Read Online Marilyn the Wild by Jerome Charyn - Free Book Online

throat and brought his guts into his mouth. He figured he would have to die. But his lungs were blowing in and out. Blood rushed into his head. Coen stood up. He was thinking lollipops again.

6.

    T HE owners of the Ludlow Street restaurant were angry at Ida Stutz. They could no longer work her twelve hours a day. Ida had grown sullen. She was insisting on her rights to a genuine lunch break. The Chief hadn’t knocked on the restaurant’s cloudy window since he returned to America, and Ida meant to find him.
    She was worried about Isaac. He’d become a skinny inspector if she couldn’t fill him with mushrooms and barley soup. It wasn’t in her nature to be stingy with men. Isaac needed her flesh to rid himself of anxieties and the strain of being a father, husband, son, and brainy cop. Ida simplified his life. She knew he had a missing daughter, a shrill wife, and a mother in the hospital, poor Sophie, who took Arabs into her bed. Ida was on her way to Rivington Street, and Isaac’s rooms. She would freshen the earth in his flower pots, scrub the inside of his refrigerator, wait for him by the fire escape.
    The streets had a pernicious look to Ida. The remains of boxes from the pickle factories flew across the gutters, bumping like fingers and limbs off a doll’s body. The February wind could eat into wood, slice through the corners of the low, gutted buildings, make the old Jewish beggar on Broome Street sink his head into the middle of his overcoat, blow under the deepest layer of Ida’s skirts, and pinch the seams of her powerful bloomers. Ida was praying for snow. The dark snegu of her Russian grandmother (the snow that fell near Delancey Street was more blue than white) could cake all the gutters with rich ice, hide the debris, force the pickle factories to conduct their business away from the sidewalks.
    Ida didn’t bemoan the past. It was no matter to her that the Essex Street market sold wigs instead of farmer cheese. The Cubans had come to Essex Street along with an influx of Israeli grocers. Ida welcomed them. She battled with the Israelis over her heathen principles, her distrust of promised lands and Jews with tanks, but she battled out of love. And the Cubans adored Ida’s blintzes, although they couldn’t pronounce the word.
    Hands, rude hands, without mittens or gloves, snatched at her near Isaac’s building, pulling her into a hallway. She was surrounded by a confusion of masks. She shivered at the hot, breathing eyes on top of her. Ida recognized the lollipop gang. This was the threesome that had visited her in the restaurant, stealing blintzes, fondling her breasts, and had gone around the corner to break Sophie’s head. Ida could smell a girl’s hair under one of the masks. Growls came out of the girl. The other two were quieter.
    â€œIsaac’s pussy,” the girl said, holding Ida by the jaw. The two boys had to restrain her. “She’s harmless,” the shorter boy said.“Take a look.”
    The girl couldn’t be placated so easily. “She goes down for him. It must rub off. A homely bitch is what I say.” And the girl got up on her toes to grab hunks of Ida’s hair. “Tell sweet Isaac regards from Esther Rose.”
    â€œShut up,” the shorter boy said.
    The taller boy slouched against a row of bruised mailboxes, his body turning away from all the banter. As Ida pushed at the fingers tearing into her scalp, she felt the boy’s restless moves. He was retreating from his friends. The shorter boy, wedged close to Ida and Esther Rose, brought Ida out of Esther’s reach. “Get smart,” he said. “That man’s too piggy for you. He has shit in his ears. He made his name sucking off New York. Now the city’s taking revenge.”
    â€œLet’s fuck her,” Esther rasped. “Let’s fuck her under her fat clothes … it’ll be like throwing harpoons in a whale.