Hot Night in the City

wasn't seeing anything. I said he was old, but the only old thing about him was a soft halo of fine white hair that held the sunlight like the lace curtains did. His face was unlined, his skin was tight, and he sat there in a straight- backed chair, staring through the curtains out across the alley with an infinite calm in his unblinking, pale blue eyes. Spooky.

Mrs McGivney returned from the kitchen and stood beside the little table, holding the back of her chair, waiting for me to sit down.

'Gee, thanks a lot, but I think maybe I'd better...' But she smiled sadly at me, so I sat down. What else could I do?

There was a heavy linen napkin on each plate. Mrs McGivney took hers and put it on her lap, so I did the same, only mine slipped onto the floor. She smiled again and pointed her nose towards the plate of cookies, indicating that I should take one. I did. She took a tiny bite out of hers, and I tried to do the same, but two bits broke off, one falling onto the floor and the other getting stuck in the corner of my mouth so that I had to push it in with my finger, and I wished I were somewhere else... anywhere.

She smiled a little pursed smile that didn't show her teeth. 'You live three houses up, don't you.'

I nodded.

'And you're Mrs LaPointe's boy.'

I nodded again, wondering how she knew, considering that she never talked to anyone.

'What's your name?'

'Luke. Well, it's really Jean-Luc, but only my mother calls me that. I like to be called just Luke.'

'John-Luke. That's foreign, isn't it?'

'French. My mother's family is French Canadian. And part Indian.'

'John-Luke's a nice name.'

'Only my mother calls me that.'

'I've noticed that you always play alone.'

'Not always. But mostly, yeah.'

'Why is that?'

'Why do I play alone?' I glanced past her towards the old man, wondering if we were supposed to pretend he wasn't there. 'Well, mostly because I make up my own games, and other kids don't know the rules or the names of the people or, well... how to play.'

'And you read an awful lot, don't you.'

How did she know that I read a lot... then it hit me. I always cut through the alley on my way home from the library, not because it was the shortest way, but to avoid the little kids who, whenever they saw me with an armful of books, would chant 'professor, pro-fes-sor, pro-fes-sor', which was one of my street names. My other street name was 'Frenchy' because of my name, which was even more French-sounding when my mother reverted to her maiden name, LaPointe, but with a Mrs so as to justify us kids I suppose. On my first day at P.S. 5 my teacher said how interesting it must be to have a French name. I hated teachers who tried to be palsy and modern. So far as I was concerned, they could forget the social worker crap. All I wanted from a teacher was information. No sincerity, no affection, no concern, thank you; just information. She wrote Jean-Luc on the board, and for the first couple of weeks I had to deal with being called Jean, a girl's name. There was teasing and a couple of fights after school—the usual trial by ordeal that every new kid on the block had to face. I was prickly and quick to go to Fistcity, always getting my first couple of shots in while the other kid thought we were still in the Oh yeah?... Yeah! preliminaries. Most of the kids at P.S. 5 were bigger than I was, but I had an edge over them: I never gave up. Bigger kids could throw me down or knock me down, but as soon as they let me up, I always plowed into them again; and although I'd come home pretty messed up, they never got away without at least a few marks and some blood, so after a while they gave up the teasing and bullying because there wasn't much glory in being able to beat up a smaller kid, and I made sure there was always a ration of pain in it for them. I never became a leader or even anybody's best pal, but my existence on the block came to be accepted and 'the professor' was left alone. In return, I concealed my bookishness, pretending not to know the answers to teachers' questions, and occasionally making wisecracks in class, or pulling funny faces behind some admiring teacher's back after she had complimented me.

'That's right, ma'am. I do read a lot. I get some of my games from books.'

'Games?'

'Like Foreign Legion. Or Three Musketeers. But mostly I get them from radio programs.'

'We don't have a radio,' she said with neither complaint nor apology.

I had noticed this on my first glance around the room, and I wondered how anyone could do without a radio. So totally was my understanding of life linked to our second-hand Emerson that I couldn't imagine not having The Lone Ranger or The Whistler or I Love a Mystery for excitement, or Jack Benny and Fred Allen and Amos 'n' Andy for laughter, or advice from Mr Anthony for getting an insight into everyday problems. My favorite moment of the day was the delicious anticipation of those ten or so seconds of hum while the tubes warmed up; then there was the deep satisfaction of a rich, familiar voice announcing one of the kids' adventure programs that my mother let me listen to for one hour every evening before homework. I would stand on one leg in front of the radio, my head down, my eyes defocused, totally mesmerized by what I was hearing and seeing. Seeing, for old-time radio was profoundly visual; the scenes were painted by and upon your imagination. For me, radio was real. Splendid and enthralling, but less real, were the worlds I glimpsed in books and movies. The life I lived on North Pearl Street was certainly not splendid, but neither was it real to me; just a grim limbo I would escape from as soon as 'our ship came in'. Until then, I could find solace in my story games.

'I'm afraid of them,' Mrs McGivney said, offering me a second cookie, which I politely refused, then reluctantly took.

'You're afraid of radios?'

'Of everything electric,' she admitted with a little smile of self-disparagement.

Only then did I notice that she didn't have electric lights. All the houses on our row still had their gas installations in place, but the gas had been cut off except for kitchen stoves. In some rooms the gas pipes had been used as conduits for the electricity, so naked bulbs dangled from stiff, fabric-wrapped wires that sprouted from the ceiling rosettes of former gas chandeliers. In our bathroom and kitchen the disused gas pipes had fancy wrought- iron keys, but you couldn't turn them because they'd been painted over so many times. But Mrs McGivney still had fancy cut-glass gas lamps on her walls, with bright brass keys to turn them on.

'Mr McGivney just loves the gaslight,' she said. 'He's always glad when it gets dark enough for me to turn it up.' She smiled at the unmoving old man, her eyes aglow with affection.

I looked over at him, sitting there with his pale eyes directed, unseeing, out the window, his face expressionless, and I wondered how she could tell he liked the gas light. Could he speak? Did he smile? And what was wrong with him anyway? Was he crazy or something?

I felt her eyes on me, so I quickly looked away.

'Mr McGivney is a hero,' she said, as though she were explaining something.

I nodded.

'My goodness! Do you know how long it's been since we've had a little boy come visit us?' she asked.

'No, ma'am.' I didn't really care. All I wanted was an opening to tell her that I'd better be getting home.

'It's been a long, long time. Michael—that's my nephew?—he used to visit us sometimes. I don't think he much liked coming up here, but Ellen—my sister?—she used to make him come. And every time he came, I'd give him some of my sugar cookies. He used to like my sugar cookies, unlike some little boys I could mention.'

'I like your sugar cookies, too, Mrs McGivney. I think they're... nice. Real nice. Well, I guess I'd better be going. My mother's been sick and—'

'Mr McGivney is a hero,' she said again, sticking to her own line of thought and ignoring mine. I could tell she wanted to talk about him, but I was uncomfortable with the waxy-clean smell of the place, and with that smooth- faced old man staring out at nothing, so I told her that my mother would be wondering where I was, and I thanked her for the milk and cookies. She sighed and shrugged, then she opened the door for me, and I escaped down the dark staircase.