Joseph McElroy - Women and Men

Senora Wing was fighting with Turnstein when I checked in. "Nobody’s gon’ find out about your kids as long as you’re smart," she said, and she stopped speaking, her golden and ruby bracelets clanking though her hands were on her hips and she wasn’t moving her arms; she knew I was behind her. I was thinking of quitting T&W, taking a chance with social worker and mother. "We need you, Jimmy," Senora said without turning around; "just don’t bring us no bad news."

Gustave reported a message came on the machine for Santee, and Gustave ran it back to where Santee could play it like for the first time himself, told me it said, "This is T.W., in from the West — don’t know about any portable mountain like the one described but I’m ready for Jersey assignment," so the weird words looked back into Gustave and me and we had the same thought that we better find a new office for Independent Messenger Unit — maybe take on another man — otherwise we would have to change a policy of ours in self-defense. Wasn’t "T.W." Turnstein-Wing? But I suddenly saw, Why does it have to be?

o. Turnstein’s twins carried on in the window. The old lady watched and laughed. The old man shivered. Turnstein got a call. Build on what you know. The twins were looking like a pair of girls today, and they fell out of the window into the office. They were tired of sparring. Senora Wing said, "We got to keep the old couple coming here every day," like Turnstein wasn’t on the phone. Turnstein sent me on the job, and Wing said suddenly, "So do you know the guy who goes out with that girl Jean?" but I couldn’t get the words out and it was only one word but it seemed like a lot. "Only good news, Jimmy," she said; "don’t carry bad, because bad news ain’t so good."

Turnstein’s twins were boys sometimes, sometimes girls. They had stole from message envelopes once and got early retirement but he couldn’t have them at home and Senora Wing said they should be locked up.

Every time I made my circuit and touched base at T&W, it felt like I came back to a little different place. My bike might get ripped off, or they might have some bushes, holding them back for me to come through like when we went to New Jersey for July Fourth — and everybody said we’re climbing this mountain but it didn’t seem like one until we got into a ravine and a man who looked like my father held the bush back like a rubber band so I could get through and afterward Georgie outside the supermarket said, "Ain’t no mountains in Jersey, man." But when I would come back to T&W something would be waiting for me except maybe the bushes wouldn’t hold till I was through and I never had nothing but the receipt, and as far as I knew, no bad news, but how did I know what Senora Wing meant by bad news?

p. Gustave was knocked down outside the warehouse next door but held true to his envelope and I came by a minute later and he said he didn’t see who did it and they disappeared so fast he didn’t even hear their feet running away. He wished he was in Bonita Springs with Maureen. He was coming from Miss Kimball’s building where he dropped off a package with logo plate and other material from lecture-booking agency and picked up a giant green envelope from unexpected client (music-composer friend of singer Ford North, friendly, insulting, 4’Think I can use you in my opera!" cracked himself up, laughed and laughed rolling on floor, while Gustave didn’t know what to do until later after I picked him up off sidewalk and assessed situation with sanitation workers and Orientals passing us along Twenty-fourth Street either side, Gustave said glump-glump garoom-garoom the way he speak, that little shit music-composer maybe wasn’t insulting him after all but meant it and got off on it, etcetera), business directed our way by Miss Kimball who ran into little sonofabitch music-composer boyfriend of North in laundry room where he had cornered a rare brown-and-blue-speckled rat he was capturing with a mop for a pet — so Gustave got a quick job from Kimball-North apartment building to warehouse-theater building because composer-ratcatcher who said words in foreign language not Spanish didn’t want to walk the distance himself with what was in the green envelope — and neither Gustave nor I knew how Gustave had held on to the green envelope later against attackers who had disappeared so fast they seemed to have gone into the nearest entrance which was actual destination of assignment, i.e., warehouse-theater.

Locked silver Raleigh on green No-Parking-sign stanchion to save time providing back-up support for combined delivery-investigation-of-premises. We looked at green envelope and looked at each other and spoke at once, same words, no stutter: We got to change policy.

We knew what we meant. Gustave picked his big fur cap off the sidewalk. He looked at it like he didn’t recognize it. I said put it on. He didn’t.

Felt the IMU log on back in bag. Keeping records vital, but no table. Then no time, because door beside letin sign was open. Then no light, because entry way inside was dark and clear of persons. Passed up flight of stairs to wide hall with only light from bulb in open closet. We were moving toward sounds of voices talking, piano dancing, woman singing to piano, music stopping, voices talking, piano up-and-downing, woman singing ("It’s her," said Gustave, and we found double doors manually operated we were glad to find). Moving into what we saw and heard was like something but no time to remember what. Wanted to go back to school. Put hand on Gustave’s shoulder, he moved ahead of me and I saw some stuff on the back of his head but there was too much to look at. We was in the theater and nothing except seats seemed to be between us and the stage, but then a moment later that wasn’t true after all. The singing was beautiful and I forgot about Gustave’s head and the green envelope and who had attacked Gustave and how we was going to buy Santee/Spence’s phone-answering machine for ourselves. Because our client the Lady Luisa was right up there on the stage singing, and, because the seats went down at a slant, she seemed to be right near us, it was a smaller theater than a movie theater. There might be someone behind us but we didn’t look. The words were not foreign but, like, the music was; but the words didn’t come easy. But it didn’t matter. Like, "I’ll be revenged for my mother," and "Where is my father?" and "Our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them, / mermaid-like awhile they bore me up / incapable of my own distress" and so on, until this beautiful dark lady with more hair than Turnstein but coiled and like reddish black and wearing bluejeans and gold-and-silver-tooled western-type boots and black highneck sweater and man’s brown corduroy jacket sang a note so high that another client came out onstage singing to her, and it was Mr. North in a long yellowish sack-type outfit, and it wasn’t clear whether she had been singing about herself or someone else but he knew where he was coming from: "There sung those lips that often I have kissed," he sang, and he was crying at the same time as he sang of how in his sleep he fought his heart until he sleepwalked out of his bed and his chamber and found he was on board ship fingering a packet and could do no wrong but knew his hue was rough reflected in a goblin’s eyes steering the ship until he took the packet and—

q. Because of what he said, we knew we had to make a policy change.

1. Two women sitting in fifth row: one turned halfway round to see if anyone else was here, and she was the girl at the foundation with the big earrings who gave me and Gustave some jobs and had the new phone number, and her name was Amy; the other woman was older and turned halfway the other way to look, and she was looking like I was feeling, and she had come out of the bright, sunny office that Amy had gone into and then Amy came out after her and there was a man’s voice still in there talking Spanish so I didn’t know if it was to them or he’s on the phone. "We know these people," I whispered to Gustave, who had his fur earflaps down — he had put on his hat again. He stood like a tree, like once before in the street, but we’re inside now.