Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes (29 page)

George, standing at the bar next to Cody, looked at Max, and he remembered that night at Big Jim’s with Bongo. Bingo. He remembered Cody playing “Shine” that night and he said, “Are you going to play us a tune, Cody?”

“Not now, Georgie, but I got a concert tonight.”

“You don’t say. Concert.”

“Over at the DeWitt.”

“Will there be dancing?”

“Gotta be. Mike Flanagan’s band’s playing with me.”

“It’s a fund-raiser, twenty bucks a pop,” Roy said. “Includes food.”

“Twenty bucks?” George said. “That’s out of my league.”

“Five bucks if you don’t eat dinner,” Roy said.

“That’s good,” said George. “Five bucks for no dinner.”

The bar phone rang and Roy answered and handed it to Max. “The call you been waitin’ for.”

Max took the phone as far from the bar as the cord allowed, and hung up after a few muffled words. “I need a cab,” he said.

Roy picked up the direct taxi line. “Five minutes,” he told Max.

Max put a ten-dollar bill on the bar. “Gotta move, Cody. I’ll try to catch some of the concert.” His tickets were still on the bar. He pushed them toward George.

“See the concert on me, George,” Max said. “Dinner included.”

George picked up the tickets. “These are for me?”

“All yours,” Max said. Then he shook Cody’s hand, the same hand that had stroked Renata’s arm at a Havana nightclub and loosened Max’s scurrilous tongue. Max had done penance for fifteen years, and Cody said forget it half a dozen times, and then finally told Max, “Don’t bring it up again. It’s history. Some of my best friends are racist fuckheads.”

Roy looked across the bar at George. “You got yourself a night on the town Dickey-bird.”

“Dickey-bird,” George said. “Is your name Dick? You look like a friend of mine.”

“Don’t start,” Roy said and he moved down the bar.

George went back to Vivian and put the tickets on the table in front of her. He took off his hat, put it over his heart. “Vivian, may I call you Vivian?”

“You certainly may.”

“Vivian, there’s a concert this evening at the DeWitt, and it would be wonderful if you could join me. They’re serving food and I relish the hope that you’ll have dinner with me.”

“That is so lovely, George. I’d be very happy to join you.”

“The man said there would be dancing.”

“Oh, good. Then we won’t need Beauman’s, will we? When is the concert ?” she asked.

George read the ticket. “Seven-thirty is dinner,” he said.

“Then we should be going,” Vivian said.

They stood up and George gestured her toward the door where Cody was talking with Max.

“Thank you for those tickets, sir,” George said to Max.

“Max, George. Call me Max.”

“Max. Thank you. Cody, will you be at the concert?”

“I sure will, George,” Cody said.

“Then I’ll see you there,” and George offered his arm to Vivian and they walked out onto Eagle Street. George stopped outside the bar and looked in both directions, torn. But Vivian stepped out toward the DeWitt Clinton.

“I’d like to go to the bank and cash a check,” George said.

“Banks are all closed now, George,” Vivian said.

“Are they? Then let’s stop at Big Jimmy’s. He’ll cash a check for me any time. He owes me.”

“I’ve got money, George, don’t worry about it. You won’t need money for the dinner, you’ve got the tickets. And I’d like to stop at the house before we go anywhere.”

“The house?”

“My house. It’s just a couple of blocks over, on Columbia Street. We still have time.”

“Columbia Street? I lived on Columbia Street.”

“You did? I thought you lived on Van Woert Street.”

“I lived on Van Woert after my parents died.”

“They died together, didn’t they?”

“I think they did.”

“What happened?”

“It was a big accident.”

“A train wreck?”

“That sounds right. A train wreck.”

“What did your father do?”

“He was in the Civil War. He knew very big people. Grant, Lincoln. And Clover. Adam Blake. Sheridan. He wrote for newspapers. Grover. Wrote a book, in fact. Two books. Commodore Cleveland. Cuba. Maybe three books. I’ll have to look it up.”

“He knew Lincoln?”

“He shook his hand at the Delavan House.”

“And he knew General Grant?”

“He was invited to his funeral.”

“Your father was an important man,” Vivian said.

They could see the Capitol now from Eagle Street, 1913 it was when George was close to power. “Martin H. Glynn was an important fella. He made the speech when they put General Sheridan’s statue in over there. He was Bill Sulzer’s lieutenant governor, Chew-o’-tabacca Bill. They kicked Bill out of being governor.” George had often been in Sulzer’s office, and then in Glynn’s after they impeached Sulzer and Glynn took over as governor. “I came home from the glove factory to vote for Glynn in 1914.”

“And you knew Mr. Glynn?”

“He ran the
Times Union
after he lost. Killed himself over his back pain. If he had money he could’ve been one of my closest friends.”

Vivian smiled and tightened her grip on George’s arm. “Mr. George Quinn-who-knows-everybody, we’ll have a good time tonight.”

Arm in arm, George Quinn arm in arm with. He looked at Vivian. With Vivian, a friend, old friend. Beauman’s we knew, other places, on the water? Al-Tro Park on the Hudson? He looked at her again. He liked her hat. Who had a hat like that? Pagger? Pag? Peg. But Peg’s hat was white straw. I’m tying the leaves. He patted her arm, bare arm. Whose?

“Vivian,” he said, and she smiled. And then he sang:

“Al-Tro Park on the Hudson, that’s the place for me,
There’s singing and dancing when you’re out on a lark,
Take a trip with your sweetheart to Al-Tro Park.”

“All right,” said Vivian. “Here we go.”

Vivian lived in a second-floor flat on Columbia Street, just up from North Pearl. She opened the door and held it for George, and he went into the front room and took it all in: nice furniture, clean; doilies on the arms of the chairs; Persian rug, shiny table, walnut, polished, pictures on the wall, W. E. Drislane Choice Family Grocers. Biggest grocer in Albany. Vivian Drislane?

“Drislane’s,” George said, looking at the old photo. “On Pearl Street. I was in it many a time. Wonderful store. They bottled their own beer.”

“One of my uncles was a Drislane,” Vivian said.

“Very neat room,” George said. “Not a pin out of place.”

“I suppose I’m neat,” Vivian said. “But I don’t have anybody to mess the place up. Can I get you a beer? Or a highball?”

“Friend highball,” said George.

“Highball it is.” And Vivian went to the kitchen.

Her bay window looked up the street to the back entrance of the Court House where George worked for so long, Supreme Court of the State of New York to be held in and for the County of Albany Honorable Justice Morris Epstein presiding hear ye!

“I was born on this street,” George said, but Vivian didn’t hear him.

Directly across the street from Vivian was the Kenmore Hotel’s side entrance, Adam Blake’s hotel. George’s father stayed there sometimes and he knew Adam Blake, didn’t he? He was a bearer at Blake’s funeral. Important fella, and rich, Blake was, and colored. George never saw him but that was his memory. Colored and rich. You don’t meet a whole lot of
them
. If George’s father stayed at the Kenmore why didn’t George? I’d have to go to the book for that one.

In the kitchen Vivian opened the half-f bottle of White Horse and poured ample shots into two cut glass tumblers. She ran water to loosen an ice tray and added a bit of tap water to the mix, then came into the parlor and handed a tumbler to George.

“Friend highball,” she said. And she clinked glasses with him. “Sit down, George, relax while I change my dress and spruce up.”

George sipped the highball and did not sit. He watched her.

“Okay, don’t sit down. I’ll be back.” She went to the bedroom with her highball.

Her moves were familiar. Peg? Vivian was it? Arms and legs, the way she carried herself on the high heels, very erect, very similar, and that front on her too, a nice size. Her dress looks fine the way it is.

“You don’t need to change your dress,” he said. “That’s a very nice dress you’re wearing.”

“But I’ve had it on all day, and I’m going out dancing,” she said from the bedroom. “Is your highball all right?”

“Friend highball,” George said. He looked at it and then sang to it:

“Friend highball, friend highball,
You’ve been a dear pal to me.”

He kept singing as he walked to the bedroom door, which was ajar.

“Years may come, years may go,
But forever my comrade you’ll be.”

Vivian, in her slip, was taking a robe from the closet. You don’t often see them like that.

“Friend highball, friend highball,
What memories you recall . . .”

“Georgie, you’re peeking at me.”

“When trouble draws near me,
The first one to cheer me,
Is my dear old friend, highball.”

“You know all the songs,” Vivian said. She pushed her arms into the robe then opened the door wide. “Come on in, if you like. I don’t mind.” She put her dress on a hanger and hung it on a door hook.

“Very katish, this room,” George said. He looked at a picture of Pierrot and Columbine that hung above her bed next to a crucifix. “I don’t see the hoi polloi.” He stared at her.

“You want to look at me, do you?”

“Looking at you is one of the pleasures of what they call a sight for sorry eyes. A proviso, a takeup for the fair and fancy.”

“So I don’t look too bad for an old lady.”

“I don’t see any old ladies on this block.”

“You’re a dear, but age is age.” She picked up her highball from the dresser. “Shall we sit in the parlor?”

She pulled her robe together at the front but as she sat in the platform rocker the robe again fell open.

“That is a lovely color,” George said, pointing at her slip as he sat across from her in the armchair.

“They all wear pink, but I like the pale yellow because it goes with my hair. Some of my hair.”

“Peg likes black slips. And white.”

“Peg had the most beautiful black hair. Peg was a beautiful girl. I knew her since we were in school. Was it a big shock to you, about her?”

“Shock?”

“That picture in the
Daily News
of her and her boss on the Atlantic City boardwalk.”

“I was in Atlantic City when Czolgosz shot McKinley. I never saw any newspaper.”

“I understand. You don’t want to talk about it.” She crossed her legs.

“Those stockings remind me,” he said. “Wonderful legs. I always like the stockings. Sheer they call them, if I’m not mistaken. Some legs are thick at the ankles, beef to the hoof, we used to say. But not Peg. And no beef there,” and he pointed at Vivian’s ankles. “Those legs there are always just right. They slope in and out. Straight legs don’t have the makings—those women look like six o’clock, straight up and down. But not these slopes.” He moved his hands in a churning motion at Vivian’s legs. “When they slope up and down and in and out like these here they’re a great glim. Great glimmer. The thing about legs. A great glimpse. You couldn’t predicate a leg like that right there without saying to yourself, George, what hills will those legs climb? They are prize-winning. Those legs can waltz, and I’ve seen them do it.” Invite her to waltz, that’s the main thing. Always invite her to waltz.

Vivian uncrossed her legs and extended her right leg, pointing the toe of her right shoe at George. “That’s my prize winner,” she said.

“That’s a honey of an outlook. Beautiful is what I say.” He could see her thigh above the garter. He raised his glass. “Here’s to it and from it,” he said.

“You like to see me this way?”

“I haven’t seen this kind of contention.”

“Oh, sure you have. Peg had great legs. She was a beauty. She got a little heavy at the end but she didn’t lose it in her legs. Didn’t Peg sit like this for you?” Vivian brought her foot back to the floor and her slip rode upward, putting both thighs on display.

“Peg let you know where you stood,” George said, “where you could pile up her questions. How’s it going? What kind of pork chops do you like? Pinochle or poker? Peg knew all the detours on the way to anyplace you wanted to swim, or shoot the chute, or rent a boat.”

“I like the pork chops,” Vivian said.

“Some things are miraculous before you know where they are.” He gestured at her with open palm.

“Ed loved to sit where you’re sitting and I’d do these things for him.” She pushed her robe off the right shoulder, then off the left. “I went with Ed twenty-two years. He gave me an engagement ring when Eisenhower was elected. We weren’t like married people. I wasn’t cut out to be the little wifey. I don‘t know what I was cut out to be, Georgie. Ed and I were together four or five nights a week, we‘d go to the movies, have dinner, then we’d come back here. He’d get me to take off this, then that. He liked me to make the first move and he loved me to talk. ‘Say it, Viv, talk about it,’ he’d say. And I’d say to him, ‘You mean my vadge?’ ‘Yes,’ he’d say, ‘your vadge.’ And I’d tell him about my vadge and how it felt and he’d tell me what it looked like to him and how he loved it. We could go on for quite a while until the words did what they were supposed to do and then we’d do it.”