Watching Matthew

3. In the dark

It’s your life, Matt Kolb, not mine, though I follow you everywhere like a wraith on a string. I’m your invisible twin, your benchmark: I see you when you’re sleeping and I know when you’re awake. You’re snoring now in your overheated little studio apartment on Lexington Avenue. Your mouth is wide open; I’m sure I could see your tonsils if you had any.

Now you’re awake. You shower, shave, go down to the Greek’s for breakfast (two scrambled eggs, bacon, white toast). This is your ninth winter in New York, isn’t it, and what have you done with all those years? You lived on money from home, drew pulp illustrations of women in diaphanous draperies (five dollars apiece — they didn’t pay the rent); then you were an assistant editor at twenty-five dollars a week, then a reader for a literary agency, had an annulled marriage, and now you are a stripper in an offset platemaking shop. You’re traveling the wrong way on the rainbow, maybe, but you like this job because stripping (which doesn’t involve taking your clothes off) resembles the mimeography you used to do in high school, and because it gives you an appetite.

The platemaking shop is south of Canal, on a grim street of granite and wrought iron. Every morning, when you go there, you enter a big room with three glass-topped drafting tables along one wall, a fourth on the opposite side. Today the room is decorated with green and red crepe paper stapled around the walls; a scrawny Christmas tree cowers in the corner like December Morn. A radio is playing “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth.”

As you stand in the steamy warmth taking off your gloves and overcoat, you see that half a dozen people are already here. Lisa Gorman, one of the partners, is at her desk sorting envelopes and talking quietly to her gofer, Beth Bamforth. Lisa’s pink smock covers a multitude of bulges; Beth, who is young and willowy but long in the jaw, wears a violet wool dress. Jacob Stenzler, the badger-bearded chief stripper, is at his station on the left side of the room, and so are Tom and Rachel on the right.

Lisa’s business partner, Paul Trimm, a silent man who never seems to do anything but carpentry, stands by his workbench contemplating a piece of pine. His bulldog pipe is in his mouth. The shelves he builds always disappear into the platemaking room. How many shelves can they need back there?

As you hang up your coat, the door opens on a cold breeze; the platemakers, Angelo and Norman, enter together, slapping each other’s shoulders as if to brush off invisible snow, and crowd you a little as they take off their overcoats. Angelo is nineteen, smooth and muscular as a dolphin; Norman, curly-haired, is in his thirties. “Hallelujah, brother!” says Angelo. Then the two of them, arms around each other’s shoulders, dance like Dorothy and the Tin Woodman into the back room. Rachel Huffman, the new stripper, applauds; the rest look on without expression, except for Jacob, who exhales a cloud of pipe smoke as if there were a gnat in it.

Beth is handing out manila envelopes to the strippers. She puts two on Rachel’s table, three on yours, and gives you a pink smile. There is a bond between you> she is educated and believes you are too because of the way you talk. On your right, Tom Donnelly is sitting with his hands in his pockets, rumpled as usual, staring at his tabletop. Tom is a former partner in a platemaking shop, dumped long ago for some unknown disgrace. Today he looks as if he’s wearing yesterday’s shirt. He has steel-gray hair, not much of it, gray eyes, black-rimmed glasses. He’s a legend in this room. At the water cooler one day Lisa made some remark about his pot belly, and Tom replied, “I’ll put mine up against yours anytime, Lisa.”

“Everything okay?” you ask him.

He speaks out of the side of his mouth without turning his head. “I’m just sitting here saying ‘Shit.’”

“Buck up,” you say, “only ten more days to Christmas.”

Tom snorts. You flick the switch that illuminates your table, open your first envelope and look at the negatives. It’s a poster ad for a kitchen gadget; the headline, in transparent letters on the black background, reads:

SLICES ANYTHING!! ONLY $1.95!!!

You tape a sheet of yellow paper to the table and begin aligning the two negatives on it, one halftone-screened, the other not. You tape them down at the comers and begin cutting away part of each to make one composite negative that the boys in the back room will use to make the plate.

Rachel’s hands with their many bracelets are still in her lap. She is a handsome, high-colored young woman dressed today in purple and green. “Oh, boy, have I got a stummick cake,” she says. “I was to my brother’s on Long Guyland last night? I nevva shoulda ate the asparagus, it makes me bilious.”

You offer her a Tum. “Would this help?”

“Maybe, if I took the whole bottle.” A funny catch in her voice where the double t in “bottle” should be.

When Rachel goes to the water cooler with her tablet, Beth leans down to you confidentially. “Did you hear the glottal stop?” she asks, smiling. She puts the same funny pop in the middle of “glottal.” You don’t know how to reply: what is a glottal stop, exactly?

When Rachel gets up again, you try several times to reproduce the word as she spoke it. Tom rumbles, “Something wrong with your goddam throat today, I guess.”

“No.”

“Want some advice?”

“Sure.”

“Put a sock in it.”

You turn the yellow paper, tape it down again, and cut away the center portion. There are still a few transparent specks on the negative. You dab them with opaquing fluid; it is violet-brown, redder when it dries. You drop the finished job in your out basket and pick up another envelope.

Rachel is back, cautiously cutting her yellow paper. An exclamation; she sucks a broken fingernail. Angelo appears from the back room wearing what at first looks like a gray wig, but is in reality the head of a dirty mop held behind him by Norman. The radio is playing Jingle Bells; Angelo turns it off, then strikes an attitude with one hand on his heart and the other extended toward Jacob Stenzler. He sings,

Rachel is red-faced with suppressed laughter; Jacob and Lisa look gloomy. Beth at her station and Paul at his workbench seem bewildered.

Angelo bows repeatedly. “Thank you, thank you, you are so kind.” He kisses his fingers, waves them right and left; then he and Norman disappear through the doorway. Lisa and Beth are deep in conversation. Perhaps Angelo has gone too far this time; but after all, it’s Christmas.

You go to the toilet, a malodorous closet built of gypsum board. Inside, on one wall an untrained artist has drawn the outline of a naked woman; some critic has scraped away the whole crotch with a knife blade. On the opposite wall a quatrain has been censored in the same way:

You target two floating cigaret butts, pull the chain and send them whirling down to darkness. Where will they end up, in Australia, spinning clockwise?

In the afternoon Beth brings you an old set of negatives; it looks like something that has been in the files for years. The red dots of the opaquing are childish, splattered at random, sometimes overlapping the halftone. You show it to Tom, laughing. “Look at this!”

He leans closer. “Keep your trap shut. That’s her work — Lisa did those.” You glance at Lisa. She is not looking at you and her expression tells you nothing, but you know she has heard.

Angelo emerges again with his mop wig held by Norman. Flinging out his arms to Lisa and Beth, he sings,

Lisa’s face is pale. Angelo bows, kisses his fingers and retreats, followed by Norman. From the back room their voices can be heard in close harmony:

We two queens of Orient are…

Paul turns the radio on; it comes to life in the middle of Joy to the World, with chimes. You’re thinking that you haven’t bought a card to send to your parents at home; better do that tomorrow. Something nonsectarian and cheery, with a note, “Thanks for the check.”

At four o’clock Beth distributes the pay envelopes. Yours, opened, disgorges two tens, a five, three singles, a quarter, a dime, and a buffalo nickel. Tom counts his money, then leans over to you. “Let’s whoop it up tonight,” he growls. “My wife is supposed to meet me at Leary’s. We’ll get something to eat, then do the bars. Are you game?”

This is the first time anyone in the shop has invited you anywhere. “Where’s Leafy’s?”

“Stick with me, I’ll take you. It’s a crummy place, but the roast beef is good.”

At the end of the day, when people are standing up getting their coats, Rachel still sits at her table with three unopened envelopes. You hear her mutter, “Why did I take this rotten job?”

“You’ll get the hang of it,” you tell her. She does not reply. You think, maybe she’s lonesome and would like to be invited to dinner; too late now.

You walk with Tom northward up the dark street toward a pink sky-glow. Tom is shorter than you; his pork-pie hat is pulled down over his eyes and his hands are in his pockets. Snow crystals around the two of you in the air are so fine that they are visible only in the street lights, but you can feel them melting on your lips. The sensation makes you feel closer to Tom, although neither of you speaks.

You pass a dry cleaner’s, closed, then a corner drugstore, open, but its lights go out as you pass. Then the bars on Canal Street. Leary’s is a dark, narrow beer-smelling place with a row of tables in the back. A jukebox is racketing out “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” The withered gray woman at one of the tables turns out to be Tom’s wife, Myra. She looks ten years older than Tom; the only color in her face is the pink tip of her nose. “Glad to meet you,” she says almost inaudibly. Her fingers are narrow and chilly.

Tom looks happy to be here, comfortable with the beer fumes and the noise. He says, “Tonight is on us, Matt, so the sky’s the limit. We got a little Christmas present from a lawyer, can you beat that? Not enough to buy a bond, too much to throw in the gutter, so we’re going to spend it on drink.”

Tom orders roast beef dinners for himself and Myra. You order corned beef and cabbage, a glass of milk, and a slice of chocolate cream pie. The corned beef is greasy; you eat potatoes and bread to soak it up. Tom is drinking a rye highball with his meal, and Myra has a cocktail with a cherry in it.

You are beginning to wonder what you’ve let yourself in for. You have never been able to afford whisky and have no head for it, but you have never been able to swill beer either. Can you buy an empty jug to pour it into? “I’m saving this for later”?

The next bar has a dance floor and is thumping with a polka. Your beer comes in a stein; it is flat and almost too cold to drink. Tom says in your ear, “Are you having fun? Had any good lays lately?”

All these places seem to be full of the same yellow light. The fourth bar has a piano player doing fancy runs at the end of every phrase, and there is a cover charge. Myra leans thoughtfully over her drink; she has not spoken since she said “Glad to meet you.” Tom beckons you closer. “Know something, we used to have a kid. I ever tell you that? Put’m in a military school. In Virginia. It cost an arm and a leg every year to send’m there. Not counting the extras.” He taps you on the arm with two stiff fingers. “You know what that kid did? He shot himself. Put a bullet in’s rifle and pulled the trigger with his toe. How you like that?”

“Oh, Jesus, Tom.”

“Never mind. Drink up. You still drinking that damn beer? Have a shot of whisky, God damn it. Put hair on your chest.” You order the shot. It is warming after the beer, and makes you feel remote from all disgrace and discomfort.

Tom pays the checks with a sprawl of dollar bills taken from his pocket. Between bars you walk in a close threesome, stumbling and swaying, with Myra in the middle. Her sharp shoulder strikes your ribs in the same place every time. She seems to be singing quietly, but you can’t make out the words or the tune.

Later, you sit in a row on the cane seat. Tom’s and Myra’s heads rock with the swaying of the car. The train emerges from underground, and you cross a bridge across an unknown river. Beyond in the blackness, isolated lights wink like the cottage candles of the damned. You have no idea where you are.

Down the stairs, swaying together on an empty sidewalk, then up another stairway smelling of damp. Tom unlocks the door into a railroad apartment: the first room is the kitchen. He turns on the light over the stove. “Take coat off,” he says. “Just a sec.” Myra has gone through into the next room and is sitting on a dark couch.

You stand in the doorway, not knowing how to get past Tom. Tom gets eggs from the refrigerator, breaks them into a bowl. He puts an iron skillet on the stove.

After a while you realize that he has not moved for a long time. He is standing in front of the stove, swaying a little, head bowed and jaw hanging, as if he has forgotten what eggs are and what a stove is. Myra watches him sphinx-eyed from the other room.

You back away, try to close the door, but the knob slips through your fingers and you can still see into the yellow glow of the kitchen. To your right, a door opens on another yellow kitchen and another motionless Tom. Another just like it opens on your left. You turn and see a fourth room spring to light behind you. Four kitchens, four Toms. Then, one at a time and in the same order, they go out. And you’re alone in the dark.