Sam's Legacy (24 page)

Max beamed. “Get this,” he said, to the table. “And who's Sandy Koufax?”

Lillian waved him off. “Silly—everybody knows that—he's a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn.”

She winked, opened her mouth, wide—in imitation, Sam supposed, of Marilyn Monroe—and turned around, shaking her butt back into the kitchen. “Terrific,” Shimmy said. “You got a terrific girl there, Max.” He paused. “You still have fifty-one per cent of the shares, right?”

“Tell me,” Max asked Shimmy, “for a hobby, do you still sniff bicycle seats?”

The guys groaned. Sid touched Sam on the arm. “Do you play the market?” he asked. Max and Shimmy continued to rank one another out.

“No,” Sam said.

“Well, if you did, now's the time to buy,” Sid said. “You can get some good prices on solid stocks.”

“I don't agree,” Herbie said. “It looks bad to me. With money tight, everybody I know is crying. Thank God, me and Ruthie, we don't have to sell—we can wait till the market comes back up—but a lot of people are getting hurt.”

“Of course,” Sid said. “If you live over your head. But I look at the market as an investment—not as a gamble.” He turned to Sam. “I know that goes against your grain, Sammy, but I'll tell you something, every morning when I pick up the
Times
and turn to the stock page and look at mine, I get a genuine thrill—just like following a team, if you know what I mean.”

“Well, without us pricks,” Shimmy was saying to Max. “Where would you cocksuckers be—?”

“Keeping your savings in the bank,” Sid said. “What with inflation—you have to have your head examined—”

Sam began laughing at that, and Shimmy patted him on the back. “You're terrific, Sammy—and you too, Dutch—don't you think, guys, we should give them medals for staying behind in Brooklyn and guarding the schoolyard!”

“Cut it out,” Dutch said.

“But I'll bet they pick up a lot of”—Max paused—“of local color.”

“I'm serious,” Shimmy said. “I mean, I have to go back there now, for business. I know. It takes a kind of—bravery, I'd call it—not to move out.” The table was quiet. “Sure,” Shimmy continued, seriously. “All of us—we do okay, but we run away from the problems. Dutch and Sammy, they're sticking it out—”

“A lot you know,” Sam said, and stood up.

“Sure,” Nate said. “I'm in midtown a lot. They think they own the city now. They're always bumping into you, daring you to say something. And believe me, I tell them where to get off.” Sam was surprised; Nate rarely spoke so much. “Sure,” Nate went on. “You know how I'd take care of the problem—with one big bomb, that's how.”

Shimmy shrugged, spread his hands, palms up. “Nathan,” he said, admonishing his friend. “And what would that do to
my
property?”

“I get your point,” Nate said. “Yeah. You got the right idea, Shimmy—take what you can from them, and run. Because that's just what they'd do to us. Ask Sam—I'll bet he knows.”

Sam shrugged. “They leave me alone,” he said.

“Sam's father—Ben—he calls it a neighborhood in transition,” Dutch offered.

Sam glared at Dutch, turned, left the room. “If they're so undernourished,” he heard Max saying, “then how come they grow so big is what I want to know—”

Sam walked down the corridor, into the bedroom, went into the bathroom. He'd eaten more than he'd wanted to. As he shook himself off, he watched his face in the mirror of the medicine chest. Carpeted wastebaskets—that took brains!

He stepped back, zipped his fly, unlocked the door. “I thought I saw you come this way.” Susie was sitting on the bed. Her slacks, bell-bottomed, were made out of a gold mesh material. Sid had met her at college, out of town, at Syracuse University, but she was from Brooklyn too, he knew—had gone to Tilden High School.

“How's tricks?” Sam asked.

“Listen,” she said, standing, drawing in on a filter-tipped cigarette and letting the smoke trail upward, toward the hanging lantern. “I didn't want Sid to know…” She looked straight into Sam's eyes, and Sam returned the look. She wasn't a world-beater, but she was all right. Sam didn't mind plain girls. She had a sweet smile and a good body. Her ass was a little heavy, but that, as they said, came in handy sometimes. “Would you take a number of a girl—a friend—if I gave it to you?”

“Sure,” Sam said.

Susie laughed, touched Sam's forearm with her hand. The room seemed to be glowing, in a soft red color, from the bedspread. “I know you'd take it, but would you
use
it?”

Sam shrugged. “I got things on my mind now. I couldn't promise, Susie. Why not try Dutch?”

“He's your friend, isn't he?” She rubbed her cigarette out in a black ashtray, next to the bed. “I mean, your best friend.”

“I guess,” Sam said.

“How can I put it so that you won't—” She licked her upper lip. “From what Sid says, Dutch has his—well, his ups and his downs.”

“Things are rough all over,” Sam said, and looked toward the door.

“Here,” Susie said, and, from under the wide black leather belt that held her tunic tight at her waist, she pulled a folded piece of paper, and handed it to Sam. He slipped it into his shirt pocket without looking at it. “I'll leave it to you. One thing you should know, though—then come, we wouldn't want to be caught here, or everyone would start asking why—is that Gail, she was a friend from college, was married. In fact, her divorce has gone through recently. I thought you should know.”

“Sure,” Sam said. “I can understand something like that.”

“She's a tough girl, though,” Susie said. “And cute.” She took Sam's arm. The sleeve of her tunic, made of a flimsy silk material, with a sheen to it, slid sideways against the muscle of his arm. “I think you two would hit it off. I have a feeling…”

Sam smelled Susie's perfume. He wondered how often Sid gave it to her. Her hair, at least, was its natural color: a kind of auburn. “You got to take some chances,” Sam said.

Susie stopped, just outside the doorway, and looked up at him, her eyes sparkling. “That's what you do, isn't it?” she asked. The corridor was dark. Sam heard voices—the guys laughing, their wives chattering. “I mean, it must be an exciting life.” Here we go again, Sam thought. Sure. All these bitches, hustling their asses through high school and college to marry dentists and doctors and guys like Shimmy and Herbie, and then they still creamed all over you because they thought you weren't like that. A lot they knew. He should introduce them all to Willie the Lump.

“Call me, all right? Tell me how it goes. Promise me that…” He felt the points of her breasts graze his chest. He needed air. “You'll like Gail—”

“I didn't promise anything,” Sam said. Sam the Lamb, he thought, that was his real name. “You shouldn't sell Dutch short,” he added.

“I didn't mean to—” Susie stepped back.

“It's okay,” Sam said, and walked away, feeling better. “Don't sweat it, right? Take care of your kids.”

He heard her laughter, soft. She probably thought that was rich too, the way he talked. Sure. Sam Berman Jr., king of the jock-sniffers. He sat down at the dining room table, watched the guys drinking their coffee. Nate's face was red. Sid was talking softly, explaining things about Negroes, about a Negro girl from his school whom he had helped. Sure, Sam thought, but while you're out dripping tears all over the ghettos, you'd better keep a lock on your bedroom. Nate was getting angrier and angrier. Sid sat in his chair, cradling a pipe in the palm of his hand. “I'll tell you this,” Nate said, pointing a finger. The guy, Sam could tell, still had plenty of power; under his shirt, above his pot belly, Sam could see that his chest was broad. Sam looked at Nate's neck. It was still wide, coming down directly from under his ears, without any indentation. The guy had been a
bulvan
—third-team All-City, and that on sheer hustle; there were a lot of guys with better shots and moves, but Nate would have gone through a brick wall if the coach had asked him to. Sam gave him credit. “My aunts and uncles—my mother's brothers and sisters—they didn't die in Hitler's gas chambers so that a bunch of dumb
shvartzehs
could knife my wife in the park, do you hear?”

Sid sighed. “Nate—try to calm down. You're not making any sense.”

“He makes a lot of sense to me,” Max said.

“But try to think of what you're saying,” Sid said. “Try to put yourself in the other guy's place. You don't make sense, Nate.”

Nate laughed, and waved a hand at Sid. “You want sense, Sid? I'll give you sense. Did it make sense for six million Jews to die in the ovens—answer me that!”

Sid knocked ashes from his pipe. “Look, Nate, first of all, you're confusing your personal emotions with—”

Nate sat back, shook his head sideways. “No, Sid. I don't buy it—you don't fool me with your fancy talk. Personal? Tell me, if you're so bighearted—did our mothers and fathers sweat their guts out in Brooklyn so that some day a dumb boogie could knock up your daughter? Does that make sense? Tell me that!”

“I understand how you feel,” Sid said, leaning across the table, tapping his pipe on an ashtray. “Believe me, I really do. But—if you could try to get a little distance on yourself—if you could try to see how the other guy feels—”

“The only distance I want is between my family and them,” Nate said. “We suffered enough.” He lifted his left arm and showed it to everybody. “I still put
tephillin
on every morning—do you understand what that means, with all your high-faluting theories, do you?”

Herbie put his hand on Nate's arm. “Relax, relax—Sid's not attacking you, Nate. We all know about your aunts and uncles—and Sid's not defending what the
shvartzehs
do, either—are you, Sid?”

“Of course not,” Sid said, quickly. “But there are reasons sometimes…”

Sam remembered sitting in the balcony of the Granada Theater with Ben, just after the war, and seeing a newsreel of skeletonlike bodies that were supposed to be people. Ben said they were Jews. A bulldozer picked up bundles of them. Nate was like that, on the court: a bulldozer. The words separated suddenly, and Sam was confused. Like a bull—that made sense, but why, if it had so much power, like a
sleeping
bull? Sam wondered if Nate had ever seen pictures of them, near the end. Since high school, Nate had worked with his father; they owned a small plant in Queens—Woodside—that manufactured buttons. “Did you hear about the
shvartzeh
who went into the drugstore to order some film—and beat up the druggist?” Shimmy asked.

Sid turned at once toward Shimmy—relieved, Sam could see. Nate didn't seem interested. “Why'd you all beat up that druggist-man?” Max asked.

Shimmy turned on the accent: “Why dat man—he had de nerve to ask me what size box mah Brownie had!”

Everybody laughed. “Terrific,” Sid said to Shimmy. “I don't know where you get them all. Terrific.” Herbie turned to Nate, who was still scowling, and Sid shifted in his chair, spoke to Sam: “Tell me,” he said. “How's your father been—still driving his cab?”

“Where've you been hiding?” Sam asked. “He gave that up six-seven years ago.”

“That's right—of course.” Sam saw that Sid's hand was trembling. Well, he supposed he'd have been shaken up also if he'd gotten into that kind of fight with Nate. Not a fight, really—but it made you feel responsible somehow just to have the subject brought up. Not that anybody could have done anything for Nate, and not that you couldn't understand the way he felt. It was as if somehow you'd invaded his life. Sam understood that. There were things you had that you didn't want anybody stepping on, that was all. If Nate wanted to put on
tephillin
every day—if it meant something to him—that was his business and nobody had a right to take it away from him. “He had that school, didn't he, and then—”

“He lives on social security now,” Sam said. “He gets by.” He considered, decided: let it out this way, he figured, and be done with it. “But he'll be moving out soon—to a senior citizen place in California, to live with his brother Andy.”

“You know,” Shimmy said. “I could have given you a lift tonight—I was in Brooklyn. I didn't think.”

Herbie was standing, in the doorway to the kitchen. He held something in his hand. “My parents—they've bought into a condominium in Florida,” Sid said. “They won't go there for another few years—till my dad retires—but I think it's a wise move. We'll miss them, of course—the kids are terribly devoted—but with the weather, and the way their neighborhood is changing—”

“In transition?” Dutch asked.

“I could have given you a lift,” Shimmy said. “I didn't think.”

Sam saw the deck of cards in Herbie's hand. I'm Lady Luck, Stella had said to him, when she'd telephoned and he'd told her that the game hadn't come off, the night it snowed. He looked at Dutch, and saw that Dutch had seen the cards also. Sam stood. “We better get going,” he said, looking at his watch. “With the way the trains run, we won't get back to Brooklyn till early morning.”

“You don't want to be walking the streets alone there,” Max said. “When you get to Atlantic Avenue, take a taxi. Don't wait around on the corner for the bus.”

“We were just going to start a card game,” Herbie said. “Nickel-dime—”

“I'm sorry,” Dutch said, standing also, and joining Sam at the doorway to the corridor. “I told you guys about what happened.” Sam felt Dutch's shoulder touching his own.

Sam shook his head. “I—we never play for money with friends. You know that.”