American Lives: A Reader

Hard Luck Suit

john skoyles Hard Luck Suit Secret Frequencies: A New York Education 47 I have a tip on a horse,” Fred said on the phone. “Want to get in on it?” I said I did. “How much can you get?” “Money?” “Of course ‘money!’” I could hear him chuckling. “I have about a hundred and thirty nine,” I said. I left off “dollars.” I was always halting my sentences with Fred to make them jazzier. “Bring it, and more if you can.” I thought I could scrounge through my junk drawer, where a few stray bills lay crushed among old keys, gum wrappers, whistles, and stubby pencils. I told him I had been listening to Nebel. “Which night? With the guy talking about bht? To keep stuff on the shelves longer? You know, there is more knowledge on the airwaves alone than in all the colleges in the world. I’ve gotta run, love to your mother. Oh, one more thing—how about I line up a girl to meet us later, for dinner?” When I paused, he said, “Okay, don’t worry. I heard about your talk with Van. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’ll ask Madeline to bring a girl. And this will be another first too, your first job with me. We’re a team now, right? See you then.” Since we were a team, I thought Fred might give me the key to his place. I wanted to take it out during the week and run its teeth over the tip of my finger. I wanted to throw a party and greet Long John and Florence Psychic at the door. I wanted to show Linda the fancy bed. When an errand brought me anywhere near the Upper East Side, I looked toward Fred’s and felt a pang close to homesickness. I mentioned this, and he said, “That’s not 48 john skoyles homesickness. You don’t live there. You’ve got away-sickness— you just want to get away.” My sleeplessness continued, and I listened to Long John interview the man Fred mentioned who claimed an evil race lived deep in the earth. The Deros, short for Detrimental Robots , rigged certain elevators in New York, so that if passengers pressed basement twice, they would travel straight down, three miles, into the boiling hearth where these monsters made their home. During one of Long John’s endless commercials for a disinfectant so strong that one drop could deodorize an airplane hangar, I worried about the money I risked, Christmas money saved to buy a Zenith TransOceanic radio. For a long time I’d wanted to hear overseas broadcasts, which wasn’t possible on my cheap transistor. I started to replay Linda’s words about Fred, and I worried. I worried about the promised girl. Not only about what would be expected of me, but because of my obsession with Linda. Of all the women in the city and all the mailroom’s thumbed-through magazines showing overinflated blondes pushing their mouths into succulent shapes while lifting gauzy underwear , nothing excited me more than my prim, officious aunt. I worried whether any other woman would be able to arouse me. I looked down at my penis, which had shrunk to the size of a hazelnut, and I worried. I met Fred at Rumplemayer’s on Saturday morning. It was mid-July, and the lips of the carriage horses around Central Park foamed with a frothlike meringue. I looked forward to going to the track, thinking of the train that sped through the stations without stopping, leaving commuters in its breeze, the train that blew straight to Aqueduct, the train marked S for Special. I arrived early and spun twice through the St. Moritz’s revolving doors just for the luxury of entering and leaving. Rumplemayer’s marble soda fountain stood in the center of an enormous pink room whose walls were hung with stuffed animals. Fred waved Hard Luck Suit 49 from a booth. He wore a dark pinstriped suit. As I slid in, I straightened my lapels. He asked where I got my tie. “Tie City.” All ties were ninety-nine cents. “I just bought it, for today.” “Don’t go there anymore,” he said. “That’s a junk shop.” I looked down at my chest, at the wildest tie I could find, a tie for the racetrack, a tie of good...