Saul Bellow - Collected Stories

It was now, I reckoned, about five o’clock. Philip had no fixed schedule. He didn’t hang around the office on the off chance that somebody might turn up with a toothache. After his last appointment he locked up and left. He didn’t necessarily set out for home; he was not too keen to return to the house. If I wanted to catch him I’d have to run. In boots, dress, tarn, and jacket, I made my way out of the apartment. Nobody took the slightest interest in me. More people (Philip would have called them transients) had crowded in—it was even likely that the man who had snatched up my clothes in the alley had returned, was among them. The heat in the staircase now was stifling, and the wallpaper smelled scorched, as if it were on the point of catching fire. In the street I was struck by a north wind straight from the Pole, and the dress and sateen jacket counted for nothing. I was running, though, and had no time to feel it.

Philip would say, “Who was this floozy? Where did she pick you up?” Philip was unexcitable, always mild, amused by me. Anna would badger him with the example of her ambitious brothers—they hustled, they read books. You coulant fault Philip for being pleased. I anticipated what he’d say—“Did you get in— Then at least you’re not going to catch the clap.” I depended on Philip now, not I had nothing, not even seven cents for carfare. I could be certain, however, that he wouldn’t moralize at me, he’d set about dressing me, he’d scrounge a sweater among his neighborhood acquaintances or take me to the Salvation Army shop on Broadway if that was still open. He’d go about this in his slow-moving, thick-necked, deliberate way. Not even dancing would speed him up; he spaced out the music to suit him when he did the fox-trot and pressed his cheek to Anna’s. He wore a long, calm grin. My private term for this particular expression was Pussy-Veleerum. I saw Philip as fat but strong, strong but cozy, purring but inserting a joking comment. He gave a little suck at the corner of the mouth when he was about to take a swipe at you, and it was then that he was Pussy-Veleerum. A name it never occurred to me to speak aloud.

I sprinted past the windows of the fruit store, the delicatessen, the tailor’s shop. I could count on help from Philip. My father, however, was an intolerant, hasty man. Slighter than his sons, handsome, with muscles of white marble (so they seemed to me), laying down the law. It would put him in a rage to see me like this. And it was true that I had failed to consider: my mother dying, the ground frozen, a funeral coming, the dug grave, the packet of sand from the Holy Land to be scattered on the shroud. If I were to turn up in this filthy dress, the old man, breaking under his burdens, would come down on me in a blind, Old Testament rage. I never thought of this as cruelty but as archaic right everlasting. Even Albert, who was already a Loop lawyer, had to put up with the old man’s blows—outraged, his eyes swollen and maddened, but he took it. It never seemed to any of us that my father was cruel. We had gone over the limit, and we were punished.

There were no lights in Philip’s D.D.S. office. When I jumped up the stairs, the door with its blank starred glass was locked. Frosted panes were still rare. What we had was this star-marred product for toilets and other private windows. Marchek—whom nowadays we could call a voyeur—was also, angrily, gone. I had screwed up his experiment. I tried the doors, thinking that I could spend the night on the leather examining table where the beautiful nude had lain. From the office I could also make telephone calls. I did have a few friends, although there were none who might help me. I wouldn’t have known how to explain my predicament to them. They’d think I was putting them on, that it was a practical joke—“This is Louie. A whore robbed me of my clothes and I’m stuck on the North Side without carfare. I’m wearing a dress. I lost my house keys. I can’t get home.”

I ran down to the drugstore to look for Philip there. He sometimes played five or six hands of poker in the druggist’s back room, trying his luck before getting on the streetcar. I knew Kiyar, the druggist, by sight. He had no recollection of me—why should he have? He said, “What can I do for you, young lady?”

Did he really take me for a girl, or a tramp off the srreet, or a Gypsy from one of the storefront fortune-teller camps? Those were now all over town. But not even a Gypsy would wear this blue sateen quilted boudoir jacket instead of a coat.

“I wonder, is Phil Haddis the dentist in the back?”

“What do you want with Dr. Haddis—have you got a toothache, or what?”

“I need to see him.”

The druggist was a compact little guy, and his full round bald head was painfully sensitive looking. In its sensitivity it could pick up any degree of disturbance, I thought. Yet there was a canny glitter coming through his specs, and Kiyar had the mark of a man whose mind never would change once he had made it up. Oddly enough, he had a small mouth, baby’s lips. He had been on the street—how long? Forty years? In forty years you’ve seen it all and nobody can tell you a single thing.

“Did Dr. Haddis have an appointment with you? Are you a patient?”

He knew this was a private connection. I was no patient. “No. But if I was out here he’d want to know it. Can I talk to him one minute?”

“He isn’t here.”

Kiyar had walked behind the grille of the prescription counter. I mustn’t lose him. If he went, what would I do next? I said, “This is important, Mr. Kiyar.” He waited for me to declare myself. I wasn’t about to embarrass Philip by setting off rumors. Kiyar said nothing. He may have been waiting for me to speak up. Declare myself. I assume he took pride in running a tight operation, giving nothing away. To cut through to the man I said, “I’m in a spot. I left Dr. Haddis a note before, but when I came back I missed him.”

At once I recognized my mistake. Druggists were always being appealed to. All those pills, remedy bottles, bright lights, medicine ads, drew wandering screwballs and moochers. They all said they were in bad trouble.

“You can go to the Foster Avenue station.”

“The police, you mean.”

I had thought of that too. I could always tell them my hard-luck story and they’d keep me until they checked it out and someone would come to fetch me. That would probably be Albert. Albert would love that. He’d say to me, “Well, aren’t you the horny little bastard.” He’d play up to the cops too, and amuse them.

“I’d freeze before I got to Foster Avenue” was my answer to Kiyar.

“There’s always the squad car.”

“Well, if Phil Haddis isn’t in the back maybe he’s still in the neighborhood. He doesn’t always go straight home.”

“Sometimes he goes over to the fights at Johnny Coulons. It’s a little early for that. You could try the speakeasy down the street, on Kenmore. It’s an English basement, side entrance. You’ll see a light by the fence. The guy at the slot is called Moose.”

He didn’t offer so much as a dime from his till. If I had said that I was in a scrape and that Phil was my sister’s husband he’d probably have given me carfare. But I hadn’t confessed, and there was a penalty for that.

Going out, I crossed my arms over the bed jacket and opened the door with my shoulder. I might as well have been wearing nothing at all. The wind cut at my legs, and I ran. Luckily I didn’t have far to go. The iron pipe with the bulb at the end of it was halfway down the block. I saw it as soon as I crossed the street. These illegal drinking parlors were easy to find; they were meant to be. The steps were cement, four or five of them bringing me down to the door. The slot came open even before I knocked, and instead of the doorkeeper’s eyes, I saw his teeth.