Free In the Night Café by Joyce Johnson Page B

Sometimes she’d stay drunk for days and forget to buy food and he’d even have to help her get out of her corset. “She and I just took care of each other,” he said. One time she told some rich woman she made hats and that she had her grandson with her, and the woman had given her a little child’s ring with a bird carved into it. “It was supposed to be the Bluebird of Happiness,” he said, “and I damn near believed it was.”
    Marie said the ring was real silver and took it away to keep for him. She said he’d only lose it. He kept asking for it back, and finally she told him she’d hocked it for two dollars. She wouldn’t tell him where the pawnshop was, but he’d seen lots of them under the el along the Bowery. He made up his mind to find that ring and steal it back, even if he went to jail.
    For weeks he went down there, searching the windows of the pawnshops, staring through the iron gratings at watches and knives and musical instruments. “Finally I knew,” he said. “I wasn’t going to see that little bluebird ring. I never believed there was such a thing as Never before that. I stood on a corner and I looked over at the el—the dark, awful stones of the el. That’s what Never looked like to me.
    â€œI think it was September,” he said, “and very, very late in the afternoon, and suddenly the stones changed, they turned red as if they were burning deep inside, and light was falling—falling through the tracks—down onto the street in shafts. The el wasn’t beautiful, but it was beautiful. I saw something that day,” he said. “You understand?”
    â€œI have to buy me some paint, kiddo,” he told me one morning, looking embarrassed. I lent him fifteen dollars. “As soon as I get my hands on some dough, you’re getting it back.”
    I had to go to a job that day. When I came home, there was canvas tacked to the wall opposite the bed and he was priming it with gesso. Now and then he’d step aside and give it that quick, sizing-up stare of his as if something that wasn’t on there yet had flashed out at him. He seemed like a dancer, so quick and light on his feet with the can of gesso in the crook of his arm and the big brush in his hand that he’d brought all the way from Florida. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I forgot to start dinner or put the groceries away. The truth was, the sight was almost painful because it reminded me I hadn’t found my own work yet. I still hadn’t entirely given up on the theater.
    The gesso had to dry overnight, he said.
    He got up so early the next morning, I was still half asleep. I heard the shade go up, then knew he was moving in and out of the room. He came over to the bed and touched my hair. He said, “Stay there, kiddo.”
    The paint hit the canvas with a sound like rain.

9
    I N THOSE DAYS , I was a crackerjack typist—one hundred w.p.m. I typed envelopes, theses, just about everything. I’d stick cards up all over the Village: Speed-of-light satisfaction. No job too big or too small. If I ran out of clients, I’d be a Kelly Girl and go around to various offices. I didn’t mind that too much because it was interesting to work in different parts of the city. I’d eat a tunafish sandwich at my desk and walk around on my lunch hour, learning about places like Varick Street and Coenties Slip. I could usually type faster than any of the other secretaries and sometimes they’d ask me to stay on permanently. I’d say, No, I didn’t want a regular job. It was because of the acting—I always had to leave an opening for it—but also I was afraid, afraid offices would get me and I wouldn’t be free anymore. I’d somehow be stuck in a role I’d never meant to choose, an office girl who wore nylons all through the hot weather and a dictation pad on her knee, when I wanted so much more