The Street (11 page)

Jones held out his hand for the keys, thinking that it was lonesome in his apartment, especially at night when he couldn't see anything if he stood outside on the street and therefore stayed inside the house by himself. Standing up outside like that his feet got tired, too. If he had a window where he could look out and see the street like Mrs. Hedges, it would be different, but the only windows in his place were in the back, facing the yard which was piled high with rusting tin cans, old newspapers, and other rubbish.

‘You could stay here'—he indicated his apartment with a backward jerk of his head. The sound of her talking would drive away his loneliness and she might stay a long time because her husband had deserted her. He had heard one of the tenants telling Mrs. Hedges about it. He watched a warm look of pleasure lighten her face, and he thought, Why, she musta fell for me. She musta fell for me.

She moved in with him that same day. She didn't have very much furniture, so it wasn't any problem to fit it into his rooms. A bed, a bureau, a kitchen table, some chairs, and a long console table with ornate carved feet. ‘One of my madams gave me that,' she explained, and told him to be careful with it on the stairs.

They got along all right until Lutie Johnson moved in. Then he began to feel like he couldn't bear the sight of Min any more. Her shapeless body in bed beside him became in his mind a barrier between him and Lutie. Min wore felt slippers in the house and ‘they flapped against the dark paleness of her heels when she walked. There was a swish-swish noise when she moved from the stove to the sink as she was doing now. Whenever he heard the sound, he thought of Lutie's high-heeled shoes and the clicking noise her heels made when she walked. The swish of Min's slippers shut the other sound out and her dark knotted legs superimposed themselves on his dreams of Lutie's long brown legs.

As he sat listening to Min slop back and forth in the kitchen, he realized that he hated her. He wanted to hurt her, make her cringe away from him until she was as unhappy as he was.

‘Supper's ready,' she said in her soft sing-song voice.

He didn't move out of his chair. He wasn't going to eat with her any more. It was a sudden decision made while he sat listening to the soft clop of her slippers as she went to and fro in the kitchen.

She came to stand in the doorway. ‘You ain't eatin'?'

He shook his head and waited for her to ask him why, so he could shout at her and threaten her with violence. But she went back into the kitchen without saying anything, and he felt cheated. He listened to the sounds of her eating. The clink of the fork against the plate, a cup of tea being stirred, the loud sucking noise she made when she drank the tea, a knife clattering against the plate. She poured a second cup of tea from the teapot sitting on the stove and he heard the scuffing of the slippers as she walked back to the table.

And he got up abruptly and walked out of the apartment. He couldn't bear to stay in there with her for another moment. He would go down and put coal on the furnace and sit in the furnace room awhile. When he came back up, he would eat, and then go stand outside on the street where he might get a glimpse of Lutie when she came home.

As he stepped out into the hall, the street door opened. Bub bounded in, his face still glowing with the memory of the movies he had seen. He paused when he saw Jones. ‘Hi, Supe,' he said.

The Super nodded, thinking, She ain't home. Wonder what he does up there by himself when she ain't home.

‘Mom didn't like that shoeshine box,' he said. ‘She got awful mad.'

Jones stared at the boy, not saying anything.

‘You goin' to fix the fire?' Bub asked.

‘Yeah,' he said, and walked quickly toward the cellar door under the stairs. He hooked the door behind him, thinking that he couldn't stand the sight of the kid tonight. Not the way he was feeling.

He put shovel after shovel of coal on the furnace. Then he stared into the fire, watching the blue flame lick up over the fresh coal, and studying the deep redness that glowed deep under it.

His thoughts turned almost immediately to Lutie and he stood there leaning on the shovel oblivious to the intense heat that surged out of the open door. So she hadn't liked the shoeshine box. Too bad. He had thought she'd be so pleased and that she would come down and ring his bell and stand there smiling at him. Tall and slim and young. Her breasts pointing up at him. Mebbe she would have got so she rang his bell often.

‘Just to say hello to you,' she would say.

‘That's mighty nice of you, Mis' Johnson,' and he would pat her arm or mebbe hold her hand for a moment.

He wouldn't do anything to scare her. He would just be friendly and give her little presents at first. ‘Saw this in a store. Thought you'd like it, Mis' Johnson.' Perhaps a pair of stockings. Yes, that would be it—stockings. Some of those long, mesh ones. Mis' Greene who lived on the third floor worked downtown—she'd get them for him.

‘Oh, you shouldn't have, Mr. Jones,' Lutie would
say, and put her hand on his shoulder.

‘How about me seein' if they fit?' That was it. Playfully. Not doing anything that would scare her.

He leaned harder on the shovel imagining what it would be like. Seeing her there in his apartment with one of her long legs thrust forward—a bare, brown leg with red stuff on the toenails. And he would shake out the long stocking and pull it slowly over her foot. The soft brown skin would show through the meshes as he pulled the stocking up, up over the smooth flesh. He would lean nearer and nearer, as the stocking reached the rounded part of her leg where the fatness of the curve came, until he was pressing his mouth hot and close against that curve. Closer and closer so that he could nibble at it with his mouth, nibble the curve of her leg, and her skin would be sweet from soap and cool against the hotness of his mouth.

He had to stop thinking about it. And as he stood there, he could see all those other women who had lived with him. Of the whole lot only one had been young and she had left at the end of three days. The rest of them had been bony women past fifty, toothless women past fifty, big ones and little ones—all past fifty. At that, none of them stayed very long. Three months, six months, and then they were gone.

All except Min. Min had stayed two years. Talking, talking, talking. At first he had thought it was kind of cheerful to have her around. She kept the place from getting so deadly quiet. Now the sound of her voice shut Lutie's voice out and he could never remember what it sounded like. Min's voice would
thrust it away from him the minute he started trying to remember.

The thing for him to do was get rid of her. Min was probably the reason Lutie never even looked at him. Only sort of nodded when she went past. He should have thrown Min out that first night he saw Lutie. He remembered how her long legs had looked going up the stairs ahead of him. Just watching her like that he had wanted her so badly it was like a pain in his chest. Those long legs walking up and up in front of him, her rump moving from side to side as she walked. He remembered how his hand had cupped into a curve—unconsciously, uncontrollably, as he walked in back of her.

And in the living room of the apartment he had stood there the light from the flashlight down at his feet so she couldn't see the expression on his face as he fought with himself to keep from springing on her as she stood in the bedroom playing her light on the walls. She went into the kitchen and the bathroom and he made himself stand still. For he knew if he followed her in there, he would force her down on the floor, down against the worn floor boards. He had tried to imagine what it would be like to feel her body under his—soft and warm and moving with him. And he made a choking, strangled noise in his throat.

‘What's that?' she had said. And he had seen the light from her flashlight waver from the trembling of her hand.

He had scared her. He tried to speak softly so that the sound of his voice would reassure her, but his throat was working so violently that he couldn't
make any words come. Finally he said, ‘I cleared my throat, ma'am,' and even to his own ears his voice had sounded strange.

After he had given her a receipt for the deposit she left on the apartment, he tried to figure out something he could do for her. Something special that would make her like him. He decided to do a special paint job in her apartment—not just that plain white paint she had ordered. So he put green in the living room, yellow in the kitchen, deep rose color in the bedroom, and dark blue in the bathroom. When it was finished, he was very proud of it, for it was the best paint job he'd ever done. He did something else, too. He scraped the paint from the windows, those long-dried spatters from his brush and then he washed them. The agent nearly caught him at it. Fortunately he had locked the door, but the man pounded on it and shouted for quite a while. ‘Hey, Jones! Jones! Where the devil is he?' He had stayed quiet inside holding the window cloth in his hand until the man went away.

When Lutie came to get the keys, he got his first good look at her in daylight. Her eyes were big and dark and her mouth was rosy with lipstick. She had a small turned-up nose that made her face look very young and her skin was so smooth and so brown that he couldn't stop looking at her.

‘You might have trouble with the door,' he had said. ‘I'll show you how it works.' He couldn't wait to see her face when she found out what a wonderful job he had done on the apartment. This way, too, he would again walk up the stairs in back of her. But she said, ‘You lead the way,' and stood
and waited until he had to start up ahead of her.

In the apartment she looked at the rooms, and at first she didn't say anything until after she had looked in the bathroom, and then she said, ‘What awful colors!' He couldn't help looking disappointed, but then she added with surprise in her voice, ‘Why, the windows have been washed. That's wonderful.' And he had begun to feel better.

Tonight she wasn't home and the kid was upstairs by himself. Where could she have gone? Out with some man, he supposed. Some big-chested man like the kid's father. Probably now at this moment they were alone together somewhere. Sweat broke out on his forehead and for the first time he became conscious of the heat from the furnace door. He put the shovel down and shut the door and walked away from the furnace. He had a sudden desire to see what the apartment looked like now that she had been living in it. It would be all right, he decided. She might even come home while he was up there and she would be glad he had stayed with Bub. That was it. He would go up and keep Bub company while she was out. And he would see how the place looked. He would see her bedroom.

He walked up the stairs slowly, deliberately making himself go slow when what he wanted to do was to run up them. He stopped outside the door. There was a thin thread of light reaching out from under the door and the radio was going. Maybe she had come home while he was down in the cellar. In that case he would explain that he just came up to see if Bub was all right, he had thought Bub was up here alone—

Bub opened the door a cautious crack in answer to his ring. When he saw Jones he opened it wide. ‘Hi, Supe,' he said and grinned broadly.

‘Thought I'd come up and see if you was all right.'

‘Come on in.'

He walked into the living room and looked around. It smelt sweet with some faint fragrance that came from the bedroom. He looked toward it eagerly. That was the room he wanted to see most of all.

‘Your ma ain't home yet?'

Bub shook his head. ‘I been to the movies,' he said. ‘You shoulda seen it. This guy came out to the West and was going to be a lawyer. And he set up in business and a rich man who got his land crooked—'

The boy's voice went on and on and Jones forgot he was there. He was imagining that Lutie was curled up on the couch where the boy sat. He wouldn't sit by her; he would stay where he was and talk to her. He wouldn't scare her. He would be very careful about that—not make any sudden moves toward her.

‘Everything all right?' he'd ask.

‘Just fine.'

‘Brought you a little present,' and he would reach in his pocket and bring out some earrings—some long gold-colored hoops.

‘You want to fasten 'em on?'

‘I'm kinda clumsy,' he would say playfully. And then he would be beside her on the couch. Right beside her on the couch. He could pull her close to him, very close. So close she would be leaning against him. He looked down at his overalls. They
had been blue once, but they had faded to a grayish-white from much washing. At least they're clean, he thought defensively. But the next time he came up, he would wear his good black suit and a white shirt. He would get Min to starch the collar.

And then he remembered that he was going to get rid of Min. That would be easy. He would fix her so that she'd light out in a hurry and she wouldn't come back. She and her carpet slippers and her whispering voice. He moved his shoulders distastefully. Why would he have to think about her here in Lutie's apartment? He frowned.

‘You mad about somep'n?' the boy asked.

Jones shifted uneasily in the chair, made an effort to erase the frown. Now what the hell had the kid been talking about—oh, yes, the movies he had seen. ‘Naw, I ain't mad. Just thinkin',' he said, and thought, I gotta keep him talking. Keep him busy talking. He took out a cigarette and lit it. ‘You only see one pitcher?' he asked.

‘Nope. Two of 'em.'

‘What's the other one about? That fust one sounded good.'

‘Gangsters,' the boy said eagerly. ‘A man who arrested 'em. He pretended to be one, only he was really a cop. They had tommy guns and sawed off shotguns and—'

That'll hold him for a while, he thought. There must be some way he could get to look around in the apartment. He stood up abruptly. ‘Want a glass of water,' he explained, and started walking toward the kitchen before the kid could get up from the couch.