Bitter Bronx (2 page)

He didn't discuss money. The widow would bring it up, talk about her holdings, as if to lasso him to her heart. She didn't want him to stray, to find his adventure elsewhere. And then she would be curious about what her new
intended
did. Howell would smile and make love to her again. She'd have to use very tender talons. Couldn't she invest in one of his enterprises? It would tie her to him. And he'd offer her a share of some phantom enterprise at a stingy rate of return, less than she could make on a jumbo certificate at the bank. It was the unattractiveness of what he offered that always drew the widows in. He'd suggest a cautious investment of a few thousand dollars, and she'd write him a check for fifty grand.

Howell didn't disappear with the check. He'd let it sit for a while, have lunch with the widow's daughters and sons, and begin returning bits and pieces of her investment, until she had half of it back, and then he'd close his account and move on. It was Howell's own sense of limits that saved him. Sometimes a widow didn't wake to the chisel for months, and sometimes she never woke to it, having convinced herself that her sweetheart with the beautiful hands would return with the remainder of her capital.

That's why Howell was never caught. He lent a certain grace to his grift, even value to whatever he grabbed. The widows never felt cheated. They remembered the dark-haired stranger who drifted into their lives and made love to them like some Manhattan sheik. But Howell had little to do with Manhattan. He was from the Bronx. And because of his own odd chivalry, that ceiling he put on whatever he stole, Howell never grew rich.

He was middle-aged, well past fifty, and couldn't bear to romance another widow. A swindler might fall prey to someone else's grift and end up panhandling on South Beach, among all the models and the movie stars. And he couldn't even say what kind of curious radar or homing device had brought him back to the Grand Concourse in his Lincoln Town Car. Howell had little nostalgia in his blood. He was the son of a Bronx superintendent and happened to grow up among all the rich Concourse brats. He inhabited a cellar apartment, with barred windows that gave out onto a backyard and a storage bin for the building's junk. But he'd had a Concourse address, like all the brats. He lived at the Lorelei, an Art Deco apartment palace near Joyce Kilmer Park, on a hill above what was then Yankee Stadium. He could peer right into that enormous horseshoe from the Lorelei's roof, and that's how he watched Yankee games; even with binoculars he couldn't see very much, but he could tell when the Yankees were at bat from the tumult of the crowd. And as a boy up on the roof Howell realized he would never be near enough to what he wanted; he still was “binoculars” away.

And here he was, driving past the Lorelei, when he saw a huge signboard on the front wall:

SAME DAY OCCUPANCY

Superintendent on the Premises

Finding an apartment at the Lorelei had once been impossible; together with the Lewis Morris Apartments, near Mount Eden Avenue, it was the most distinguished address on the Concourse. But the Lewis Morris didn't have Yankee Stadium at its door; the Lorelei did. And what kind of crazy impulse sent Howell looking for the superintendent, who no longer lived in the cellar, but had a sterling apartment on the ground floor.

Howell didn't care how many apartments were available, or if the first month was free. The super seemed desperate to have him. His name was Nando, and he was from Venezuela.

“I want Apartment 6A,” Howell said.

Nando peered at him like an artful poker player. “That's impossible. It's our flagship apartment, the top of the line—with a triple exposure. It's like being on your own planet.”

But Howell saw right behind the super's ploy. “You don't have to tell me about 6A. I've played hopscotch on its parquet floors.”

Now Nando was alarmed. “Are you some kind of burglar?”

Howell laughed and told him that he'd lived in the Lorelei as a child, that his own father had once had Nando's job.

“Then you know about Miss Naomi?”

Howell froze; he'd tumbled into a secret little game.
Miss Naomi
. She was the reason he'd drifted back to this land of desolation. Naomi Waldman, the little Bronx debutante who'd driven Howell wild when he lived under the ground with his pa. The Waldmans owned the building and two or three other Art Deco palaces along the Grand Concourse. Apartment 6A was their castle keep, the official residence of the Waldmans, where they gave their parties and concert recitals, and where Naomi Waldman, their only child, studied and took private dancing lessons in one of the Lorelei's sultanic rooms. Hugo Waldman was the paterfamilias of the whole tribe—nephews, cousins, and uncles-in-law who lived along the Concourse in lesser palaces. He'd come from Hungary at the age of five, was orphaned at nine, but was still able to attend Harvard and Columbia Law. He'd been a fencing champion at Harvard and he fluttered around on the balls of his feet, like a man who was superior to anyone else in the room.

He went into real estate, eschewed Park Avenue, and established himself in a storefront right on the Grand Concourse. He married one of the local beauties, a myopic girl without much credentials other than her ability to play the violin. Her name was Helena Goldenhagen, and she pleased this young paterfamilias of the Bronx. He bought the Lorelei with the help of a Bronx savings bank, had Helena give recitals at home. She played in front of the Concourse's little kings—councilmen, department store moguls, savings bank scions, even the borough president.

She gave birth to Naomi between two recitals. She was twenty-seven years old. Carrying Naomi in her womb had dazed Helena, left her with some kind of permanent squint, as if her insides had been seared. The child was born in its own bullet of blood. Helena stopped playing the violin. She couldn't nurse Naomi. They had to call in an Armenian woman with her own supply of milk. This woman suckled the child. She had a mustache that Helena couldn't bear. Hugo had to fire the wet nurse.

But it didn't harm Naomi, who burst out of her baby clothes. It was 1950, a decade before the Grand Concourse began to decline. Hugo would lope along the Concourse with his daughter on his back—the entire boulevard her domain. She was incorrigible by the time she was three, throwing tantrums and hissing at her nurses and Helena, who had already withdrawn to the back rooms of the family's apartment-castle. Even Hugo could hardly keep up with a little dark-haired tyke who never ceased to explore. And that's how Howell was first introduced to Naomi Waldman.

Oh, he'd seen her before, wrapped in scarves, coming out of her father's Lincoln. But
his
father had told him to keep away from Mr. Hugo and the Little Miss. Howell didn't have much to do with the building or its magnificent lobby of hammered silver and black marble that shone like devilish, blinding glass. He entered the building through a gate that led right into its bowels, and that's where he remained, unless he was at school, or was ordered by his pa to polish the black marble in the lobby.

He must have been six or seven that first time, and the Little Miss was about the same age. She was already wearing lipstick. She'd come from a school play. She looked like a witch in her mascara. She'd gone into the super's apartment without even knocking on the door. Howell lived alone with his pa. His mother had run away with another man before Howell was five. This devil of a man had something to do with Mr. Hugo. He was a dentist who had an office in the building—his teeth were capped with silver. Howell recalled those silver teeth. He didn't have much of a recollection of his mother. She had arms that moved like magical sticks. Her hair smelled of silk. But he couldn't have told you the color of her eyes, or how tall she was.

His encounter with Naomi was much more vivid. She'd come to him in high heels, a girl of six or seven who seemed to walk on stilts. She'd already appropriated her mother's squint.

“I beg your pardon,” she sang in a voice sweet as a violin. “I must have strayed. Might I trouble you for a cup of water?”

Howell rushed over to the sink. And she followed him into the kitchen like a pony on high heels. He had to rinse his own drinking cup and wait until the water ran cold in the faucet. He held the dented tin up like a chalice and handed it to Naomi.

“Do you have a biscuit?” she asked. “I'm famished.”

Howell was bewitched. He couldn't have known that Naomi had gone to elocution school and had been taught to speak like a little duchess in her own manor house. The voices he heard in the Bronx never had Naomi's lilt. Even Mr. Hugo, who'd had his own fencing master at Harvard, spoke with the usual Bronx burl—it was gangster talk, though Howell hadn't met many gangsters on the Grand Concourse.

He had the devil of a time coming up with a biscuit for Naomi. All he could find was a stale soda cracker in one of the tins his mother had left behind when she ran off with the dentist. He let her feast on the cracker with strawberry jam.

And that's when his pa appeared with Mr. Hugo. Pa's eyes had narrowed down to pale blue slits. All the usual paranoia had settled in. That's why his mother had abandoned this cave under the Lorelei. She couldn't bear the darkness
and
his pa's paranoia. But why did she leave Howell behind with her own little gallery of tin boxes?

Mr. Hugo wasn't suspicious at all. He had a razor-sharp mustache, like Smilin' Jack, Howell's favorite character in the funny papers. All Mr. Hugo needed was a pair of goggles and an aviator's cap and he could have been Jack.

Pa twisted Howell's ear in front of Naomi and Mr. Hugo. “Carlton,” he grumbled, “why are you bothering Mr. Hugo's little girl?”

No one called him Carlton, except his pa. Even his teachers at elementary school learned to call him Howell. And he felt ashamed in front of the little duchess. But she rescued him right away.

“Super,” she said, with little blinks of mascara, “your boy was most helpful to me. I was lost in this underground passageway, looking for the bin where all the travelers' trunks are stored. And Carl fed me a scrumptious biscuit and a cup of water.”

“Was he a gentleman with you?” asked his pa, one of his pale eyes practically screwed out of its socket.

“A perfect gentleman,” she said. “I was playing Scarlett O'Hara in my elocution class, and I ran all the way home in my costume.”

The little duchess offered Pa her hand to kiss. He was trembling, but he pecked her hand with his lips, while she winked at Howell. Then she and Mr. Hugo crept back into that shadowland under the building. Pa waited ten minutes before he beat Howell with his belt buckle, just for offering a soda cracker to the little duchess.

That was fifty years ago, but it stuck in Howell's memory like a strange claw. He couldn't believe that “Miss Naomi” could still be found in 6A. How could the Waldmans have remained at the Lorelei while the Concourse slid into oblivion? Howell had left home while the Cross Bronx Expressway was being built. It was tunneled right under the Concourse near Mount Eden, in some marvel of engineering, but it still cut the Concourse in two and created desolation on both sides of its path. The Bronx now had a series of ghost neighborhoods, with concrete walls and concrete gardens. But Howell was gone before the Bronx began to burn and wild dogs roamed Claremont Park. He had to leave once his father could no longer seize him by the ear. Howell had grown too tall. He vanished without a note, before he ever had a chance to murder his pa.

Mr. Hugo had always been kind to him, had given him pocket money to accomplish little household chores. He'd shellac the desk in Naomi's room, repair a chipped tile, take Helena for walks in Joyce Kilmer Park. He'd learned all the skills and handicrafts of a superintendent's boy. He'd also become Naomi's slave and part-time beggarly brother. He was forever in her room, which was as large as the grand salon at the Concourse Plaza. She could never find a wardrobe that fit. She'd burst out of her clothes from season to season. She was voluptuous at thirteen, and it was almost as if she vampirized whatever small charms Helena had left. Her mother began to shrivel, while Naomi swayed like a tigress. She had marriage proposals before she was fifteen. Millionaires pursued Naomi for their sons; and sometimes for themselves.

It was Howell's misfortune that he had to listen to all their clatter. Bankers wanted to elope with her, realtors wanted to buy her a building. But Mr. Hugo had flooded her mind with a sense of Grand Concourse culture. Why would she need a building when she had her own grand salon? While her miraculous chest fluttered and her calves swelled, she dreamt of marrying a Bronx Van Gogh.

“Carl,” she told him, “you can't have art without suffering.”

She was the only one who was allowed to call him Carl. And he was obliged to commiserate with her. Since she was constantly chauffeured from class to class, and went to school with the heir to this fortune or that, it was difficult for her to meet struggling artists and musicians. And she had no ambition to venture outside the Bronx. Howell would escort her to the Loew's Paradise or the Botanical Garden, with little envelopes of cash Mr. Hugo stuffed into his pocket. He'd clutch her hand at the movies whenever a monster was on the screen. But he could never have become Van Gogh.

And yet one afternoon, while they were in the dark of the Loew's Paradise, with its Alhambra walls and star-crusted ceiling, Howell's hand strayed upon her breast. How could he ever have described her heaving heart? She didn't brush his hand away. It was the most insanely erotic moment of Howell's life.

Nothing was the same after that. They would stumble about on the queen-sized sofa in her room, neither of them really knowing what to do. And then, after a few such fumblings, she wiggled out of her clothes and lay with Howell in her panties and bra, as if both of them had been entombed. Helena found them like that and started to shriek.