The City When It Rains

“But, I’m just hitting a lot of dead ends.”

Pike’s eyes returned to the stacks of envelopes which covered one side of his desk. “It’s burying me,” he moaned, then glanced up at Corman. “So tell me, you interested in Groton’s job or not?” He lifted one of the envelopes and spilled the negatives onto the top of the light box. “Lilies and lace, that’s his beat.”

Corman could see Groton in his mind, slumped in a velvet chair, his camera bags gathered at his feet like sleeping dogs, his head nodding forward from time to time, heavy-lidded, ponderous, waiting for the bride, the groom, the first blast from the towering pipe organ. “Society shoots,” he said, almost to himself, “that’s all I’d be doing, too?”

“From morning till night, my friend,” Pike said. “You too good for it?”

Corman leaned against the door jamb and said nothing.

After a moment, Pike glanced up at him. “That’s the way it is, Corman,” he said. “You don’t get cakes and ale.” His eyes narrowed. “You want it or not?”

“How long can you hold it open?”

“Like they say, five business days.”

“That’s all?”

“You got till Monday morning,” Pike said firmly. “After that, you’ll have to take a number.”

Corman drew in a deep breath. “All right,” he said. “I’ll let you know one way or the other.”

“What about this shoot with Groton? The Waldorf?”

“I’ll be there,” Corman told him. He stood up, started out the door.

“Oh, by the way,” Pike said, stopping him. “Even if you come on staff, I don’t want to be your social secretary.” He picked up a small pink phone message and thrust it toward Corman. “Somebody left this for you about an hour ago.”

Corman took the message and read it. “It’s from my—what would you call it—the guy who married my wife.”

“Before or after you did?”

“After.”

Pike seemed to relax a bit. He grinned his old grin. “Just call him Sloppy Seconds,” he said.

Fenster was leaning against the wall in the lobby, fumbling through his camera bag, when Corman walked out of the elevator.

Fenster glanced up quickly. “You sell anything?”

Corman shook his head.

“Bastards,” Fenster hissed. He eased himself from the wall, pulled the camera bag onto his shoulder and headed for the door.

They walked out of the building together then turned west down 42nd Street. It was a sea of weaving umbrellas. Fenster added his to the jumble and drew Corman under it.

“I hate the city when it rains,” he said. He slowed his pace and glanced about aimlessly. “I don’t know where I’m going. That stuff about playing Hugo against the Times, that was bullshit.”

The rain suddenly stopped west of Fifth Avenue. Fenster folded his umbrella and stuck it into his bag. “By the way,” he asked, “where you headed?”

“Midtown North.”

“What for?”

Corman shrugged, hating the sound of Lang’s name in his mind. “Something I’m working on.”

Fenster stopped, looked at Corman closely. “Anything big?”

Corman shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

They walked on silently until they reached Times Square. There was a long bank of public telephones just in front of the old Times Building. Corman left Fenster at the corner while he made the call.

A woman answered immediately. “Candleman and Mills.”

“I’d like to speak to Mr. Mills,” Corman said. “I’m returning his call.”

“May I have your name, please?”

“David Corman.”

“Thank you, Mr. Corman. Just a moment, please.”

Something from the Brandenburg Concertos came over the phone suddenly, high, metallic, utterly unmusical. Corman drew the receiver from his ear to avoid it.

Jeffrey came on a few seconds later, cutting off the concerto in the middle of a flourish.

“Hello, David,” he said in a soft but decidedly serious voice. “How are you?”

“Fine.”

“I’m sorry about tracking you down this morning, but I needed to talk to you, and I didn’t want Lucy to know.”

“What’s up, Jeffrey?” Corman asked dryly.

“Well, I was hoping that you and I could meet for dinner.”

“I have to be home with Lucy.”

“Would a drink be possible? Just a short one?”

“I guess.”

“We really do need to have a talk, you know,” Jeffrey said, adding a gentle emphasis.

Corman remained silent.

“Would seven be all right?”

“Maybe a little earlier,” Corman said.

“Six?”

“Okay.”

“How about the Bull and Bear, then,” Jeffrey said. “It’s a favorite of Lexie’s and mine.”

Corman’s fingers tightened around the phone. It was still hard for him to imagine that Lexie was married to another man, choosing favorite bars, restaurants, songs with him. It seemed strangely doomed in its repetitiveness, as if you could only change your seat on the train, never the direction in which it was moving. “Yeah, okay, the Bull and Bear,” he said, then hung up.

“Everything okay?” Fenster asked when Corman joined him again.

“Good enough,” Corman said.

The two of them headed west again, down that stretch of 42nd Street the cops called “the Deuce,” a wide expanse of cheap souvenir shops, porno theaters and adult bookstores where pimps, burned-out hookers and dope peddlers lounged together in bleak doorways while they watched the other, more prosperous portion of humanity stream by. Corman had spent a lot of time photographing them, trying to capture the way they seemed to envy the ordinary people who rushed past on their way to the bus terminal or the towering offices of midtown, but despised them, too, felt a vehement contempt for their wormy little lives.

“We should be like them,” Fenster said as he nodded toward a small knot of grim-faced young men. “You don’t butt-fuck one of those guys.” He laughed mockingly. “That’s what I’m going to say to my kid the next time he asks me what I do. I’m going to say, ‘I grab my ankles, Conrad, I take it up the ass.’” His eyes bore in on the men again. One of them nodded toward him and grabbed his crotch.

Fenster stopped dead in his tracks and stared evenly into Corman’s eyes. “Did you see that?”

Corman nodded.

Fenster smiled. “Some balls they got, huh?” he said fiercely. “They wouldn’t live like us for five fucking seconds.” He glanced back at the group of men in the doorway. “They see something they want, they take it. And if there’s a plate glass window between them and the goods, they just smash the fucking thing.” His face reddened suddenly, his eyes glistening. “You can’t be a man in this fucking city unless you’re willing to do that. You can’t be a man unless you’re willing to live like them, tell people to piss the hell off.”

Corman started to move down the street again.

Fenster grabbed his jacket, stopping him. “They got the edge on life, Corman,” he said. “They got the edge, not us. You know why? Because they know it’s all bullshit.”

Corman tugged himself free and started walking again.

Fenster followed him, pressing his shoulder against Corman’s. “It’s the truth,” he said. He craned his neck, peering down the street. “Look at this place. You think any of our friends could survive around here?” He stopped