Harlem Shuffle(3)

A hundred and eighty-nine retail, let’s say another twenty with the Harlem tax from a white store; overcharging was not limited to south of the Mason-Dixon. Carney said, “I could probably sell one to a customer in the market.” A hundred fifty on installments, they’d sprout feet and march out the door singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

    “I can part with two. I’ll throw in the work on the Philco. It was just a loose lead.”

They did a deal for the TVs. On his way out the door, Aronowitz asked, “Can you help me bring your radios into the back? I like to keep the front presentable.”

Uptown Carney took Ninth Avenue, not trusting the highway with his new TVs. Down three radios, up three sets—not a bad start to the day. He had Rusty unload the TVs into the store and drove up to the dead lady’s house, 141st Street. Lunch was two hot dogs and a coffee at Chock Full o’Nuts.



* * *



*

3461 Broadway had a busted elevator. The sign had been up for a while. Carney counted the steps to the fourth floor. If he bought something and lugged it out to the truck, he liked to know how many steps to curse on the way down. On the second floor, someone was boiling pigs’ feet and on the third, old socks from the smell of it. This had the feel of a wasted trip.

The daughter, Ruby Brown, let him in. The tenement had settled, and as she opened the door to 4G, it scraped the floor.

“Raymond,” she said.

He couldn’t place her.

“We were at Carver together, I was a few years behind you.”

He nodded as if he remembered. “I’m sorry about your loss.”

She thanked him and glanced down for a moment. “I came up to take care of things and Timmy James told me to call you.”

Didn’t know who he was, either. When he first got the pickup and started lending it out, and then buying furniture, he knew everyone. Now he’d been in business long enough that word had spread outside his old circle.

    Ruby flicked on the hall light. They passed the galley kitchen and the two bedrooms off the hall. The walls were scuffed, gouged to plaster in spots—the Browns had lived there a long time. A wasted trip. In general when he got a furniture call, people had strange ideas about what he was looking for. Like he’d take any old thing, the saggy couch with springs poking out nappily, the recliner with sweated-into arms. He wasn’t the junkman. The good finds were worth it, but he wasted too much time on false leads. If Rusty’d had any sense or taste, Carney could send his assistant on these missions, but he didn’t have sense or taste. Come back with something that looked like raccoons nested in the horsehair stuffing.

Carney was wrong this time. The bright front room overlooked Broadway and the sound of an ambulance snuck in through the window. The dinette set in the corner was from the ’30s, chipped and discolored, and the faded oval rug revealed traffic patterns, but the sofa and armchair were in factory condition. Heywood-Wakefield with that champagne finish everybody liked now. And sheathed in transparent vinyl slipcovers.

“I live in D.C. now,” Ruby said. “I work in a hospital. But I’d been telling my mother to get rid of the couch for years, it was so old. Two months ago I bought these for her.”

“D.C.?” he said. He unzipped the plastic.

“I like it there. There’s less of that, you know?” She gestured toward the Broadway chaos below.

“Sure.” He ran his hand over the green velvet upholstery: pristine. “It’s from Mr. Harold’s?” She hadn’t bought the sofa from him, and Blumstein’s didn’t carry the line, so it had to be Mr. Harold’s.

“Yes.”

“Took good care of them,” Carney said.

Work finished, Raymond took another look at Ruby. Dressed in a gray dress, round and plump. Tired in the eyes. She wore her hair in a curly Italian cut now, and then it flickered—Ruby Brown as a stick-limbed teenager, with two long Indian ponytails, a light blue blouse with a white Peter Pan collar. She hung out with a clique of studious girls back then. Strict parents, that type.

    “Right, Carver High School,” he said. He wondered if they’d laid Hazel Brown to rest already, what it was like to attend the funeral of your mother or father, what expression you screwed into your face at such times. The memories that popped up, this small thing or that big thing, what you did with your hands. Both of his parents were gone and he hadn’t had that experience, so he wondered. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said again.

“She had a problem with her heart, the doctor told her last year.”

He was a senior when she was a sophomore. Eleven years ago, 1948, when he was busy trying to get a handle on things. Spackling himself into something presentable. No one else was moved to help, so he had to do it himself. Learn to cook a meal, pay the bills when late notices arrived, have a spiel when the landlord came around.

There was a gang of younger kids on his case all the time, Ruby’s classmates. The rough boys his age left him alone, they knew him from before and let him be because they had played together, but Oliver Handy and his group, they were of that feral breed, street. Oliver Handy, two front teeth knocked out since whenever, never let him pass without starting something.

Oliver and his group made fun of the spots on his clothes, which didn’t fit properly and so they made fun of that in addition, they said he smelled like a garbage truck. Who had he been back then? Scrawny and shy, everything out of his mouth half a stammer. He shot up six inches junior year, as if his body knew it better catch up to handle his adult responsibilities. Carney in the old apartment on 127th, no mother, father aprowl or sleeping it off. He left for school in the morning, closed the door on those empty rooms and steeled himself for whatever lay beyond. But the thing was, when Oliver made fun of him—outside the candy store, in the back stairwell at school—he’d already taught himself how to properly wash out a stain, hem his pants, take a good long shower before school. He made fun of him for who he’d been before he got his shit together.