Make Room! Make Room!(15)

“That’s not the half of it.” The door closed and they whined down the shaft. “They take that temperature on top of the building and I bet down near the street it’s a lot more than that.”

“You’re probably right.”

In the lobby the doorman Charlie saw her when the elevator opened and he spoke into his concealed microphone. “Going to be another hot one,” he said when she came up.

“Morning, Miss Shirl,” Tab said, coming out of the guardroom. She smiled, happy to see him as she always was, the nicest bodyguard she had ever known—and the only one who had never made a pass at her. She liked him not because of that but because he was the kind of man who would never even think of a thing like that. Happily married with three kids, she had heard all about Amy and the boys, he just wasn’t that kind of man.

He was a good bodyguard though. You didn’t have to see the iron knucks on his left hand to know he could take care of himself; though he wasn’t tall, the width of his shoulders and the swelling muscles on his arms told their own story. He took the purse from her, buttoning it into his deep side pocket, and carried the shopping bag. When the door opened he went out first, bad party manners but good bodyguard manners. It was hot, even worse than she had expected.

“No weather report from you, Tab?” she asked, blinking through the heat at the already crowded street.

“I think you’ve heard enough of them already, Miss Shirl, I know I must have collected about a dozen on the way over this morning.” He didn’t look at her while he talked, his eyes swept the street automatically and professionally. He usually moved slowly and talked slowly and this was deliberate because some people expected a Negro to be that way. When trouble began it usually ended an instant later, since he firmly believed it was the first blow that counted and if you did that correctly there was no need for a second one, or more.

“After anything special today?” he asked.

“Just shopping for dinner and I have to go to Schmidt’s.”

“Going to take a cab crosstown and save your energy for the battle?”

“Yes—I think I will this morning.” Cabs were certainly cheap enough, she usually walked just because she liked it, but not in this heat. There was a waiting row of pedicabs already, with most of the drivers squatting in the meager shade of their rear seats. Tab led the way to the second one in line and steadied the back so that she could climb in.

“What’s the matter with me?” the first driver asked angrily.

“You got a flat tire, that’s what’s the matter with you,” Tab said quietly.

“It’s not flat, just a little low, you can’t—”

“Shove off!” Tab hissed and raised his clenched fist a few inches; the sharpened iron spikes gleamed. The man climbed quickly into his saddle and pedaled off down the street. The other drivers turned away and said nothing. “Gramercy Market,” he told the second driver.

The cab driver pedaled slowly so that Tab could keep up without running, yet the man was still sweating. His shoulders went up and down right in front of Shirl and she could see the rivulets of perspiration running down his neck and even the dandruff on his thin hair; being this close to people bothered her. She turned to look at the street. People shuffling by, other cabs moving past the slower-moving tugtrucks with their covered loads. The bar on the corner of Park Avenue had a sign out saying BEER TODAY—2 P.M. and there were some people already lined up there. It seemed a long wait for a glass of beer, particularly at the prices they were charging this summer. There never was very much, they were always talking about grain allotments or something, but in the hot weather it was gone as soon as they got it in, and at fantastic prices. They turned down Lexington and stopped at the corner of Twenty-first Street and she got out and waited in the shade of the building while Tab paid the driver. A hoarse roar of voices came from the stalls in the food market that had smothered Gramercy Park. She took a deep breath and, with Tab close beside her so that she could rest her hand on his arm, she crossed the street.

Around the entrance were the weedcracker stalls with their hanging rows of multicolored crackers reaching high overhead, brown, red, blue-green.

“Three pounds of green,” she told the man at the stand where she always stopped, then looked at the price card. “Another ten cents a pound!”

“That’s the price I gotta pay, lady, no more profit for me.” He put a weight on the balance scale and shook crackers onto the other side.

“But why should they keep raising the price?” She took a broken piece of cracker from the scale and chewed it. The color came from the kind of seaweed the crackers were made from and the green always tasted better to her, less of the iodiney flavor than the others had.