you like something say “Stop” and I’ll stop while you write it down. I don’t go back once I’ve read off a job. Got a pencil?’
‘A pen. I’m ready.’
‘Remember, Dante, say “Stop.”’
‘Okay.’
She started reading the alphabetical list. Most of what she had sounded okay but not more than a couple of notches above the staple-puller deal. ‘Arcade Ticket Taker, Auditor’s Assistant/Collator, Assembler’s Helper.’
‘Keep going,’ I said.
The ‘Cs’ ‘Ds’ and ‘Fs’ weren’t much better; ‘Car Detailer, Dish Washer, Cook’s Helper, Fill-in Delivery Man. Fitter Assistant, Flyer Distributor.’
‘Well?’
‘Keep going.’
‘Garage Attendant, Label Sticker/Packager, Loading Dock Clerk…’
By the ‘Ss’ I could tell that Herrera was out of patience. ‘Survey Taker, Supply Room Stock Man…C’mon Dante,’ she said, ‘my gum surgery was more fun than this.’
She started on the ‘Us’. ‘Usher.’
I knew immediately. ‘I’ll take Usher,’ I said. ‘Theater usher?’
‘Movie usher.’
‘I’ll take it.’
She gave me the location and the name of the person to see. She waited, wheezing, tapping the phone with her pencil, while I wrote down her directions on how to get there by subway. The manager’s name was Mrs. Lupo. An Italian name. I was optimistic.
Herrera surprised me by saying something conversational. ‘So, Dante,’ she hissed, ‘did you get to the Empire State Building?’
‘I was a block away on one of my lunch breaks but I didn’t go in.’
‘Soo…what’d you think?’
‘Tall…I thought it was tall.’
There was a click on the other end.
Chapter Two
I’D BEEN DRUNK most of the weekend for no reason other than boredom. Beer and wine. I like to walk sometimes when I’m drunk, especially when I’m in a new place. So I walked on Saturday. Uptown on Riverside Drive next to the frozen Hudson River. Up to Grant’s Tomb. Then down Broadway. Buying brown-bag short dogs of Triple Jack wine, stopping at the newsstands and used book stores. Paperbacks, three for a buck. Passed the Ansonia Hotel, Seventy-second Street, Lincoln Center.
On Sunday I was awake hours before sunrise. I tried to write before I drank, working on my play, then gave up and hit the wine to stop the head noise. I ordered eggs and toast when the luncheonette on Eighth Avenue opened. The waitress had the name tag LaVonne. Friendly. Pretty, even white teeth.
After that I drank some more in my room and read my ‘new’ used Hubert Selby until I couldn’t concentrate. Then I walked down Eighth Avenue. In Greenwich Village I passed chic outdoor cafés and people getting out of limos. It reminded me of L.A. and Beverly Hills so I turned west toward the docks and found a coffee house bookstore. A rummie with a ponytail was playing chess by himself. He had no cigarettes but he had a philosophy degree from NYU and said Edna Millay once lived on Hudson Street, e. e. cummings on West Fourth. He went on about dead Jesus until I got him off it and then about a trip he’d made to Alaska. What me and the rummie had in common is that we both had done a lot of walking. I bought us coffee and he pulled the cigarettes out of my pack one after the other and smoked them. When I left him I found Hudson Street but I never found Millay’s house.
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light.
I arrived late that Monday afternoon for my first day at the Loew’s Sheridan Movie - filling in for a man named Guido who was in Palermo for four weeks because his father died. I looked forward to the job because I always liked movies and because of the dark and the imaginary world and the smell of popcorn.
Herrera had told me that Mrs. Lupo was an old lady but a good client. Herrera’d said that she was ‘funny’ and ‘moody.’ A stickler.
The minute I saw Mrs. Lupo I knew that nobody in the theater but her could be the boss. She was small, under five feet and weighing less than ninety pounds. Her hair was pure white and she wore slacks and noiseless soft-soled black nurse’s shoes and she had an intense, bosslike, rat face. I pegged her immediately as a stalker. She was way past retirement age but it was evident from watching her that she could out-speed-walk any employee in her theater.
She had me follow her to the unheated men’s dressing area in the movie theater basement and pointed to a rack where there were white shirts and clip-on bow ties