Joseph McElroy - Women and Men

v. Took hold of gooseneck and right handlebar; examined front wheel alignment in front brake pads, greasy dirt in rear chain sprockets; found potential trouble spot in Teflon brake-cable housing slightly bent and scuffed when I upside-down’d bike to check wheel spin before leaving office last night no longer felt to be secure. Though they might be right that "we" know something going on in City no one else does: but wondered what it could be.

Riding down avenue before turn, recalled twilight some days ago and feelings then and need to act on knowhow.

Reached warehouse-theater, spotted Senora Wing but would never give her the envelope (which she saw anyway plus bike plus me plus truth that Independent Messenger Unit was in operation but she said nothing and went on in), saw big-man singer spring from taxi making it rock back and forth and side to side so it rocked circular for a second — and swiftly I handed the envelope to him, seeing no rapier at his side and not looking at him but mumbling, No need for receipt, but hearing from him in song-type tone, I am afeard you make a wonton of me & A hit, a hit, a hit — so I would have asked him for tickets if I had not thought him ready to open the envelope.

So I was gone with his Thaaaaank U, dear boy! lowering after me and Gustave and the office on my mind yet something else — the twilight of some days ago, when I was another man at the same time that I was the one my mother now called a man: for was considering grabbing a free tow on a slow-moving Checker cab practically falling apart: but looking back was diverted by something way high and slipped insanely out into center of evening traffic in Fifth Avenue and brought bicycle to a position of stationary rest and looked back up at the Empire State Building and there were birds circling the Empire State tower devouring moths (I didn’t dream) for that was what they were doing, having studied insects, with the cars sides wiping trousers and bike structure, making own wind, and I answered in my own mind the question my mother asked me and asked in presence once of social worker who didn’t know then that I had a new business, What month is it? can you tell us what month it is? Because looking up at night at the birds circling the Empire State way high near the giant antenna devouring moths, I could say to myself, It’s beautiful, it is a beautiful night.

w. Until, upon opening door and spotting big Gustave hunched over answering machine and quick craning neck around at me in case I was Spence, Ray, or Ray Santee, I would have asked How are you doing? but heard a man with an accent begin a message with "Mason" and say in no uncertain terms that they had to discuss the messenger service — and then a new message cut in and it was that voice called T.W. saying a direct phone contact was essential and leaving a number I somehow knew but I didn’t know how followed by the words new evidence of trace and a buzz, as if the voice had been interrupted by its own power. And Gustave turned and opened his mouth to start to laugh and his jaw was as large as mine and he held out both hands but did not laugh. He turned machine on.

I informed him we are in danger and must move the business from this dump, it isn’t our office anyhow. Phone rang and we looked at it and the machine and all the time I listened with my hands on handlebars for sound of steps coming upstairs but none, and on machine came voice speaking so careful it was inside both me and Gustave circling down almost our throat but not throat — only ear and head — and Gustave started to laugh and put his hand over his mouth and his face got like those dogs that have all the skin and the voice which was the one called Mason and foreign said: "We are becoming impatient with you and your little operation and it is obvious that you and S.M. ‘s father know the links between this stolen music and much else including the Cuban and time is running out for you and your boys, you little insect, there in your little base of operations" — followed by a buzz like a phone and then nothing and I thought of Amy’s boss and his accent when he spoke kindly in the foundation office, and sometimes stayed in his room and you only heard him.

I told Gustave we build on what we know and sometime we got to do without knowing. He laughed and was shivering and began taking off his big coat but I said not to. We got to deal with known obstacles in lane-related routes. Forget Santee called me light of his life. Angel. Forget breath of life, coinage of my brain. The business has to survive.

x. Gustave had a headache. Examined the back of his head where he had blood last week. Loose ends of other people no concern of you and me. Go on what you know. Go on policy. Remember what can happen to messenger with bad news. We got no bad news in us, Gustave — it’s only in envelope. Gustave laughed. I gave him log to read.

y. Senora Wing came on machine. Jimmy we need you, you better get down here, you lose out. I told Gustave we got to go. Move business. Wipe prints off phone and desk. Took log out of Gustave’s hands. I said we would go see the old lady and old geezer, if he didn’t go on working vacation he said he needed yet. We would watch for them two corners away so Senora Wing or Turnstein not see us. We in danger. We get out of here or we never be heard from again. Machine comes on again with piano music and singing in background, and hammering. I said That’s O.K., we get a new office. Machine voice is a woman talking fast Spanish I didn’t understand except Spence.

Outside I saw bike rider I thought was white jerk with gray beard and orange headband who looked like my father only white except my father not alive probably, and I told Gustave what Chilean gentleman at foundation said to Amy. I said it to Gustave: ‘The void is the decent interval between exposure to our parents and the time when we can inherit their habits."

I was surprised I could say it.

I walked my bike south and Gustave was right with me.

Other words of the man at the foundation came to me but in bits, but I remembered "structure," yes I remembered that word "structure," and I remembered "small-scale units," and I remembered feeling he was a fine man, a kind man, a gentleman, and how he and the girl smiled when at the end of this bunch of bits that I couldn’t quite remember, he said "as if people mattered." I thought I might take a vacation sometime like the old guy said he was.

If it could speak — and he and his new friend were discussing whether it actually could — his heart would have had a thing or two to say about how two older friends of his, Amy and Jim, had acted. Larry’s heart wasn’t going round in circles so much, and had let some part of itself go. He had plenty of heart; he wasn’t cold no matter what his mother had once said about how he kept the lid on, and no matter if his father said Lar’ needed to see Martha and he paid the bills.

But, O.K., what had looked like danger the other night still might be; but he cared a lot less now. So hosting his new friend Donald Dooley from Economics class in the clear light of a cloudy day, Larry thought of Amy as quite far away, far more than thirty blocks’ bike ride (or walk); an older chick, an older (O.K.) woman, or anyway person; or a government agent implicated in something. She had vanished from her apartment (and she only five or six years older than Larry!), and, that night, had left her things all over that made it look like she had been abducted. Meanwhile, Jim Mayn mattered much more to Larry, who could not understand how on the morning after Amy’s apparent disappearance if not abduction Mayn had emplaned from La Guardia airport on a tristate business trip without knowing if Amy was all right for God’s sake, so maybe he didn’t even care; yet the night before upon learning from Larry that Amy was gone, Mayn had made with him a whirlwind visit to the East Side foundation where she worked (maybe one more interruption before Lar’s life finally began): it was a building and block where nothing was happening at that late hour, no abductions, no light rape (like what Maureen and Grace kidded they would subject a man to someday), no thefts, no cop cars screeching up onto the sidewalks, no execution of babies, nothing at that late hour except a Mexican watchman Mayn knew in suspenders playing a battery-powered electronic game at a rickety little logging-in table, one knee crossed over the other (while, as a bike flashed past exactly like Lar’s old Raleigh and come to think of it with a black kid on it but painted silver —repainted? a bit thickly? — down the street in a closed but brightly lighted shop that sold mainland-Chinese shirts, pants, and trinkets, an Asiatic woman who stayed in Larry’s mind had been sitting on some phone books).