The City Man Read online

  Eli looks around. Spots a man with a bloody nose and Guston’s stitched into his shirt, staring up at the steady gathering of cumulus. Eli walks up to him.

  Morenz, from the Star. How’s the beak?

  Lotta blood, but the docs said I’ll be okay.

  What happened?

  Shit if I know, brother. They just came roaring down the hill and smacked into me. Right fucking into me. Boom.

  Boom.

  Yup. Course they got the worst of it.

  Was the siren on?

  Yeah yeah, they were in a real hurry, you know? But they came down the hill so fast I didn’t have no time. No time at all.

  Wet flakes start to fall. The bread man reaches into his breast pocket for a cigarette. Small splats of blood across the Guston’s logo, crimson serif of the letter S a slightly darker shade.

  The bread man exhales a long line of smoke. Shit, brother, this is going to cost my boss a lot of dough.

  Eli smiles.

  What? What’d I say?

  The wet snow comes down and down. Drops of slushy water bounce off the entablature of the Front Street portico, drip down the colonnade onto the scattered hats and heads of the scurrying. Some don’t chance it. Mona stays dry. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other. On her left side, a squat dowager hefts a matronly bosom and sighs.

  Sheeeee-eesh.

  More people come through the doors of the station. Shove forward so small ripples of movement edge along the bodies, ripple wider until an egress grows ten feet to Mona’s right. She sees Chesler impatiently elbow his way free, turn up his collar and then start across the street. More people leave the portico. Mona strikes a match and blows smoke from a mouth set tight. Whispers of nicotine loosen the jaw and leave her eager for the next drag. One after the other she inhales, until the precipitation comes to a full stop and her fingernails grow patiently yellow.

  Chesler pulls his jacket over his head and runs, a hump skirting the slush. His shoes make small splashes that undulate half a foot outward before dissipating near a streetcar stop. Five men get ready to board so Chesler, with lungs burning, picks up the pace and tags on. Six of them now taking tiny steps forward, a procession slower than exhale. Chesler huffs and stares at all the hands that bulge in the kickouts. Britches that jingle. Everyone fishing for change. Another step, another. Chesler grits his teeth because a long day of two-dollar pokes gets even longer during this moment of silver. He takes one more deep breath and then stretches his fingers across a chasm of inches.

  He comes home and quickly undresses. Suit and tie hit the floor, clothes that give him a sucker’s anonymity. He crosses the room in an old undershirt, tweed cap pulled low on the face. With a shot of whiskey in his hand, he settles into a big-backed chair. Takes a sip, warmth and release after another day of grinding it up. Day after day after day. Commotion and gesture that coalesce into nothing but small change. He rubs his forearms, massages his palms. Wasn’t turned out to be one of these nickel-and-dime schnooks. Nope. Not like her. The best stall he’s ever seen and still she’s happy with a couple cheap scores. Rag her about it and then she chirps the same sorry tune: Times are tough. So what?

  For a cannon like Chesler, the slow end of the whiz comes down the muscles of his forearms, eases up at the cartilage in his fingers. The trepidatious racket gives him a tight grip on the shot glass. He knocks one back, then another.

  From his desk, Eli observes the origins of copy. Watches reporters race out of the newsroom and return within the hour, possessed of answers who, what, where, when and, if possible, why. They hastily sit and start to type, cudgelling events into coherence. Some do this in total silence. Others mutter to themselves. Still more pace the floor and badger their fellows with so little restraint that the entire women’s section was seated out of earshot of the four-letter words that leap out, like perverts, from the anxious newsroom.

  Shit piss fuck, says Mackintosh, the City Hall man.

  Eli looks over. What’s up? he says.

  Another protest piece.

  Yeah?

  Some nut says he’s going to march out front of City Hall for three days straight.

  What’s he after?

  Fair wage. Same old thing.

  Three days is a long time, says Eli. Says he’s got nothing to lose.

  Says he’s a goddamned soman ... sonab ... what the fuck’s the word again?

  Somnambulist, says Eli.

  Says he walks in his fucking sleep.

  Ten minutes later. A pimply boy in a peaked cap rips the pages out of Mackintosh’s Underwood and runs them over to the copy desk where Johnson, ancient and hawk-nosed, takes few pains to properly place the modifiers. A snap of the fingers. Another boy grabs the edited pages and descends, one floor down, to the composing room where the type is transformed. Cast into lead. Set onto steel plates. Another descent and plates are affixed to the presses that roar tremendously and spew sheets and sheets and sheets of newsprint. The papers are cut, folded and finally delivered into the denizens’ hands six times daily, seven in summer.

  After loitering in the cold, Mona comes home. Upstairs, she steps into steam. Hot water stalks her ankles, thighs, then back. The minutes scald before she surrenders to temperature. She lies deep in the tub. Only her face remains above the surface, a mask of air. With every breath, concentric circles push outward from her head. Grow larger, larger, and then they vanish. She closes her eyes.

  Early lessons. She watched the whiz ramble through three rooms on Cecil Street. No rhythm to what she saw. Squabble and arrest made most two-handed mobs tenuous. Her father and a succession of big-hipped, childless women who nurtured the girl with their own kind of instinct. Agnes, the thumb-wrestler, who expounded on tendon and guile. Bella. Her hugs were only skin and bones, but her perfume outweighed them all, a heavy lavender that hung in the air and briefly hid a mouldy avarice. And Francie, her favourite, who gave her cigarettes and showed her the boost. The three of them spent evenings at home. The old man silent in his chair. Mona, with a smoke in the corner of her mouth, tried to strike a match. Three bent matchsticks beside her feet.

  Francie laughed.

  Like this, honey. No no. This.

  The careless tapping of ash. They left cigarette burns on the sofa and stolen silk camisoles hanging off the end table, the draped ghosts of past mothers.

  She joined the whiz at fifteen. Tagged along to the train station and spent hours hustling the doniker for small change. Men passed by. She loitered near the men’s room with her face in the newspaper. One eye out. Stared at the bone in her wrist. Adolescence concealed in her father’s coat and cap, but the body inched out. Conspicuous, suddenly culpable. Gawky at five feet two.

  She followed the mark inside.

  Chose a stall to his right and wiped damp palms on the sides of her coat. She counted to calm herself. Forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty. Numbers silent in her head and then her hand started to make noise. She rolled a silver dollar along the floor, from her stall to his. The slow, rattling distraction. In three revolutions of the coin, she got a glimpse of wingtips and a big white thigh. Sparse follicle. She came out of his pants pockets with quarters and dimes and a crumpled bill. The mark cursed. He was in a shackle of dropped trou, going nowhere. But Mona was off and running out the door, in the dense station crowds. Her small hands full of change.

  Mona matured in three rooms. She started in the kitchen, feeling heat off the boiler and then grifted along routes of cold tile. Past dirty glasses on the counter and stolen dishes in the sink. The old man was one step behind.

  Keep moving, he said.

  Breath and spittle on the lobe of her ear.

  Stay on the balls of your feet.

  Mucid syllables turned thick in her brain. She grew conscious of every step. Moved with dolorous precision into the sitting room. Edged around the hard angles of daylight and coffee table. Bumped into a big chair.

  Careful, he said.

  Toes curled in her shoes
. She kept moving and moving, inched into the bedroom, stepped over a hat and into the crinkle of splayed newspaper. She looked down and saw a tie still knotted. Polka-dot pattern.

  Now, he said.

  She slowed down. Moved forward but leaned back. Stalled her father with a gentle nudge of elbows. The floor creaked. Tension in her calves. Stress ran the calibrations of hip, a harsh curve from her buttocks to his crotch. Her prat planted with too much strain.

  No no no no, he said.

  His hands grew stern. He grabbed her wrist. She blinked at the ridge of knuckles and then he let her go and she blinked at the dark outline of his fingers. His imprint on her, a dark heredity.

  Do it again, he told her.

  She nodded and returned to the kitchen.

  Mona lifts her head out of the water. She stands up. Gooseflesh in the cool air. Water rushes off her body, dripping from her fingers into the tub with the tiniest sound.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Eli watches the whispers wind around the curve of the city desk. From one editor to the next, mouths move in nearly unnatural duplication so each offers the same questioning puss. Psst-psst, they say. Psst-psst. Bert curses in the middle of the floor, nickel-cigar stub jammed into the corner of his mouth like a crooked brown tooth. Behind him is the city desk, shaped like a horseshoe but not nearly as lucky. The scene of endless diatribes, twenty-two firings and three fistfights. Mackintosh swivels in his chair, elbow garters as tight as his held tongue. Eli lowers his gaze, looks instead at the fingertips of his right hand sitting motionless on the keys HJKL. No words come from that combination of letters, not even a single syllable that can help him start his story. The lede lingers somewhere along the route of metal, skin and skull and all he can do is slouch lower in his chair and cautiously retrace that route over and over and over again.

  Police car crashes into truck

  Officers responding to an emergency encountered one of their own this afternoon when a police automobile hurtled down the Bathurst St. hill and collided with a bread truck on Davenport Rd. Constables Ed McGirr and Bill Pumps were racing to a holdup at the Dupont branch of the Bank of Montreal. The machine was approaching speeds of 50 miles per hour at the time of impact, which generated enough force to shatter the windshield andloosen the door on the driver’s side. Both officers received medical attention at the scene.

  Fred Gallo, driver for Guston’s Bread, was also under the watchful eye of a doctor after the collision. He suffered some minor cuts. He said he knew he was going to get hit, but had no chance to hit the brakes.

  ‘They sure picked up a lot of speed down that hill. There wasn’t much time to worry about my bread.’

  Mona plants her prat. Chesler pinches the poke.

  She sits on her bed, blanket and the front page bunched off to the side, and opens the deck of cards. Cuts them. Taps the edge of them against her open palm and watches the red lines emerge and fade in her flesh. She shuffles. The cards curve under her thumb, a pleasant resistance. Mona deals, a game of Klondike across wrinkled bedsheets. Keeps her hands busy while the mind wanders around Union. A wrong spot for weeks. And Chesler’s offices, his brief clucks and exhalations, now sounding sharper in her ears. Nothing new there. For five years, she has endured his minor frustrations and kept the mob moving, day after screaming day, in the rigidly defined roles of their racket. What else is there? She glances at her options. Four of spades onto five of hearts onto six of clubs. Nothing else. She deals from the top. Ten of spades onto jack of diamonds and then nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. An ace on top and then the deck is done. She peeks at the face-down cards. Finds the nine of hearts and uses it. Another ace too, because she never can play this game without cheating.

  Mona plants her prat. Chesler pinches the poke.

  He covers a labour protest at College and Spadina. Almost at the intersection before folks are suddenly shoulder to shoulder. Feet on the march and placards held high. A gathering of the local needle trades, shmatte workers filing from the west and the south toward the grass-and-stone nexus of Queen’s Park. Eli gets pushed toward a presser named Nodelman.

  We want someone who is with us square!

  Uh.

  Not these gonifs what all they do is take and take!

  Okay, says Eli.

  Nodelman gesticulates with his index finger. His mouth opens but his next words are lost to labour’s growing discord. Voices Yiddish and Ukrainian squish together in the sparse wiggle room of protest, a polyglot glut of tongues that needs nearly a whole minute to ease into harmony.

  FAIR WAGE!

  FAIR WAGE!

  FAIR WAGE!

  FAIR WHHH-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

  First come the police whistles and then the quartet of cops who jump down the front steps of the station. Others follow. Push and shove, push and shove. Eli gets grabbed by the collar and spun around.

  Star man, says Eli. Star man!

  What’re you doing here?

  Trying to get a story.

  The officer draws his truncheon, knuckles going white at the ridge. Well, he says, get it and go.

  Again, Eli files his story fitfully. Then heads home, where he slouches in his armchair with the funnies open in his lap. After a week of newspaper ruckus, he has trouble settling into his own silences. He shifts his weight. Through his tiny apartment window, the setting sun leaves a scar of light across his neck and chest and legs.

  The tip’s monotonous division of labour leaves Mona no less attentive. Crammed in among the frantic waves and aborted runs of the arrivals concourse, she nonetheless fronts with such gorgeous acuity that Chesler is almost a half-second too slow on the fan. But he locates. Offices for her to come through. She reverses position on the mark, a hunched Hasid burdened with two bulging suitcases, and doubles back toward Chesler. She knows the way the moment has stretched so ungainly that Chesler has been unable to score the pit. Office for a second frame rumbles in her ear and she shadows the Hasid up the stairs.

  In the Great Hall, a couple kisses farewell. Others bunch obliviously near the departure ramp. Mona wanders compliantly, all elbows, while she watches the back of the Hasid’s head. His yarmulke askew like a large lazy eye. Chesler clucks. Dawdlers begin to thicken around the announcement boards and Mona sets a new frame. Hips planted, buttocks sway with such discreet allure the Hasid almost ossifies. Chesler makes his move. His hands an argosy of want.

  They cut up the scores in a talkie. Slouched in the darkness of the Alhambra Theatre, mumbling Chesler cusses the paucity of every poke he cleans out. Shush go the audience members on either side of him, shush. Mona beside him watches the picture, a Durante and Keaton comedy whose recent sense of sound is at odds with the flickering speed of images. Mugs of beer shatter flatly on the screen. Jokes hiss. An actor trips and slaps the ground long after he could be back up. Mona chuckles nonetheless. Elbows Chesler. Chesler mumbles. SHUSH! He rifles the fat poke of the Hasid, eager fingers finding nothing but black-and-white photos of frowsy nude women. No bills. In the shimmering light of the movie screen, he gets an eyeful. Pose after pose of cunt and tit. He opens his mouth; nothing comes out for the first second and then he says, HOL-eee –

  SHUSH!

  Queen’s Park protest turns violent

  Toronto’s needle workers are bloodied but unbowed after yesterday’s protest was transformed from apeaceful demonstration into a struggle between police and labour.

  Members of the Industrial Union of Needle Trade Workers began to gather at Queen’s Park just after noon. A smattering of workers quickly grew

  into a dense crowd, many of them with a common chant of ‘Fair wage.’ The mass of people swelled toward the south end of the provincial seat of government before the local constabulary

  arrived on foot.

  They were soon accompanied by members of Chief Draper’s mounted ‘Red Squad.’

  Words between police and the demonstrators heated up quickly, with pushing and shoving making matters worse. The chant
from the crowd of workers grew louder when the mounted police arrived.

  ‘All we want is a fair wage,’ said Efrim Nodelman, a pants presser from T. Eaton Co. ‘We don’t want any trouble. We just want to say our piece.’

  The police arrested several protesters. Myron Kleig, Sid Goodis and Lou Markfield, all of the Pacific Pants Ltd., were charged with sedition and creating a public disturbance.

  From the kitchen table she turns, holding a bottle in each hand. Daisy takes two quick steps into the living room, then slows. Faint bustle comes from the corner table, where Slotsky leans close to his girl. Daisy passes by and hears a joke half-told, the creaking of chairs. She keeps going, the bottles growing heavy in her arthritic hands.

  Fuck, she says.

  A stutter step toward the middle, where Levitz and Lippman chop it up. She places one of the bottles on the table.

  Thanks, Daisy.

  Sure.

  Join us. Take a load off.

  Later.

  She keeps weaving, a near-sober sequence between Hashmall, who used to front for Benny the Yid, and a street-corner Bolshevik named Rossen, who slurs words from his rehearsed speeches to anyone who passes by. Daisy has heard it all before. She angles away from him but then jostles another customer so hard a whiskey jumps the rim of a glass.

  Hey!