A Prayer Answered

by Ray Keifetz

I was trying everything I could think of to get Marjory to take me back. As a last resort I did as the old women on my street whenever a storm came up and their sons were at sea. I walked into a church and sat down. I sat for hours in the drafty dark waiting for something to happen. An old woman came in and began to mumble. She lit a candle, dropped some coins into the box, and walked away smiling. What a cheap, small change sound those coins made. Finally I just said into the emptiness, to whomever: "Please, make her. . ."

It was right around that time the job with Monarch Movers came through. In a way the job and the money were wasted on me because without Marjory I wasn't going anywhere and I hardly felt like eating.

At Monarch they put me to work for a guy named Lou. The dispatcher said, "The two of you will make a fine pair."

I sat in the truck cleaning my nails with the tip of my knife waiting for this guy Lou to show up. That dispatcher doesn't even know me, I kept thinking. So how can he say we'll make a fine pair?

The truck dipped to one side as my new partner pulled himself in. Half the steering wheel disappeared in the folds of his belly.

"Lou," he said and put out a pudgy white hand.

I felt something in my stomach turn over. "Johnny," I said and touched the hand. If I hadn't given up on eating, there'd have been no room in the cab for me.

Lou pulled out of the garage and we headed down Fourth Avenue. The morning light stung my eyes. We turned down a cross street and the windshield filled with red brick row houses, red church spires, telephone poles creosoted black, old Jews wrapped in black; wherever you looked red and black and beside me Lou in a white shirt wide as a schooner's sail, his skin pale as the bottom of a fish. Lou stopped in front of a luncheonette and squeezed out of the cab. The sun was barely above the roofs but I was sweating. Fat people make me sick.

Panting, Lou climbed back in. He was holding a large pink box. He opened it and took out a wedge of cheesecake the color and texture of the folds hanging from his upper arms. He popped it whole into his mouth and then handed me a slice.

"No thanks," I said.

"Are you kidding? This is the best cheesecake in Red Hook. Everyone likes this cheesecake. Have a bite."

Lou spoke with his mouth full.

"Go on. Have a bite."

To make him close his mouth I took a nibble.

"Attaboy, Johnny!" and he placed a pudgy hand on my knee and squeezed.

We spent the morning making deliveries up and down Atlantic Avenue, which means I made the deliveries while Lou sat in the truck sorting invoices. This suited me fine; the longer I was out of the cab and away from him the better.

We passed a row of Arab groceries and restaurants. In front of a corner newsstand Lou suddenly hit the brakes. I couldn't believe how fast he moved. One moment he was jumping off the truck, the next he was inside the stand. The guy behind the counter had time only to open his mouth before he was swallowed by Lou's vast white back. Seconds later Lou was sitting in the driver's seat again.

"Nice work," he said and stuffed something down my shirt pocket.

"I don't want this."

"Aw sure you do. Buy you and your girl dinner and a movie."

I started to refuse again but spreading himself out so I was pressed against my window, Lou said, "You do have a girl, don't you?"

When I didn't say no he patted me on the chest where he had restuffed the pair of twenties.

We drove down to Bush Terminal for some pickups. I stared at my watch trying to make the hands move faster. Lou had this funny, high pitched voice, like a girl's—

All across the docks sirens started wailing and Lou drove us into the shade of the expressway spanning the Gowanus. He asked me where we should go for lunch and I told him it didn't matter.

"If it doesn't matter," he said, "you can't complain about where you end up."

We ended up at a place called Tarantino's right next to the canal. Through the window you had a great view of the oil soaked water and the scummy rainbows floating this way and that. As I sat down two skinny guys wearing dirty t-shirts, hair cut short like Marines, came over and eased Lou into his chair, patting and caressing him on the way down as if he were one of those idols you see in Chinatown. They waited for Lou to catch his breath before they sat down themselves on either side of him. The waiter came and placed three enormous bowls of spaghetti before them. I asked him to bring me a slice of dry toast. He brought me instead a fourth bowl of spaghetti.

Lou ate methodically, taking his food in massive mouthfuls, between each one dousing the dwindling pile with streams of yellow oil.

"Good for digestion," he said, strands of spaghetti dangling from his mouth.

Hunched over their bowls, sharp shoulder blades sticking through their shirts, Lou's two pals ate like starving ferrets.

I tried to keep my eyes on my own plate, forced myself to relax. "He's as normal as you are," I kept repeating to myself. "He's just fat."

I got up to go to the bathroom. When I got back my bowl was gone and the two ferrets were huddled around Lou. Between their shoulders I glimpsed not only the last of my spaghetti being divided between them but something white and powdery.

"What about him?"

I slipped my hand into my pocket and gripped my knife. In another second they would come at me—

"He's with me," said Lou and pushed two bills in my direction. "Johnny," he said resting his arms on the scrawny shoulders beside him. "I want you to meet my brothers. . ."

As I climbed back into the truck Lou patted my hip and said, "Man, you were cool in there."

"Hey, don't touch me!" I said.

"That won't be easy, Johnny. I mean," he grinned, "look at the size of me."

On the way to Brooklyn Heights it started to drizzle.

"I hate the rain," Lou said. "It makes the streets greasy."

I was hunched against the door; a narrow gap separated me from Lou's body. My hand still on my knife I assured myself, "If he touches me . . ."

The next few deliveries, mostly to places selling dresses and women's underwear, Lou took. These were tiny shops run almost without exception by women. Just by walking through the door, Lou's body automatically cut off the shop girl's retreat. "Hi doll," I could hear his high pitched voice. "I brought you a present—"

This went on in shop after shop and I started believing that Lou could do and get away with almost anything—running his hands down a shop girl's breasts, squeezing her against the wall, his groin pressed to hers, his thighs straddling her hips. And if she screamed, he'd scream back, "There's no room in here!" Watching him at work, meeting the eyes of this frightened girl or that peeping out from behind his round back, I started thinking about Marjory. I knew now how I must have looked to her all those nights and days and why she'd tried to run away—

"Here, Johnny, get us some ice cream. Get me two."

We were parked high up on a cliff overlooking the harbor.

"You know," Lou said, "you never have to go anyplace, because sooner or later everything and everyone comes steaming up the Narrows."

I stared at Lou's smooth round face, his slit of a mouth with its tiny gray teeth. As if reading my thoughts, he said, "Don't you agree?"

I was thinking about Marge, about her saying, I'm going away. This neighborhood stinks. I'm going to San Diego where it's warm all year round. And me saying, No one leaves, there's nowheres to go. It's all here, Marge. And Marge saying, No, Johnny, I am going. With me shouting, Why, Marge, why? Because you think you'll meet better guys out there, some kind of beach boy studs? Better than me, Marjory? And then—

Hey the ice cream, Johnny! Over there—the Good Humor Man!"

I bought Lou his two ice cream pops and threw the change into the bushes. He would have only told me to keep it. I passed him his pops through the window, then leaned against the grill and gazed at the water. The rain had stopped and the heavy air was practically unbreathable. But my hands, still cold from holding Lou's popsicles, brought back winter to me, all the winters which in the middle of July seemed as far from me as the dark side of the moon or Marge's love. And I was right all along. Nobody ever does go anywhere. You wanted to go to San Diego, Margie, and lie on the sand and let all the guys admire your beautiful body and now you can't. Thanks to me you're stuck here like all the rest of us, the guys on the dock with arms and faces the color of the red brick houses they live in and are found behind locked doors in the middle of every January dead in. That's how I'd always pictured Marjory and me—carted away quickly before we had a chance to thaw.

"Hey what's the matter with you, Johnny? You look like someone just died."

As we drove back to Red Hook Lou kept telling me how lucky I was to be working for him, about all the money I could make if I was smart, and the women I could have if I had the money. But I kept thinking about Margie, Margie, and how I never had any money and how she never seemed to care.

"Oh but I forgot," Lou said giving my thigh a nudge, "you already have a girl."

At every stop light Lou made me get out and run into the nearest bakery for a pastry. Each one, he explained, had its specialty. When the bakeries disappeared he sent me after newspapers and glossy magazines, bottles of soft drinks in every shape and color. He said he liked the way I moved. But soon we were racing non-stop across abandoned trolley car tracks, down jolting cobblestoned streets through eddies of dust. Finally there was nothing for me to fetch; all that was sweet or fat had been fetched and devoured by others long before us.

"Last stop!" Lou called out pointing at a warehouse whose stamped out siding had turned the frosty green of the Statue of Liberty. "Get out and ring the bell."

I rang once and the gate swung open. I jumped back in and Lou eased our truck through an opening built for horses to the loading dock beyond. Off to the side a group of men in dirty white coveralls were sitting on a pile of packing crates smoking and playing cards. "Fucking unions," Lou muttered. Reaching across me, he opened the glove compartment and pulled out a brown manila envelope. From the envelope he pulled out a stack of photos. "Take a look at this one," he giggled. "Check out where he has his mouth."

I got out of the truck as Lou, ignoring me and the men on the loading dock, slid his hand down to his crotch.

"Good clean fun," he laughed. "It don't hurt anyone."

At last the warehouse men got off their butts and wheeled three huge crates onto the dock. Their foreman looked at his watch, glanced at Lou whose fly was still open, and followed by the men walked across the courtyard and through the outer gate closing it behind them.

"What's going on?" I said.

"It's better this way. Just the two of us."

I had to help Lou climb up onto the dock, my hands sinking deep into his flabby back.

"Okay, Johnny, now you get a chance to use your muscles. Let's walk this one in first."

I pivoted my end forward. Lou pivoted his.

"Okay, Johnny, come around to my side and push."

Lou counted to three and I leaned—the crate slid forward over the edge of the dock, hung on the tailgate for a moment, then with a grinding clang slid the rest of the way into the truck. As we turned from the crate one of Lou's hands passed down my back. I stepped away from him.

"Sorry, Johnny," he grinned.

I walked over to the second crate.

"Good idea, Johnny. You take care of that one and I'll take care of the rest."

I watched him walk into the vacant office which for some reason had been left unlocked. Taking a deep breath, bending my knees, I heaved myself against the crate. Nothing. I tried again but it barely moved. I tried again. I didn't want that fat pervert helping me. I wanted to get this crate onto the truck and myself out of here. The sooner it was on the truck the sooner I could see Marjory. This very evening I would go to her and make it all up to her. With all my might I shoved. My face and neck were bursting with blood.

"That's the trouble with you slim trim guys: no weight. Here, let me give you a hand."

Lou put his shoulder to the crate. "On three," he said and started counting slowly. His face was inches from mine. I could smell everything he'd stuck in his mouth that day. "Three!" he shouted. The crate shot forward and I landed on my face. Lou, his stumpy legs spread apart, was looking down at me, laughing. Then he put his hand on my arm— "I told you not to!" I screamed, in one motion grabbing my knife and burying it in his groin.

Lou staggered back, the smile gone, and I scrambled to my feet. He started towards me, the knife handle bobbing up and down between his legs. I backed away. Lou kept coming towards me. Abruptly he stopped and started unbuckling his belt. I couldn't move. As he unzipped his fly rolls of white ropey flesh surged towards me. Holding up his pants with one hand, he plucked the knife out with the other and tossed it away. With his free hand he reached down into his fly and came up with a heavy canvas satchel.

"You stupid little prick, I want to show you something."

Lou opened the satchel and shook out stacks of one thousand dollar bills. Then he peeled one off, crumpled it, and flipped it to me same as if it had been a single or a five.

"Now quit your bellyaching," he said glancing at his watch. "Thanks to you we're running late."

"I need to be somewhere," I said, turned, and flung myself at the gate, like the animal I'd become, repeatedly.

***

The nurses tried blocking my way; they kept telling me visiting hours were over. I pushed past them into Marjory's room.

"Either take me back," I shouted, "or call the police!"

"But I don't want you back," Marjory said.

Only her eyes and mouth showed through the bandages. The rest of Marjory's face was hidden from me. And from her.

"It was because I loved you," I said.

"You what?"

"Loved you, Marge. I love you."

"Christ."

"I want to take care of you—"

Her spit fell far short of my face and dribbled down her blanket.

"Is there no forgiveness?" I said. "Isn't there anything I can do for you?"

"There is," Majory said, her lips struggling with the bandages, "what I pray for every waking moment: You can go straight to hell."

***

Next morning I waited about twenty minutes in front of the garage before a Cadillac, black, brilliant, one of the old ones with the wings, pulled up. Lou got out. He was wearing a fresh white shirt and there was something moving around inside his mouth. He saw me.

"Hey, Johnny, ready for a day's work? Ready to cut the crap?"

Swallowing back the nausea, I sank slowly to my knees. "Yes," I answered. "I'm ready."

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