Somehow we always managed to borrow the rent money in time. Dr. Kronski sometimes came to the rescue, and so did Curley. But it was a tussle. When we were really desperate we would walk to my parent’s house—a good hour’s walk—and stay until we had filled our bellies. Often Mona fell asleep on the couch immediately after dinner. I would do my utmost to keep up a running conversation, praying to God that Mona wouldn’t go on sleeping until the last horn.
These post-prandial conversations were sheer agony. I tried desperately to talk of everything but my work. Inevitably, however, there would come the moment when either my father or my mother would ask—How is the writing going? Have you sold anything more since we saw you last? And I would lie shamefacedly: Why yes, I sold two more recently. It’s going fine, really. Then would come a look of joy and astonishment and they would ask simultaneously: To which magazines did you sell them? And I would give the names at random. We’ll be watching for them, Henry. When do you think they will appear? (Nine months later they would remind me that they were still on the look-out for those stories I said I had sold to this and that magazine.)
Towards the end of the evening, my mother, as if to say Let’s get down to earth! would ask me solemnly if I didn’t think it would be wiser to drop the writing and look for a job. That was such a wonderful position you had with … How could you ever have given it up? It takes years to become a good writer—and maybe you will never succeed at it. And so on and so forth. I used to weep for her. The old man, on the other hand, always pretended to believe that I would come through with flying colors.
He fervently hoped so, that I was certain of. ‘.Give him time, give him time! he would say. To which my mother would reply—But how will they live in the meantime? Then it was my cue. Don’t worry, mother, I know how to get along. I’ve got brains, you know that. You don’t think we’re going to starve, do you? Just the same, my mother thought, and she would repeat it over and over, as if to herself, that it would really be wiser to take a job and do the writing on the side. Well, they don’t look as though they were starving, do they? This was the old man’s way of telling me that, if we really were starving, all I had to do was to call on him at the tailor shop and he’d lend me what he could. I understood and he understood. I would thank him silently and he would acknowledge my thanks silently. Of course I never called on him. Not for money. Now and then, out of a clear sky, I would drop in on him just to cheer him up. Even when he knew I was lying—I told him outrageous cock-and-bull stories—he never let on. Glad to hear it, son, he’d say. Great! You’ll be a best seller yet, I’m sure of it. Sometimes, on leaving him, I would be in tears. I wanted so much to help him. There he sat in the back of the shop, a sort of collapsed wreck, his business shot to hell, no hopes whatever, and still acting cheerful, still talking optimistically. Perhaps he hadn’t seen a customer for several months, but still a boss tailor. The frightful irony of it! Yes, I would say to myself, walking down the street, the first story I sell I’m going to hand him a few greenbacks. Whereupon I myself would wax optimistic, persuaded by some crazy logic that some editor would take a fancy to me and write out a check, in advance, for five hundred or a thousand dollars. By the time I reached home, however, I’d be willing to settle for a five-spot. I’d settle for anything, in fact, that meant another meal, or more postage stamps, or just shoe laces.
Any mail today? That was always my cry on entering. If there were fat envelopes waiting for me I knew it was my manuscripts coming home to roost. If they were thin envelopes it meant rejection slips, with a request to forward postage for the return of the scripts. Or else it was bills. Or a letter from the lawyer, addressed to some ancient address and forwarded to me in miraculous fashion.
The back alimony was piling up. I would never be able to foot the bill, never. It looked more than ever certain that I would end my days in Raymond Street jail.
Something will turn up, you’ll see. Whenever anything did turn up it was always by her contrivance. It was Mona who ran into the editor of Scurrilous Stories, and got a commission to write a half-dozen stories for them. Just like that. I wrote two, under her name, with great effort, with heroic effort really; then I got the bright idea to look up their old files, take their own published stories, change the names of the characters, the beginnings and endings, and serve them up rehashed. It not only worked—they were enthusiastic about these forgeries.
Naturally, since they had already savoured the stew. But I soon grew weary of making potpourris. Just so much time wasted, it seemed to me. Tell them to go to hell, I said one day. She did. But the kick-back was wholly unanticipated. From being our editor, his nibs now became a heavy lover. We got fives times the money we used to get for the damned stories. What he got I don’t know. To believe Mona, all he demanded was a half hour of her time in a public place, usually a tea room. Fantastic! More fantastic still was this—he confessed one day that he was still a virgin. (At the age of 49!) What he omitted to say was that he was also a pervert. The subscribers to the bloody magazine, we learned, included a respectable number of perverted souls—ministers, rabbis, doctors, lawyers, teachers, reformers, congressmen, all sorts of people whom one would never suspect of being interested in such trash. The vice crusaders were undoubtedly the most avid of their readers.
As a reaction to this phoney slush I wrote a story about a killer. I wrote it as if I had known the man intimately, but the truth is I had gleaned all the facts from little Curley who had spent a night in Central Park with this Butch or whatever he was called. The night Curley told me the story I had one of those bad dreams in which you are pursued endlessly and relentlessly, escaping certain death only by coming awake.
What interested me about this Butch was the discipline he imposed on himself in plotting his holdups. To plot a job accurately required the combined powers of a mathematician and a yogin.
There he was, right in Central Park, and the whole nation searching high and low for him. Telling his story, like a fool, to a young lad like Curley. Even divulging a few sensational aspects of the job he was then plotting.
He might as well have stood on the corner of Times Square as prowl about Central Park late at night.
A reward of fifty thousand dollars was coming to the man who got him, dead or alive.
According to Curley, the man had locked himself in his room for weeks; he had spent hours upon hours lying on the bed with a bandage over his eyes, rehearsing in detail every step, every move that was to be made. Everything had been thought out thoroughly, even the most trifling details. But, like an author or a composer, he would not undertake the execution of his plans until they were perfect. He not only took into account all possibilities of error and accident, but like an engineer, he allowed a margin of safety to meet unexpected stress and strain. He might be dead certain himself, he might have tested the ability and the loyalty of his confederates, but in the end he could count only on himself, on his own brains, his own foresight. He was alone against thousands. Not only was every copper in the country on the alert, but so were the civilians throughout the land. One careless little move and the jig was up. Of course he never intended to let himself be caught alive. He would shoot it out. But there were his pals—he couldn’t let them down.
Perhaps, when he strolled out to get a breath of air that evening, he was so chock full of ideas, so certain that nothing could go amiss, that he simply couldn’t contain himself any longer. He would collar the first comer and spill the beans, trusting to the fact that his victim would be reduced to such a state of terror that he would be paralyzed. Perhaps he enjoyed the thought of brushing elbows with the guardians of the law, asking them for a light, maybe, or for directions, looking them
