Chapter eight

 

       

                In 1790s, at least a section of Modern Broadway in Paterson was called "The Old York Road." Near its start at the Northeastern corner of modern Main Street was an estate owned by Simeon Van Winkle. The stone structure stood back from the road by 12 feet with huge overhanging trees forming a wall of green along its front.

                Farther along Old York, at the corner of what is now Carrol Street, Paul Rutan's Inn received guests. Horsemen came here and horse talk filled its smoky air. Most people called it "The Black Horse Tavern" because of the crude horse's head painted on the swinging panel sign above the door. In later years, John E. Van Winkle would build his mansion here.

                Another famous inn stood on the corner of Willis Street. People knew this by various names, though the owners called it "Post's Tavern." A more popular name was "Bull's Tavern" after the distorted bull's head painted on its creaking sign board. Others called it "Peace & Plenty Tavern" for the inscription painted in alternative blue and red letters on the board beside its door. Mrs. Rachel Van Houten ran the place. Her first husband's name was Post.

                A brick-faced house stood at the corner of Vreeland and Old York a little father on, this belonged to Nicholas Van Blarcom, a farmer and a mason. Next came the Van Riper mansion, a dark place, later torn down and replaced with a cheerier residence -- though the new place retained the name Van Riper, despite a string of new owners. At Water Street stood Judge Terhune's place, one of the most important local figures, whose family would come to dominate the Bergen County legal system into the late 20th Century. His descendent was Bergen County sheriff in 1987. Another relative became tax assessor in Secaucus in the 1980s.

                At Cedar Lawn, just short of the horse railroad terminus, lived Hazel Peterson. Her family lived in the Lakeview section of Paterson until 1970s, though much of her property and the property of Cornelius Vreeland was converted into the Cedar Lawn Cemetery.

                ***********

                Maxwell looked and felt like a delivery boy, one of those boys with bow tie and slicked down hair from some high-priced, mid-Manhattan clothing store, stumbling into the bar with the accumulation of packages, all of them glittered with gift wrap and bows, as if his arrival meant the early arrival of Santa, boxes and bows giving the contents more status than they deserved, the stack barely fitting through the complicated right angle turn between the inner and outer doors.

                Unable to see in front of him, Maxwell struggled to navigate the narrow space between the juke box, cigarette machine and electronic card game. He might have been a pin ball bounding from one bumper and point traps to another, lacking only bells and lights to tell him how many points his little journey accumulated.

                The stiff-necked north siders turned as Maxwell neared, their grim jaws grinding out expressions of utter disapproval. Even the new comers looked surprised, their nervous sweating faces still flushed from their confrontation with the night's warm up dancer. They squinted at Maxwell and tried to make out what all this meant? Ruth, her red hair catching in the light on the far side of the bottle island, stopped, beer foam flopping over the lip of down mugs and down over her knuckles. Her pink painted mouth shaped out the words: "Oh, no!"

                She plopped down the drink where she was and rushed towards the gap in the island, ignoring the protest of newcomers who had ordered those drinks.

                "ARE YOU CRAZY?" She hissed at Maxwell in a harsh whispered as he settled on a vacant stool right in the center of the danger zone. The first dancer had already left the stage and the men around the bar shifted and shuffled in expectation of Patty's appearance -- most casting curious glances at Maxwell's packages, which he had deposited on the bar.

                "What do you mean?" he asked.

                "I MEAN," Ruth said, pushing the words through clenched teeth. "If Wolfman sees you here like this, he'll put you out of here for good. And there's no telling what SHE will do. Get out now, and take this..."

                Ruth never got the chance to finish. Wolfman bellowed and rose from his stool at the south end, both his huge hands slapped the flat top of the bar.

                "Why, I'm gonna kill that boy!" he roared, but didn't move, or rather didn't get a chance to move, no more than Ruth had gotten a chance to finish her warning, because just at that moment, just when Ruth might have done something to get Maxwell out before the situation had gone too far, Patty made her entrance, parading out from the ladies room with her usual arrogant air, her nose lifted as she passed the hooting men at the pool table. She did not acknowledge them, or acknowledge Wolfman's giggling minions when she reached the south end of the bar, even though they had turned completely around on their stools, faces so taunt with this new expectation, she might have wondered what had gotten them so excited so suddenly.

                And maybe Wolfman might have roared again, except something in her movement kept his hands on the bar, the massive fingers curling around its edge as if he was just barely hanging on. Something in her sharp stare turned the minions around again, making them grab up their now-flat beers, swallowing glassfuls whole.

                Even Maxwell sensed something queer in the air, something unusual in the mix of hormones that generally made for Patty's magic, and he wondered if perhaps Ruth was right, and his timing at bringing the presents so utterly bad, coming at a moment when Patty was already in an altered mood as to make her reaction to his gesture totally unpredictable.

                Perhaps, he could have grabbed up the boxes even then and fled and avoided the inevitable confrontation. But the thought came too late and when he began to move, his fingers only rustled the wrapping paper and drew her stare to where he sat, drawing her to an abrupt halt. She frowned, her mouth losing some of its attitude as it fell slightly open. The previous dancer's jukebox selection ended and left an uncomfortable silence in the room, one in which Maxwell half expected to hear the buzz of some poor, insect about to be crushed.

                Patty stopped near Wolfman, squinting hard at Maxwell now, one of her painted eyebrows raised like a question mark on her forehead. She stared at the packages Maxwell had piled on the bar, her face half hidden now in shadow, her mouth turning into an odd smile. She said something to Wolfman that Maxwell could not hear. But he did hear Ruth mutter from a few feet away.

                "It's too late now," she said, then looked at Maxwell. "Just sit tight, Max. I'll get you a beer."

                But Patty made no move towards Maxwell, at least no obvious move, though even as she accepted the quarters for the jukebox from Ruth, her gaze remained fixed on the pile of boxes, and as she made the long trip around the bar to select her songs, she slowed down, staring at Maxwell and the boxes more directly from the eastern side of the bar. She paused at the jukebox only long enough to punch out some series of songs which she might or might not have known, some familiar pop song starting up her set -- though not a song she had selected previously, lacking her usual attraction to a strong backbeat. Finally, she made her way down the west side of the bar, heading straight for where Maxwell sat.

                She actually seemed surprised to find his face behind that wall of boxes, her sharp blue eyes taking on a puzzled -- yet immensely curious -- looked when she recognized him. Again, she slowed, but she did not stop, and when she came closest to him, her head jerked away just in time to avoid a head on collision with a man making his way up that side of the bar in the other direction.

                She continued to stare even as she moved behind the bar and returned up the inside to the stage, her air of indifference shattered by her unmitigated curiosity. She said nothing, just climbed up onto the stage and started to dance. Despite the fact, she had several prime candidates for her abuse, Patty ignored them, sending Wolfman into a barely controlled frenzy at his end of the bar.

                "Would you look at that!" he boomed, his voice intentionally loud so Patty, Maxwell and the rest of the bar couldn't miss his meaning. "I hire her to dance for people, and she gets this thing in her head for a bunch of boxes. If I had one goddamn dancer half as good as her I'd show her what I think. She'd be out on the street with her boxes, doing her thing for the winos."

                If Patty heard, she never acknowledged it, or changed her slower than usual dance. But she did manage frequent glances at Maxwell, and at the pile of boxes, like an intrigued kitten who couldn't quite maintain her air of indifference. Only her equally frequent glances at the clock showed her utter frustration, time ticking much too slowly for her, which caused her dance to slow down even more.

                About half way through Patty's set, Ruth came over to Maxwell and touched his hand, her pink nails and pink lips shimmering in the on and off pattern of the stage light. Maxwell shook his head, thinking she was offering him a refill on his drink. She crooked her forefinger and leaned towards him, whispering into his ear.

                "Wolfman wants you to leave -- now!" she said.

                Maxwell straightened and stared into Ruth's face. She nodded solemnly, then she whispered again.

                "It's for good this time," she said.

                "Why?" he asked. "Just because of these boxes?"

                "Because you've gone too far," Ruth said. "He doesn't like men romancing his dancers."

                "Romancing?" Maxwell shouted. "I'm not romancing anybody!"

                "That's not how Wolfman sees it," Ruth said, keeping her own voice calm. "It's one of the rules. No romancing. No boyfriends. No sex in the bathroom. Dancers come here to dance. That's all."

                "Are you trying to tell me the dancers can't have boyfriends?"

                "Of course they can have boyfriends," Ruth said. "They can have lovers, they can have husbands, but just not in here. It keeps down the fights."

                "But I'm not anything to Patty," Maxwell protested, glancing down the bar to where Wolfman sat. The big man glared back, his large black eyes like the open barrels of a shotgun, the brain behind them aching to pull the trigger.

                "Just leave, Max, before you get hurt," Ruth said. "Wolfman can be a mean man when he's riled."

                "All right," Maxwell mumbled. "I'll go. But can I leave the packages?"

                Ruth shrugged. "Do what you want," she said. "Just do it fast. He's peeved enough to want to take you outside himself."

                Maxwell rose, dropped some money on the bar, then slowly turned to leave.

                "HEY!" Patty roared from the stage. "Where the hell do you think you're going?"

                Maxwell paused, his shoulder hitched up as if struck in the back. He could feel Wolfman's raging stare, and could see the man's shotgun eyes, mind slowly squeezing the trigger to the point of exploding. But when Wolfman roared, it was at Patty, not Maxwell.

                "Let fucking asshole go, girl!" the man roared. "Tell him to pack up his fucking presents and leave you alone."

                Someone -- probably Ruth -- hit the off switch for the juke box and Madonna's voice ground to a half, slowing down onto the word "Virgin." An uncanny silence filled the room, filled only by a few uncomfortable coughs and stirrings of the seated men, north, south, east and west.

                "BUT I DON'T WANT HIM TO GO," Patty shouted back, punctuating each word with the jab of her forefinger, the glittering red finger nail like an already bloodied dagger.

                "Well, he can't stay here," Wolfman said, clearly taken back by her reaction -- a sad and disappointed look replacing the rage in his eyes. "You know the rule about boyfriends."

                "He's not my boyfriend."

                "He's bringing you presents like he's one."

                "Lots of people give me things," Patty snapped. "That doesn't make them all my boyfriends."

                "Drinks are okay," Wolfman said. "Shit from Bloomingdales ain't."

                "For Christ's sake, Richard," Patty said. "You don't know what's in those boxes any more than I do. Stop acting as if the man has bought me a mink coat."

                "I don't need to know," Wolfman said. "If it ain't a mink, it's something worse, something made of lace maybe."

                Patty stared suddenly furious. "You're fucking jealous," she said. "That's what this is all about."

                "I am not."

                "Yes you are," she said, glaring. "I know the look and you've got it. That's why you give me such a hard time about the men who come to see me. You don't mind me hurting the newbies, but god help a man if he actually thinks he'd like to take me to bed."

                "Stop it!" Wolfman roared.

                "I won't. And you can't make me."

                "But I can make him leave," Wolfman said. "A rule is a rule and he's got to go."

                "If he goes, I'm going, too."

                Wolfman blinked, surprised, and then with a sigh, slowly resigned. "If that's the way you want it, then so be it, as long as your boyfriend goes."

                Patty snorted, gathered up a few tips from the edge of the stage, then slowly climbed down, rushing down the inside of the bar, passed Ruth, and out the gap at the southend, refusing to look at Wolfman or his minions. She vanished into the ladies room and reappeared almost instantly, carrying her street clothing in her arms -- walking up the west side of the bar to where Maxwell sat.

                "Call me if you want me, Richard," she called over her shoulder to Wolfman. "You know the number."

                Then, reaching Maxwell, she growled: "Well? What are you waiting for?"

                Maxwell rose and started to follow her, but she turned and stopped him with the flat of her hand against his chest.

                "Aren't you forgetting something?" she asked.

                Maxwell frowned. She glanced at the bar and the two bags of boxes he had left there.

                "Oh, yeah," he said and grinned and grabbed them off the bar as she continued her march towards the door, the shocked faces of the patrons turning as she passed. By the time Patty reached the door, Ruth had switched the jukebox back on. Wolfman sent one of his minions to pound on the ladies room door to wake up the other dancer.

                "She'll be back," the northsiders seemed to say, nodding at each other, Wolfman stared at her across the long end of the bar, his stare saying she would come back only if she begged.

                Patty's chin rose with indignant defiance, and her gaze turned back towards Wolfman as she readied to open the door, her stare saying "Never!" Then she pushed at the door. Maxwell stopped her.

                "Don't you think you ought to get dressed?" he asked. "It's pretty cold out there."

                Patty frowned, then stared down at herself, at the pasties that dangled from the tips of her breasts. A devilish grin rose on her lips.

                "The cold is only half of it," she said, dumping her clothing on top of the cigarette machine as she yanked on a thick black, navy style coat. "If I went out like this, a couple of dozen horny cops would have me in the slammer within minutes -- and I do mean, have me."

                "Is the coat enough?" Maxwell asked.

                Even with the coat, she did not look dressed, her long legs poking out from underneath.

                "I'll be find until we get to your car."

                "My car?"

                "You do have one, don't you?"

                "Yes, but I walked here. I don't live far, but maybe you should wait here while I..."

                Patty laughed, put her forefinger across his lips.

                "Oh, no. We don't know each other well enough for me to come to your place."

                "I -- I didn't mean that," Maxwell said, his face suddenly warm and read. "I was going to suggest you wait here until I went and got my car."

                "No, way, Jose," she snapped. "You walked out on me once. I'm not going to give you a second chance. Just lead the way. I'll be warm enough long enough to get to your car."

************

                "This is your car?" Patty said, her voice full of scorn, as she stood at the door of the garage with her arms folded across her chest against the cold. She shook her head as she studied the machine. Its grey shame filled the garage like a ghost's. Even with the light on, its outline seemed indistinct, merging with the shadows -- though its gloom did disguise the patchwork of grey splotches where Maxwell had repaired the holes.

                "Yes," Maxwell whispered, aware of the dog in the corner, the beast still sniffing at Patty, still making up its mind as to whether he liked the woman or not, whether to growl or park or just leap and bite.

                "What is it?"

                "A 1968 GTO."

                "1968?" she said, the date rolling off the tip of her tongue like something sour. "Can't you afford anything newer."

                "It was my uncle's car," Maxwell said, fitting the key into the door lock, twisting it slowly until the inside lock popped up.

                "So?"

                "So I'm a bit attached to it."

                "So I see," Patty said, taking on uneasy step into the garage, the dog's low growl announcing the beast's decision, yet one so low Patty seemed not to hear it. "Doe it have heat?"

                "After a fashion," Maxwell said, pausing before he slipped behind the wheel. "But I'm not sure it'll keep you warm with you dressed like that."

                Patty grinned and took another step closer to the car, flopping her loose clothing over the slanted rear window. "I wasn't intending on staying dressed like this," she said. "Turn around."

                Maxwell frowned, this two thin eye brows folding over his deep set eyes. "What for?"

                "I'm going to get dressed, stupid."

                "It seems to me all you have to do is put clothing on."

                "Which shows how much you know. If you think I'm butting a blouse on over these pasties, you're crazy. Why don't you put those boxes in the back seat. I'll go over into the corner and..."

                "NO!" Maxwell shouted, and Patty turned.

                "Why not?"

                "The dog's there."

                "Dog?"

                "We have a guard dog. He slipped in when I swung open the door."

                "Some guard dog, he didn't even bark."

                "He doesn't always bark. Sometimes, when he's made up his mind about someone he just lunges for the throat."

                "Oh?" Patty said, staggered closer to the car as she glanced around.

                "I'll go hold him while you dress. Then I'll put the boxes in the trunk. Just get in the car as quick as you can. The dog likes me well enough after a fashion, but I'm not sure I can hold him back once he's determined to attack."

                Maxwell moved towards the place from which he original heard the low growl and found the dog crouched in the corner, eyes green with the impact of the lights.

                "Here, boy," Maxwell said, holding out his hand for the dog to sniff. Jack distrusted the beast, where Maxwell did not. Jack believed the dog would someday kill him in his sleep. But Maxwell believed the dog too lazy for such a devious plan, yet didn't trust to place himself between the dog and its prey.

                Close up, Maxwell saw the dog's tale wag, its reddish, curly coat the product of cocker spaniel genes, though the head and body had too box-like an appearance for the dog to have been sired directly by a pure breed of any kind, nor did its unstable disposition fit the cocker spaniel's temperament. Still, the dog's tongue lapped at Maxwell's extended fingers, and the head pressed against his knees.

                "There, there, boy," Maxwell whispered, as the tearing sound of a closing zipper rose from the darkness behind him, followed immediately by the sound of stomping boots -- immediately followed by a curse.

                "Is something wrong?" Maxwell asked.

                "I just buttoned my blouse wrong. It's this damned dark. Don't you have a brighter light?"

                "The landlord doesn't like to waste money," Maxwell said, having complained over the same 10 watt bulb himself many times. "Do you need help?"

                "Right!" Patty said sarcastically. "Like I need the help of a man to get myself dressed. With most men, I usually have to keep them from undressing me. I wish you could find me a better place for me to change."

                "You could use my apartment."

                "Ah yes!" Patty said, suddenly appearing before Maxwell in the dim light, fully dressed, the legs of her skin-tight jeans stuffed into the top of two white cowboy boots, old boots, whose gold pattern had faded. She still looked cold in a jacket that was too thin for the season. "But I wouldn't be able to get dressed in your apartment either, would I? At least, not right away."

                Her eyes sparkled with devious suggestion.

                "I didn’t say anything of the sort," Maxwell protested.

                "You didn’t have to."

                Maxwell shivered, then rose from his crouch near the dog, struck by the dog’s sudden calm. The dog was not growling now, or even looking as Patty, as if the animal had come to the conclusion she was not worth his effort.

                "Are you ready?" Maxwell asked.

                "I am, but you’re not," Patty said. "You haven’t loaded up my presents yet."

                The bags sat on top of the car’s rear.

                "Oh yeah," he said, grinned, and carefully unlocked the trunk, easing both bags in, before circling around the car again to the driver’s side door. Patty had already climbed in, momentarily startling Maxwell. For the most part -- with the exception of Jack’s occasion begging for rides -- the passenger side remained empty, and seeing it full, alarmed him, as if some sacred ritual was being violated.

                This was Charlie’s car. Only Maxwell could sit in the passenger seat, or Charlie when Maxwell sat behind the wheel. Who was this strange woman seated there now? Why did Maxwell’s hands shake as he climbed in and closed the door? But the oddity faded, and for some reason, Patty suddenly seemed appropriate. For the first time since acquiring the car from the junk yard, Maxwell did not see Charlie's ghost sitting in that seat, too, bearing that grin Maxwell ached to be rid of, but was condemned to endure, the man's memory more a prison sentence than county jail had been. Now, Maxwell saw only Patty's impatient face staring back.

                "Well?" she asked. "What are you waiting for, an invitation?"

                Maxwell turned the key, the mighty engine rumbling to life with a cough and a sputter, then, when the engine steadied, he eased the car into gear an slowly backed out. Even then, the car rocked under the power of the engine, as if more savage horse than machine. Charlie used to laugh about it, often calling the car "an engine with seats" and -- that first time, with his small hands on the wheel, Maxwell had felt the power vibrating through him, as if he was a Bronco rider, raring to rage across a wild landscape. Now, Maxwell only noted the slight hesitation and the missed beats of the engine, fouled spark plugs or an error in timing he needed to correct. Silently, he calculated the step in his head as his hands and eyes and body went through the motions of driving the car out into the car port.

                With the motor still running, Maxwell leaped from the car, swung open the gate, then leaped back behind the wheel, easing the car out onto the dark street, where the echoes of the powerful engine resounded off the face of dilapidated tenements and dark-windowed tenement store fronts. Again, he leaped out, swung closed the gate, reattached its chain and lock -- this clinking also echoing, drawing the eyes and ears of watchers from the shadows. He knew they were there, knew that only the dog and rusted barbed wire above the gate kept him and the building safe from them.

                "You go through that every time you want to drive somewhere?" Patty asked when Maxwell had climbed back behind the wheel again, door now closed and locked against the darkness.

                "Down here, you have to," he said. "Especially at night. Sometimes, during the day, I'll park the car on the street. But never at night."

                "But why? Who would want to steal THIS hunk of junk."

                "It's a fast car, Patty," Maxwell said, steering the machine out onto the Market Street, pausing briefly at the stop sign. "People like to joy ride in fast cars."

                "Not me," Patty said. "It has to be new and fast, and with air-condition for me to want to be seen in it. Give me a Trans Am or a Camero or a Vet."

                "This car can beat any of them," Maxwell said, drawing a glance of stark disbelief from Patty.

                "This hunk of junk?"

                "It would depend upon the condition of the car and the skill of the driver," Maxwell said. "But yes, this car could."

                "You could?" Patty asked, her mouth twisting into one of her teasing smiles.

                "I could if Charlie let me."

                "Charlie?" Patty asked, both painted eyebrows rising. "Who the hell is Charlie?"

                "Charlie is the car."

                "You named your car?"

                "After my uncle," Maxwell said. "This was his car."

                "Oh Lord!" Patty moaned, leaning her head against the passenger side window, the tips of her fingers pressed to her forehead. "What have I gotten myself into here?"

                "What's wrong with naming my car?" Maxwell asked, trying to look at her and drive at the same time.

                "Oh nothing," Patty said with a flip of her hand. "We all do it. In fact, I name everything. I have a clothes dresser named Maggie and my socks are named frick and frack..."

                "All right, I get your point," Maxwell mumbled. "Now do you want to tell me where I'm taking you. Or should I guess?"

                Patty glanced over, her hard blue stare fixed on his face, seeming to study every crack for clues. Finally, she sighed and said: "Make a right here."

                "East?" he said. "How far East?"

                "I'll let you know as we go along. Just drive -- and slowly. We’re not racing any Trans Am now, and I'd like to get home in one piece, even if your hot rod doesn't."

                ***********

                "Over here," the whispered voice said as Maxwell eased through the huge iron gates that marked the entrance to the cemetery, a cemetery so dark and thick with trees no one might ever have suspected a vice president of being buried here, or the arrival of the President, the Governor, eight cabinet members, four supreme court judges and many, many U.S. Senators for that vice president's burial in 1899 -- the year his grandfather was born. Silk barons were buried here. Builders of the railroad, too.

                But Maxwell hated coming here, hated the huge Celtic crosses that marked many of the stalk-like grave stones, hated the concrete wall that surrounded the 15 acres of granite and lime stone and decaying bones. From the outside, the place reminded Maxwell of prison, and the inside was so dark under the cover of its trees, he could hardly read the names on the faces of stone.

                "Over here," the voice whispered again, more insistent than before, echoing slightly in the marble gate house from which it had emerged.

                The term "gate house" hardly described its Greek architecture, a model miniature of the capital building complete with three six-toot tall columns and a two-room marble interior, all open to the air, all strewn with leaves.

                Puck's nose poked out one of the windows, his flashing black eyes as haunting and dark as any ghost's.

                "It sure took you long enough to get here," Puck hissed, and grabbed Maxwell's arm to drag him inside.

                "My uncle had be doing chores around the yard."

                "Your uncle?" Pual said, eyes glancing outside in a sudden rush of panic. "I thought you said he was out of town."

                "Ed, not Charlie," Maxwell said. "I have more than one uncle."

                "Which one has the car?"

                "Charlie. It's Charlie's car."

                "Did you bring it?"

                "Yes, I brought it. But I don't understand why you wanted me to. Charlie told me I could drive it while he's gone. I just don't feel comfortable doing it."

                "You're a pussy, Max," Puck said, as Maxwell eased down onto one of the cold marble benches that normally accommodated mourners. Although the building had been constructed human size, Maxwell always felt as if he was sitting inside a doll's house, with walls and windows more decorative than useful. People came here dressed in black, gathering in this place for the long walk to the grave, the floor stained with their tears and the scuff marks of their impatient shoes. Even now, the smell of fresh dug earth and dying flowers swirled around the interior.

                "Why am I pussy? Because I do what I'm told?" Maxwell asked, squinting to make out Puck's shape in the shadow. The sharp angle of dying sunlight cast the shadows of the gate across Puck's face, making him look as if he stood inside a prison.

                "Because you act like a robot, doing whatever anybody tells you to do, even me. I told you to bring the car and you brought it. If it was me, I would have asked what for right up front."

                "So why do you want it?" Maxwell asked, impatient with Puck's constant verbal circles.

                "You'll see," Puck said. "Did you park it out of sight?"

                "I put it on Knickerbocker Avenue," Maxwell said. "Is that out of the way?"

                "As out of the way as it needs to be," Puck said, beginning a slow pacing back and forth across the narrow, open-aired room. "I just don't want it parked in front of the gate where the cops might see it and know we're in here."

                "Why are you so worried about the police?" Maxwell asked. "I have all the proper papers. I even have my license now."

                Puck stared sharply at Maxwell with a glint of contempt and incredulity in his eyes.

                "I'm sure it's all nice and legal, friend," he snarled. "But if they see us now, and talk to us, they'll know who we are later, and know just where to go and get us."

                "I don't understand."

                "I know you don't," Puck said. "As I said, you're a pussy."

                "So what are we waiting for?" Maxwell asked, riled by Puck's abuse. He had seen the boy a half dozen times since driving by him with Charlie and the car, each meeting seeming to provide a more and more hostile undertone, as if each meeting added to Puck's contempt for him.

                "We're waiting for dark, stupid," Puck said, continuing to pace. "You can't do what we're going to do in the light of day."

                "Which is?"

                "I told you, you'll see."

                "That's not good enough," Maxwell said. "Uncle Charlie's car isn't going anywhere now or after dark unless I know why."

                Puck paused his pacing and stared, his black eyes widening to take in this new aspect of Maxwell.

                "You'll do what I say or I'll break you in two," Puck said finally, fingers folding into fists at his side.

                "I won't," Maxwell said, feet parting the way Uncle Charlie had taught him, his own hands rising, but not into fists.

                "You're a fool as well as a pussy," Puck growled and took a step towards Maxwell. "I guess I'm going to have to teach you who is your real boss, me or your Uncle Charlie."

                "You can try," Maxwell said softly though the cords in his neck tighten as his torso shifted slightly in expectation of attack.

                Although Puck swung, his fist never hit, Maxwell catching the arm mid air, twisting it around Puck to push the boy into the corner, nose pressed against the duty marble.

                "Hey!" Puck howled. "Let go of me."

                "Only if you promise not to try and hit me again."

                "I promise I'll kill you if you don't," Puck yelled. "Let go of me, Pussy, or when I do get loose, I'll pluck your fucking eyes out."

                Maxwell yanked up on the arm, not hard, but in the exact manner Charlie had taught him.

                "A little move can cause a lot of pain, boy," Charlie said. "In any fight, you'll have to worry about, it's pain you want to cause, not damage. The more pain you give, the less likely your attacker will come back at you later."

                Puck howled. "STOP THAT!"

                "Only if you promise to behave."

                Puck wrenched his head around to glare over his shoulder at Maxwell, the pinned boy's face grimacing with pain and outrage, looking like a mad dog caught with a paw in a trap.

                "Sure," he hissed through his clenched teeth. "I'll behave."

                Maxwell let go.

                Puck sprang away as if released from a spring, twisting himself around as he crossed to more open space, and then, in mid flight, out from his clothing flashed a knife, blade glinting in the dying sunlight as if already drenched in blood.

                "You stupid bastard!" Puck said, and circled now in a much more wary fashion, shifting the knife from hand to hand as he studied this new and apparently dangerous version of Maxwell. "You should have kicked the shit out of me while you had the chance."

                "I couldn't do that," Maxwell said, watching the knife, not the boy.

                "Never fight a man with a weapon, boy," Uncle Charlie had told him. "Not unless you have no choice. Run, hide, lie, beg if you have to. But don't fight unless that fellow will absolutely use the weapon no matter what else you do."

                "I don't want to fight you, Puck," Maxwell said.

                Puck grinned, his eyes flashing with the same fiery color as the knife.

                "You should have thought of that before you got into this," he said. "Now I'm going to stick you -- just to teach you a lesson."

                "Why?" Maxwell asked, keeping arms up and away from his body, circling as Puck circled, watching the blade as it leaped from hand to hand.

                "Because I don't want you thinking you can push Puck Fetterland around and get away with it," Puck said with sudden vehemence. "If word would get out that I let a pussy like you throw me, I'd have every junkie and whore's son in Paterson trying to pull me down."

                "I wouldn't tell anybody," Maxwell said.

                Puck stared, his gaze narrowing as he studied Maxwell's face, eyes full of surprise and additional anger.

                "Na, you wouldn't tell nobody. You're too much of a goody two shoes for that, the kind that's gonna stick to his friends through thick and thin and all that shit, crawling over hot coals before going back on a promise, just a regular swell-hearted pussy, through and through, and one that makes me so goddamn sick, I want to vomit!"

                Puck leaped, his hand leading with the knife. Maxwell waited and watched, and then as the point neared his stomach, he stepped aside.

                It was as easy as that, Uncle Charlie told him. Move out of the way, then strike.

                Maxwell grabbed Puck's write as it passed, twisting it up, much in the same fashion as he had the first time, every step in the procedure mechanical and well rehearsed, one he had learned by repeating it with Charlie again and again, and later, done in earnest when the kids at school had tried to hit him. Only this time, the knife clattered onto the marble floor, and something snapped, Maxwell feeling the sickening vibration through his fingers, though the sound itself was no louder than the snapping of a twig.

                This was instantly replaced by a howl from Puck, a wail so loud it echoed like a siren off the walls of the small building, waking up the snoozing landscape so that even the lazy rabbits jumped.

                "You broke it! You fucking broke it!" Puck yelled. "You broke my fucking arm!"

                Puck clutched the limb to his chest, as Maxwell's limp fingers fell away, Puck, bending over as if clutching a dead child.

                "I -- I didn't meat to," Maxwell said. "I guess I yanked too hard. Uncle Charlie always scolded me about that. He said: `You have to have the touch of a feather, boy.' But I guess I got careless I..."

                "I don't give a flying fuck what your Uncle Charlie says, or how gentle you've got to be. I'm hurt. I need a doctor. For Christ's fucking sake, stop fucking talking and go get the fucking car."

                **********

                Maxwell turned the car from Main Street and onto Broadway, heading East. The store front of the dojo where he practiced three nights a week glowed white against the otherwise dark block, its single eye seeming to watch him as he passed, reminding him -- the way Charlie had -- to keep his touch light at all times. Inside, a dozen figures moved away, dressed in white, kicking and ducking, flipping and rolling to their feet, in the same endless repetition Charlie had put Maxwell through, all of it becoming so natural, so engrained that when the time came to use it, no thought was needed, only the pure feather light touch of gears engaged.

                "What are you looking at?" Patty asked, drawing Maxwell's attention back to the present.

                "Nothing," he mumbled.

                "You do that a lot, don't you?"

                "Do what?"

                "Stare into space, thinking about nothing, saying nothing even when you look like you're thinking of something or looking at something."

                Maxwell laughed. "I suppose you're right," he said. "Jack says I think too much and I suppose I do."

                "Ha! So you were doing something after all!"

                "Yes," Maxwell admitted. "But it is often too complicated a process to explain."

                "So now I'm stupid, eh?"

                "I never said that."

                "No, but you implied it."

                "I did no such thing," Maxwell said, and laughed. "You inferred it."

                "I what?"

                Maxwell sighed. "Never mind."

                "There you go again. I know what infer means. I just didn't know what you mean specifically."

                "I meant," Maxwell said, "that you read more into my silences than they deserve. And I never said or implied you were stupid. Maybe I'm the one that's stupid because I can't translate my thoughts into words."

                "Oh," Patty said, then stared out the window.

                "Do we turn soon?" Maxwell asked, attempting to avoid another long silence.

                "I told you I'd tell you when to turn," Patty said without looking at him.

                "I know, but..."

                "Stop inferring things," Patty growled. "I'll let you know where to go."

                Maxwell let out an even longer sigh, a steamy circle forming on the windshield above the steering wheel. He reached for the defrost switch.

                "Don't!" Patty said.

                "What's wrong?"

                "Don't put on the heat."

                "But I thought you were cold?"

                "I was. I'm not now, and I don't trust this tin bucket of yours. The fewer switches you push and pull the better our chances of getting home."

                "The car runs better than it looks."

                "So you say. Just leave it alone. If I get cold I'll start a fire."

                Maxwell's hand dropped away from the dashboard.

                "I'm sorry about what happened at the bar," he said.

                "Why?" Patty asked, her sharp blue gaze turning on him.

                "Because you lost your job," Maxwell said. "I never meant for that to happen."

                "If you had, I wouldn't be in this car," Patty said, and stared away again. "But you didn't lose the job for me. I walked out. I don't let anybody boss me around like that."

                "What are you going to do for work?"

                Patty let out a howl of laughter.

                "There's hundreds of jobs in this town," she said. "I'm popular enough to get anyone one of them. And Richard knows it. Besides, I have a day job."

                "Oh yeah?" Maxwell asked, looking up as he stopped for a traffic light, his face registering his surprise. "What exactly do you do when you're not taking off your clothing?"

                "I'm an accountant."

                "No, seriously," Maxwell said.

                "I am being serious."

                Maxwell's eyebrows folded down over his hazel eyes as he stared.

                "Are you telling me..."

                "I'm not going to repeat myself," Patty snapped. "Even for an airhead like you."

                "But accountant's make good money."

                "That's true."

                "Then why the hell do you dance in...."

                Patty's stare stopped him, her upper lip rising into a snarl.

                "Don't," she warned. "I'm sick of hearing men ask me that question."

                "But it's a good question."

                "So you say."

                "Aren't you going to answer it."

                "Not unless you twist my arm."

                "Will you please stop being so difficult and tell me. It's not like I'm asking you your age."

                "I dance because I like to dance," she said. with an exasperated sigh. "Is that such a big mystery?"

                "No," Maxwell admitted. "But there are other kinds of dancing."

                "What other kind of dancing pays me as much for two nights work as I make all week at my regular shop? Tap Dancing? Ballroom dancing? Ballet, perhaps?"

                "So you do it for the money."

                "The money, the drinks, and..." Patty said with a devious smile, "for the attention. I like men looking at me while I'm up there. I like making them react."

                "Squirm, you mean."

                "That's only one part of it -- the most obvious part. All men react to me when I dance, even those sour faced bums at the northside of the bar. If you look closely enough, you can see them grow less subtly sour when I get up on the stage. The old fakers are trying not to gawk at me the way the new men do, or giggle like Richard's friends. They don't understand how much I'm testing them, how sometimes I push and push and push just to see them sweat a little, and they do, though they also hide it better than most of you."

                "Me?"

                "You react, too, you know."

                "Only because you're crazy."

                "Am I? You point it out the next time we're there."

                "There won't be a next time. We're barred forever, remember?"

                "No, not forever," Patty said. "Nothing is forever. In a few weeks we'll both be back there, acting as if none of this happened."

                "How do you know?"

                "Because Richard always takes a fit when I take an interest in someone, and he always tries to intimidate them by tossing them out the bar. That's why I walked out. If I let him keep getting away with it, I would never have a sex life."

                "You mean you want to..."

                "What do you think!" Patty snapped. "Turn left quick!"

                Maxwell slammed on the brakes and yanked the steering wheel, forcing the car into a sudden skid into a side street they had nearly passed. The smell of burning rubber rose from around the tires, filling the interior of the car.

                "I thought you were going to tell me where to turn!" Maxwell yelled when he had the car straightened out again.

                "I did."

                "Not until the last minute. I could have used a little warning."

                "You distracted me with all your questions. You are the nosiest person I have ever met."

                "How am I supposed to know anything if I don't ask questions?"

                "There you go again. Hey, make the next right," Patty said, jabbing her forefinger towards the next corner, a dark street off Madison Avenue in the People's Park section of Paterson, an area, Maxwell had wandered through from time to time as a kid, but always on his way to somewhere else, store fronts and brown stones and two family houses shaping each block into a Monopoly Board monotony.

                "It's my nature to ask questions," Maxwell said after a moment of silence. He had slowed the car, sensing himself close to Patty's home. The neighborhood fit what he knew of her personality, Italian deli and caterer, fish markets and fine leather shoe stores marking another generation of Paterson with older macho power cars parked at the curbs with the aspirations of being new: a white Mustang sat in front of a crumbling tenement, a metalitic green Corvette sat it its viper-like neck poking out between two sagging brick buildings.

                Maxwell knew the kind of people he would find here, too, aging cronies of the old country trying to control their Mafia-bound sons -- this white series of blocks seeing itself as the last bastion of a formerly all-white Paterson, struggling to resist the inevitable tides of immigration and ethnic invasions from the deep south, as if such efforts had ever worked in the past when the Lenape gave way to the Dutch, and the Dutch to the English, followed by Germans, Irish, Italians, blacks, and hundreds of variations of Latinos. Even the Arabs had set foot here, forming a little Arabia along a middle section of Main Street. But here, in the numbered Avenues and streets of Paterson, the Italians held on the longest, and put up the hardest fight against change, manufacturing male off-spring as if issuing troops for war, hoping they could out-produce the progeny of the incoming "colored" families, only to be foiled by their own offspring who wanted no part of this battle or this town, looking towards a higher class of living that places like Wayne, Nutley, Bloomfield produced, marrying here, maybe, until their jobs allowed them to take the next generation of Italians to those places, building walls of police officers and inflated real estate prices to keep the blacks and Latinos from following.

                "LOOK OUT!" Patty screamed.

                At first, Maxwell thought she wanted him to turn again, and twisted the wheel as he slammed on the brakes -- the whole car shuddering as if the wheels had gone out of alignment, as if the whole frame of the car wanted to shake itself apart. Yet even in the midst of this madness, Maxwell saw the shape of the other dark car swerving towards him out of the shadows, and he twisted the wheel again, his bumper barely missing the black bumper of the other car as it raced passed him out of a one way street the wrong way. No headlights. No honked horn. Just the car, as smooth and deadly as a leopard.

                "That son of a bitch!" Maxwell screamed, glaring in the rearview mirror as the black Trans Am slipped away. "That was on purpose!"

                Patty looked pale in the blue tint of the street light.

                "Just let go of it," she said, sounding as shaken as she looked. Maxwell turned.

                "Are you all right?"

                "There you go with your questions again," she said, trying to sound light-hearted, though she wouldn't meet his gaze. Her fingers fumbled with her purse until she produced a cigarette and lighter. The flick of flame only emphasized the dread in her eyes. Then, after sucking in the smoke and sighing it out, she finally glanced at him. "Well? Are you going to sit here in the middle of the street all night or what? Drive on before the police decide to ask us what we're doing."

                Maxwell nodded. The car had stalled. He turned the key, the engine whining for a moment before recatching. The car begged for a tune-up, and the gas gauge showed only a quarter tank. Charlie never ran well that low. But Maxwell only glanced up into the rearview mirror again, caught sight of a dark shape turning around a few corners back, a black Trans Am with tinted windows that he would remember, and lookup later, when Patty wasn't around.

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