alive, wasn’t she?
I didn’t like the state of my mind and stared out the window to bring into myself the structure of the city, the solidity of the dark buildings, and the colors of traffic lights reflected in the black shining street. The city has always given me assurances, whenever I have asked for them. I recalled to myself my own imperial intentions. If I could not trust my own impulses to direct me, I was not in Mr. Schultz’s class. He operated without sufficient thought and so must I. We were directed beings, and to the extent that I trusted myself I should trust him. What I was in was a thrilling state of three-dimensional danger, I was in danger of myself, and in danger of my mentor, and in danger of what he was in danger of, which was a business life of murdering danger; and out beyond all that were the cops. Four dimensions. I cracked a window and smelled the fresh night air and relaxed.
The cars were heading uptown. We went along Fourth Avenue, and then through the tunnel which brought us up on the ramp that curved around Grand Central Terminal and then we rolled onto Park Avenue, the real Park Avenue, going past the new Waldorf-Astoria Towers, with its famous Peacock Alley and its equally famous host the irrepressible Oscar, as I knew from my reading of the Mirror , an invaluable source of information; and then we turned left on Fifty-ninth Street and bumped along behind a streetcar whose bell sounded in my ears like the gong at a prizefight, and then we swerved and pulled up to the curb at the corner of Central Park in the shadow of General Tecumseh Sherman on his horse slogging up there through the rain, which fell also from the fountain of tiered basins across the plaza into the shallow pool he would have to have the horse step through if he was going to get the woman with the basket of fruit standing up there on top of everything, assuming it was a piece of fruit he wanted. I have never liked public monuments, they are ghostly foreign things in the city of New York, quite beside the point, if not actually stupid lies, and for all you can say about the Bronx you won’t find generals on rearing horses or damescarrying baskets of fruit or soldiers standing in aesthetic hills of dying comrades and lifting their arms and holding their rifles up to the sky. To my astonishment the door opened and Mr. Schultz was standing there. “Okay, kid,” he said and in he reached and yanked me by the arm and all at once I was standing there in Grand Army Plaza being rained on and thinking, in this world of water, that that was it for the phantom wizard juggler of the rackets, I would be found face down in a mud puddle under a bush in Central Park, and if dying depth was a measure of achievement I was worth whatever was of value to some dog snout rooting me up from an inch of water and licking the mud off my dead eyes. But he said walking me quickly to the first car: “Take the lady to her apartment. She is not to make any phone calls under no circumstances, although I don’t think she will try. She will pack some things. You are to wait with her until I get back. Not long. Just stay with her and someone will call you on the house phone to bring her down. You got it?”
I nodded I did. We came up to his car, and though water was dripping off his hat brim, he only now reached in to the back seat and withdrew a black umbrella and after he opened it he bent into the car and brought her out and handed me the girl and the umbrella; it was a lovely moment, the three of us under the one umbrella, and she was looking at him with some slight and cryptic smile and he was gently stroking her cheek and smiling at her; then he dove into the car and was still pulling the door closed as it gunned away from the sidewalk with a screech of tires, the second car close behind.
We stood in a huge blowing rainstorm. It occurred to me I had no idea where Miss Lola maintained her apartment. For some reason I assumed everything was up to
I didn’t like the state of my mind and stared out the window to bring into myself the structure of the city, the solidity of the dark buildings, and the colors of traffic lights reflected in the black shining street. The city has always given me assurances, whenever I have asked for them. I recalled to myself my own imperial intentions. If I could not trust my own impulses to direct me, I was not in Mr. Schultz’s class. He operated without sufficient thought and so must I. We were directed beings, and to the extent that I trusted myself I should trust him. What I was in was a thrilling state of three-dimensional danger, I was in danger of myself, and in danger of my mentor, and in danger of what he was in danger of, which was a business life of murdering danger; and out beyond all that were the cops. Four dimensions. I cracked a window and smelled the fresh night air and relaxed.
The cars were heading uptown. We went along Fourth Avenue, and then through the tunnel which brought us up on the ramp that curved around Grand Central Terminal and then we rolled onto Park Avenue, the real Park Avenue, going past the new Waldorf-Astoria Towers, with its famous Peacock Alley and its equally famous host the irrepressible Oscar, as I knew from my reading of the Mirror , an invaluable source of information; and then we turned left on Fifty-ninth Street and bumped along behind a streetcar whose bell sounded in my ears like the gong at a prizefight, and then we swerved and pulled up to the curb at the corner of Central Park in the shadow of General Tecumseh Sherman on his horse slogging up there through the rain, which fell also from the fountain of tiered basins across the plaza into the shallow pool he would have to have the horse step through if he was going to get the woman with the basket of fruit standing up there on top of everything, assuming it was a piece of fruit he wanted. I have never liked public monuments, they are ghostly foreign things in the city of New York, quite beside the point, if not actually stupid lies, and for all you can say about the Bronx you won’t find generals on rearing horses or damescarrying baskets of fruit or soldiers standing in aesthetic hills of dying comrades and lifting their arms and holding their rifles up to the sky. To my astonishment the door opened and Mr. Schultz was standing there. “Okay, kid,” he said and in he reached and yanked me by the arm and all at once I was standing there in Grand Army Plaza being rained on and thinking, in this world of water, that that was it for the phantom wizard juggler of the rackets, I would be found face down in a mud puddle under a bush in Central Park, and if dying depth was a measure of achievement I was worth whatever was of value to some dog snout rooting me up from an inch of water and licking the mud off my dead eyes. But he said walking me quickly to the first car: “Take the lady to her apartment. She is not to make any phone calls under no circumstances, although I don’t think she will try. She will pack some things. You are to wait with her until I get back. Not long. Just stay with her and someone will call you on the house phone to bring her down. You got it?”
I nodded I did. We came up to his car, and though water was dripping off his hat brim, he only now reached in to the back seat and withdrew a black umbrella and after he opened it he bent into the car and brought her out and handed me the girl and the umbrella; it was a lovely moment, the three of us under the one umbrella, and she was looking at him with some slight and cryptic smile and he was gently stroking her cheek and smiling at her; then he dove into the car and was still pulling the door closed as it gunned away from the sidewalk with a screech of tires, the second car close behind.
We stood in a huge blowing rainstorm. It occurred to me I had no idea where Miss Lola maintained her apartment. For some reason I assumed everything was up to
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