William Kennedy - Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes

“That’s a honey of an outlook. Beautiful is what I say.” He could see her thigh above the garter. He raised his glass. “Here’s to it and from it,” he said.

“You like to see me this way?”

“I haven’t seen this kind of contention.”

“Oh, sure you have. Peg had great legs. She was a beauty. She got a little heavy at the end but she didn’t lose it in her legs. Didn’t Peg sit like this for you?” Vivian brought her foot back to the floor and her slip rode upward, putting both thighs on display.

“Peg let you know where you stood,” George said, “where you could pile up her questions. How’s it going? What kind of pork chops do you like? Pinochle or poker? Peg knew all the detours on the way to anyplace you wanted to swim, or shoot the chute, or rent a boat.”

“I like the pork chops,” Vivian said.

“Some things are miraculous before you know where they are.” He gestured at her with open palm.

“Ed loved to sit where you’re sitting and I’d do these things for him.” She pushed her robe off the right shoulder, then off the left. “I went with Ed twenty-two years. He gave me an engagement ring when Eisenhower was elected. We weren’t like married people. I wasn’t cut out to be the little wifey. I don‘t know what I was cut out to be, Georgie. Ed and I were together four or five nights a week, we‘d go to the movies, have dinner, then we’d come back here. He’d get me to take off this, then that. He liked me to make the first move and he loved me to talk. ‘Say it, Viv, talk about it,’ he’d say. And I’d say to him, ‘You mean my vadge?’ ‘Yes,’ he’d say, ‘your vadge.’ And I’d tell him about my vadge and how it felt and he’d tell me what it looked like to him and how he loved it. We could go on for quite a while until the words did what they were supposed to do and then we’d do it.”

“Vadge,” George said.

“That’s my word,” Vivian said. “I invented it for Eddie. I never say it anymore. I haven’t said it in eight years. I guess that means I want you to look at me the way Eddie used to.”

George stood and took off his coat and loosened his tie. He raised his highball in a toast: “Here’s to it and from it and to it again. When you get to it do it for you may never get the chance to get to it to do it again.” He drained the highball and set it on a table. He sat down and stared at Vivian’s center.

“That’s what Ed used to do,” she said.

George hummed a few notes. Let me.

“Forty years in the post office and then he died. I never figured it out. Still haven’t. I should’ve grabbed you when I had a chance.”

“Why would you grab me?”

“We went out twice. I met you down at Kinderhook Lake, Electric Park by the Ferris wheel. We danced a few dances at the pavilion and then we came back to Albany on the trolley. A week later you took me dancing out to Snyder’s Lake in your convertible. You were with a bunch of sassy fellows, with mouths on them. You weren’t that way but I thought you might be, so I didn’t encourage you. And then Peg took you out of circulation.”

“Electric Park only kept the lights on till ten, and then the hicks went to sleep. The last trolley was at ten-fifteen. Thirty-five minutes to Albany, a grand ride, even in the dark.”

“Sometimes romance went on in the back of the trolley.” She shifted her body forward, closer to George. “You’re a lovely man, Georgie.”

He put his hand on her stocking so that his forefinger touched the flesh of her thigh. “Let me call you sweetheart,” he said.

“You can call me that.”

And he sang:

“Let me hear you whisper that you love me too.”

“Love,” whispered Vivian. “Where do they keep it?”

“Will you dance with me, Vivian is it?”

“I surely will, Georgie.” She stood and tossed her robe onto a chair.

“Keep the love-light glowing in your eyes so true.”

George put his right arm around her waist as he sang. He put one finger under the straps of her slip and her bra and moved them downward until her left breast was free. He kissed it.

“Oh, George, it’s so nice to have you here tonight.”

“Let me call you sweetheart. .”

As he sang he tried to move her to the waltz tempo, but the crowded room allowed for no pivoting and so he waltzed her in place, his feet moving one-two-three, with hers doing the same, but he held her so they did not move forward, just one-two-three, and again, in place, right here is just fine, and it’s getting better, and he ended the song:

“I’m in love with you.”

He stopped moving and kissed Vivian, a long kiss. There’s something about a kiss that you can’t get anyplace else.

“Vadge, is that it?”

“That’s it, Georgie. You got it.”

Quinn the Samaritan parked by the Emergency entrance to Memorial Hospital and went inside for a stretcher. An orderly wheeled one to the door and with Matt’s help lifted Tremont out of Quinn’s backseat onto it. Medical expertise would now banish all ’ritises from the peripheries of Tremont, the assassin-in-progress. Drug that man. Be kind and send him back into the world painless.

“You’re back,” the orderly said to Tremont.

“You know Tremont?”

“He’s a regular,” the orderly said.

“He’s sick as hell,” Quinn said.

The orderly nodded and wheeled Tremont inside. Matt followed.

“You ain’t leavin’,” Tremont said.

“I’ll be back. Matt’ll be with you.” Matt would stay with Tremont until he was safe in a room. Keep in touch through the city desk, Quinn told Matt. We’ll reconnect after my interview.

“Who you interviewing?” Matt asked.

“The Mayor.”

“Very timely. Tell him not to accept rides from strangers.”

Markson, the city editor, had cigarettes going in two ashtrays at the city desk where he was whittling away at a pile of copy with his pencil. In shirtsleeves, tie loose, loafers, no socks, pot belly gaining on him, Markson looked up as Quinn crossed the city room. Ten reporters were typing their stories, the copy desk editing them in full frenzy as the Times Union moved toward deadline for the first edition.

“The Mayor,” Markson said, “did you nail him?”

“I didn’t call him yet. Frankly I don’t think he’ll talk to me. I’m a public enemy, but that’s not the point.” Inhaling Markson’s twin columns of smoke Quinn reached over to stub out one cigarette but Markson slapped his hand.

“I need all the smoke I can get,” he said. “I called the Mayor myself. He will see you. If he’s not in his office he’ll be at the Fort Orange Club. He’ll interrupt his cocktail hour for you. I told him what a great job he and the police were doing to keep down tension in the city and that we wanted to help and that you’re doing the story. I didn’t ask him about Bobby. You do that. You interpret what he says, even if it’s no comment. He’ll probably praise the hell out of him.”

“Patsy McCall once said Bobby was a stiff and a louse. Alex didn’t contradict him.”

“No need to resurrect that one. Let’s not make Alex sound like an assassin, all right?”

“How about an assassin’s target?”

And as Quinn sketched the assassination scheme Markson dropped his pencil and pushed his chair away from the desk. Quinn motioned him toward the teletype cubicle where the clacking covered their voices, and told him Tremont’s tale of Zuki, using no names, not Tremont, not Zuki, no mention of the Brothers, which was Markson’s first question: Are they in on it?