Эд Макбейн - Running From Legs and Other Stories

“But I have to go down this way, too,” I complained.

“Can you charge it to the business?”

“No, but...”

“Then don’t be silly.” He picked up the money and stuffed it into my coat pocket. “Now go ahead, don’t be silly, Howard.”

“Well, thank you,” I said, “I appreciate it,” and then realzed I didn’t even know his name, I had never heard anyone calling him by name on the train. “Thank you,” I said again, and got out of the cab.

We have a small office, and Concetta, our secretary, has asthma, which means that smoking a cigar and filling the air with deadly fumes would give her coughing fits all day long. So I stood in the corridor outside the men’s room and smoked my morning cigar there. Rafe Goldman came in at nine-thirty. I was still standing there smoking. He fanned the air with both huge hands and said, “Whooosh, you trying to fumigate the place?”

“Well, I know Concetta doesn’t like cigar smoke,” I said.

“You can smell that the minute you get off the elevator,” Rafe said. “What is that, an El Ropo?” he said, and nudged me, and laughed.

“It’s a good cigar,” I said. “Cost me twenty-five cents.”

“We’re going to have complaints from the Fire Department,” Rafe said, and laughed again. “They’ll probably send the commissioner around.”

“Look,” I said, a bit heatedly, “if I can’t smoke it in the office, and if I can’t smoke it here in the corridor outside the men’s room where it isn’t bothering anybody, where the hell can I smoke it?”

“Don’t get excited,” Rafe said, and patted my arm. “Why don’t you go smoke it downstairs?”

Downstairs was a hundred below zero, downstairs was troikas followed by packs of starving gray wolves.

Rafe went into the men’s room. I put out the cigar and went inside to my desk. All that morning, I thought about Harry. You have to understand that whereas I appreciated his having paid my cab fare on two separate occasions, I would have preferred paying my own damn fare so that I could have smoked my cigar in peace without a fresh air fiend in attendance. I stress this point only because Adele later said perhaps I was really a Cheap Charlie who enjoyed having my cab fare paid each morning. This simply was not true, and I told Adele so in very positive terms. For whereas things are sometimes a bit tight in North Stamford, what with Marcia’s tooth alignment and all, I can certainly afford to pay my own cab fare. In fact, as I pointed out, and as Adele well knew, the taxi rides to and from work were luxuries I felt I owed myself, essential elements of the private little party I had been throwing to celebrate the fact that I had not got killed in Korea.

So it seemed to me that Harry Pryor was sharing something more than just a taxi with me, and I decided to tell him flat out come Monday morning that whereas I enjoyed his company immensely, I really preferred riding down to work alone as it gave me a chance for contemplation, an opportunity to ease into the long hard day ahead, which was not exactly true, but which I rehearsed nonetheless all through the weekend. Then I remembered that I didn’t even know his name, so I called Frank Cooperman on Sunday night to ask about it.

“Who do you mean?” he said.

“The fellow who rides in with us each morning.”

“Which fellow?”

“The one with the black mustache and the blue eyes and the glasses. Who tells all the jokes in the morning.”

“I think his name is Harry,” Frank said.

“Don’t you know?”

“Well, I’m not sure.”

“He’s your friend, isn’t he?”

“No, no,” Frank said. “My friend? What gave you that idea?”

“I just thought he was your friend,” I said.

“I thought he was your friend,” Frank said.

“Well, whose friend is he?” I asked.

“Search me,” Frank said.

“Well, what’s his last name?” I said.

“Pryor, I think.”

“Thank you,” I said, and hung up, a little annoyed with Frank, I’m not sure why. I debated whether I should call my taxi-mate “Mr. Pryor” (since he didn’t seem to be anyone’s friend) or just plain “Harry” when I broke the news to him, and then I rehearsed it both ways, figuring I’d play it by ear when the time came. I could barely sleep that night. Adele finally poked me in the ribs and said, “Howard, if you don’t stop tossing, I’m going to go sleep in Marcia’s room.” I didn’t answer her as she very often makes dire threats in her sleep. On Monday morning, I drove to the station, and there was Mr. Harry Pryor waiting on the platform with the other fellows, coffee container in one hand, wrapped cheese Danish in the other.

“Morning, Howard,” he said.

“Morning, Harry,” I said.

“Getting off at 125th as usual?” he asked.

“As usual,” I said.

“Would you care to share a taxi with me?” he asked.

That was my opportunity, and I should have given him my rehearsed speech right then and there, but I didn’t want to embarrass him in front of the other fellows. So I said, “Yes, Harry,” and figured this would be our last shared ride together, I’d tell him how I felt on the way down to 86th.

It was a bitterly cold day.

Men were hunched over small coal fires in empty gasoline drums, girls clutched coat collars to their throats, icicles hung from awnings, broken orange crate slats jutted crookedly from frozen curbside puddles.

“I can’t tell you how much I enjoy this morning ride with you, Howard,” Harry said for openers.

I grunted.

“I don’t know many Negroes,” he said.

I didn’t know what to say to that one, so I coughed.

“That’s a bad cold you have there,” Harry said.

I grunted again.

“You ought to quit smoking,” he said.

“I have,” I said. “Temporarily,” and I thought now is the time to tell him. Right this minute. I turned toward him on the seat.

“How else can we get to know each other?” Harry said.

“I beg your pardon,” I said.

“Negroes and whites,” he said. “How else can we possibly breach the barricade?”

“Well,” I said, thinking I didn’t have any particular barricade to breach, and if Harry had one, he shouldn’t attempt to breach it in a taxicab. “Actually...”

“Can I walk up to a Negro on the street and say, “Listen, fellow, let’s have a drink together, I’d like to know you people better.” Can I say that?”

I thought No, you had better not say that, Mr. Pryor, especially not up here in Harlem. I glanced through the window on my right where the city had put up a housing development. On one of the walls, a teenage letterer had painted the name of his club. He had spelled it wrong. For posterity, the words “The Redemers” boldly asserted themselves in white letters on the brick wall.

“So just having the opportunity to talk to you this way, to get to know you this way, is very important to me, Howard. I want to thank you for it. I want to tell you how much I appreciate your generosity.”

“Yes, well,” I said, “don’t mention it, really.”

I felt trapped, and frustrated, and suddenly in danger. Once, in Korea, when we were trying to take this hill, we had two of our guys with a mortar about a hundred yards on the left, and the sergeant and another guy and me with the mortar rounds over on the right. But we couldn’t get to each other because the Chinese had set up a machine gun on top of the hill, and they kept raking the ground between us. It was very frustrating. Finally, somebody called for artillery to knock out the emplacement. But that was after the sergeant had already sent my buddy to get killed trying to lug the ammo across that hundred yards of bullet-sprayed ravine to where the mortar was waiting. The sergeant tapped me on the shoulder. I was next. Just then, the artillery barrage started. I don’t know who called for the support, probably the captain of Baker company which was on a little knoll looking down into this depression where we were trapped and frustrated. I never found out. That was one of the times I almost got killed.