Joey-O
a novel in progress by Earl Coleman

Chapter 2

Joe pinned skinny Tessie, long tight dress, back against the wall, grinding her to "Dream Baby," letting her feel all of it against her belly, getting her ready for the night, blocking out these strangers dancing, some not even moving in the crush. There was a single crew cut only he was looking for.

One promise that he’d made himself inside the joint – this was it for Tess. No time to look yet, just got sprung. He couldn’t hold out for a piece of ass that long. She‘d have to do. Gonna come ten times tonight. Once for every month they’d locked him up. The fucks. “Oooo,” Tessie whimpered into his neck. “Joey, Joey, let’s get out of here.”

“Cut out soon, baby, soon,” he hummed. Jimmy’d told him if he’d come tonight, for sure he’d have two kees for him. Third floor he’d said with that shit-eating grin. Why did he trust him, why, a fuckin’ college boy? Jimmy was smarter? What? Than him? Jimmy dealt for kicks, him because you had to piece together how you made your bread. So if Jim wasn’t smarter then what was the big difference him and Jimmy? The difference was, he had bupkis, Jimmy had the bread. Well anyway, his old man’s bread. He slipped his hands between Tessie’s eager ass and the plaster wall, rocking it to her slowly, slow. Who cares the mob of dancers breathing down his neck? When he dumped her, who? Sarah? Maybe. The room was dark except for candles on the tables, bodies jamming them so that he couldn’t even keep a steady beat. Getting mad. Nothing pissed him off like missed connections, losing his control, the promises of something that were never kept.

She stroked her purple nails on his neck, his ear lobes, under his jawbone. “You like that, Joey, drive you crazy like before? Tell me, tell me feels so good. How much you love me. Tell me.” She took it as his answer when he clamped her breasts in his fingers like he was ready to ball her standing where they were. She let him feel her up right there, why not, my God he just got out of the can and it was dark. She felt herself get moist and wished they were in bed this minute, any bed, even the mattress down the basement. A motel on the Saw Mill would do and if he didn’t have the dough she did. Hated it in the bucket seat of his T-bird, her legs hanging out, ribs crushed against the shift. “What kinda place is this,” she whispered up against his chin, to say to him, it didn’t matter what, wanting desperately for him to speak to her, to feel for her, to really love her like she felt for him, “looks like a house that people live in.”

“A house that people live in,” he sneered, mocking her voice. “It’s a college boy frat house. What is it with the questions, what? We’re dancing. Now you made me lose the fucking beat.” He jerked his head disgustedly and put his hands up, one on her shoulder, one grabbing the back of her new bouffant hair-do.

The hair had cost her plenty but she held herself as still as stone. “Sorry, Joey, sorry,” she whispered. “Just a question. I meant nothing by it.” The time in jail had made him mean as quick as that. “Didn’t know you had no college friends, that’s all. Who? Jimmy?”

Fed up with her. Should have dumped her on their first night out, four fucking months before they stuck him in the can. He connected her to that. Bad luck. A bad luck kid. Her. Not him. It was her who’d brought bad luck to Hesh and him. He let his hands drop to his sides. “You know you got a big fucking nose Tessie, butt in my business all the time. I tell you what. Downstairs, first floor, they got this spread. Get me a Miller and grab a chicken wing they got. If not tuna or some cheese on rye. OK? You need a map?” The music hadn’t stopped a minute, bodies crowding them.

“Nah, Joey, I can find my way. You mad at me? You gonna be right here?”

“Yeah, yeah. Go. So go.” He turned away.

Scowling, Jimmy nowhere to be seen, he shouldered through to look for him around the couples dancing now to Twist and Shout. Questions? From a broad? Questions up the giggie. Tell them nothing. Ever. What did they mean, the questions? That they knew more than him? Tessie!? Her? Like Hesh the shmo, without a brain and always bringing up his fucking up their lead pipe cinch! Chicken-shit Hesh, thinking now that they could make it going straight, telling him how he should run his life. His own life. And then he saw a face, forgot the rest and thought his heart would stop.

Corner table, all alone, hair glowing, lit by candlelight, eyes secret like inside herself. Looked twice. Once more. Like she was waiting, planted there for him. A shiksa. Cheeks like Ava Gardner, pouty lips, eyes deep and purply black in the yellow light. A few steps only, he was there. “Hi,” he said, above the noise. “You saving this?” He pointed to the chair. He made his dark brown eyes like slits. It always scored.

“No.” There was distance as she glanced away as though she had a glom on something no one else would ever know. He wanted it. Right then.

“You mind?” He was already seated as he spoke.

“No.” Her voice was like it came from somewhere in her bones. Felt it resonate in his gut. She hadn’t really paid attention to him yet. She would.

“You sitting this one out?” They were playing "Save The Last Dance For Me."

The smile was bittery. “I guess.” More to herself than him. A beat or two and then she said, “My boyfriend just walked out on me, the S. O. B.”

He thought he saw a tear. “A dish like you? He’s nuts. Hey. That makes the two of us. My girl just split with me.”

She looked at him as if they both knew that he lied. “You telling me the truth?”

“Honest. Just now she left me flat.” He smiled the smile. “It must be, you know, fate or something.”

“That led you straight to me?” She looked skeptical but hadn’t said “Fuck off.” She sounded sad. She seemed just maybe a year younger than he was. Hurt like he’d seen a hundred times with broads, shocked, not understanding how this could happen to fantastic them – as if they’d ever understand. A knockout. She wore a white blouse and a jacket over it. “Is that your line?” she said.

“That led you straight to me? That’s good. Like opposite in the song. You want to dance?”

“Not really.” She talked as though she was deep in thought, and mostly to herself. “I’m too shook up, too angry to hear the music. What kind of feelings do you have, you guys? Did your girl really leave you in the lurch just now? Are you mad at yourself for being a fool or are you mad at her?”

Whoa! She was a college girl for sure. Out of his league. What would she want with him? Hold the phone! What kind of way was that to think? They were all looking for the same thing. College. Not. Gentile. Jew. “Hey. I knew she’d dump me soon.” He let a moment pass. “Can I stay or you want me to take a powder?”

“It doesn’t matter, you can stay. You go to Columbia? I haven’t seen you here. Junior? Senior?”

“No. I got this friend I meet sometimes. You sound like you been here a lot.”

“I have.”

She belonged. He knew he didn’t by the way she spoke. Fucking college kids with all their daddy’s dough. Big-deal Jimmy. And yet he felt dirty talking to her, like he hadn’t bathed for a week. Well, shit on that. He played the only card he had, the card that worked for him. “Is there like another room where it’s you know quiet, we could talk? I mean if you want. I think that you and I got things that we could talk about. Both ditched.” He turned the eyes on and the smile. It might have seemed to someone studying his face that all he did was keep his eyes expressionless, but it was more than that.

She cupped her face in her palms and studied him hard across the table. Studied him.

He saw that she was thinking, really thinking. Imagine that. Thinking. Thinking of him? The man he was? He saw the fire in her eyes. She wasn’t crying now, attention was on him. She kept looking at him on and on. He hoped that Tess had lost her way. He sat straight up, like open to inspection for the screws, letting her see all of him, himself. Her hair was swirled around her cheeks in soft brown waves. Her lips were full. He wanted to get at them now.

Who is this guy? A city boy for sure. Where does he come from, NYU? Too rough to be Columbia. Do I have anything to say to him or him to me? He’s Jewish but he looks like Jimmy Dean, a little edge to him. It isn’t right to judge that way. This was New York City, not her little enclave up in Riverdale. Why had she never dated Jewish men, she who made a big deal over being liberal? At least he’s open. No pretense. No used-up sugar plums. What he wants is obvious enough. Not devious and secretive like Peter with his adoring freshmen in some free-for-all. Where does Peter take them? Down his rec room? How many at a time? And he’s the one who walked away! The nerve.

She realized she was slumping in her chair. Come on. Worth ten of Peter’s harem. She wouldn’t slump for God’s sake. She was stunning. Her mirror told her that. More than that – she was unique, anyone could know it in a minute and a half. So Peter walked away. Well that was his tough luck. It didn’t take five ticks and here was someone else, a tall and handsome someone, drawn to her. Was he a someone she would care to know? Her record wasn’t marvelous to here – finding someone she was sure was right a half a dozen times who wound up wrong. Just maybe what she needed was a wider lens, seek out other possibilities. A Jewish guy?

She straightened up. Her anger and a kind of recklessness converged. “Fate may have intervened as you suggest. There is a tiny cubicle down on the second floor where we can talk,” she said. “In the meantime I don’t even know your name. Mine’s Beth.”

“Joey. Joe.”

“Joey. Why does it sound so fierce? OK, Joey, here we go. Two orphans in the storm.”

*

More like a closet than a room. Window, couch, lamp, rug, and door. Not much. Soft bulb in the lamp. He closed the door. She took the far end of the couch, tucking her legs up under her, face glowing in the light. Wore slacks. Curled up as if she owned the place. He took the near end. “So far so good,” he said. “We’re on our way.”

“Where to?” she asked.

He had a feel of it. He’d brought her to this room by just his will. He thought to cross his legs but didn’t, kept them open, leaning back, left hand possessively on the couch pillow. Unsmiling. Cool.

In his gut he felt the tension in her shoulders, breasts, as though she wanted him to make it better, take away the pain of being dumped, felt it like he had his hands on her, forcing her to give it up. Her eyes were riveted on his. Never saw that in a broad, like she was hot to get her eyes into his brain, his kishkas. As if she ever could. He sensed he had her now, right now. Who needed words? It was action that they wanted, all of them, action, business. He’d gotten her to here, now one more step.

A cockroach halted beside his right foot. He saw her eyes flick to it. Frat house had cockroaches too. He thought of Jimmy for a second and the two kee score. Fuck it. That could wait. Not this. He swung his eyes to her again. “I came here in a red T-bird,” he said. “You want to cut out, take a spin?”

She had a dimple when she smiled, but now she froze, looked scared like she was spooked. “You said you wanted us to talk. Don’t push. I can’t be pushed.”

Her head was stuffed with Peter, couldn’t think quite straight. Peter walking out right in the middle of a dance, the whole explosion in a second and a half. Even angry his green eyes were spectacular. Even saying rotten things his voice was beautiful. And all because she caught him out and the bastard didn’t have the courage to fess up. It wasn’t that she wanted some exclusive lien on him, although after all their time and all they’d done she had some rights. Just not to be so naked about it. Not much to ask. All those girls. And probably more of them than she suspected. She thought again how beautiful he used to be, as if he’d died, shooting for the winning basket, rising, rising, like there was no end to him.

Well he’d as good as died, walking out on her and in the instant she got angry through and through. She had given him herself, her love, her brains, her body, her own fantastic body and her world-class brain. They didn’t seem to count for much with him, like he could find the same in any girl. The way they circled him. He didn’t know what he had lost. The prick. She was shocked using that word even to herself, mad every inch. She knew of other girls and jocks who dumped them, so much garbage to be tossed, but she was light years past those dim-wits who threw themselves at him. Where would he find another girl as sexually adventurous as she, well-read, knee-deep in the arts? How could he walk away so callously when he had said last weekend she was everything he looked for in a girl?

Joey with the wicked grin, he knew. If he came often why had she never seen him at a prom? His looks were striking enough. Her mind so crammed with Peter it had made her blind? Well it was clear Joe wanted her, as plain as day. It hadn’t taken him two looks to know he did. She liked the way he sat there, rough and out of place, and at the same time hard and compact like he knew the man he was, not masquerading as some clean-cut college kid, sometimes only to avoid the draft, like Peter. Other of her friends at least were anti-war. Peter had no principles except to save his precious skin.

Joe made no bones about it who he was, a tiger, panther, ready all the time. His fingers weren’t graceful, but his hands looked sinewy and strong. She felt a stirring in her breast and tried to talk herself away from it. Come on. You’re on the rebound now. First simmer down. She felt the heat rise to her cheeks, a sign she recognized. And then her recklessness took hold and overwhelmed her, grabbed her, and she knew she wanted to explore this one more step, some land-bridge leading her away from Peter and the bad taste in her mouth. She realized that she’d always had control because no guy she’d known was capable of taking it. Maybe that’s what Peter hadn’t liked. She willed herself to cede a jot of it to Joe. “I get a feeling that you’re dangerous to be around,” she said, not knowing what she meant by that.

He got up, walked to her, sat beside her, put his right hand on her breast and kissed her, forcing her lips open, going for broke, not sure of how it would come out.

No, she thought for a panicked moment. I’m not ready yet. That isn’t who I am. And in the instant she had kissed him back and put her arms around his neck.

He grasped her face in his hands and moved apart an inch. “You don’t know the half of it, how dangerous I am.” Tore away her jacket, fingers quickly on the buttons of her blouse. Noises, splinters of the music, shut out mostly at the door. The night was his. And Beth was his. The two of them. Zipping down his fly he felt like she was someone in a movie who’d stepped off the screen and come into the audience, to him. Why him? Cause she could tell the man he was, the man that he would be. He knew that she was gonna bring him back his luck. Felt that there were only just the two of them.

*

From the landing, over Beth’s shoulder, he saw Tessie coming up the darkened staircase, one hand holding a paper plate piled up with food, the other a can of Bud. He’d told her Miller plain as plain. Even in the massive crush he saw no way to avoid her. He didn’t give a shit that she was lost and stranded there as though she was some punch-drunk stumble-bum the middle of the ring. What he was worried about was Beth, them meeting, saying something. What? He steered Beth like she was blocking for him, intimate now, the two of them. There only were the two of them. Couldn’t let dumb Tessie fuck it up. Beth was a score that panned out bigger than anything he could have thought. Didn’t matter that she fucked so quick. He wanted her. He didn’t have her yet. More to this, more to her, than just a piece of ass.

Just as he’d almost slunk on past Tess spotted him. “Joey!? Where you been? Looking, I been looking for an hour up and down. You disappeared on me.” Middle of the stairs. Beth motionless the stair below.

“I told you no,” he said. “Some other time.”

She looked like come apart, like half-undressed the back seat of a car. “What are you talking Joey? What kind of no? No what? Where are you going now? What’s happening?” She extended hands filled up with food and drink, wedged in by bodies, walls, banisters.

He loved it when they begged like that. It showed who had control. Now he was saved by people squeezing through, pressing weeping Tessie up, him down. “No’s no,” he called back up. He shrugged a minuscule apology to Beth who’d stayed frozen for a moment before accepting what she’d seen. He walked on down with her. “This traffic’s terrible. Some girl trying to make time with me,” he said. “As if she could when you’re the greatest thing that ever was.”

*

She couldn’t wait to get his zipper down, twisted like a pretzel so he could use the shift.

He grabbed her hair roughly with his right hand to move her, slow her, make it last. Jeez. What they did when they were dumped. The next guy got a mitzvah. Wow. Whoever ditched her had to have his head examined. Took the Henry Hudson at 145th, fingers on her neck, then moving them around her lips while she was eating him, her hands braced on his legs. There only were the two of them, the car, the road. He came, they hadn’t hit 168th.

He paid the toll, composed, she holding his right hand in her left, a princess. She was gonna be his luck for sure. She directed him at a Fieldston exit and he glided down an empty street, parked where she said. The street had maybe twenty lampposts. Not a sound. No sirens, radios. The people living here were loaded, you could tell. She sat there motionless, like making up her mind. What happened, what? Was she having second thoughts? He grinned then, and he nodded, dug what she was waiting for! Would he be starting off right, giving in to her? Would he be giving up control? He pondered this. Beth wasn’t Tess or Angie down the block. She was a something. Couldn’t treat her like the rest. Could he keep up with her? Why not? How could he handle this and not give up control? And then thought what the hell. No broad could take control away from him. He went around and opened up the door for her. She was a princess so he bowed. Might as well go all the way. She kissed him for reward like he was royal guard.

It was a house, with hedges, grass. She took him down the basement, let him in. Opening the door she said, “My parents had a choice. They could let me have my own separate place and I’d stay with them, or I’d move out. They live upstairs.” She kissed him in the dark, her tongue deep in his mouth, moved away and then she flipped a switch theatrically. In the huge space the walls that didn’t hold up bookshelves carried art, spotlights on the paintings she liked best. The room was nothing like he’d ever seen. Vases, sculpture, pantry, panels, huge water bed perched on a wooden frame. She flipped another switch for music. He thought he might have heard it once. The kind of music he shut out, fast dialing away from it. “You like this kind of stuff?” he asked. “I like it faster, with a beat.”

His response to music told her everything. Wrong! She’d got it wrong again. He was a primitive and ignorant of anything she prized. Oh, Beth! She thought she would throw up, remembering their passion on the floor, the fringes of the frat house dusty rug beneath her nails, and then her gluttony for him inside the car. As gross as that! She was disgusted with herself. “ It’s Mozart,” she said flatly. “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.”

He pursed his lips. Walked to the spotlighted picture of a large woman wearing a white dress, with arms crossed. “I think I’ve seen this somewhere.”

She studied him studying the litho. C’mon Beth. He was the man he was. Was he stupid? No. She knew it in her bones. A snob, that’s what she was, with her Barnard airs, no matter how liberal she made believe she was. He hadn’t been exposed to it, she had. Were Peter, Henry, Butch, the better men for knowing art? Pricks, the lot of them. That word again. Was this Joe’s influence on her, they hadn’t even met until this evening? Was that what happens when you leave a world you know and cut across class lines? Class lines? Good Lord. She sounded like her mother. “Yes,” she said. “You’ve seen it.”

He nodded. Looked at her bookshelves. Shook his head. “You read all this?”

In a turnaround her heart went out to him he seemed so lost. “A lot of it.” But was he lost or was she rigid in her notions of a man who hadn’t found himself? He had. He knew the man he was. Had any of the others had a hint of that?

A feeling like the one he had with Tessie came to him. He wanted to hit out at something, hit, do something bad. There weren’t any cockroaches here. It wasn’t cause he didn’t know this stuff. It was because she did. If she was off the screen then this was movie business, words and clothes and fancy wine. What kind of handle could he get? These college kids who never had to scramble for a dime. These stuck up brats. “I need to take a piss,” he said, closest he could come to smashing something in.

Shocked, but maybe what he wanted her to be, unanchored as he was in this, a brand new world for him. “Right there,” she pointed.

She had this moment. Closed her eyes. Whatever you have done you’ve done. You felt it, Beth. Felt it. You can always walk away. This guy is real, not like the boys you’ve known. Even sex with his him is different, more exciting, raw. He’s dangerous, but so’s the independence that you want. How can you study life except close up? Explore it further, Beth. Explore.

She was at the bathroom door when he came out. She wrapped her arms around his tensed-up body. “Don’t feel bad about it, Joe, that I know things you don’t. If you want to know this stuff you’ll learn. And if you don’t, you won’t. It hasn’t anything to do with us. With me. I like you just the way you are.”

He had her and yet understood he didn’t have her in his full control. He took her by the hair of her neck and pulled her tight to him, so tight they might well have been one. “The only thing I want to learn is you. You’re gonna be my luck. I’m gonna go to school on you. Make sure I learn it right you’re gonna fuck my brains out morning, noon and night and in between.”

*

“I can’t ma, can’t. Give, give to Joey, give. The quiet one. What I got, ma.” Heshy put his hands over his plate protectively.

Lena pursed her lips. Perhaps at “Joey.” “Noo Yussel? You? Another piece brisket?” Her sausage fingers clutched the fork and knife. “For you. I made for you. On me it’s wasted. What do I need? Two crumbs? Who’ll finish, who?” In the light of the three-bulb fixture over the formica kitchen table Lena Ostowitz, hair in wisps over sweated face, the mother, giving food, the table littered with the sauerkraut, the gravy in a boat, pickles, beets, potatoes, almost cold by now, pumpernickel, rye, a can of High Life for each, four empties, two unopened cans besides, the radio in the bedroom announcing something about Vietnam. She sat back down and turned to Herschel. “Tell again.” The tiny room was filled with them.

Hesh laid it out as though they were a junta making plans. “A body shop on Coney Island Avenue. Pay’s not much, but the man’s legit, the most important part. In the three weeks I been out I’ve had offers for more money – I said no. Why? Like I told my parole officer, cause I could see they had some funny business cooking on the side. Fishy I don’t need. When you get sucked in to someone else’s thing you wind up with the shaft. Business under the table. After hours in the dark. I never, never ma, you hear, I never gonna wind up in the can again. Hard. But hard’s OK. I made my mind up, never pull another job. Legit’s the way.” How he wanted Joey’s admiration now. Three weeks only and he’d found a spot. Handsome Joe was studying his plate.

“My Herschel.” Laid her fleshy hand on his.

“Scottish, maybe Irish guy. McCullough. Same place forty years. Flatbush and Cortelyou Road. I look ahead. McCullough – if I bust my ass for him, then he’ll appreciate and maybe move me up a little bit. And Joey, you – you ain’t found nothing yet. Gimme two, three weeks I’ll speak to him. Maybe he can take you on. If in the meantime you don’t find a job.”

Joe stabbed his brisket in disgust. “Did I ask for something, Heshy? Did I? Ma appoint you watch my ass? What?” Mr. Lame-Brain scoring points again with ma, making like a hot-shot, offering a job. A job! What was he, Mister Nine to Five? The fuck.

“You got a big mouth, Joe. You wanna be a two-bit punk forever? I got ideas, Joe, like I said. The two of us. Together. Together we could lick the world.” So hard. Why couldn’t it go back to how it used to be? Joe thought he was the only one who had a brain? The rest were empty suits like he would say? Maybe he could prove to Joe that he could make a better plan.

“Yeah, yeah. Your big idea. Lick transmissions under cars. Lick ass. You suddenly came up with an idea? The only good ideas we ever had were mine.”

“Yeah, sure. Just like the one that we got busted for.” Sorry right away he’d said it. But he liked the way it felt, him employed and Joe who only put him down since they got busted, unemployed. He riveted his eyes on Joe’s. Nothing but hostility. “Bumped into Tessie, Joe. She cried all over me. You dump her in some frat, she had to take a subway home?”

Joe scowled and now he looked at Hesh head on. “You know – you got no brain, but you got a big friggin’ nose.”

Hesh raised a fist but didn’t hit. “Watch your mouth. Your mother’s sitting here. You dump Tessie for another broad? From here? The neighborhood?”

“Up yours.”

“Shit, Joe, don’t it bother you to talk like that, your mama at the table? You’re never home. What you doing Joey? Hanging out with Binky all the time? Haven’t been to shul like mama wants since we got back. I hit you, that’s no good. We used to be like a matched set. We’re brothers, Joe, we’re twins. Don’t that mean anything to you? You’re gonna be my partner when we do our thing. I try to tell you nice but nice don’t work. What works?”

This time Joe’s voice was low, dispassionate and menacing at once. “Nothing works unless it works for me. First off, you never threaten me again, you hear? And second, it’s my business what I do with my own life. We’re brothers. Yeah. Same birthday and all that shit. But I’m not your double, Hesh. I call my shots myself.”

“Don’t fight, my boys, don’t fight.” Lena covered bunched-up fists on either side of her with heavy hands.

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