The Railway Police and the Last Trolley Ride by Hortense Calisher Page A
Authors: Hortense Calisher
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“What-I-am.” It was nothing like my young dreams of going for a cabinboy—though it might turn out to be the most masculine thing I’ve done yet.
In the elevator, luckily self-service, I was nervy. All of me felt weak and exposed, like an invalid up on his pins again but not without a suspicion that there’d been more to the operation than supposed. I got past the doorman without difficulty.
“Taxi, Miss?” he said, but of course I declined. Ever since a certain event in both our lives he had been particularly respectful; unless my scarf slipped, he would remain so.
“Cheerio, Duggins,” I said. “And watch out for more armored cars.”
It wasn’t until I boarded the subway that I realized those words had been my last address to the first-class-with-loungeseats world I was leaving. I decided they would do.
It was just dusk when I got off in the neighborhood of my case-load, the locale I’d chosen to start out in. Honeymoons might be nothing more than unveiling, but all unveilings were not exactly—well, yes it was cowardly of me. But I couldn’t afford to start out on 42nd, a street under constant patrol for all the exhibitionists that were there already; yet in the subway, where the bashed-in people will tolerate anything, I would never be noticed at all. Later on, when I was really in practice, in that happy future when all would be ordinary again—at least for me—I planned to work my way uptown, even to hare off to the better country resorts, at weekends. Right now, I found myself not really conservative, but choosy. Which means timid. I suppose there’s no exactly right place to be reborn in, but I’ve not done so badly. This neighborhood is ruined, but lively. If the same is said of me, I shan’t be sorry.
One way to start the ruination was to get rid of all the extra money I had by me, all in packets thin enough to be slipped under a door, but when totaled, rather a sum. The teller had been horrified; banks so disapprove of cash one would think they hadn’t got any. It’s credit, of course, that makes the planet whirl smartly; cash is for scum. I was scummed to the ears with it. It wasn’t that I still kept any special brief for the poor-in-houses as people; I had long since been aware that their mechanisms of kindness or the reverse were at best about the same as anybody else’s; nor was I even any longer romantical enough to expect any change in that area in those of the viaduct, though I preferred them. But the difference between rich and poor isn’t only cash or credit; it’s scope. To my professional knowledge, windfalls were scarce down here. These were my reasons; the facts were, that even in the most decently uncovered heads, the poor can still be a damn headache.
I had a modest forty-five cases in my load—and they were all special, of course; that is, they were the ones I knew. As the evening darkened, and I toiled up one after the other of the tenement stairs as I had done so often before—one couldn’t trust the mailboxes, from which even government checks were regularly burgled—I carefully kept myself from any sly satisfactions of charity that I might have dragged with me from Tudor City, but couldn’t help being merry. I delivered to dark fanlights only, but had all their habits so closely by me that few return visits were needed. Now and then I stopped at a stall to have a slice of pizza or a knish or an ice, and almost every other one of the old hallways still had toilets—the whole evening was like an old household whose marvelously simple conveniences I was learning.
In my envelopes were bills of small denomination, in sums ranging no higher than $250, the limit I had set in order not to have the matter noised about, or to alarm the receivers, to many of whom good fortune was never anonymous or gratuitous. On most, I had written something not instructional, just enough to show good intention, and that it was for them. And on each, I tried to hit a note median
In the elevator, luckily self-service, I was nervy. All of me felt weak and exposed, like an invalid up on his pins again but not without a suspicion that there’d been more to the operation than supposed. I got past the doorman without difficulty.
“Taxi, Miss?” he said, but of course I declined. Ever since a certain event in both our lives he had been particularly respectful; unless my scarf slipped, he would remain so.
“Cheerio, Duggins,” I said. “And watch out for more armored cars.”
It wasn’t until I boarded the subway that I realized those words had been my last address to the first-class-with-loungeseats world I was leaving. I decided they would do.
It was just dusk when I got off in the neighborhood of my case-load, the locale I’d chosen to start out in. Honeymoons might be nothing more than unveiling, but all unveilings were not exactly—well, yes it was cowardly of me. But I couldn’t afford to start out on 42nd, a street under constant patrol for all the exhibitionists that were there already; yet in the subway, where the bashed-in people will tolerate anything, I would never be noticed at all. Later on, when I was really in practice, in that happy future when all would be ordinary again—at least for me—I planned to work my way uptown, even to hare off to the better country resorts, at weekends. Right now, I found myself not really conservative, but choosy. Which means timid. I suppose there’s no exactly right place to be reborn in, but I’ve not done so badly. This neighborhood is ruined, but lively. If the same is said of me, I shan’t be sorry.
One way to start the ruination was to get rid of all the extra money I had by me, all in packets thin enough to be slipped under a door, but when totaled, rather a sum. The teller had been horrified; banks so disapprove of cash one would think they hadn’t got any. It’s credit, of course, that makes the planet whirl smartly; cash is for scum. I was scummed to the ears with it. It wasn’t that I still kept any special brief for the poor-in-houses as people; I had long since been aware that their mechanisms of kindness or the reverse were at best about the same as anybody else’s; nor was I even any longer romantical enough to expect any change in that area in those of the viaduct, though I preferred them. But the difference between rich and poor isn’t only cash or credit; it’s scope. To my professional knowledge, windfalls were scarce down here. These were my reasons; the facts were, that even in the most decently uncovered heads, the poor can still be a damn headache.
I had a modest forty-five cases in my load—and they were all special, of course; that is, they were the ones I knew. As the evening darkened, and I toiled up one after the other of the tenement stairs as I had done so often before—one couldn’t trust the mailboxes, from which even government checks were regularly burgled—I carefully kept myself from any sly satisfactions of charity that I might have dragged with me from Tudor City, but couldn’t help being merry. I delivered to dark fanlights only, but had all their habits so closely by me that few return visits were needed. Now and then I stopped at a stall to have a slice of pizza or a knish or an ice, and almost every other one of the old hallways still had toilets—the whole evening was like an old household whose marvelously simple conveniences I was learning.
In my envelopes were bills of small denomination, in sums ranging no higher than $250, the limit I had set in order not to have the matter noised about, or to alarm the receivers, to many of whom good fortune was never anonymous or gratuitous. On most, I had written something not instructional, just enough to show good intention, and that it was for them. And on each, I tried to hit a note median
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