Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar Part 9

Then there were drinks. There were cheese biscuits and shrimp with plastic toothpicks impaling them on a cabbage, so it looked as if the cabbage grew multicolored quills. "Don't poke me," said the cabbage. "I get ticklish if you poke." Then the cabbage giggled, and Harold Weber laughed. "I guess we'll have that fire," he said to Mark's father. "I guess Ernest helped old Busy Bee to get his family out." "I guess," agreed Mark's father, and they laughed and swallowed shrimp.

That day he knew he'd witnessed magic-not the poor ventriloquy but the invented voice. A creature from a page had spoken to him, Mark, from a familiar place. He adored Harold Weber through lunch.

The party started at six. His father's business partners, his uncle from Arezzo, his neighbors arrived. They congratulated him. They offered wine and a leather-bound notebook and a subscription to The New York Review of Books and champagne. His sister's plane was late. She took a taxi from LaGuardia and clattered in, exuberant, embracing him. "I knew you could do it," she said. She told him that Johns Hopkins was a prison, and medical school like some sort of boot camp or jail; she hadn't slept in weeks, and then just for an hour with the surgeon on the cot. She laughed with the openmouthed braying hilarity that meant she did not mean it. "I love the place," she said. "Seriously, kid."

The caterers served drinks. They set out food. There were several pates and salmon mousse and sliced roast beef and a whole ham and veal in aspic and caviar and water chestnuts and vegetable dip. Bill Winterton drove down from Rhinecliff. He accepted scotch. "It's quite a spread," he said. Mark was uncertain if he referred to the tables piled with food or to the house itself. "It's a question of proportion," Winterton observed. "Your folks are spending more for this than we paid for the book."

His friends appeared. They drove from Manhattan and Riverdale and Westport and Larchmont and Barnegat Light. They arrived in pairs or carloads and three of them came on the train. Betty Allentuck traveled alone. She had been living with Sam Harwood, his close friend; she and Sam had broken up that spring. Sam was on a Fulbright in Brazil.

Betty had thick chestnut hair, long legs and high wide hips. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were full. She smoked and drank and swore with what he thought of as erotic frankness; he had envied Sam. They brushed against each other in the foyer, and she kissed him happily. "Your big night," she said.

"I'm glad you're here."

She kissed him again. "Later," she promised, and they went out on the porch.

That promise hovered where she stood in the gathering dark on the lawn. Spotlights in the oak trees lit the far stone wall. There were lanterns and torches as well. There were aromatic candles in gla.s.s jars. His father moved among the guests, wearing a pinstriped blazer, looking like a politician, pumping hands. The punch was good.

His friends attended him. They asked about the Cape, they praised his tan, they asked for free copies or where they could buy one or if he would sign books they brought. They talked about themselves. They were in law school and business school and advertising agencies; they were moving to Los Angeles and Spain. There was a rope hammock, slung between two maples; Betty lay inside it, swinging, sandals off. His father's accountant said, "Mazel tov," pointing in what seemed to be her direction; his uncle asked about his plans, what he was planning next. There were checkered tablecloths and helium balloons in cl.u.s.ters anch.o.r.ed by his book. The balloons were blue and white.

Then there were toasts. Bill Winterton said he was pleased, and Mark should get to work. He hoped and trusted this was the beginning of a long career. There was applause. Mark's sister said, I want to tell you, everyone, his handwriting is rotten. Scribble, scribble, scribble, Mr. Gibbon. People laughed. There was a toast to the reviewer for the Times: may her judgment be repeated. I'm proud of you. Mark's father said, I'm grateful you folks came. Imagine what this food will look like in the morning, said his mother; please everybody take seconds. Help yourselves.

By the time dessert arrived, he had grown impatient. A party in your honor is supposed to be more fun than this, he told Betty in the hammock; it was nine o'clock. Dessert was cake. His mother said, "You cut it, dear," and led him to the serving table. They made s.p.a.ce. The cake was large, rectangular, its icing fas.h.i.+oned in a perfect likeness of the cover of his novel. The blue sky and the bird outstretched against it and the pillars with his name inscribed-all were reproduced. He was embarra.s.sed. "Beautiful," they chorused. "It's magnificent." "The word made sugar," said Billy the D.J. "Take of my body. Eat, eat."

There were photographs. Flashbulbs popped repeatedly while he smiled and blinked. His mother provided a knife. "You cut the first slice, author."

"I can't."

"It's the book's birthday. We made it a cake."

"I don't want to."

"Please," she said.

He took the knife and flourished it, then stabbed the air. He wielded it as if it were a saber, impaling, conducting. In the angle of his vision he saw his mother's face, shocked. He advanced as might a fencer, left arm curled above the shoulder, wrist c.o.c.ked, thrusting. She would construct indulgence yet again. There were a hundred portions, and he hacked.

"You were wonderful," said Betty.

"When?"

"With the cake. I loved it."

"You're in the minority."

She put her hand on his arm. "When the party's over would you take me home?"

"Is that a proposition?"

"Yes."

The guests dispersed. They took their leave of him as if he were a host. There were pots of coffee for those who had to drive. The caterers cleaned up. His parents and his sister rocked companionably on the porch. "You'd never make a surgeon, Mark," she said. "Look what you did to that cake."

He told them he was taking Betty to New York. He claimed a bottle of champagne, said thank you to his parents, and promised to return by dawn. "Drive carefully," they said. "To the victor," said his sister, and they laughed.

The MG's top was down. The seats were wet. He dried them with his handkerchief, and Betty leaned against him, and they kissed. Headlights from a turning car illuminated their embrace; she did not turn away.

What followed was delight. They drove into Manhattan in their own created wind; she rested her hand on his thigh. The city spread beneath them like a neon maze through which he knew the track, a necklace suspended from the dark neck of the river. At the Triboro Bridge toll booth the attendant said, "Fine night." He found a parking s.p.a.ce in front of her apartment, and they closed the car. "I've wanted this all year," she said. "Haven't we been virtuous? It seems like I've waited all spring."

The s.e.x was a promise delivered. Betty took him into her with a high keening wail, a fierce enfolding heat; she flailed against him in the bed, repeating to his rhythm, "G.o.d, my G.o.d, my G.o.d." He was proving something, celebrating, displacing his friend in her flesh; he battered at her till she cried, "I love you, Mark." He wondered, was that true. They drank champagne. The ache in his knees, in his back, the plenitude of travel and arrival and release, the long day waning, the radio's jazz, the whites of her eyes rolling back-all this was bounty, a gift. Each time he entered her she begged him, "Stop. Don't stop."

On Tuesday he and Winterton met again for lunch. This time they ate at Lutece. "Word is the Newsweek is good. And The Sat.u.r.day Review." He handed Mark The Sat.u.r.day Review. There was his photograph, and a review ent.i.tled "Timeless Parable." Again he had heard of the critic; again the a.s.sessment was kind. "I wish I could have written a book this good at twenty-two. I could not, and very few do. There's a major talent here. Hats off."

"Publicity is ringing off the hook," said Winterton. "Don't let it go to your head."

The b.u.mblebee, he said, is by all scientific measure too slow and fat to fly. Cheerfully ignorant of this, however, and to the dismay of scientists, the b.u.mblebee just flies. Winterton flapped his arms. He drank. You've got to learn, he said, to be like that b.u.mblebee flying: just go ahead and buzz.

"I'm working on a story," Mark announced.

"Good."

"It's about discovery. Self-discovery. A boy who sleeps with his best friend's girlfriend, then finds out she's the Muse."

"Don't spoil it by a.n.a.lysis."

"I'm not. I'm only telling you."

"Well, don't." He pressed his palms to his temples and then extracted gla.s.ses from his coat. He had not worn gla.s.ses before in Mark's presence; he studied the menu with care. "There's nothing that can happen now," he said, "that's anything but a distraction to your work. If the praise continues, if it dies down or changes or stops. All of this"-he waved his hand-"it's beside the point. The point is to keep working, to not stop."

He said this with bitterness, smiling. The first course arrived. Thereafter the mood lightened, and Winterton grew expansive. Ernest Hemingway drank rum, and Scott drank French 75's, and Bill Faulkner drank Jack Daniels; he emulated them all. You can tell a writer's models by which drink he orders, at which bar.

His tennis game was off. He had lost his backhand and his overhead. His marriage was a warring truce, his boy a diabetic, and his secretary couldn't tell the difference between Tolstoi and Mickey Spillane if her raise depended on it; his eyes hurt. No one read Galsworthy now. No book buyer in this room-he raised his arm, inclusive-could tell him, he was certain, where "The apple tree, the singing and the gold," came from, and what was its original.

Mark too recited a verse. "Samuel Smith he sells good beer / His company will please. / The way is lit and very near / It's just beyond the trees."

"What's that?" asked Winterton, incurious, and Mark said he read it in Wellfleet. It was a tavern motto from a tavern washed away. The whalers weighed anchor off Jeremy Point-but all they found was pewter now, a bowl or two, some spoons.

"Mine's Sophocles," said Winterton, "in the Gilbert Murray translation. 'Apples and singing and gold . . .'"

The garden room was full. Light slanted through the windows; women laughed. Mark had taken the train to Manhattan and would take it home again; his car was being serviced in the garage at Rye. They drank Italian wines, to honor what Bill Winterton described as his true provenance; it seemed important, somehow, to pretend they were in Italy. This went against the decor's grain; the waiters spoke in French. "You know where Napoleon comes from? It's a riddle." Winterton coughed. "The question is what nationality was Napoleon at birth? I ask you, 'Can you answer?' and the answer's, 'Cors-I-can.'"

This seemed uproarious to Mark-witty, learned, apt. They celebrated lengthily, and there was nothing he could not attain, no prospect unattainable. Walking to Grand Central he breathed deeply, weaving. He made the 4:18.

Between self-pity and aggrandis.e.m.e.nt, there is little room to maneuver. His stomach churned; his s.h.i.+rt felt rank. The train was old. Mark wandered to the forward car; the conductor waved him in. The gray seats were unoccupied, the windows dark. He sat sprawling in the windowseat while the train filled up.

A woman with two shopping bags settled beside him. She wore a pink knit suit and had a purple handbag and white hair. He made s.p.a.ce. She produced The Sat.u.r.day Review. The train lurched and rumbled forward, and he told himself his father made this trip five hundred times a year. They stopped at 125th Street, and then they gathered speed.

He needed water. He wanted to sleep. His neighbor read the magazine with absorbed attention and came, on page 23, to his photograph. He was sitting on a rock in front of Long Island Sound. His tie had blown over his shoulder, his hair was engagingly tousled by the propitious breeze. He wanted to tell her, "That's me." He wanted her to know that she was sitting next to Mark Fusco, novelist, whose first book earned such praise. He imagined her shocked disbelief, then recognition. She would tell her husband, when she got off the train at Pelham or Greenwich or wherever she was getting off, "Guess who I sat next to, guess who I met on the train?"

Mark was on the verge of telling her, clearing his throat to begin, when the train braked. Momentum threw him forward; he jerked back. They had no scheduled stop. His neighbor had her handbag open, and its contents spilled. "What was that?" she asked. The whistle shrieked. He bent to help her gather pens, a tube of lipstick, Kleenex, keys. "What was that?" she asked again, as if he might have known.

They remained there without explanation. The train lights flickered, dimmed. He tried to open his window, but it had been sealed shut. Brown grime adhered to his hands. His head hurt. He excused himself to drink from the water dispenser, but there were no paper cups. He pressed the lever nonetheless, and water trickled out. In the s.p.a.ce between the cars conductors huddled, conferring. They looked at their logbooks, their watches. The next stop was Larchmont, he knew. He tried to see the Larchmont station down along the track; he saw the New England Thruway and apartment buildings and gas stations and what looked like a supermarket and a lumberyard. The train had been stopped in its tracks. He understood, of a sudden, the force of that expression; he returned to his seat and repeated it. "The train has been stopped in its tracks."

Then there were rumors. The train had hit a dog. It had hit a car. It had narrowly avoided a collision with a freight; the switching devices failed. The President was on his way to New Roch.e.l.le, and traffic had therefore been halted. There was trouble ahead with the switches, and they would wait it out here. There were work slowdowns, strikes. The woman to his right protested the delay. Her husband would be worried silly; he was a worrier. He liked to feed the cat and canary just so, in sequence, and if there was some change in the schedule, some reason to feed the canary first, he worried for the cat.

Her husband would be waiting at Mamaroneck. He would keep the motor running and fret about the wasted gas and fret about the timer oven since this was the maid's Tuesday off; since her husband had retired, she called him worrywart. She went to New York once a week. It wasn't for the shopping, really, it was to escape-a freedom spree, she called it, not a shopping spree.

Mark drifted, nodding, sweating. They would know him at Lutece. He would buy a pipe and captain's hat and lounge along the dock.

The grandmother from Agrigento buried donkey bones. She told her children there was treasure at the temple site, and they ought to dig. They were greedy; they vied for attention. She lay dying by the seawall, seeing her progeny fight, watching them swing shovels and threaten each other with picks.

Her favorite nephew watched too. He had flown to Sicily on a visit from the north; he was torn between two women-a big city sophisticate and the girl next door. The grandmother stretched out a finger like a claw. He mopped her brow with flannel soaked in lemon water; he ground rosemary and garlic and fed her moistened mouthfuls of bread and olive oil. Her house was bright with broken gla.s.s embedded in cement. Barbed wire clung to the doorframe like a climbing rose.

"Giovanni?" she said.

"Grandmother?"

Her voice was as the sea on gravel. "When there's treasure, stupido, you look for it here." She scratched at her ribcage, then nodded. "You understand, caro, the heart?"

He understood, he said. Dolphins played in the white surf. This teetered on the verge of sentiment, said Winterton, but it might be profound.

Then the conductor appeared. His hair was brown, and he wore a handlebar moustache. He stood at the front of the car, expectant, gathering an audience. They quieted. "We're sorry to inform you"-he cleared his throat, repeated it-"I'm sorry to inform you of the cause of our delay. There has been an accident. A person or persons unknown has been discovered on the track. That's all I can reliably report." His voice was high. He relished the attention, clearly, and refused to answer questions. "That's the statement, folks."

Police appeared beneath the window, with leashed dogs. There were stretcher-bearers and photographers; it was beginning to rain. He said to the woman beside him, "I need air." Then he followed the conductor to the s.p.a.ce between the cars. "Can I get out and walk?" he asked. "I'm late. I know the way." They would not let him leave. "I might be sick," he said. They pointed to the bathroom door, unlocked.

The bathroom reeked of urine; the toilet would not flush. He held his nose and gagged. He braced himself upon the sink and stared at his reflection-hawking, blear-eyed, pinched. "'The apple tree . . .'" he mouthed. What was out there on the track found him irrelevant; it proceeded at its chosen pace, and Mark was not a witness they would call.

In the next two hours, waiting, he learned what he could of the story. He heard it in bits and fragments, the narrative disjunct. A body was found on the tracks. It had been covered with branches and pine boughs and leaves. It had been a suicide, perhaps, or murder. It was female and, judging by hair color, young. The engineer had noticed the leaf pile ahead and slowed but failed to stop. By the time he identified clothing underneath the branches, and what looked like a reaching hand, he could not halt the train. No blame attached to his action. The body had been crushed. There were few identifying marks. Bone and flesh and clothing shreds were scattered on the engine, spattered on the crossties and beneath the first two cars. If the act were suicide imagine the antic.i.p.ation, the self-control awaiting death; if murder, the disposal of the corpse. Forensic experts had arrived to gather evidence. Police were searching the approach roads to the overpa.s.s, and all nearby foliage. Traffic was delayed in both directions, therefore, while they combed the tracks.

"I'm leaving tomorrow," he said to his parents that night.

"For the Cape?" his father asked.

"So soon?" his mother asked.

"I need to get to work again."

"We wouldn't bother you," she said. "We'd leave a tray at the door."

"We'd screen your calls," his father said. "We'd say, 'No interviews.'"

"I didn't mean it that way. I left my work in Wellfleet."

"Coffee?"

"Please."

They settled in the living room. He tried to tell them, and could not, what had happened on the train-how his blithe a.s.sumption of the primacy of art was made to seem ridiculous by fact. It was flesh and not Karenina that spread across the track. It was rumor, not a cry for help, he heard. What impressed itself upon him was his picture in a magazine, and Betty's lush compliance in, enactment of his fantasy, was how much money they might spend for lunch. Mrs. Newcombe's ancestor spat in the coal grate. Bonnie will not take him back, will work in the Town Library; she runs off with the drummer from Spokane.

He would write it down, of course. Mark made notes. It would become his subject; he would squeeze and absorb and digest it-as might have, once, the Barone P. P. He would throw his voice. It would take him time, of course, but if it took him twenty years he'd balance the account. He would feed the canary, then cat.

Junot Diaz.

EDISON, NEW JERSEY.

The first time we try to deliver the Gold Crown the lights are on in the house but no one lets us in. I bang on the front door and Wayne hits the back and I can hear our double drum shaking the windows. Right then I have this feeling that someone is inside, laughing at us.

This guy better have a good excuse, Wayne says, lumbering around the newly planted rosebushes. This is bulls.h.i.+t.

You're telling me, I say but Wayne's the one who takes this job too seriously. He pounds some more on the door, his face jiggling. A couple of times he raps on the windows, tries squinting through the curtains. I take a more philosophical approach; I walk over to the ditch that has been cut next to the road, a drainage pipe half filled with water, and sit down. I smoke and watch a mama duck and her three ducklings scavenge the gra.s.sy bank and then float downstream like they're on the same string. Beautiful, I say but Wayne doesn't hear. He's banging on the door with the staple gun.

At nine Wayne picks me up at the showroom and by then I have our route planned out. The order forms tell me everything I need to know about the customers we'll be dealing with that day. If someone is just getting a fifty-two-inch card table delivered then you know they aren't going to give you too much of a ha.s.sle but they also aren't going to tip. Those are your Spotswood, Sayreville and Perth Amboy deliveries. The pool tables go north to the rich suburbs-Livingston, Ridgewood, Bedminster.

You should see our customers. Doctors, diplomats, surgeons, presidents of universities, ladies in slacks and silk tops who sport thin watches you could trade in for a car, who wear comfortable leather shoes. Most of them prepare for us by laying down a path of yesterday's Was.h.i.+ngton Post from the front door to the game room. I make them pick it all up. I say: Carajo, what if we slip? Do you know what two hundred pounds of slate could do to a floor? The threat of property damage puts the chop-chop in their step. The best customers leave us alone until the bill has to be signed. Every now and then we'll be given water in paper cups. Few have offered us more, though a dentist from Ghana once gave us a six-pack of Heineken while we worked.

Sometimes the customer has to jet to the store for cat food or a newspaper while we're in the middle of a job. I'm sure you'll be all right, they say. They never sound too sure. Of course, I say. Just show us where the silver's at. The customers ha-ha and we ha-ha and then they agonize over leaving, linger by the front door, trying to memorize everything they own, as if they don't know where to find us, who we work for.

Once they're gone, I don't have to worry about anyone bothering me. I put down the ratchet, crack my knuckles and explore, usually while Wayne is smoothing out the felt and doesn't need help. I take cookies from the kitchen, razors from the bathroom cabinets. Some of these houses have twenty, thirty rooms. On the ride back I figure out how much loot it would take to fill up all that s.p.a.ce. I've been caught roaming around plenty of times but you'd be surprised how quickly someone believes you're looking for the bathroom if you don't jump when you're discovered, if you just say, Hi.

After the paperwork's been signed, I have a decision to make. If the customer has been good and tipped well, we call it even and leave. If the customer has been an a.s.s-maybe they yelled, maybe they let their kids throw golf b.a.l.l.s at us-I ask for the bathroom. Wayne will pretend that he hasn't seen this before; he'll count the drill bits while the customer (or their maid) guides the vacuum over the floor. Excuse me, I say. I let them show me the way to the bathroom (usually I already know) and once the door is shut I cram bubble bath drops into my pockets and throw fist-sized wads of toilet paper into the toilet. I take a dump if I can and leave that for them.

Most of the time Wayne and I work well together. He's the driver and the money man and I do the lifting and handle the a.s.sholes. Tonight we're on our way to Lawrenceville and he wants to talk to me about Charlene, one of the showroom girls, the one with the blow-job lips. I haven't wanted to talk about women in months, not since the girlfriend.

I really want to pile her, he tells me. Maybe on one of the Madisons.

Man, I say, cutting my eyes towards him. Don't you have a wife or something?

He gets quiet. I'd still like to pile her, he says defensively.

And what will that do?

Why does it have to do anything?

Twice this year Wayne's cheated on his wife and I've heard it all, the before and the after. The last time his wife nearly tossed his a.s.s out to the dogs. Neither of the women seemed worth it to me. One of them was even younger than Charlene. Wayne can be a moody guy and this is one of those nights; he slouches in the driver's seat and swerves through traffic, riding other people's b.u.mpers like I've told him not to do. I don't need a collision or a four-hour silent treatment so I try to forget that I think his wife is good people and ask him if Charlene's given him any signals.

He slows the truck down. Signals like you wouldn't believe, he says.

On the days we have no deliveries the boss has us working at the showroom, selling cards and poker chips and mankala boards. Wayne spends his time skeezing the salesgirls and dusting shelves. He's a big goofy guy-I don't understand why the girls dig his s.h.i.+t. One of those mysteries of the universe. The boss keeps me in the front of the store, away from the pool tables. He knows I'll talk to the customers, tell them not to buy the cheap models. I'll say s.h.i.+t like, Stay away from those Bristols. Wait until you can get something real. Only when he needs my Spanish will he let me help on a sale. Since I'm no good at cleaning or selling slot machines I slouch behind the front register and steal. I don't ring anything up, and pocket what comes in. I don't tell Wayne. He's too busy running his fingers through his beard, keeping the waves on his nappy head in order. A hundred-buck haul's not unusual for me and back in the day, when the girlfriend used to pick me up, I'd buy her anything she wanted, dresses, silver rings, lingerie. Sometimes I blew it all on her. She didn't like the stealing but h.e.l.l, we weren't made out of loot and I liked going into a place and saying, Jeva, pick out anything, it's yours. This is the closest I've come to feeling rich.

Nowadays I take the bus home and the cash stays with me. I sit next to this three-hundred-pound rock-and-roll chick who washes dishes at the Friendly's. She tells me about the roaches she kills with her water nozzle. Boils the wings right off them. On Thursday I buy myself lottery tickets-ten Quick Picks and a couple of Pick 4s. I don't bother with the little stuff.

The second time we bring the Gold Crown the heavy curtain next to the door swings up like a Spanish fan. A woman stares at me and Wayne's too busy knocking to see. Muneca, I say. She's black and unsmiling and then the curtain drops between us, a whisper on the gla.s.s. She had on a t-s.h.i.+rt that said No Problem and didn't look like she owned the place. She looked more like the help and couldn't have been older than twenty and from the thinness of her face I pictured the rest of her skinny. We stared at each other for a second at the most, not enough for me to notice the shape of her ears or if her lips were chapped. I've fallen in love on less.

Later in the truck, on the way back to the showroom Wayne mutters, This guy is dead. I mean it.