things in front of me began toppling over and falling; my own cup and saucer, the salt and pepper shakers, a napkin holder. They appeared to be self-propelled, upending themselves and plunging from the counter to the floor. The last thing down was a stainless steel cream container, exploding against the linoleum, soaking LaVonne's legs and waitress shoes, dispersing a wave of milk on top of the lagoon of steaming coffee and broken gla.s.s.

Then she slipped.

Things got bad after that.

I wanted only to help, to steady her. One of my hands came to rest on her firm right t.i.tty. There was screaming.

The women customers at the table had me wrong too.

Mister Dave came out from the kitchen as LaVonne was pulling herself away from me. Dave was Israeli. In his sixties but still healthy and well over two hundred pounds. He had a low tolerance for anyone who would put their hands on his female help.

The wind-up was that I was pulled and dragged out the door of the restaurant.

Chapter Fourteen.

THAT MONDAY I reported back to work. Broke. Hung over and shaking, but sober.

Me and Ben Flash had moved on to another smaller state job on Park Avenue South. The offices of Building & Safety Administration. One floor in a tall building.

Even though it was a flat-fee a.s.signment, I was in training so Murphy decreed through my supervisor that I'd be paid by the window only, less the fifty dollars I had borrowed from Flash.

My second day of work I washed twenty-eight panes. Both sides. In and out.

At the end of the job, after we'd packed up and were ready to leave and move on to our next a.s.signment, Flash decided to let me in on a ritual he practiced. I got on the elevator with him and we took the car up to the top of the building. The fifty-sixth floor. Flash knew where the roof access was located, so we climbed out.

I followed him as he crossed to the edge. It was bitter cold. We looked down. Then he spit over the side. A big glob of phlegm and saliva. After he'd spit he leered at me. 'Okay, Dante,' Flash said. 'Your turn. Go ahead.'

I spit too.

'How's it feel?' he asked. We'd watched my stream disappear out of sight. 'Okay,' I said. 'It feels okay.'

'You bet your a.s.s! It feels great!'

The weather improved and the temperature went above freezing. Mid-thirties. By Friday of that week we were on a semi-annual contract apartment house uptown off Madison Avenue; an old high-rise relic built during Prohibition, complete with mean-faced concrete gargoyles poised to leap from the cornice of every floor.

It was a ma.s.sive structure; seventy-seven stories. Fat Murphy a.s.signed three teams of two men to the job. We picked numbers in the office for the section a.s.signments. Flash and me drew the top twenty-five floors.

But the weather was warm enough to snow, so it snowed. We lost half of the first day. The group of us, all six, sat in the bas.e.m.e.nt with the building security guy playing nickel poker and drinking coffee with wine from styrofoam cups. We had reported at 5 a.m. so by 6 the coffee was gone and we were at the wine straight from the bottle - Boone's Farm and Triple Jack.

Around nine o'clock the temperature warmed some more and the snow stopped, so we went up. Flash was okay because he was always okay but I was drunk. So were most of the other guys.

I started on seventy-six and Flash took seventy-seven. We'd decided to alternate floors as we worked our way down.

I did my first few panes, moving along. I was much better with the squeegee and pole now. More confident. But this was an old, privately owned apartment house rather than a state office building, which made a difference in how it got maintained. Everything was rickety. The exterior paint was chipped and slippery and there was dry rot in the window frames. Some of the gla.s.s panes rattled as I swiped across them with my squeegee.

I'd done about a dozen panes and I was flipping over from the last sill when I swung out and hooked my right harness strap to the far right hook of the next window. That went okay and I completed the maneuver by bouncing onto the sill. If I'd been sober I probably would have noticed that the spike I had attached my strap to was loose and wobbling.

But I didn't notice.

Clamped in on both sides of the window I steadied my bucket and leaned back with my full weight.

Later on, after falling off the ledge and being suspended seven hundred and fifty feet in the air for several minutes until Flash could pull me up, I realized that this was the closest I'd ever been to accidentally killing myself.

At first I was too scared to yell so I just dangled. I'd let go of my cleaning pole with the bra.s.s squeegee and the half-full bucket of cleaning solution. The stuff caromed off the ledge of the floor below then plunged the rest of the way to the street.

(When you're at that distance from ground level you won't hear the noise when falling objects slam down against the sidewalk below or collide with the roofs of parked cars. The sound doesn't travel back).

Just beneath me, Flash heard my stuff as it clattered and bounced off his floor. He looked up and saw I was in trouble, then forced open an apartment window and rushed up the service stairs in time to haul me to safety.

Half an hour later, after I'd calmed down a bit, the two of us took the elevator to the ground floor and left the building. Flash helped me search the street and sidewalk until we located my mangled bucket, my broken pole and the rest of the window-cleaning gear.

Red Ball's storefront is located on Eighty-sixth between Lexington and Third. We walked the three avenue blocks cross-town on Eighty-sixth. I didn't talk and Flash didn't talk.

When we crossed Lex Flash stopped at the liquor store on the corner. It was close to the Red Ball office and he knew the counter guy, Perry. He paid for two short dogs for himself and two for me, then we stood in a doorway on the avenue, out of the cold, smoking and sucking down the Triple Jack until it was gone.

By the time we entered Johnny Murphy's office I was okay. Better. I set my deformed window-cleaning gear down on his desk. Murphy glanced at the stuff but didn't react. 'What's up?' he said, eyeballing Flash, then me. 'You guys workin' some kinda new half-day schedule?'

'I quit,' I said. 'As of today. Immediately.'

There was no reply from Murphy. Instead, he began piling my harness, the mangled bucket, squeegee and other stuff on the floor beside his desk, counting each rubber blade and sponge as he set it down.

When he was done he rocked back in his chair. 'There's damage to this equipment. Red Ball company property.'

Flash stepped forward. 'Ya, well, ya know, f.u.c.k the company property!'

My partner and Murphy locked eyes. Murphy smirked. 'You men been drinkin' this morning? Starting your weekend early?'

'f.u.c.k you too Murphy,' Flash snarled. 'How's that! I'm hot about this. f.u.c.k it, ya know. Maybe I'll quit too.'

The fat man got up, still calm, walked the distance to his open office door, swung it closed, then returned to the desk and sat down. 'Okay, Flash, what's your problem?'

'My problem?' Flash shot back. 'Not my problem, Johnny Murphy; your problem. This man just now f.u.c.king-near fell seventy f.u.c.kin' floors! That building - that f.u.c.king Stuyvesant Apartments antique rattletrap piece-a-s.h.i.+t c.o.c.ksucker on Eighty-fifth - that f.u.c.ker is unsafe! That's your problem. Dante was hooking on and one of those rusty spike c.o.c.ksuckers came completely out of the concrete, and this man, a new man, almost got himself dead. Ya know? I mean, that's bulls.h.i.+t! You know it and I know it. Every harness monkey in this company ever worked up the side of that c.o.c.ksucker knows its a b.u.m ride. And don't grease me, for chrissake. I don't want to hear that I'm crazy or any of that s.h.i.+t.'

The big man leaned back in his chair but avoided eye contact with either me or Flash. He glanced back around the desk at the broken equipment, then he took his time lighting a cigarette. 'Don-tay?' he said finally, addressing me, as if it were a question.

'Yeah?' I said.

Murphy opened the center drawer of his desk and removed the company's check book; a long, black payroll ledgertype deal.

'Spell it. Is it D-o, or D-a?'

'D-a,' I said.

'First name again?'

'B-r-u-n-o.'

'Right. B-r-u-n-o.'

He began filling in a check; my name, the date. 'Okay, Flash,' he said, tapping his pen against the desk, 'what's the man's count? How many panes?'

Flash shot me a look, then winked. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he located a small spiral note pad, found the right page, then read out my daily totals. When he was done he double checked by adding again. 'Ninety-seven,' he said.

Murphy repeated the number. 'Ninety-seven.'

Flash had increased my count by twenty-five windows.

'Three dollars a gla.s.s?' the boss asked.

'Right,' Flash said. 'Three bucks.'

'But let's not forget there was a thirty-dollar advance, correct?'

'Correct.'

'Less another twenty dollars for the broken bucket. Less fourteen-ninety-five for a new squeegee...'

'Less my d.i.c.k! Less nothin'!' Flash shouted. 'How could the f.u.c.kin' breakage be the man's fault?'

Murphy sucked his teeth. 'There's damage, that's all I know. Less twenty then. We split the difference.'

Flash sneered. 'Twenty ain't f.u.c.kin' half of thirty-four ninety-five, Johnny Murphy! Seventeen-fifty is f.u.c.kin' half.'

The boss smirked. 'Have it your way.'

When Murphy had finished filling in my check he signed it, tore it out of the book, then handed it across the desk.

I folded the paper and slipped it into my jacket.

He rocked back again in his over-burdened boss's chair, his fat oozing through the slats on the side. 'You know, Dante,' he began, 'out west in Colorado or Montana, places like that where they still have cowboys and rodeos - not L.A. - out west; what do you think a cowboy does when he gets thrown off his horse? What does he do, Dante?'

It was a dumb question. 'We're talking here about a seventy-six-story horse,' I said. 'You a.s.shole!'

There was an old Blarney Stone saloon across the street on the north side of Eighty-sixth, two doors from the Loew's movie. They cashed Red Ball's payroll checks. The place had a steam table and a pretty girl behind the food counter. Asian; Korean maybe, or Chinese. Red lipstick and lots of eye make-up.

I cashed my check. Me and Flash started with shooters, beer back. We talked. Mostly I talked, and watched the girl serving food. I put two twenties up on the bar. Flash put his own twenty up and we kept going.

Chapter Fifteen.

GETTING A HACK license and becoming a taxi driver in New York City is not difficult. In fact it's not even necessary to know the city in order to get the license.

You take the subway downtown to Center Street to the Hack Bureau, fill out an application, pay a fee, then pick up a stack of photocopied sheets they give you that list the questions and answers that will appear on the hack exam; two hundred names and locations of hotels, hospitals, airports, and other prominent places. You study the material on your own time, then you come back to take a two-hour exam. The test is given every other week. You are permitted to repeat taking it until you come up with a grade of 60 percent or more. I was desperate to earn money so I memorized everything and got a pa.s.sing grade my first time out.