Harry Harrison: Make Room! Make Room!

The cab driver pedaled slowly so that Tab could keep up without running, yet the man was still sweating. His shoulders went up and down right in front of Shirl and she could see the rivulets of perspiration running down his neck and even the dandruff on his thin hair; being this close to people bothered her. She turned to look at the street. People shuffling by, other cabs moving past the slower-moving tugtrucks with their covered loads. The bar on the corner of Park Avenue had a sign out saying BEER TODAY — 2 P.M. and there were some people already lined up there. It seemed a long wait for a glass of beer, particularly at the prices they were charging this summer. There never was very much, they were always talking about grain allotments or something, but in the hot weather it was gone as soon as they got it in, and at fantastic prices. They turned down Lexington and stopped at the corner of Twenty-first Street and she got out and waited in the shade of the building while Tab paid the driver. A hoarse roar of voices came from the stalls in the food market that had smothered Gramercy Park. She took a deep breath and, with Tab close beside her so that she could rest her hand on his arm, she crossed the street.

Around the entrance were the weedcracker stalls with their hanging rows of multicolored crackers reaching high overhead, brown, red, blue-green.

“Three pounds of green,” she told the man at the stand where she always shopped, then looked at the price card. “Another ten cents a pound!”

“That’s the price I gotta pay, lady, no more profit for me.” He put a weight on the balance scale and shook crackers onto the other side.

“But why should they keep raising the price?” She took a broken piece of cracker from the scale and chewed it. The color came from the kind of seaweed the crackers were made from and the green always tasted better to her, less of the iodiney flavor than the others had.

“Supply and demand, supply and demand.” He dumped the crackers into the shopping bag while Tab held it open. “The more people there is the less to go around there is. And I hear they have to farm weed beds farther away. The longer the trip the higher the price.” He delivered this litany of cause and effect in a monotone voice like a recording that has been played many times before.

“I don’t know how people manage,” Shirl said as they walked away, and felt a little guilty because with Mike’s bankroll she didn’t have to worry. She wondered how she would get along on Tab’s salary, she knew just how little he earned. “Want a cracker?” she asked.

“Maybe later, thanks.” He was watching the crowd and deftly shouldered aside a man with a large sack on his back who almost ran into her.

A guitar band was slowly working its way through the crowded market, three men strumming homemade instruments and a thin girl whose small voice was lost in the background roar. When they came closer Shirl could make out some of the words, it had been the hit song last year, the one the El Troubadors sang.

” …on earth above her… As pure a thought as angels are… to know her was to love her.”

The words couldn’t possibly fit this girl and her hollow chest and scrawny arms, not ever. For some reason it made Shirl uncomfortable.

“Give them a dime,” she whispered to Tab, then moved quickly to the dairy stand. When Tab came after her she dropped a package of oleo and a small bottle of soymilk — Mike liked it in his kofee — into the bag.

“Tab, will you please remind me to bring the bottles back — this is the fourth one now! And with a deposit of two dollars apiece I’ll be broke soon if I don’t remember.”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow, if you’re going shopping then.”

“I’ll probably have to. Mike is having some people in for dinner and I don’t know how many yet or even what he wants to serve.”

“Fish, that’s always good,” Tab said, pointing to the big concrete tank of water. “The tank is full.”

Shirl stood on tiptoe and saw the shoals of tilapia stirring uneasily in the obscured depths.

“Fresh Island ’lapia,” the fish woman said. “Come in last night from Lake Ronkonkoma.” She dipped in her net and hauled out a writhing load of six-inch fish.

“Will you have them tomorrow?” Shirl asked. “I want them fresh.”

“All you want, honey, got more coming tonight.”

It was hotter and there was really nothing else that she needed here, so that left just one more stop to make.

“I guess we better go to Schmidt’s now,” she said and something in her voice made Tab glance at her for a moment before he returned to his constant surveillance of the crowd.

“Sure, Miss Shirl, it’ll be cooler there.”

Schmidt’s was in the basement of a fire-gutted building on Second Avenue, just a black shell above street level with a few squatters’ shanties among the charred timber. An alleyway led around to the back and three steps went down to a heavy green door with a peephole in the center. A bodyguard squatted in the shade against the wall, only customers were allowed into Schmidt’s, and lifted his hand in a brief greeting to Tab. There was a rattle of a lock and an elderly man with sweeping white hair climbed the steps one at a time.

“Good morning, Judge,” Shirl said. Judge Santini and O’Brien saw a good deal of each other and she had met him before.

“Why, a good morning to you, Shirl.” He handed a small white package to his bodyguard, who slipped it into his pocket. “That is I wish it was a good morning but it is too hot for me, I’m afraid, the years press on. Say hello to Mike for me.”

“I will, Judge, good-by.”

Tab handed her purse to her and she went down and knocked on the door. There was a movement behind the tiny window of the peephole, then metal clanked and the door swung open. It was dark and cool. She walked in.

“Well if it ain’t Miss Shirl, hiya honey,” the man at the door said as he swung it shut and pushed home the heavy steel bolt that locked it. He settled back on the high stool against the wall and cradled his double-barreled shotgun in his arms. Shirl didn’t answer him, she never did. Schmidt looked up from the counter and smiled a wide, porcine grin.

“Why hiya, Shirl, come to get a nice little something for Mr. O’Brien?” He planted his big red hands solidly on the counter and his thick body, wrapped in blood-spattered white cloth, half rested on the top. She nodded but before she could say anything the guard called out.

“Show her some of the sweetmeat, Mr. Schmidt, I’ll bet she goes for that”

“I don’t think so, Arnie, not for Shirl.” They both laughed loudly and she tried to smile and picked at the edge of the sheet of paper on the counter.

“I’d like steak or a piece of beef, if you have any,” she said, and they laughed again. They always did this, knowing how far they could go without causing trouble. They knew about her and Mike and never did or said anything that would cause trouble with him. She had tried to tell him about it once, but there was no one thing she could tell him that they did that was wrong, and he had even laughed at one of their jokes and told her that they were just playing around and not to worry, that you couldn’t expect party manners from meatleggers.

“Look at this, Shirl.” Schmidt clanked open the box door on the wall behind him and took out a small flayed carcass. “Good leg of dog, nicely hung, good and fat too.”

It did look good, but it was not for her so there was just no point in looking. “It’s very nice, but you know Mr. O’Brien likes beef.”

“Harder to get these days, Shirl.” He moved deeper into the box. “Trouble with suppliers, jacking up the price, you know how it is. But Mr. O’Brien has been trading here with me for ten years and as long as I can get it I’m going to see he gets his share. How’s that?” He came out and kicked the door shut, holding up a small piece of meat with a thin edging of white fat.