Harlem Shuffle(7)

And their sweet Elizabeth had settled for a dark apartment with a back window that peered out onto an air shaft and a front window kitty-corner to the elevated 1 train. Weird smells came in one way, trains rumbled in the other, all hours. Surrounded by the very element they’d tried to keep her away from her whole life. Or keep down the block, at least. Strivers’ Row, where Alma and Leland Jones had raised her, was one of the most beautiful stretches in Harlem, but it was a little island—all it took was a stroll around the corner to remind its residents that they were among, not above.

You got used to the subway. He said that all the time.

    Carney disagreed with Alma’s assessment of their neighbors, but yes, Elizabeth—all of them—deserved a nicer place to live. This was too close to what he’d grown up in.

“No need to rush,” Elizabeth said.

“They can have their own rooms.”

The apartment was hot. In her bed-rest term, she often stayed in her housecoat all day, why not? It was one of the few pleasures left to her. She wore her hair in a bun, but some strands had gotten loose and were plastered to her sweaty forehead. Tired, skin flushed red under brown in her cheeks. She flickered then, as Ruby had that morning, and he saw her as she was on that rainy afternoon under his umbrella: almond-shaped dark eyes under long lashes, delicate in her pink cardigan, edges of her mouth upturned at one of her strange jokes. Unaware of the effect she had on people. On him, all these years later.

“What?” Elizabeth said.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “The girls can share.” She had decided the baby was a girl. She was right about most things so had a certain bravado with this fifty-fifty proposition.

“Take her Caw Caw and you’ll see how much she likes to share.” For proof, he reached over and plucked a piece of chicken off May’s plate. She howled until he plopped it in her mouth.

“You just finished telling me you had a slow day and now you want to move. We’ll be okay. We can wait until we can afford it. Isn’t that right, May?”

May smiled, at who knew what. Some Jones girl course of action she’d planned.

When Elizabeth rose to start the girl’s bath, Carney said, “I have to step out for a bit.”

“Freddie show up?” She had pointed out that he only said step out when meeting his cousin. He had tried varying his phrasing, but gave up.

“He left a message with Rusty saying he wanted to see me.”

    “What’s he been doing?”

Freddie had been scarce. Lord knew what he’d gotten his paws into. Carney shrugged and kissed them goodbye. He carried the garbage out, trailing greasy dots all the way to the sidewalk.



* * *



*

Carney took the long way to Nightbirds. It had been the kind of day that put him in the mood to see the building.

This first hot spell of the year was a rehearsal for the summer to come. Everyone a bit rusty but it was coming back, their parts in the symphony and assigned solos. On the corner, two white cops recapped the fire hydrant, cursing. Kids had been running in and out of the spray for days. Threadbare blankets lined fire escapes. The stoops bustled with men in undershirts drinking beer and jiving over the noise from transistor radios, the DJs piping up between songs like friends with bad advice. Anything to delay the return to sweltering rooms, the busted sinks and clotted flypaper, the accumulated reminders of your place in the order. Unseen on the rooftops, the denizens of tar beaches pointed to the lights of bridges and night planes.

There had been a bunch of muggings lately, an old lady carrying groceries hit on the head, the kind of news Elizabeth fretted over. He took a well-lit route to Riverside Drive. He went around Tiemann Place, and there it was. Carney’d picked 528 Riverside this month, a six-story red brick with fancy white cornices. Stone falcons or hawks on the roofline watching the human figures below. He favored the fourth-floor apartments these days, or higher, after someone pointed out that the higher views cleared the trees of Riverside Park. He hadn’t thought of that. So: that fourth-floor unit of 528 Riverside, in his mind a pleasant hive of six rooms, a real dining room, two baths. A landlord who leased to Negro families. With his hands on the sill, he’d look out at the river on nights like this, the city behind him as if it didn’t exist. That rustling, keening thing of people and concrete. Or the city did exist but he stood with it heaving against him, Carney holding it all back by sheer force of character. He could take it.

    Riverside, where restless Manhattan found itself finally spent, its greedy hands unable to reach past the park and the holy Hudson. One day he’d live on Riverside Drive, on this quiet, inclined stretch. Or twenty blocks north in one of the big new apartment buildings, in a high-letter apartment, J or K. All those families behind those doors between him and the elevator, friendly or not, they live in the same place, no one better or worse, they were all on the same floor. Or maybe south in the Nineties, in one of the stately prewars, or in a limestone fortification around 105th or thereabouts that squat like an ornery old toad. If he hit the jackpot.

Carney prospected in the evening, checking the line of buildings from different angles, strolling across the street and scanning up, speculating about the sunset view, choosing one edifice and then a single apartment inside. The one with the blue window treatments, or the one with the shade half down, its string dangling like an unfinished thought. Casement windows. Under those broad eaves. He wrote the scenes inside: the hissing radiator, the water spot on the ceiling where the rummy upstairs let the bath run and the landlord won’t do a thing about it but it’s fine. It’s nice. He deserves it. Until he tired of the place and resumed his hunt for the next apartment worthy of his attentions, up or down the avenue.