Read Online Seventh Avenue by Norman Bogner - Free Book Online Page B

was there to say? Was I supposed to warn you? A little late for that. Should I have embarrassed you by saying I saw you? Nothing for me to do, except keep my mouth shut and forget . . .”
    “Does Poppa . . . ?”
    “Don’t think so. Better if you don’t say a word. Jay know?”
    “I doubt it.” She was excited and yet disconsolate.
    “He’ll marry you, won’t he? I mean even if you weren’t . . . You’re keeping company. Everybody knows that, even Momma and Poppa. I ran into Howie the other day, and he’s heard from Poppa that you’re spoken for. Wants to meet Jay . . . usual older brother business. I think he hopes to make a touch on Jay. Oh, maybe that’s not fair to Howie, he was excited really.”
    Fully dressed, Rhoda examined herself in the mirror.
    “You really can’t tell when I’m dressed.”
    “But how long’ll that last . . . another month or so? You’ll tell Jay.”
    “Guess I’ll have to . . .”
    “Well, if he tries any tricks, Poppa’ll have to speak to him.”
    “Oh, no I wouldn’t want him to . . .”
    “Somebody’s got to fight for you. You want the same thing that happened to me to happen to you? Spoiled my life. Can’t have children. God, I hate Jay.”
    “You don’t,” Rhoda said.
    “I do and I don’t. I hate him because he gets away with murder with everybody, and at the same time I don’t hate him because he’s too good-looking to hate, and the trouble is he knows it and uses it.”
    “He’s got a good heart and he’s good to his mother.”
    “So was Dillinger.”
    They both laughed half-heartedly.
    “I’ll see him this afternoon,” Rhoda said.
    “Oh, Christ, no, this is the end,” Jay said, throwing his hands helplessly in the air. “As soon as I stand on my feet, this. Well, you can’t have it, so forget it.”
    “Oh, of course, I’ll just forget about it. Sorry I bothered you.”
    They were standing in the gutter, behind his pushcart, and the street was rank with the smell of garbage and putrefying food. Broken wooden boxes lined the curbside, and flies were conducting a hallelujah dance on spoiled fruit. Rhoda could barely stand the odor.
    “It should come to this,” Jay groaned.
    “Whose fault is it? Mine or yours . . . ? You’re supposed to be the expert.”
    “The question is, am I the one?”
    She slapped him hard across the side of the face, and he almost lost his balance.
    “Okay, I’m sorry. I can’t stand here talking. I’ll see you tonight, and we’ll work something out.” He kissed her on the cheek. “Bear with me . . . it’s such a shock that I don’t know what I’m saying.”
    At seven o’clock in the evening, she was surprised to see him pull up in front of her house in an old black Model T Ford. He did not come inside, but blew the horn twice, and she went out. She opened the car door, and he flicked his index at the seat.
    “You shy or something?” she said indignantly. “Since when don’t you come into the house? And where’d you get the car?”
    “Barney loaned it to me.” He started up the engine, and they started the drive across Brooklyn, towards the Manhattan Bridge, in silence.
    The summer evening was warm and sultry, and people sat in front of their houses on bridge chairs, gasping for a breath of air. Two-family houses and overcrowded apartment houses rolled by Rhoda’s eyes in an unchanging montage of poverty.
    “Where we going?” she asked finally.
    When they came out of the Holland Tunnel on the Jersey side, he replied. “Scranton.”
    “What for?”
    “What do you think?” he said harshly.
    “Don’t you even ask me how I feel?”
    “What’s to ask?”
    “Is this the only thing that you can think of? Nothing else?”
    He turned off at the exit marked Union City and proceeded slowly to the center of town. At a light, he fished out a piece of paper from his pocket and studied it. He drove for another five minutes, and they found themselves in front of a theater that was a riot of dancing neon