Sarah Hall - The Electric Michelangelo

And there was the in, the doorway into which a professional boot tip could be inserted. Cy himself had never stepped foot through the gates of Ebbet’s Field, he had never been amid the almighty ballpark cheer, though he’d lived in Brooklyn for several years now. But he could walk into any drinking establishment or bakery or butcher’s in the district, in the entire borough, and there would be daffy Dodgers talk, so all he had to do was collect pieces of their history and recent programme along with his bread and his meat and beer. Cookie Lavagetto, Al Lopez, Van Lingle Mungo. These were names he could produce with confidence in a conversation to gain a local confidence, like a handshake between allies. The feuds, the players, the shares bought and sold and inherited and disputed. It was revered territory, daily exchanged Brooklyn currency, one of the glues of the people. There were those that believed in the heroes and ghosts of the game so fervently that even the curse of Charlie Ebbet’s grave which had struck McKeever down was real to them. And this was how Cy worked the crowds. He had learned to tease out a splinter of interest in a customer just by working loose its tip.

— Brooklyn Dodgers, best team in the country right now without a doubt, though I’m no expert I’ll confess, more of a cricket and rugby man, but anyway, I’m sure you know the business. What with Camilli coming in from Philly, and Grimes at the helm, and who knows more than Grimes let’s face it, those Giants won’t stand a chance. Teach Fat Bill Terry to have ever asked if Brooklyn’s still in the league, eh Eddie lad? Teach them all another lesson,

Eddie’s eyes got a glint and a luminescence like the unshuttering of blinds in a dim room. He took Cy by the elbow and leaned in.

— You know they got Ruthie coaching first base too this season, don’t ya? I seen him play last month, that exhibition game for the night-lighting. Oh, he’s still got it, he may be the same age as my old daddy woulda been, God rest him, and I ain’t saying forty-three is old, but oh brother is he a slugger. Why, those lights light up the ground like something holy … like some kinda holy thing … like I don’t know what …

The chuckling friend pitched in a comment suddenly.

— Hey. Get this mermaid here, Eddie, she’s a beauty. Yeah, I like her, Eddie; c’mon take that one. Look at her on that rock, like she’s been swimming all day and now she’s resting, well, she’s a sweetheart. I like the way her little tail tips up. And her cute little pout. She has a flower in her hair like one of them hula girls! Can you get that green of her tail just the same when you put it on a fella?

— Green as you see it on the page there.

Eddie wasn’t sure he liked the mermaid being pointed out to him. He furrowed up his brow while his friend tried to convince him. He was a browser apparently, not an impulsive man, he could have talked about baseball until the sun went down and came up again without getting tattooed. The perky mermaid did not compare with the Dodgers by any measure, but Eddie’s friend would not let the idea drop.

— Hear that? He’s going to make her just as cute. See, with the little dip at the top of the tail, you know what that’s like. C’mon. What’s the matter with you, buddy?

By now Eddie was shrugging and backing up towards the entrance of the booth and Cy could see that if his friend kept it up, shoving the idea over to him like a helping of vegetables he didn’t like and didn’t want, he’d lose interest in the meal altogether and the sale would be gone. Some men were like children that way, they had to be guided to an outcome or they’d waste the day on nothing but idle play. And in the business every sale counted. It had been a slow week for mid-season. The rain was cool, autumnal, and premature in August. A quality of it brought to mind Cy’s hometown. Poor weather could give him a slight feeling of edginess, a sense of struggle, and he would put more effort into his sales brag. Then, the very next moment, Cy was remembering, clear as a bell chiming inside his head, his mother’s rusting Tate and Lyle sugar tin with its pennies at the bottom that blackened up and stuck together with old damp sugar close to the end of winter, close to the last of them, and how she’d make him shine them with polish before he went out to buy potatoes and beetroot from the greengrocer. Reeda Parks had possessed her own style of pride, pride in the ability to provide for her fatherless son with money that shone and looked newly handled. Even if she had walked the pier with her political plate collecting naught but laughter and buttons and fudge from the bathers and holiday-makers and gathering unfavourable reputation among the women that ran the guest houses in Morecambe Bay. Even if she had emptied the basins of consumptives like a maid and did not object to the wet slush of their diseases. Cy hadn’t thought of his mother in a while. But now he was suddenly remembering too the way she would write out in pencil in a little notebook the budget for the months of October through to March and she would be pleased with herself if there was money left over after any one week, but she would never spend it, she’d just carry the surplus over into the savings from the summer. Hatching a line through the dates, adding half-sized numbers to the next portion of the notebook, faintly, gently where she usually licked the lead tip and charcoaled darkly, as if the numbers were precious and fragile because of their diminutive status, their ghost life as money. She never once spent beyond what the small sturdy pencil marks dictated she could spend, and so if the price of pork rose at the butchers they would eat fish twice a week instead of loin, if the price of fish rose they would eat oatcakes through the winter. That kind of caution must have been hereditary, or it infected Cy where the consumption didn’t. Either way, he could calculate how long the money from the work of the last twenty customers would support him here now, if they proved to be his last twenty of the season. He realized that if he let his mind focus through the numbers, he could work out what percentage of summer income the two customers in front of him now represented, should he make the sale.

In any case the men seemed to have reached an impasse in the discussion while his mind had been wandering. Eddie looked downright sulky while his friend had an expression of pinched impatience on his face. Cy turned to Eddie’s friend. He was a handsome fellow, with his cap on at a jocular, upturned angle suggesting that he was a man prone to humour and chaff.

— And what might your name be, sir?

— Richard Samuel Bender.

— Now then, this one I could do for you, Dick. I like to think a man can find the right woman in a crowd, by instinct if you will, and you went straight for her. Eddie’s loss, he missed her and she’s a beauty, but you picked her out. Better not to give her to another chap, she wouldn’t appreciate the handoff, eh? You picked her. Like you knew her. The amount of times I’ve seen that happen with a design you couldn’t count. But there’s something to it in this trade. Oh, yes. There’s something to it all right.

— Well, by God she is a little darling! It’s why I went for her.

— Oh, she is at that. I painted her up from scratch, there’s not another mermaid like her at Coney, and if there is she’s stolen off me and I’ll take it up with the thief because I wouldn’t sell her on as flash. Some of the others are standard. She’s not, she’s an original, see I’ve initialled the piece in the corner there, and if you look at her closely you’ll see my shading. I had a feeling somebody would choose her today would you believe?

— Dollar you say?

— Two dollars for two I’m afraid, Dickie. Freehand they take a little longer, and what with this rain set to clear up this afternoon I’ll be hard pressed to take less for the time. It gets busy quickly and if I’m stuck under-priced and out of time, well you understand that, being a business man right? But certainly, when Eddie’s chosen his tattoo, I’ll do the pair of you for that price, two for two. Not another freehander down here, and with that fine shading you know where that you pointed out to Eddie you’ll be wanting her done properly, I imagine. And if Eddie’s changed his mind, and there’s no crime to that, it happens that a man comes here on occasion and doesn’t fancy what he sees or gets a bit shy, and there’s no harm to it I say, well, then maybe just a dime extra, she is after all the siren that called to you.