Part 33 (1/2)

AFTER he ran out of the Hotel Trevi, Joe becah the streets of New York that night He carried a pint of rye that he had bought in a bar on Fifty-eighth Street His hair froze into icicles on his head and his blue tuxedo turned to cold granite, but he felt nothing He kept walking, sipping froht with taxis, the theaters were eht and the vapor of their patrons' breathing He recalled with shame the elation that had seized hi, the rattling ride underground with everyone staring at the eneral love of poodles and car horns and the tooth marks of the Essex House on the face of the moon that had suffused him as he walked in his top hat froo, he thought, the h to ht

Somehow he ended up in Brooklyn He rode the train all the way out to Coney Island and then fell asleep and woke up in a place called Gravesend, with a policeh hand on his shoulder So, ht he had appeared on the stairs in Bernard Kornblum's house on Maisel Street, he showed up at 115 Ocean Avenue, at the door of apartment 2-B

Ethel answered the door almost immediately She was fully dressed and made up, and her hair was tied neatly in a bun If she was at all surprised to see her nephew at her door, frozen stiff, bleary-eyed, in full evening dress, she did not betray it Without a word, she put her arm around him and helped him to her kitchen table She poured him a cup of coffee from a blue pot enameled hite flecks It was dreadful, thin as the water in which he cleaned his brushes and sour as turned wine, but it was fresh and painfully hot Its effect on hi As soon as it hit his throat, all the facts and contingencies he had held under the water, until it see, now bobbed back up to the surface, and he knew that he was alive, and that his brother, Thomas, lay dead at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean

”We should turn on the radio” was all he could think of to say

Ethel sat down across from him with her own cup of coffee She took a handkerchief froan and handed it to hiuht of his arrival, handed hirandhtgown, and, apparently unaware of Joe's presence, lowered her pale blue behind onto the pot

”You don't listen tohim by his aunt's old-country name ”From the first day, I said I don't like this boat Didn't I say it?”

Joe spoke English ”I'ot off the toilet Without a word, she turned out the light and shuffled back out Joe finished his shower in darkness

After he had war, his aunt wrapped him in a bathrobe that had once been Saht,” she said ”All right” She put a dry hand to his cheek and kept it there until he had stopped crying, and then until he stopped shaking, and then until he caught his stuttering breath He lay still and snuffled The hand on his cheek remained cool as brick

He woke up a few hours later It was still night outside the ithout a trace of s, burned as if he had been breathing smoke or poison He felt hollow and flattened and quite unable to cry

”She's co in the doorway to the rooht by the fixture over the kitchen sink ”I called her She was out of her ”

Joe sat up, and rubbed his face, and nodded He wanted nothing to do with Rosa, with Sammy, with his aunt or his parents or anyone who could tie hih any bond of memory or affection or blood, to Tho about it, and he had, in any case, no idea of what he should do His aunt found hiht from the sink The clothes were much too se them While they waited for Rosa, sheat their cups Three quarters of an hour later, with a treht in the air, there was the sound of a car horn from the street below He washed out his coffee cup, laid it in the drying rack, wiped his hands on the towel, and kissed his aunt goodbye

Ethel hurried to the , in tiirl step out of a taxi-cab She threw her ar that Ethel found herself regretting, with an intensity that surprised her, that she had neglected to take her nephew into her arms It seemed just then to be the worst mistake she had ever et into the taxi and drive away Then she sat down in a chair, with its festive pattern of pineapples and bananas, and covered her face with her hands

17

Joe and Rosa crawled into her bed at six-thirty in thethere, the unknownin the space between them Then she slept herself When she woke, it was past two o'clock in the afternoon, and Joe was gone She looked in the bathroom, then went downstairs to the black kitchen, where her father was standing with the most peculiar expression on his face

”Where's Joe?” she said

”He left”

”Left? Where did he go?”

”Well, he said so in the navy,” said her father ”But I don't iine he'll be able to do that until to about?”

That was how she learned of the attack on the naval base at Pearl Harbor According to her father, it was very likely that the United States would soon find itself at ith Ger on

The doorbell played its weird tune, Raymond Scott's shortest composition, ”Fanfare for the Fuller Brush Man” She ran to the door, certain that it was going to be Joe It was Saht There were abrasions on his cheek and a cut by his eye Had he been fighting with Bacon? She knew that Saeles today-she and Joe had planned originally to go down to the train station and see theht be dangerous, though it was difficult to i to hurt Saht sleeve of Sammy's shi+rt, where it met the shoulder

”Your shi+rt is torn,” she said

”Yeah,” he said ”I tore it That's what you do when you're, you know In -ago funeral of a great-uncle The ed great-aunt had also covered all thethe place a disturbing air of having been blinded

”Want to come in?” she said ”Joe's not here”

”Not really,” Sammy said ”Yeah, I know I saw hiet his things I guess he woke ht”

”Here,” she said, sensing an odd note in his voice She grabbed an old sweater of her father's from the hat stand, put it around her, and stepped out into the courtyard It was good to get out into the cold air She felt soht?” she said She noticed that he winced when she touched him, as if his arm or his shoulder were sore ”What's the , I hurt it”

”How?”

”Playing football on the beach, how else?”

They sat down on the stone steps, side by side

”Where is he now?”

”I don't know He's gone He left”

”What are you doing here, anyway?” she asked him ”Aren't you supposed to be on a train for Hollywood? Where's Bacon?”

”I told hio ahead without ed ”I never really wantedI don't know I think I got a little carried aith the whole thing”

That oodbye to Tracy Bacon, in the compartment that had been reserved for them both aboard the Broadway Limited

I don't understand,” Bacon said They were aard and clumsy with each other, in the closeness of the first-class co the other, the second devoting eachtouched, that their carefuldistance between theet arrested Jio away”

Sa opposite each other on the twin upholstered banquettes, which they would have, soht, unfolded into a pair of beds

”I just can't do it anymore, Bake,” Sammy said ”It's just-I don't want to be like this”