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mallorys_cameraCHAPTER 4
(iv)
September turned into October. October turned into November.
Marder took off for Jamaica. The weeds in the garden of the Montague Street flat died; the birds flew some place else. A cold wind blew, and hard snowflakes fell on the city. They smelled like ashes.
Then it was December. Always my least favorite part of the year. December was a kind of dark time tunnel through which, if I closed my eyes and held my breath, I might be able to slide through fast without injuring myself.
Men had some idea that they ought to spend Christmas with their families. If they didn’t have families, they had some idea they ought to barricade themselves in a solitary room and drink.
After December, came January. Men made resolutions: I will live a better life. The ones that could stand to do it took a long hard look at themselves in the mirror, though often the only mirror that was close at hand was a shaving mirror, and the reflection they caught of themselves there—desperate eyes above a threadbare union suit—made their hands shake so hard that they cut themselves when they actually used it for shaving. In the week following New Years, New York City was a veritable sea of men with dazed eyes and slashed faces.
Of course, this life was the best one they were ever likely to get. But until they made peace with that fact, they were unlikely to show up at the Orpheum.
“Maybe now the place closes,” Nestor told me, shrugging.
That same night, Dr. Dao turned up with a couple of Chinese girls in tow.
From time to time it had occurred to me that Dr. Dao might be the true owner of the Orpheum, but whenever I tried to broach the subject with him, his English became worst than ever and he evinced a sudden interest in my thymus gland: “My English! Not good. You need Huáng Qí? I give you special price.”
They were quite plain with their flat, black, oily hair and broad faces, but Dr. Dao’s girls could trip the light fantastic like nobody’s business. You’d have thought Ginger Rogers took foxtrot lessons from them.
It didn’t matter what the Chinese girls looked like anyway. They had novelty on their side. The few male stragglers in whom the Orpheum habit was too embedded to die pounced on them. This embittered Florrie and Hannah.
“Their twats are horizontal, you know,” said Hannah.
“Jesus,” I said in disgust.
“It’s a scientific fact! And the reason they’re yellow is because they eat dogs.”
I had been trying to teach Florrie and Hannah how to play bridge with my old Tarok deck so we’d have something to do while we sat at the faded velvet banquette and listened to the steam piano play Yes! We Have No Bananas. But they were too stupid to understand the difference between a trump and a trick. So, instead I told their fortunes.
To Hannah, the Tarok assigned a placid if unremarkable future. Ten of Hearts, Five of Clubs: She would meet a man, and one day she and that man would have offspring. They’d be doorstops together in some upstate wasteland far away from the city! And that would pass for happiness.
What the cards foresaw for Florrie, though. That was disturbing.
There was the Fool card. What they call L’excuse in French and Sküs in German. I knew the French and German because Papa was very particular about the naming of cards.
And the Hanged Man. Le Pendu in French; Il Traditore in Italian. The legend was that the man dangling from the tree was Judas Iscariot, and that the little thing he clutched in his hand was the goatskin bag with its 30 pieces of silver.
As a Jew, of course, I’ve always been inclined to view Judas with a certain amount of sympathy, but mine is not the conventional view. Nor the view of the cards.
“What’s gonna happen to me? What’s gonna happen to me?” bubbled Florrie, giddy as a little girl.
Horrible things had already happened. And the card was reversed. Horrible things would happen again.
I didn’t know why I should care, but I did. So, I narrowed my eyes, pretended to peer. “You’ll marry your own true love. He’ll die and leave you a ton of money, and then you can live however you please,” I said.
Florrie squealed.
One of the Chinese girls, on her way from the bathroom, turned her head toward the cards spread across the cracked red leather and laughed.
“Do you mind?” I asked.
“She believes in that shit. The least you could do is be honest with her.” The girl’s voice was pure Coney Island.
“Dry up,” Florrie said. “You smell like fish. What the fuck do you know?”
“What business is it of yours?” I said.
“It’s not,” she said. She made her voice go singsong. “We use coins. Very accurate! We see far into future! We give you true love’s middle name!” Then she smiled infuriatingly at me. “The trick is to keep them coming back, right?”
(iv)
September turned into October. October turned into November.
Marder took off for Jamaica. The weeds in the garden of the Montague Street flat died; the birds flew some place else. A cold wind blew, and hard snowflakes fell on the city. They smelled like ashes.
Then it was December. Always my least favorite part of the year. December was a kind of dark time tunnel through which, if I closed my eyes and held my breath, I might be able to slide through fast without injuring myself.
Men had some idea that they ought to spend Christmas with their families. If they didn’t have families, they had some idea they ought to barricade themselves in a solitary room and drink.
After December, came January. Men made resolutions: I will live a better life. The ones that could stand to do it took a long hard look at themselves in the mirror, though often the only mirror that was close at hand was a shaving mirror, and the reflection they caught of themselves there—desperate eyes above a threadbare union suit—made their hands shake so hard that they cut themselves when they actually used it for shaving. In the week following New Years, New York City was a veritable sea of men with dazed eyes and slashed faces.
Of course, this life was the best one they were ever likely to get. But until they made peace with that fact, they were unlikely to show up at the Orpheum.
“Maybe now the place closes,” Nestor told me, shrugging.
That same night, Dr. Dao turned up with a couple of Chinese girls in tow.
From time to time it had occurred to me that Dr. Dao might be the true owner of the Orpheum, but whenever I tried to broach the subject with him, his English became worst than ever and he evinced a sudden interest in my thymus gland: “My English! Not good. You need Huáng Qí? I give you special price.”
They were quite plain with their flat, black, oily hair and broad faces, but Dr. Dao’s girls could trip the light fantastic like nobody’s business. You’d have thought Ginger Rogers took foxtrot lessons from them.
It didn’t matter what the Chinese girls looked like anyway. They had novelty on their side. The few male stragglers in whom the Orpheum habit was too embedded to die pounced on them. This embittered Florrie and Hannah.
“Their twats are horizontal, you know,” said Hannah.
“Jesus,” I said in disgust.
“It’s a scientific fact! And the reason they’re yellow is because they eat dogs.”
I had been trying to teach Florrie and Hannah how to play bridge with my old Tarok deck so we’d have something to do while we sat at the faded velvet banquette and listened to the steam piano play Yes! We Have No Bananas. But they were too stupid to understand the difference between a trump and a trick. So, instead I told their fortunes.
To Hannah, the Tarok assigned a placid if unremarkable future. Ten of Hearts, Five of Clubs: She would meet a man, and one day she and that man would have offspring. They’d be doorstops together in some upstate wasteland far away from the city! And that would pass for happiness.
What the cards foresaw for Florrie, though. That was disturbing.
There was the Fool card. What they call L’excuse in French and Sküs in German. I knew the French and German because Papa was very particular about the naming of cards.
And the Hanged Man. Le Pendu in French; Il Traditore in Italian. The legend was that the man dangling from the tree was Judas Iscariot, and that the little thing he clutched in his hand was the goatskin bag with its 30 pieces of silver.
As a Jew, of course, I’ve always been inclined to view Judas with a certain amount of sympathy, but mine is not the conventional view. Nor the view of the cards.
“What’s gonna happen to me? What’s gonna happen to me?” bubbled Florrie, giddy as a little girl.
Horrible things had already happened. And the card was reversed. Horrible things would happen again.
I didn’t know why I should care, but I did. So, I narrowed my eyes, pretended to peer. “You’ll marry your own true love. He’ll die and leave you a ton of money, and then you can live however you please,” I said.
Florrie squealed.
One of the Chinese girls, on her way from the bathroom, turned her head toward the cards spread across the cracked red leather and laughed.
“Do you mind?” I asked.
“She believes in that shit. The least you could do is be honest with her.” The girl’s voice was pure Coney Island.
“Dry up,” Florrie said. “You smell like fish. What the fuck do you know?”
“What business is it of yours?” I said.
“It’s not,” she said. She made her voice go singsong. “We use coins. Very accurate! We see far into future! We give you true love’s middle name!” Then she smiled infuriatingly at me. “The trick is to keep them coming back, right?”
