president. But all that was before your time.”
“By a few years,” she allowed.
“It was even before mine,” he said. “But I grew up here, just a few blocks from here, and I can tell you nobody called it Clinton then. You probably know what they called it.”
“Hell’s Kitchen,” she said. “They still call it that, when they’re not calling it Clinton.”
“Well, it’s more colorful. It was the real estate interests who plumped for Clinton, because they figured nobody would want to move to something called Hell’s Kitchen. And that may have been true then, when people remembered what a bad neighborhood this was, but now it’s spruced up and gentrified and yuppified to within an inch of its life, and the old name gives it a little added cachet. A touch of gangster chic, if you know what I mean.”
“If you can’t stand the heat—”
“Stay out of the Kitchen,” he supplied. “When I was growing up here, the Westies pretty much ran the place. They weren’t terribly efficient, like the Italian mob, but they were colorful and bloodthirsty enough to make up for it. There was a man two doors down the street from me who disappeared, and they never did find the body. Except one of his hands turned up in somebody’s freezer on Fifty-third Street and Eleventh Avenue. They wanted to be able to put his fingerprints on things long after he was dead and gone.”
“Would that work?”
“With luck,” he said, “we’ll never know. The Westies are mostly gone now, and the tenement apartments they lived in are all tarted up, with stockbrokers and lawyers renting them now. Which are you?”
“Me?”
“A stockbroker? Or a lawyer?”
She grinned. “Neither one, I’m afraid. I’m an actress.”
“Even better.”
“Which means I take a class twice a week,” she said, “and run around to open casting calls and auditions.”
“And wait tables?”
“I did some of that in the Cities. I suppose I’ll have to do it again here, when I start to run out of money.”
“The Cities?”
“The Twin Cities. Minneapolis and St. Paul.”
“That’s where you’re from?”
They talked about where she was from, and along the way he told her his name was Jim. She was Jennifer, she told him. He related another story about the neighborhood — he was really a pretty good storyteller — and by then her Rob Roy was gone and so was his Jameson. “Let me get us another round,” he said, “and then why don’t we take our drinks to a table? We’ll be more comfortable, and it’ll be quieter.”
He was talking about the neighborhood.
“Irish, of course,” he said, “but that was only part of it. You had blocks that were pretty much solid Italian, and there were Poles and other Eastern Europeans. A lot of French, too, working at the restaurants in the theater district. You had everything, really. The UN’s across town on the East River, but you had your own General Assembly here in the Kitchen. Fifty-seventh Street was a dividing line; north of that was San Juan Hill, and you had a lot of blacks living there. It was an interesting place to grow up, if you got to grow up, but no sweet young thing from Minnesota would want to move here.”
She raised her eyebrows at
“Oh?”
“I followed you in here.”
“You mean you noticed me even before I ordered a Rob Roy?”
“I saw you on the street. And for a moment I thought—”
“What?”
“Well, that you were on the street.”
“I guess I was, if that’s where you saw me. I don’t…oh, you thought—”
“That you were a working girl. I wasn’t going to mention this, and I don’t want you to take it the wrong way—”
What, she wondered, was the right way?
“—because it’s not as though you looked the part, or were dressed like the girls you see out there. See, the neighborhood may be tarted up, but that doesn’t mean the tarts have disappeared.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“It was more the way you were walking,” he went on. “Not swinging your hips, not your walk per se, but a feeling I got that you weren’t in a hurry to get anywhere, or even all that sure where you were going.”
“I was thinking about stopping for a drink,” she said, “and not sure if I wanted to, or if I should go straight home.”
“That would fit.”
“And I’ve never been in here before, and wondered if it was decent.”
“Well, it’s decent enough now. A few years ago it wouldn’t have been. And even now, a woman alone —”
“I see.” She sipped her drink. “So you thought I might be a hooker,” she said, “and that’s what brought you in here. Well, I hate to disappoint you—”
“What brought me in here,” he said, “was the thought that you might be, and the hope that you weren’t.”
“I’m not.”
“I know.”
“I’m an actress.”
“And a good one, I’ll bet.”
“I guess time will tell.”
“It generally does,” he said. “Can I get you another one of those?”
She shook her head. “Oh, I don’t think so,” she said. “I was only going to come in for one drink, and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do that. And I’ve had two, and that’s really plenty.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m afraid so. It’s not just the alcohol, it’s the time. I have to get home.”
“I’ll walk you.”
“Oh, that’s not necessary.”
“Yes, it is. Whether it’s Hell’s Kitchen or Clinton, it’s still necessary.”
“Well…”
“I insist. It’s safer around here than it used to be, but it’s a long way from Minnesota. And I suppose you get some unsavory characters in Minnesota, as far as that goes.”
“Well, you’re right about that,” she said. And at the door she said, “I just don’t want you to think you have to walk me home because I’m a lady.”
“I’m not walking you home because you’re a lady,” he said. “I’m walking you home because I’m a gentleman.”
The walk to her door was interesting. He had stories to tell about half the buildings they passed. There’d been a murder in this one, a notorious drunk in the next. For all that some of the stories were unsettling, she felt completely secure walking at his side.
At her door he said, “Any chance I could come up for a cup of coffee?”
“I wish,” she said.
“I see.”
“I’ve got this roommate,” she said. “It’s impossible, it really is.
My idea of success isn’t starring on Broadway, it’s making enough money to have a place of my own. There’s just no privacy when she’s home, and the damn girl is always home.”
“That’s a shame.”
