Every now and then he would take Julie to the library with him, leaving her in the children's section while he roamed in his mature twelve-year-old masculinity through the adult section, taking a book from a shelf, scanning it, deciding whether or not he wanted to read it. He never bought any books then, and he did not know there was such a thing as the bestseller list of the New York Times Book Review. He had not ever, in fact, even read the New York Times, although kids used to come around to the classrooms selling the Times and also the Trib. He grew up with the News and the Mirror and the Journal-American (he later felt betrayed when even these friendly and well-known newspapers killed his play). He wondered now when he had last gone to see a play that had not received rave notices, when he had last read a book that was not on the bestseller list. It had been much simpler then, the long walk to the library along White Plains Avenue, the library snug and warm, the aroma of books, the feel of them in his hands. And at Christmas, the tree opposite the main desk, decorated with popcorn, the Dickens novels bound in burnished red leather, tooled in gold, spread on the floor beneath the tree, more appropriate at Christmas than at any other time. The librarian was a nice German lady named Miss Goldschmidt. "Merry Christmas, Arthur," she would say. "What are you reading this week?" — the cherished copy of The Talisman with the jacket picture of the knight on horseback, he slid the book across the desk and Miss Goldschmidt beamed approval.
"You sure that's on Forty-sixth?" the cabbie asked.
"I'm sure," Arthur said. There were not too many things he was sure of, but he was dead certain that the Helen Hayes was on Forty-sixth Street because Catchpole had opened at that identical theater when it was still known as the Fulton in 1947, to be mercilessly clobbered by all ten gentlemen of the press the next day — back then, PM, the Mirror, the Sun, and the Brooklyn Eagle also had a say about what would be permitted to survive. He thought it supremely ironic that his new play was holding readings at the same theater, but he fervently wished it would open someplace else, anyplace else, where he would be safe from the evil eye. Evil eye, my ass, he thought, but hadn't his grandfather come to America from an impoverished mountain village called Ruvo del Monte, and wasn't there still enough to this heritage in Arthur to cause suspicion and doubt? In fact, hadn't his Aunt Filomena been hit by the iceman's runaway horse on First Avenue the very night after his mother had dreamt it? Any place but the Fulton, he thought. You can change the name, but the jinx remains. And yet he knew his fears were idiotic, God, look at what the wind was doing out there, papers blowing in the gutter, hats skimming off heads, look at that woman trying to control her skirts, God this was a city, what a city this was.
He wanted to own this city.
But more than that, or perhaps a part of it, an extension of it, he wanted to know that this was where he belonged, this city into which he had been born, this city whose streets and gutters he knew from the time he had felt for immies in deep puddles along the curb, this city whose rooftops held secret fluttering pigeons to watch, hot, sticky tar to mold into huge, strange shapes, chimney pots behind which you could pee, this city that had grown to include the Bronx and a two-family house opposite the junior high school, hide and seek behind hydrangea bushes, fig trees wrapped in tarpaper against the winter's cold, a two-cent Hooton with nuts every afternoon on the walk home from Evander, Bronx Park and the winding river path, Laura in the woods behind the Botanical Gardens, they'd been eaten alive by mosquitoes, this city, this.
He wanted to claim it, but more than that he wished to be claimed by it.
Those solitary walks to the library alone, when alone his thoughts would spiral and somersault, when alone he would build magic castles bright with minarets and floating golden banners, when alone he was master of a world in which he walked proud and unafraid and people knew his name and dreaded it, hands thrust deep into the pockets of his mackinaw, the library books dangling at the end of a long leather strap except when it was raining and his mother made him put them in a shopping bag from the A&P, those solitary walks when he knew without question who he was and what he would become.
He wanted the city to tell him who he was again.
He paid the driver and got out of the taxi, walking directly to the stage entrance and opening the door onto the long alley that led to the rear of the theater. Selig and Stern were standing at the end of the alley, in whispered consultation just outside the metal stage door. Selig was wearing a black overcoat with black velveteen collar and cuffs, puffing on a cigar and standing alongside the iron steps that ran to the upper stories of the theater. The alleyway was gray, capped by an ominous piece of gray sky that hung high above it like a canopy. Selig stood in black against the rusting iron steps, surrounded by gray walls and gray smoke. His face appeared gray, too, as though someone very close had passed away during the night.
Stern was wearing a blue plaid sports jacket with a navy blue sweater under it. He was rubbing his big hands together as though chiding himself for having anticipated spring in December, his shoulders hunched, shivering with every swirling gust of alley wind. He looked up in surprise as Arthur approached, and then said, "Is the trial finished already?"
"No, we broke early," Arthur replied. "Is Kent here?"
"Not yet," Selig said.
Kent Mercer was their director, a faggot whose nocturnal revels ("I'm a night person," he would protest, "that's why I'm in the theater, really") often terminated along about dawn when less talented citizens were rising and banging on the radiators for heat. No one expected him to be on time because he never was, and no one ever mentioned his tardy appearances — except Selig, who would invariably remark, each time Mercer arrived late and pantingly out of breath, "Have a good night's sleep, Kent?"
"Where is it?" Stern asked, shivering. "The trial, I mean."
"All the way downtown. Foley Square."
"Is that near the traffic court down there?" Stern asked.
"I think so."
"I was down there once on a speeding ticket," Stern said.
"Mmm," Arthur said, and wondered how Stern could possibly equate a traffic ticket with something as important as a plagiarism suit. Of the two men, he liked Stern least, which in itself was no recommendation for Selig. "Have you heard from Mitzi?" he asked.
"Not yet," Selig said.
"Well, what's happening with Hester's contract?"
"You know as much about it as we do," Selig said mildly, and then puffed on his cigar and looked at the wet end as though suddenly displeased with its taste.
"Last Wednesday—"
"That's right," Stern said. Stern had an annoying habit of agreeing with a statement before it was finished. Arthur was tempted to say, "Last Wednesday someone told me you were a son of a bitch." Instead, he glanced at Stern in brief anger, and then said, "Last Wednesday you told me Hester liked the play."
"That's right," Stern said.
"That's what her agent told us," Selig agreed.