Henry Roth - Mercy of a Rude Stream - The Complete Novels

“So you tell Mama.” There was a new note of defiance in her tone.

“C’mon, kid, you forgot something in school.” He patted her butt. “Hey, Mr. McLaughlin — he wanted to show you something,” Ira teased provocatively. “Is he good-looking? Married? I bet you’re teacher’s pet.” She refused the lure.

“Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.”

“Right. Lucky guy. Okay. Here we go. In another ten minutes we’ll be walkin’ the other way.”

“You make me feel I’m doing you a favor, Ira, because I worried you so much.”

“Oh, no,” he patronized. “It’s Thanxy, it’s Thanxy. Let’s celebrate. Turkey-lurkey. Goosey-loosey.” He winked. “And here’s Foxy-loxy. Foxy-loxy with cream cheese on a bagel.”

Rewarded with a token simper, he got out his wallet, approached the ticket booth. There. He had gotten around her again. But she baffled him just the same, baffled him, once she made up her mind she wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t let on; fooled him because so unexpected: suddenly her flaccid mask became impenetrable. What kind of trouble did she mean? Well, just as he had his tricks of artful dodging, she had too: like that round-the-world stuff. What d’you know about that? Mr. McLaughlin’s big mick uncircumcised cock with her heavily rouged lips around it. She was getting way ahead of him, the little cunt. A head was right. Jesus, the way street words had ruined him. What if she takes it into her head to make money, now? Lucky she had no inkling of what he could do in Fox’s, no, what he could think of doing in Fox’s. Boy, wild — He laid a dollar in front of the half-moon opening at the bottom of the glass cage shielding the woman cashier: “Two in the mezzanine.”

“Admission’s the same as the orchestra till six o’clock.” Spoken crisply from behind the glass cubicle. Glimpse of regular, chiseled features no longer young, heavily made up, in eyeglasses, too.

“Oh, I didn’t notice. Okay. Two.” Flat brass mechanism crackled under the woman’s fingers. The tickets sprouted magically from the metal, were tendered through the opening, along with the change. His briefcase under the crook of his arm, Ira scooped up tickets and coins. He still had comfortable surplus from Edith’s fiver. Could anything plait together the mat of irony that got him here because of Mamie’s dollar that he was going to replicate with a Trojan bought out of Edith’s fiver: out of Mamie’s kitchen to Fox’s smoking balcony. He had an odd image of primitive, of African statuary — the plum-and-striped-uniformed swarthy ticket taker returned the stubs — the grotesque faces they maybe thought were beautiful. Try to map, to match, the different cultures, Edith called them, and smart-ass Marcia — with Stella hesitantly in his lee, Ira made for the balcony. Their thoughts must have converged within the dingy plaster of the spiral walled staircase.

“Isn’t she waiting for you, Ira, that lady we were going to?”

“Yeah. I shoulda called her. She made an appointment — for you.”

“So?”

Ira climbed a couple of steps, turned. “She’ll know.” Stella’s shallow blue eyes glistened up at him. These females really had their own rivalries. Or whatever you call it: their own fortes, circean premiums, something like that, niches for bitches — Jesus, the dirty valences of terms.

“What do you get out of all of this?” he asked, two steps before the balcony top.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Yeah.”

“You’d be surprised.” In the last dull streetlight of the small window of the staircase, her lips barely swelled out, her short throat barely inflated. Boy, that was a new one, all right. From the gray light of the staircase they stepped into the stale perfume of piano musical gloom of the first balcony. Disoriented a few seconds, they groped through tenebrae, through movie-house night pegged to the red exit lights, under the cigarette smoke meandering in the beam high above them that fell on the screen. The usher’s flashlight moved toward them.

“Right here, Stella.” Ira anticipated the usher’s approach, led her to the very last row, behind barrier and curtain, at the top of the balcony.

“Here?”

“Yeah. Last row.” She understood: he meant the first two seats on the aisle — the last aisle, with the heavy protective curtain behind them. Just in front of the curtain, she stood poised a moment uncertainly. And Ira after her: “You want help with your coat?”

“No. Should I take it off?”

“A minute. It’d be easier.” Ira set down his briefcase, doffed his Chesterfield. They both sat down, coats over their knees. Her pudgy face emerging out of the beam-lightened gloom looked contented, reassured, spreading her short legs to invite the course of his ardor. With his hand on her thigh, working up, they watched the screen: a few minutes of hot petting, fingering her parted muff under her green coat, till her legs stretched rigid. With graven, expectant face, her eyes followed the hand he guided to the hard-on sprung like a pale spar from his open fly. President Coolidge — grave-faced, austere countenance, the embodiment of Puritan rectitude — shook hands with Gene Tunney on the newsreel. Below the scanty audience, men scattered here and there on the balcony, here and there puffing on a cigar or cigarette.

“You want me to?”

“Go ahead.” He spoke before he even looked, and only when she lowered her curved blond lock under cloche-covered head did he turn his head away from the screen to peer athwart. Was everything all right? She was just bending down under cover of his coat. Oh, was that it? That was what it was like? She pressed hard against the hand on her pussy. That was his part, to cooperate, as she bent almost double, latent, unguessed, limber little fatso.

“Oh,” he breathed silently — could see her eyes were closed tightly shut, always open unseeing when she straddled him before, but shut now: swoggled, the word arose spontaneously—“O-o-h,” his turn this time: “O-o-h, Stella.” Hornswoggled — inner ecstacy hers, hermetic, supreme, too deep for utterance—

Light from the opened balcony door darted into the gloom of the balcony. She neither saw it nor heard the quiet sound of hinge. Her eyes popped open as he lifted her face away, covered receding stalk under coat — but before? Or not before? The three spindly, springy black youths reached the top of the balcony stairs. Oh, Jesus, they were inspecting Ira and Stella with glistening white eyeballs. And then furtively, knowingly, one another. Oh, God. Ira sat upright.

Stella too now realized what had happened. She recovered resignation first: “Should we go?”

Between fear and fury, Ira sat immobilized. “Sonofabitch luck.” Yeah. They had bounced down to the lowest tier of seats, just before the brass railing, and the tallest looked up. Then dark faces leaned together. They talked as Ira squirmed about. Where the hell was that usher? If he could hear them jabber, everybody else could. He heard a soft tread behind him, saw a flashlight beam on and off. About time.

“Get your coat. Wait a minute, my briefcase.” He saw Stella get ready, just as the uniformed usher, flashlight like a baton, began descending the aisle.

“Listen,” Ira whispered, “do what I say.”

“What? What’re you gonna do?”

“Never mind. You ready? When I tell you, follow me.” Ira could see she was dismayed. He shook his hands at her more in menace than reassurance. Fuck her. Fuck them. “Get ready to get up.” His mind seemed in uproar. He didn’t give a damn. Guardedly, he turned his head to peer over his shoulder: was everything still the same? The white, rubber-covered chain still stretched across the steps to the second balcony? Jesus, it was. And so was the white NO ENTRANCE sign still hanging from the chain — he had ducked under it a hundred times on his way to and from the projectionist’s booth on top of the stark third balcony, where the chairs had no cushions. Jesus, everything looked the same. But it would take nerve, boy, it. . would. . take. . nerve. But he wasn’t going to lose it — goddamn her, them. Red Grange carried the ball, shaking tacklers, running like a phantom through the broken field. Maybe give it up. Open his fly again, hold her twat, and jack off — and go. Play it safe. Mamie was waiting. He was about to reopen the top button of his fly. Nah. Jimmy Walker was doing the honor with visiting dignitary; not Mussolini, was it?