Free Seventh Avenue by Norman Bogner Page A

slow trot and there’s like no place to make it in except in the empty pig pen, and that’s where we went. Honest, it was fabulous. What was her name? Jeannie Something, one of the best, no kidding.”
    “Sounds sensational,” Jay said.
    “We’re making good time. Ought to be in Scranton pretty soon.”
    It had grown dark, and Rhoda stared out of the car window as they reached the outskirts. Black factories, with huge cylindrical smoking chimneys set back from the road, glowered on what had once in the distant past been countryside; like the dead risen, they stood thundering black smoke that drifted into her face and made her eyes smart. It was a strange, foreign country, a country in which she feared she might die. She became dizzy and breathless.
    “You’re very quiet all of sudden,” Barney said to her, hoping for a reaction to his story, and when none came he continued. “You’re taking this in the right way, Rhoda. To be honest, I didn’t expect you to take it any other way. Smart girl. You and Jay are going to make it in a big way. I got loads of confidence in you.”
    “Things are better now than they’ve ever been,” Jay affirmed. “We’ve got a future, don’t we, Rhoda?”
    She did not answer, and now they were driving along the main street, which contained scores of brightly lit bars. Wherever she looked there were bars and girls leaning against walls. They’re both frightened, terrified, she thought, and they want me on their side because they need me. They can’t stand up to me, but they don’t know yet that I know that. She made a vague attempt to examine her motives: had she got herself pregnant to trap Jay? If this was the case, then she had an obligation to herself, not to him, to go through with it, because nothing could be gained by holding him. If they married because she was pregnant, the cornerstone of their relationship would be reduced to sand and the whole structure would totter the moment the scaffolding was withdrawn. She probed her mind, and discovered that there had not been any plan - at least any plan that she herself had devised. She had given herself to him in the muddied and ambiguous hope that she could make something of him: provide him with a character and identity that he did not possess and never would, unless it was shaped by love.
    Jay parked next to a noisy bar, overflowing onto the sidewalk with loud drunken men talking Polish and shoving each other to make more elbow room. Jay opened the car door, and she waited for Barney to get out. Like a general on an inspection tour, he moved through the pack of men with Rhoda and Jay trailing him. She could see from the smiles he got that he was well-known to them and that they approved of him. At the bar, they made room for him, and a woman wiped the chipped, scratched wooden surface in front of him with a sopping rag.
    “Usual, Barney?”
    “Er. Yeah, two rye boilermakers. Doubles. Rhoda, what would you like?”
    She ignored him. The room was stiflingly hot, and the men, with their sleeves rolled up, collars open, revealing tattered, dirty undershirts, sweated and drank. She had never seen a bar so crowded and with so many drunken men pushing each other without breaking into open fights. A man with two beer mugs was propelled out of the mob, all fighting for service. He was dead drunk, and his head hit the top of the bar with a dull thud. The woman who had served them took the two mugs out of his hands, filled them with beer, then lifted his head up. He took some money out and was almost pushed to the ground as others fought to squeeze in his place.
    “Sally here yet?” Barney said, all business.
    “Upstairs, waiting for you.”
    “Sure you won’t have a drink, Rhoda?”
     
    “C’mon” - Jay put his arm around her shoulder – “have one. Good for the nerves.”
    “My nerves are okay. But you have another drink.”
    “Same again,” Jay said.
    They had three more rounds of drinks before Barney made a