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  City Light

  Harry Mazer

  For our family and especially for my father, Sam Mazer, and my mother-in-law, Jean Garlen Fox.

  Chapter 1

  “Is something bothering you, George?” Julie sounded hopeful. She thought I wasn’t serious enough about life and the suffering world, all the stuff that filled the news at night. “There’s that frown line between your eyes,” she said. “Are you thinking about something?” She liked the frown, a sign of a deep thinker thinking deep thoughts.

  My mother has the same line between her eyes. It’s a family trait. The mark of Farina. The sun is shining, but there’s a cloud in the sky, a crease in Farina’s eye. I leaned over the counter, raising myself up a little because I’m not that tall, and looked over at her legs in yellow tights. Yellow legs like flower stems.

  It was Thursday and she was at work at Buzzy’s in the mall. Pumpkin season. Pumpkins and black cats lined the walls, and cutout witches hung from the ceiling. Julie was wearing an orange-and-black uniform and the basic Buzzy beanie.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “Your legs are like tulip stems,” I said. Mistake. It wasn’t a profound thought. Mere frivolity.

  “Seriously,” Julie said.

  “Seriously?” I said. “I love Julie.”

  The words sort of hung there, in the air, like one of the cutouts. I love Julie. Why did I say it? Julie closed her eyes as if the words really were out there and she didn’t want to see them. Julie, you have to understand, was not an excessive person. Julie didn’t trust people who talked a lot. Everything about her was spare, a little less than more. She had a narrow, heart-shaped face, small lips, a little point to her chin, a dash for her eyebrows, a dart of a nose. Nothing big or overflowing about her.

  We were almost exactly the same height. Once, I went over to her house in a downpour, got there wet as a rat, and had to change all my clothes. I wore Julie’s jeans and one of her shirts. For a while in eighth grade, we’d go out wearing identical outfits. Tan cords and blue shirts or gray cords and green shirts, whatever. We only stopped doing it when Julie said it was getting to be too cutesy.

  “Seriously,” Julie said again, “you concentrate on us too much, George. There’s more to life than us, more to think about than us, us, us, all the time.”

  It was true that us was a lot of what I thought about. Us now and us in the future. Julie and George, here in Clifton Heights, Julie with her medical practice and me working for my father or maybe having taken over the business. I could see it. My whole future. My whole life. And I liked it. Was that frivolous? Was that idleness? Didn’t thinking about us count?

  “Order something,” Julie said suddenly.

  I glanced in the mirror on the column and saw her boss’s face, Buzzy himself, wearing the Buzzy beanie and a row of Basic Burger buttons down his jacket. “Pumpkin pie,” I said.

  “We don’t serve pumpkin pie. We’ve got Basic Burgers, Buzzy’s Burger Broil, and Burger Bottoms, a new item on the menu,” Julie said, sounding brisk and professional. “A charred, juicy burger on a toasted sesame roll.”

  “No pumpkin burgers?”

  “George, come on,” she whispered. “You have to order something.”

  Friends weren’t supposed to hang around during working hours. Buzzy was a dragon about rules. When Julie first got the job, she had to memorize Buzzy’s Code of Conduct. The little yellow book. Buzzy’s own Ten Commandments. Thou shalt smile at all times. Thou shalt be helpful to customers. Thou shalt not conduct personal business while at work. Thou shalt not eat while on duty. Thou shalt not serve your friends. Et cetera.

  Question. How can you tell the difference between a boyfriend and a customer? Answer. Customers order. Boyfriends stand around and occupy customer space.

  “Big Buzzy soda and Basic Buzzy Burger,” I said. Julie got busy filling my order. Her boss disappeared in back. “Hey, Julie,” I said, “do I have to pay for this?”

  “George, behave!” She slid the food across the counter and held out her hand for the money.

  I sat down nearby at a round patio table under an umbrella. There was Julie, hard at work, and here was George, lounging around watching her. Well, I worked, too, for my father, but did that signify? Working for my father was too easy. If I didn’t feel like going in, I didn’t go in. My father approved when I worked, but he wasn’t fanatic about it. If I really didn’t want to, I didn’t have to. If I said I had homework or something to do at school, he’d let me off. And I still got everything I wanted. More than I asked for. So how tough was that? How real was that?

  A father was sitting nearby with his two kids, little girls wearing paper crowns and eating ice cream out of plastic cups. Buzzy came out from the back again, checked Julie, then glanced toward me. I took a big bite of my Basic Burger so he could see I wasn’t just taking up space.

  Julie had to work. If she wanted anything for herself, if she wanted to go to college, she had to earn the bucks. She worked two days during the week and all day Saturday. On Sundays she volunteered at St. Joseph’s Nursing Home, visiting the old people.

  “How are you, my man?” I looked up to see my friend Troy with Chris. Ambling by. Troy ambled, Chris bounced. Troy, as always, was as inconspicuous as an Alaskan brown bear.

  “How’s the wholesome pair?” I pulled out a couple of chairs.

  Troy and Chris were wearing sweats and conspicuous sneakers and the red nylon Clifton Heights athletic jackets. Chris played point guard on the girls’ varsity basketball team. She was fast and clever on the court, with a nice outside shot, a good arc.

  “Waiting for Julie, faithful George?” Chris had a great smile. She was blonde and most people described her as beautiful, but I didn’t like to use that word too loosely.

  When I thought of someone beautiful, I thought of Julie. Do I sound tiresome? Nobody has to agree with me. Maybe it’s corny, but for me, beauty is like a light coming from the inside. Julie had that light. Maybe I was the only one who could see it. That was okay with me. I didn’t favor or relish the idea of a lot of guys standing around and talking about Julie’s inner light.

  Troy sat down. Correction. He didn’t sit. He landed. He parked himself. “Sit,” he said to Chris, “take a load off your brains.” That was supposed to be funny. It went on all the time between them. Me-big-man and you-squaw stuff.

  “So what’s going on, Georgie?” Troy said. “How long have you been hanging out here?”

  “I’ve lost count. Is it day or night?”

  Troy and I have been friends ever since his family crossed the mighty Hudson and landed on the Jersey shore. That was ten years ago, when we were both in second grade. Even then Troy was extra-tall and I was extra-short. We were always a mismatched pair.

  He wore baggy jeans and gray sweatshirts that showed his belly and, when he bent over, the elastic waist of his jockey shorts. The only pair of jeans I owned were cutoffs I wore in the summer to wash my father’s car. I favored chinos and cotton shirts and sweaters, and loafers.

  I was particular about the clothes I wore and how I wore them. Clothes made me feel good, they made me feel complete and whole, aware of limits, aware of where I ended and the world began. I got the feeling sometimes that I was a neatly wrapped package, all the strings tied, the address label and stamps in place. It gave me a good, secure feeling about myself, like I was all there and in control. What you see is what I am.

  Troy was an outlaw, an anarchist; he didn’t believe in rules. He believed in freedom. He could have been a communist for all I knew. He went t
o school, but he considered it a waste of time. He played football, but he thought all the hoopla was pathetic. Coach Burmeister was always threatening to throw him off the team, but Troy on the line was formidable.

  He never studied, but he got by without any trouble. He more than got by. He knew a hell of a lot. It was from reading books all the time. He had a book stuffed in his back pocket now.

  “What are you eating?” he said.

  “Buzzy’s Basic Burger.”

  He sniffed it, picked it up, and finished it off in one bite. “More.”

  I pointed to Buzzy’s.

  “How much dollaroso?”

  I pulled out all I had with me, a buck, and laid it on the table.

  “What will that get us?” Troy said. “Chris? You got any money? You’re always hungry.”

  “You just ate a whole pizza.”

  “You see, you can’t trust a woman to keep a confidence.” He handed her the dollar. “Woman, get me three of those burgers.”

  “You’re crazy. He’s crazy, George. A dollar will buy you one, great man.” She went up to the counter.

  “So is this what you do all the time?” Troy said, turning to me. “What are you, afraid to let her out of your sight?”

  “Don’t you have football practice? What are you doing here, anyway?”

  “I skipped out early. I got hungry.”

  “What’d you tell the coach?”

  “Nothing.” He glanced up at Chris, who had just come back. “Sit down,” he said. “You’re not waiting on tables.”

  Chris kicked his foot. “Don’t tell me stupid things.”

  “I’ll tell you as many stupid things as I want to tell you.”

  “No, you won’t!”

  I looked from one to the other. Were they serious? A moment ago they were laughing, everything was funny, and now they were staring each other down, looking grim as gargoyles.

  “Arm wrestle?” I said to break the tension. I set my elbow on the table. Overall, Troy beats me more times than I beat him, but I can hold him pretty good, because I put more into it.

  Troy winked at Chris. “You root for me.”

  “Why should I?” She took a bite of the burger.

  “’Cause you’re my woman.” He rubbed her back with his free hand and I took him.

  He took me the next three times.

  “My turn,” Chris said.

  “You never win,” Troy said.

  “I don’t want to wrestle you.”

  “I’ll go left-handed with you, Chris,” I said.

  “Because I’m a girl? No thanks, George. All or nothing.”

  “Prepare to lose.” I got set. I knew Chris had a good grip, but I looked over to see if Julie was watching and lost my concentration. Chris beat me with a single, quick, hard move.

  “Take her on left-handed,” Troy jeered.

  “Don’t rub it in,” Chris said. “George did his mighty best.”

  They both laughed. Whatever their fight had been about, it was over as quickly and mysteriously as it had started. They were friends again and left holding hands.

  Julie quit work early. She was having cramps and the smell of food was making her feel really sick.

  We walked along the dark streets, cars on one side, hedges on the other. It was uphill most of the way from Bergen Boulevard. “How do you feel now?” I asked. “Cramps any better?”

  “A little. Not much.…”

  It’s always difficult to know what to say to someone who isn’t feeling good. The truth is, you don’t really feel someone else’s pain. I cared because it was Julie and she was hurting, but the main thing was, I wanted her to know I knew she felt lousy. And that was a little phony.

  “George, is your father going to sell our house?”

  Julie’s family lived in an apartment house that my father owned. It sat on the cliffs overlooking the Hudson and had a great view of the New York skyline. The developers had their eye on it. They’d already bought the property on either side.

  “My parents are worried,” Julie said. “They say Muggleston needs the land our house is on to put up his condos. It’s money, George. Why are you shaking your head? He’ll pay anything to get property along the cliffs.”

  “My father wouldn’t do it, Julie. He’s not going to put you out. He doesn’t want those condos in Clifton Heights. You know what he told me once? He’d like to keep one of the apartments in your house for himself, so he could go over there anytime he wants to and look out over the river.”

  “He wants to live in our house?”

  “I don’t know if he’d really do it, but he talks about it sometimes. He’s just like your father about that view. You know how he feels about this town. He wants it to stay a small town. He doesn’t want a lot of new people and traffic coming in. He won’t sell. He’ll never sell.”

  She shrugged. What did that mean? Didn’t she believe me? Was she resentful because my father had the power to put them out of their house? Or was something else wrong? She’d been so cool all afternoon. I thought it, then I dismissed the thought. Nothing was wrong, Julie just didn’t feel good.

  At her door, we kissed. She touched her lips to mine. I held her, but she slid away and went in. The door clicked shut.

  As soon as she was gone, I felt lonely for her. I crossed the street and looked up at the lit windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.

  Chapter 2

  GEORGE LOVES JULIE FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER.

  Maybe you’ve seen that sign on one of the pedestrian walkways that snake around and over the Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge. I did it a couple years ago after Julie and I had a big fight. We broke up for several days, almost a whole week. I don’t remember what the fight was about. I only remember how I felt. Like I was bleeding and dying. Like I had to do something drastic, excessive, to get her back.

  GEORGE LOVES JULIE FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER.

  In red, crudely formed letters. Almost childish, kindergarten letters. Not exactly George Washington’s script. His woman’s name was Martha. This was George Farina’s hand. Not the father of his country, more like a thief, scanning the crumbling stairs, a broad, felt-tipped magic marker in his fist, the light coming down on him through the protective mesh screening put there to protect walkers from bottle-heaving travelers.

  If you were riding by in your car on your way out of the city, you could have seen all this. Seen me. Sicko, you would have thought, sicko kid writing on the wall. Exhibitionist Jersey hood. Pimply adolescent.

  Had you unexpectedly come upon me on the stairs, maybe you’d have turned and gone the other way. Yeah, you would have if you’d seen my face, seen the red squiggly lines down my cheeks and across my forehead. Decorated like a birthday cake. He’s a loony, you’d have thought, and jumped back, the blood sinking in your stomach. And if you had the guts to go past me, you’d have held yourself as far from me as you could, as if I were a disease you didn’t want to catch.

  That time, when we made up, I took Julie to see my artwork. “You did that, George?”

  Was she impressed? If she’d done something like that for me, I’d be impressed. I’d be kicking up my heels, turning cartwheels. But even when Julie was impressed, she was impressed quietly. Everyone says opposites attract. It was true about me and Julie. And Troy and me. Even my parents. Real opposites.

  My father was a hugger. He couldn’t come near anybody without putting his arm around them. My mother had plenty of affection, but she was a lot crisper with people. She didn’t even hug my sister and me that much.

  My parents worked together in my father’s shop, worked together every day, but they didn’t agree on a thing. Not even their cars. My mom drove a VW convertible, old but in great shape. My father hated it. She loved it. She used to buzz around in a VW before she was married. “It makes me feel young,” she said. My father drove a Cadillac Seville. He was a little bit of a big shot—not that he was obnoxious about it—but he liked nice stuff, great clothes, and big
cars. He had a diamond on his pinky. “Why not, I work for it,” he said.

  He wanted my mother to drive a bigger car. “That Bug isn’t safe,” he said, which was half true. Mom admitted that when she drove the Bug, big cars were always taking advantage. “Especially at intersections, when I have the right of way. Then you can count on it, some bully of a car is going to try to jump out in front of me.”

  Sometimes I felt like life was like that, like a road packed with cars and trucks. Troy was one of the trucks, big enough that he didn’t have to worry who was in his way. Julie was more like a Mercedes or a BMW—quality stuff, safe, not needing to throw her weight around to prove anything. Me, I was like that VW Bug of Mom’s. Whatever you were, though, you had to be quick to stay in the fast lane. I didn’t care if I was in the fast lane or not, but when you were a bug you had to be alert just to keep from being crushed.

  Once I told Julie my theory of Life Is a Road. “That sounds so negative,” she said. “Do you think of yourself as a bug?”

  “I do not.”

  “As something about to be crushed underfoot?”

  “No, Julie, that’s not the point.”

  “George, are you sorry you’re short?”

  “Are you kidding? It’s better to be short.”

  “Good. That sounds more positive.”

  “Short people live longer. Their bodies are more efficient—less distance for blood to travel.”

  “Doesn’t sound too scientific,” Julie said doubtfully.

  “Take my word for it. Tall men go soft and get potbellies and their hair falls out. Short men are wiry and sexy and women can’t keep their hands off them.”

  “Tell me about it,” Julie said.

  “Short people have better posture, too. Less to hold up straight. Short people are closer to the ground, which means they’re more practical, they don’t have their heads in the clouds. I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point.”

  “You mean there’s more?”

  “Julie! What about wrestling?”

  “What about it?”