She took another step toward me. “Danny, that ain’t the way I want it. I don’t want you to be mad at me.”
I was getting sore. Why was she making such a big deal out of the whole thing? My voice mimicked her: “Danny, that ain’t the way I want it!” I laughed bitterly.
There were tears in her eyes. “I thought you liked me, Danny,” she said in a small voice. “I liked you.”
I reached out quickly and grabbed her arm and pulled her toward me in the dimly lit doorway. I dropped the cigarette to the ground and put my arms around her.
I could feel the stiffness in her body as she looked up at me, her eyes wide and frightened. But she stood still, very still.
I kissed her swiftly, feeling her lips crush beneath mine, her hard teeth behind them. Her lips were cold. I kissed her again. They were a little warmer now and parted slightly. I felt them move and kissed her again. They were warm now and pressed back against me.
I looked down at her, smiling slightly. “Is that so bad, Nellie?”
She hid her face against my shoulder. “You’ll think I’m no good,” she cried.
I was puzzled. This wasn’t what I had expected at all. My confusion spilled over into my voice. “What you play up to me this afternoon for? Yuh should know the score by now.”
She looked up at me and in the dark her eyes were soft and wide but no longer afraid. “I liked you, Danny, that’s why. That’s why I didn’t go home when you told me.”
I looked at her for a moment; then I sought her lips again. This kiss was for real. I held her close to me. “But yuh acted so wise,” I whispered. “About the fight an’ all that. You knew that Spit and Solly were fakin’. How’d yuh know somethin’ like that if yuh never been aroun’?”
“My oldest brother, Giuseppe, was a pug,” she answered, not stirring in my arms. “He taugnt me to tell when they were fakin’ it.”
“I like you,” I said, laughing suddenly. “You’re funny, but you’re nice.”
She smiled up at me. “Not mad any more?”
I shook my head. “No, baby.”
This time she held her face up to me and waited for my lips. I looked down at her, not moving. Her eyes were closed. “Danny,” she whispered shyly, “kiss me, Danny.”
I felt the change in her lips. They were suddenly open to me and she was pressing desperately against me. My arms tightened around her. I dropped my hand along her spine, moulding her to me.
Her eyes were still closed. We were drifting in a hazy cloud. The corner was gone, the street lamp was gone, the doorway was gone. Everything had vanished except the pressure of our lips. I closed my eyes as my hands sought the warmth of her body.
Her whisper was almost a scream in my ears. “Danny! Danny, stop!” Her hands were grabbing excitedly at mine, pushing them away from her.
I caught her wrists and held them. Her body was trembling
frightenedly
. “Easy, baby, easy,” I said gently. “I ain’t gonna hurt you.”
The panic left her as suddenly as it had come and she hid her face against my shoulder. “Oh, Danny, I never felt like this before.”
I put my hand under her chin and lifted her face toward me. Tears were standing in her eyes. “Me neither,” I said earnestly. And I meant it too.
Her eyes grew large and round with wonder. “Danny, do you——” her voice hesitated. “Do you think maybe we’re in love?”
I was puzzled. I didn’t know. I tried to smile. “Maybe we are, Nellie. Maybe we are.”
Almost as I spoke, an embarrassment seemed to spring up between us and we moved apart. I took out and lit a cigarette. Her hand reached toward me and I took it. We stood there silently, hand in hand, until the cigarette burned down.
Then I threw it away and it fell into the gutter, spilling small sparks, and we turned and looked at each other. I smiled. “Hi, Nellie.’
“Hello, Danny,” she whispered back shyly.
We stared at each other for a moment and then began to laugh. With our laughter, the embarrassment seemed to fall away. I bent and kissed her quickly, our hand-clasp tightening and loosening as our lips met and quit.
“Hope your father won’t be mad,” I said.
“He won’t be,” she smiled. “I’ll tell him I was working.”
We walked out of the doorway to the corner under the street light. Her face was flushed and bright, her eyes shining with a brand-new warmth, and her teeth were white and sparkling under her red lips as she smiled at me.
“Did I tell you you were pretty?” I asked jestingly.
“No,” she answered.
“I guess I didn’t have time,” I grinned, “so I’ll tell you now. You’re very pretty. Like a movie star.”
“Oh, Danny!” Her hand clung to mine very tightly.
“I guess yuh gotta go,” I said seriously.
She nodded.
“Well—good night then,” I said, letting go of her hand.
“Will I see you again, Danny?” Her voice was very small.
“Sure thing.” I grinned quickly. “I’ll drop around to the store tomorrow.”
Her face brightened. “I’ll make you a special soda. Three full scoops of ice cream!”
“Three scoops!” I exclaimed. “You couldn’t keep me away then!”
She was smiling again. “Good night, Danny.”
“Good night, baby.”
She started across the street, then turned back to me. There was an anxious look on her face. “You won’t bring your friends, will you? They might get caught.”
“Yuh worried about them, Nellie?” I laughed.
“I don’t give a damn about them,” she said fiercely. “It’s you I’m worried about.”
I felt a glow kiting through me. She was a good kid. “I won’t bring them.”
The serious look was still on her face. “Do you have to run around with them and do things like that, Danny? You might get caught. Can’t you get a job?”
“No,” I answered stiffly. “My folks won’t let me quit school.”
Her hand reached for mine and squeezed it understandingly. There was deep concern in her eyes. “Be careful, Danny,” she said softly.
I smiled down at her. “I will,” I promised.
She stepped up on the kerb and kissed me quickly. “Good night, Danny.”
“Night, baby.”
I watched her run across the street and turn into a doorway. She stopped there for a moment and waved at me. I waved back. Then she disappeared into the hallway.
I turned and started down the street. I felt good. I felt so good I almost forgot how much I hated living down here until I crossed Delancey Street in front of Papa’s store and saw Mr. Gold again.
H
E
was standing in front of the store stuffing a small canvas-
and-leather
pouch into his pocket. I knew what it was right away. It was a pouch used to make a night deposit in the bank.
Automatically I ducked into a doorway and watched him. A glance at my watch told me it was a few minutes to twelve. He glanced once more in the store window, then started down Delancey Street toward Essex. I followed him slowly, lagging half a block behind.
At first I didn’t know why I did it, but as I moved along behind him, the reason came to me. He turned up Essex and began to walk quickly. I crossed to the opposite side of the street and kept pace with him, the idea taking quick shape in my mind.
He walked to the bank on the corner of Avenue A and First Street. There he took the little pouch from his pocket and dropped it in the night depository. Then he turned and started up Avenue A.
I lingered behind on the corner, watching him go. I had no further interest in where he was going. I lit a cigarette and began to think.
When I had first moved down here, it had seemed like another world. And it was. It was a different world from any I had ever known. Down here there was only one rule: you either fought or went hungry. And there were no holds barred.
The kids knew that even better than the adults. They were brought up to scrounge for themselves as early as they could. They were tough, bitter, and cynical beyond anything I had ever imagined. There was only one thing that kept me from being killed. I could fight better than they could and in many ways think faster.
It had taken a little time, though. At first they couldn’t figure me. After the fight I had the day Rexie was run over they had shown a certain respect for me. It wasn’t until I had taken to hanging out in the candy store on the corner that I began to know them.
From that point on, it became my show. The boy I had beaten up was the leader of the gang. Now they shifted around without purpose. Spit and Solly had tried to take over, but they couldn’t command respect from the others. The only language they could understand was physical superiority.
Then one day Spit came over to me while I was having an egg cream. Covering me with a fine spray of saliva, he invited me to join the gang. I listened to him cautiously, but after a while I came in with them. I was too lonely down here; I had to identify myself with somebody. It might as well be with the Stanton Street Boys.
But the main concern remained dough. Lack of money was the miasma that hung over the lower East Side like a plague. You could see it everywhere you turned, in the dirty streets, in the placarded store windows, in the ill-kept tenements. You could hear it
everywhere
, in the crying hawk of the street-pedlars on Rivington, in the careful haggling over pennies in the shops.
If you had a buck in your pocket you were a king; if you didn’t, you looked for someone who did and would pay your freight. But kings did not live on the East Side any more unless they were the kind who could drag enough pennies from the general poverty to make life comfortable for themselves.
There were plenty of those—bookies, shylocks, and petty criminals. They were the smart ones, the heroes. They were the envied, the strong who managed to survive. They were our examples, our men of distinction.
They were the people we wanted to be. Not like our fathers, who had fallen by the wayside because of an inability to cope with the times. Our fathers were the people of the lower East Side. And there were enough of them as it was. We weren’t going to be like them if
we could help it. We were smarter than they were. We were going to be kings. And when I was king I would buy back my house in Brooklyn.
I strolled back toward my house. Spit had asked me what we were going to do next. I hadn’t known then. All I knew was that the five-and-dime job wasn’t worth the effort. But I knew now. I could knock over two birds with this caper. I decided to drop in at the candy store before I went upstairs to talk it over with Spit and Solly.
I stirred restlessly in the bed. I was too excited to fall asleep. A horn honked loudly in the street outside my window. I got out of bed silently and sat down near the window. I lit a cigarette and stared out.
A truck was parked down there. The faint, metallic sounds of the garbage cans clanging against its sides as the men emptied them came up to me. I remembered the expression on Spit’s face when I first explained the job to the boys.
He had been afraid. But Solly was hot for it, and that won him over. Just the three of us could handle it. But first Gold’s routine would have to be checked; that was important.
One of us would have to follow him for several nights in a row as he left the store and make sure of all his stops and habits. Then on the right night we’d jump him.
There was a couple of hundred bucks in it, I had told them. All we had to do was knock him cold and snatch the dough. It was a cinch. I hadn’t told them anything about my father working in the store. It was none of their business.
The sound of a girl’s voice coming in the open window made me think of Nellie. She was a strange kid for a luksh. Usually they were loud and tough and you could tell they were Italian as soon as they opened their mouths, but she was different. She was soft-spoken and gentle and nice.
She had liked me, too. I knew that. It was funny how things
happened
. You took out a dame for one reason and suddenly you find out that things weren’t what they seemed. That the dame was level and that you really liked her. Then you didn’t want to do anything that might make her dislike you.
That was a strange thing. I had never felt like that about any dame before. I remembered what she had said: “Maybe we’re in love.” Maybe we were. I couldn’t explain any other way how I felt. There had never been any other dame I was content just to hold and talk to and be near. Maybe she was right in what she said.
The girl’s voice floated in the window again. I craned my neck
into the street in order to see her. The street was empty. Again I heard the girl’s voice. There was something familiar about it, I knew that voice, but it sounded strange coming in my window.
The girl was talking again. This time I traced the sound to the roof over my head. I looked up. I could see the glow of a cigarette over the parapet. Then I recognized the voice. It was Mimi’s. I wondered what she was doing up on the roof at this hour. It was after one o’clock. Then I remembered she had said something about a date with that guy in her office she had a crush on—a George somebody. I had twitted her about going out with a jerk who worked in an office and she had been angry. “He’s better than those candy-store bums you hang out with,” she had retorted.
I decided to go up there and see what Miss High-and-Mighty was doing. I knew that if you went up on the roof down in this
neighbourhood
at night, you weren’t going to look at the stars. I slipped into my trousers and silently left my room.
The roof door was open and I quietly stepped outside. I hid in the shadow of the door and looked toward the front of the roof. She was there all right. So was the guy. I watched them.
In the moonlight I could see Mimi’s face. I caught my breath sharply. She didn’t look a goody-goody now. The guy was talking, his voice low. I couldn’t make out his words, but he seemed to be pleading. Mimi shook her head and he went off again in another torrent of words.
She shook her head again and began to speak. “No, George; forget about marriage. I like you very much, but I’m tired of worrying about money and we’ll only have the same thing. I don’t want that.”
I grinned to myself. Mimi was no dope. A buck was a buck. Still, it seemed funny to think about her getting married. It made me realize that she was all grown up now, she wasn’t a kid any more.
The fellow pulled her to him again. He said something to her and kissed her. I watched them, still grinning. For all her high-and-mighty ways, she knew the score when it came to necking. It didn’t look like this was the first time she had been up on a roof. I turned silently and went back down the stairs to my room.
About fifteen minutes later I heard the door open and I went out into the hall. She was closing the door silently and she jumped when she turned around and saw me.
“What are you doing up, Danny?” she asked in surprise.
I didn’t answer, just stood there grinning at her.
She stared at me angrily. “What are you grinning at?”
“Your lipstick is smeared,” I told her, my grin becoming broader and more knowing.
Her hand flew to her mouth. “You stayed up to spy on me!”
“Uh-uh.” I shook my head. “You and your boy friend were making so much noise up on the roof over my head I couldn’t sleep.”
“You got a dirty mind!” she flung at me.
“Have I? Take some advice from your kid brother, baby. Next time you go in for any heavy lovin’, wipe your lipstick off first.”
She bit her lip furiously, too angry to think of a retort.