In the Night Café by Joyce Johnson Page A

particular legend, the circumstances that had miraculously brought you to me, which I was going to learn by heart.
    I had once even dared myself, End it, so I thought I knew all about that, too. It was a game I’d played the night I learned Arnie Raff had left me—Chianti and aspirin, I wasn’t a driver. I lay down on my bed and started swallowing the little tablets, six or seven of them. But suddenly I realized, I don’t mean this, and it seemed quite humiliating to want to die over Arnie Raff.
    But I didn’t tell you about any of this. I didn’t say a word about Arnie, the original occupant of the apartment. My real history had after all begun that moment you spoke to me at Annabel’s party. I asked you, did you happen to remember walking past a place called Rappaport’s on Saturday night?
    You were so surprised. “How do you know that?”
    â€œI was in there. I saw you. Where were you going?”
    You said, “I was looking for you, kiddo.”
    There was a roll of canvas that had been left downtown and a suitcase and finally it seemed appropriate to get them. By that time it was getting dark outside again. We walked down to Duane Street along Broadway. I remember us radiating light at each other, passing all the decaying iron-columned buildings, the blue-lit upstairs factories where Puerto Rican women sat behind whirring spindles of thread.
    Tom’s friend who had the canvas and the suitcase lived in a studio behind a rag shop that was going out of business. We had to ring his phone twice from the street, so he’d know he wasn’t being raided by building inspectors. He opened the door to let us in. He was a small wiry man with a bristling, flaming red moustache. I’d seen him around the Cedar. A long white scar ran straight from his forehead to a bald spot on top of his head. Tom said very abruptly, “This is Joanna. We’re going to be living together from now on.” It was the first time I heard it as a fact to be communicated to outsiders.
    Since Tom had just been going uptown for a beer the last time Leon Renfro had seen him, Leon didn’t know what to think. He took off his glasses and wiped them and said, “Well… . ” Then he slapped Tom on the shoulder. “Didn’t I tell you you’d luck out?”
    â€œThere’s all kinds of luck!” Tom said, and I saw him turn fierce in an instant. I think he wanted Leon to know right away that the luck was love.
    â€œSure, sure,” Leon said. “Why not?” But he still must have taken a pragmatic view of the situation. Most people would have, I guess.
    He did insist on toasting us, though. He poured the remains of some vodka into a paper cup, and we each took a sip from it as Tom collected his things.
    Leon asked me what kind of place I had and where it was and if I had a shower. “You wouldn’t mind if I came around sometime to use it? I always bring my own soap and towel.”
    I admired people like Leon who had stratagems for everything, who even seemed to relish poverty because it made things hard, kept them alert to possibilities. What I hated about being poor was that it took up so much time, you always had to think about it. If you needed practical advice, Leon was definitely the person to go to. He knew how to vacuum electric meters to make them run backwards. He kept his potbelly stove going with big wooden crates he dragged in from the street. He could tell you what days of the week mattresses got thrown out in classy neighborhoods or where the crashable parties were in the penthouses of collectors. Leon got real enjoyment out of the rich but was down on the bourgeoisie. When he wanted to step out, he’d put on his tuxedo from the Goodwill and take a girl friend uptown to the Hotel Pierre or the Plaza. They’d crash some big wedding reception, where they’d hurriedly consume dozens of canapés, passing themselves off as distant