2022 !! HAPPY NEW YEAR !

It’s also a new year in JUST ACROSS THE STREET IN NEW YORK CITY. Here’s the 7th installment from my novel, ready for re-release on February 2, 2022. If you like it, please share it. Thanks so much for your support. Have a great year. xoxo

§§

“Dad, do I have time to wash my hair?”

Her hair always looked the same to Mike, big, red, and frizzy wild, but he turned away from the window to answer, “Can you do it in 15 minutes?”

“I’ll be front and center in 12,” Sherri called, running toward the bathroom.

Mike took another sip of Glen Livet. He’d gone over the lines for Seth fifty times, it seemed like, but he couldn’t seem to loosen up.

He was on a schedule, even though it was Sunday. He had to have the girls back to Joanie’s apartment by 6 p.m. His call-back audition was at 1:45. He’d thought he was a genius when it dawned on him to let the girls go to a movie while he went to the theater.

Sherri and Fran had been with him the entire holiday week before Christmas. With help from Pat Knolles, Mike had decided to tell Joanie he wanted the girls with him all summer. She’d forwarded the request to her lawyer, and he hadn’t received a reply. Apparently, divorce was more expensive than marriage, and just as slow.

He finished his drink and smiled. The longer she dragged out the divorce, asking for the moon and the stars, the longer he’d have to prove her wrong about his fathering capabilities. At least, neither of the girls had gotten pregnant or hooked on heroin during these months of legal haggling. Both girls loved him and loved being with him, he was sure.

Fran came out of the bedroom wearing blue tights and high boots, pulling a down jacket over her long black sweater. “Are you ready for your audition?” she asked her dad. She was blond, tall and slim, like her mom.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said, flapping pages of On The Couch in the air.

“Do you want me to look at the script while you practice the lines?” she asked.

Mike was saved from explaining that the lines were X-rated when Sherri rushed in, fluffing her hair, saying, “I’m ready. It’ll dry on the way.”

“Are you sure you won’t catch cold with wet hair? It’s 28 degrees,” Mike said, sliding his jacket on.

“She goes out like that to school all the time, Dad,” Fran answered. “She’s got the constitution of a rock.”

Sherri grinned, “A diamond, she means.”

Fran was the beauty. But at 14 years old, Sherri had her own kind of quirky, red-headed good-looks. She was shorter than her sister, with a big butt that she liked to swing around.

Mike knew Sherri would be no problem during the summer. She’d entertain herself at the YMCA, or read, or go to movies. He wasn’t so sure about how the summer would pan out with Fran. But Pat had assured him during several therapy sessions that he shouldn’t worry about summer since it was the middle of winter.

When they got to the movie theater, Sherri told the lady at the ticket window, “Two for Dick Tracy please.”

Mike peeled off the dollars for the matinee price.

Instead of taking the bills from Mike, the cashier stared at him, then said, “It’s you.”

Mike glanced over his shoulder and turned back to the cashier, feeling confused.

Fran poked her dad in the ribs and said, “She recognizes you from the Vietnam Memorial interview on the news.”

“Dad, come on.” Sherri pulled at his sleeve. “Get the tickets. We’ll miss the previews, Dad.”

“Here’s the money. May we have the tickets?” Mike said to the fat woman in the glass cage. The cashier continued to stare while she punched out the tickets, and he felt himself blushing. At least she wasn’t shooting questions at him about being dead.

He handed the tickets and change to Fran. “Get popcorn and cokes,” he told her. “I’ll meet you here when it’s over.”

Fran kissed her dad’s cheek and said, “Break a leg at the audition.”

Taxis were scarce the day before Christmas, and Mike considered it a lucky sign that he found an empty one in less than a minute. His adrenalin was pumping when he stood in the middle of the room facing the director and two assistants, flexing his muscles and shrugging like he imagined a cocky manual laborer would do. His eyes went cool and the lines rolled off his tongue.

YOU WANT TO FEEL ME? I MEAN MY BICEPS, DOC. MY BICEPS.

MY ARMS ARE LIKE CONCRETE FROM ALL THE WORK I DO. THE WORK GETS MY HANDS DIRTY. I LOVE GETTING MY HANDS DIRTY. I GET HOME AND THEY’RE BLACK WITH DIRT. PUSHING THAT SHOVEL INTO DIRT, HARD, OVER AND OVER, MY CALLOUSES ARE DAMN HARD.

DON’T WORRY, I WOULDN’T RUB THEM ON YOU, DOC. I WOULDN’T NEED TO USE MY HANDS TO GET YOU DIRTY. I COULD JUST LOOK AT YOU AND YOU’D FEEL DIRTY. NO? YOU DON’T BELIEVE ME? I DID IT WITH MOMMY.

SHE’D COME IN ALL CLEAN, SMELLING LIKE SOAP, AND I’D SHOW HER MY HANDS, MY DIRTY HANDS, HOLDING ‘EM THIS CLOSE TO HER FACE, THIS CLOSE TO HER PRETTY, CLEAN TEE-SHIRT, AND I’D TELL HER, “HEY MOMMY, I’M GONNA GET YOU DIRTY.” I’D SAY IT SLOW.

I’D LET HER WATCH ME WASH MY HANDS. I’D WASH EACH FINGER, LIKE THIS, REAL SLOW, AND I’D NEVER TAKE MY EYES OFF HER, AND I’D SAY, “THE CLEANER MY HANDS GET, THE DIRTIER YOU’RE GONNA GET.”

YOU’RE NOT LAUGHING, DOC. HOW COME? IT ALWAYS MADE ME LAUGH, TO SEE MOMMY BEGGING TO GET DIRTY.

Mike laughed deep from the bottom of his gut as he finished the scene. The laugh was real, because he knew he’d nailed the audition.

§§

Marsha Winston drank New Year’s Eve champagne with three friends and 60 strangers in a six-room apartment in Murray Hill. Starting at midnight, one of the 60 kissed her for 20 minutes, from lips to breasts, until she decided to leave the party.

With the crisp air clearing her head, Marsha was glad the next day was a holiday.

Inside her apartment, she skipped the crossword puzzle, her normal sleeping potion, and flopped into bed without washing her face, falling soundly asleep.

When she woke up, she thought it was sirens making all the noise. Then she remembered it was New Year’s Eve, and she figured the noise was a bunch of loud drunks on the sidewalk. Marsha rose farther out of her groggy fog and realized it was someone knocking on her apartment door.

“You’re shitting me,” she said to herself and looked at the digital clock: 2:44. She pulled the covers up to her nose, smelling the lavender scent from the laundry detergent. She hoped the reveling rapist would go away without hurting her. All her senses were on alert. Then she heard crying. No. Not crying. Moans, and groans, followed by shrieking.

If she ignored it, she thought it would go away, whatever it was. After all, it was New Year’s Eve. Everybody was crazy on New Year’s Eve.

Five minutes later, she sat up on an elbow, and dialed 911 by touch in the dark.

“Yes, hello,” she said when the dispatcher answered. “There’s someone screaming outside my apartment.”

The calm, firm voice at the other end of the emergency number asked her address, asked if she knew who it was, and if she understood what the screams were about.

Marsha paused on the last question. Were the screams crazy or were they scared? The tone had changed. From the bedroom, she couldn’t be sure what was going on, and she didn’t want to walk toward the door in the living room. “I think the person’s calling for help.”

Then the dispatcher asked if she was willing to give her name. Marsha took the split second to decide to tell the truth instead of making up a fake name.

“I’ll send a car over. Can you let us in the building?”

She’d have to get out of bed to do that. But the police would take care of her if it was a murderer in the hallway, so she agreed, “Ring my apartment. I’ll buzz you in.” Marsha wondered if she sounded logical and clear, or hysterical and scared like she felt.

“How long will the car take?” she asked, but the emergency operator was gone.

Marsha snuck out of her bed, as if someone were watching her. She slid on a pair of sweatpants to go with her pajama shirt, and searched under the bed for sneakers, to be ready if she had to talk to the police in person.

The noise stopped when she had one sneaker tied, and she rolled her eyes, thinking she was going to look stupid when the cops showed up and the problem had disappeared.

Then the shrieking started, louder than ever. Marsha tip-toed through the kitchen into the living room.

The shrieks changed to moans, and Marsha heard the words, “Help me, help me. Please.” Marsha’s heart took a leap, then she heard it again, “Help me. Marsha. Please.”

Marsha panicked. How could the person know her name? Through the peep hole in the door, she didn’t see anything.

The voice was bawling at the bottom of her door, a woman’s voice, like she was in agony.

Against all the safety training she knew, against all her fear, Marsha unlocked the door and opened it an inch.

Curled in a ball on the floor, moaning and screeching, was her landlady’s daughter.

Marsha dashed into the hallway, putting her arms around the woman before she realized the floor was wet and bloody.

Lydia’s daughter didn’t speak through her cries, but her eyes pleaded with Marsha. One of her hands was locked against her chest, and the other one clutched up at Marsha’s shirt as if she wanted to stand.

In an instant, Marsha understood: Carolyn Duffy, the fat woman she so often peeked at in the back yard, the daughter her landlady demeaned with constant curses and criticism, Carolyn was dying. Maybe Lydia had stabbed her? Or was she shot?

She couldn’t wait for the police. Marsha shifted into autopilot, ripping open the building’s front door, and running to the corner. Early morning of New Year’s Eve, could there be a taxi? She stood in the middle of the street, not noticing how cold it was.

The holiday gods were with her, because an empty cab was heading south on 7th Avenue. Marsha waved it to turn on West 22nd Street, and she beat the cab to her building, yelling, “I have to get my purse.”

Marsha’s adrenalin was pumping. She lifted Carolyn to her feet like an ailing pussy cat, shuttling her out of the hallway. When the driver saw Carolyn, he refused to touch her.

“Don’t be a fucking asshole. Hold open the goddammed door,” she barked. The cabbie did as he was commanded.

Marsha shouted directions in his ear, and the driver did his job, flying through the streets of late night New York, running red lights, down to St. Vincent Hospital’s emergency entrance on 12th Street.

Throwing a fist-full of bills at the cab driver, Marsha was out of the taxi before it stopped. She raced through the emergency doors, screaming, “Help, help, outside, help,” and returned to the cab without waiting to see who was following her.

The blood that covered her hands and half her face attracted more attention from the staff than her voice. A young man in scrubs appeared with a wheel-chair at the open back door of the taxi, asking Marsha what happened.

“I think she’s dying. Get her inside,” Marsha directed, while the driver sat in the front seat looking the other way out his window.

The orderly looked at the bloody woman and said to Marsha, “Not dying. Not yet at least. She’s having a baby.”

§§

Marsha’s jaw dropped open at the idea of Carolyn Duffy having a baby, but she refocused to help the orderly heft the half-conscious woman out of the back seat. Figuring it would save time, Marsha handed the admissions person her insurance card and gave her own name, address, and phone, for the registration.

Working with roses had been a good career for Marsha. She was able to characterize any plant in the family Rosaceae, from single-flowered roadside species to the most hybridized horticultural form. She could evaluate and analyze information fast and form conclusions with no problem. But at this instant, Marsha didn’t know what she was doing, and at the same time, she felt fully alive.

She watched through a half-closed curtain while a team of medical people examined Carolyn, gave her injections, and hooked her up to various machines and monitors. Then she had to step aside, as they surged out of the cubicle, rushing Carolyn’s gurney toward an elevator.

Sinking into a chair in the emergency waiting room, Marsha noticed the couple across the aisle staring at her. The man two seats away with an ice pack on his jaw was staring too. Marsha blushed, realizing how loud and demanding she had been when she’d run in the emergency room. Then it dawned on her how she looked, pajama shirt, old sneakers with laces half-tied, sweats, and no coat. She smelled the aroma of blood on herself, looked at her bloody hands, and understood it wasn’t her voice that was attracting attention.

She found the restroom, and in the mirror, she saw the reflection of a zombie version of Lady Dracula. “God, you look you’ve been through a shit storm,” she said out loud. She washed up as best she could, then went out to clear up the registration she had falsified to get Carolyn admitted fast.

The admissions lady was not happy to find out there was a woman without insurance documents being operated on. Marsha was too drained to do more than shrug at the problem and say, “Well, it’s too damn late now, isn’t it.”

During science classes in graduate school, she’d watched films about childbirth. She’d been embarrassed in the co-ed classroom, watching a patient’s legs spread open as she writhed in sweat, screaming. The woman gripped the edges of the sheet covering her breasts like it would save her life. The camera focused on the pregnant woman’s crotch.

Marsha remembered seeing a pale, small saucer where the woman’s pubic hair should have been. A nurse cradled the saucer in her palm, and Marsha realized it was a head. The nurse wiped goo and blood from the head, and then another lump appeared. It was a shoulder. Suddenly, the nurse’s hands were full of a gelatinous mass which slowly took shape as a slimy and tiny baby-doll shape.

The medical people rubbed, clipped, and wrapped. She’d seen the film in three different biology classes. Her favorite part was when the lump became a shoulder.

That was all she knew about pregnancy and childbirth, but she understood screams and blood. Where had Lydia been? Why hadn’t she heard her daughter’s shrill pain? Maybe she’d gone off to a mean people’s New Year’s Eve party. Better, maybe she’d gone on a cruise to hell, Marsha thought hopefully, then felt ashamed of the thought.

§§

“Hello. This is Toulousa Bell. Is Carolyn there?”

Toulousa was using the phone in the Triplex office. Her boss Max Gambardella was taking January 1 as a holiday, and Carolyn hadn’t shown up for work. The first day of the year was the third busiest day of the year, after Christmas Day and July 4, and they were 50 minutes away from opening the door without enough people to manage the crowd.

There was a cough on the other end of the line, then a screechy voice answered, “Carolyn’s sick.”

“Ms. Duffy? Can I talk to her?”

“She’s not here.”

Toulousa was confused. Was Carolyn sick or was she out doing something? “Is she on her way to work? She hasn’t gotten here.”

Lydia replied, “I told her it’d go wrong.”

Then Toulousa heard a click. The lady had hung up on her. She started to hit the re-dial button, then stopped. Instead she called her own apartment in Jamaica.

“Joe,” she sighed, relieved to hear her brother’s voice. “Is Sharon off today?” she asked, explaining to him that they were short-handed at the Triplex.

“You’re asking her to stop watching football?” Joe quipped.

“And you too. I need you both here.”

“I could bring Coco too, and Granddaddy Papa, if you’re passing out paychecks.”

Toulousa didn’t bother to answer. Instead she demanded, “How fast can you get here?”

When she went out to the lobby, Pete was staring out the glass door at the crowd forming on the sidewalk. His eyes were wide, showing a lot of white. “I don’t know how to work the ticket machine,” he told Toulousa. “What if they riot when they find out they can’t get tickets?”

Toulousa said, “A SWAT team is due in a few minutes.”

Pete blinked slowly and frowned.

“I’m joking, Pete. Don’t unlock the door yet. Stay cool. I’ve got people coming to help.”

“Where is she? She never misses work,” he said. The wrinkle in his black forehead made him look older than his 18 years. “I’m worried about her.”

“I’m trying to find out what’s going on,” she said, starting a batch of popcorn. Then she ran back to the office. Toulousa shook her head, thinking about the conversation she’d had with Carolyn’s mother. Then she snapped her fingers and guessed what was going on – Carolyn’s baby had arrived, and her mother was pissed. The baby wasn’t due for another four weeks. She hoped it was an early baby, and not something worse.

Toulousa picked up the heavy Yellow Pages book, searched under hospitals, and dialed the number for Saint Vincent’s, the one closest to the Triplex.

In less than an hour, Toulousa’s brother was clicking out tickets to customers, and Sharon was behind the concession counter juggling candy bars, popcorn, and soda like a magician.

Toulousa pulled on her coat.

Joe’s lop-sided grin flashed. “This is harder than rocket science, Toulousa.”

“Don’t give me your college-boy lip,” she growled, hiding her smile. Toulousa went to the front door of the theater, “Pete, are you okay with my family taking over for me and Carolyn? I’ll fix it with Max tomorrow.”

Pete nodded and said, “No problem. Are you coming back?”

Toulousa looked at Pete’s sweating forehead. “You know, you can come with me. Joe can tear the tickets after he punches them out.”

Pete aimed a frozen smile at a customer and ripped the ticket in half, then reached toward to the next person in line. “No,” he said to Toulousa. “I’m no good in hospitals. Really. But call me when you see her, okay?” He swiped his shirt-sleeve across his forehead. “Tell her I need her.”

Toulousa agreed and started out the door, but Pete grabbed her arm. “You think she’s going to be okay? It’s too early for her to have the baby. I want her to be okay.”

“I’ll call you,” Toulousa said.