*Another chapter that isn't particularly PC but I'm trying to highlight to
racial and ethnic tensions (among other tensions) of the period–plus there
was no such thing as "politically correct" in 1920*
"To bate a fish withal: if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million, laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian where is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."
We were sitting, Sonny and I, in the backroom of his family's grocery store, Geneco. I had promised to teach him Shakespeare, an apology for calling him a misogynist and pegging him as stupid. Sonny was reading aloud.
"I never thought this could be so easy to understand," he commented.
"I think you were just shying away because of the Old English and crazy metaphors."
"I guess that too, but what I really mean is that I didn't think I'd agree with him...at least with Shylock. I don't know what Shakespeare thought. Shit ain't changed."
"Maybe it'll change one day."
"People have been saying that forever. Wanna here my deal?"
"Sure."
"I seen a lot different people...Negroes, Irish, Germans, Italians like me, Jews like George, rich, poor,...immigrants right offa the boat...they'll always hate each other. Not everyone, but there's always gonna be someone hatin' the other guy just because he's the other guy. No one bothers to really take a look at another person. It's like we're too lazy to like each other."
"That's frightening...because I agree. I spent a year rallying for voting rights, now I've got them...I'm not treated any differently when I go in for work. Directors don't listen to me unless I'm half-dressed, the army won't give me veterans' benefits, and it's implicit everywhere I go that I'm some sort of prostitute because I live on my own, travel on my own, and sleep with men."
"I know. You know why I was never faithful to Em?"
"Why?"
"Because that's how I could get to her...everyday when we were kids, she'd bully me...Yeah, she'd bully me because she liked me and didn't want to admit and 'cause I was an annoying kid, but every time I was a 'fuckin' guinea' or a 'fuckin' wop.' I knew Em don't have anything against Italians or nothin' but the fact that she thought she could–that she could get to me using that. I was kid so–I believed it....so then I slept with another woman every time something went bad–you know when she was my girl. It was what made me felt like a man. I could hurt her that way. I could get to her, ya know? 'Yeah, I was the man and it was okay.' I mean my father did it to my mother and no one said a God damn thing, not even Mama. If Em could make me feel like some sorta dirty white, I could make her feel like she was just a stupid woman. I don't think women are any worse than men and I know Em don't care about what blood's in anybody, but everything around us...it made it okay to use it against each other."
***
Emily had done it. By April we were in New York's trafficking scene. If serving alcohol to the Irish mob every night at Joe's hadn't made it apparent enough delivering drugs from the Eleventh Avenue warehouse had.
We were walking on the scenic streets of Hell's Kitchen, past a brawl in an alley, to which we paid little mind. We must have been somewhere on 53rd between 9th and 10th when I starting schvitsing.
"No one's going to stop us," Emily said, "you're paranoid. Suitcases, Rose. Yeah, real suspicious. We're delivering because no would suspect a couple of seemingly nice young woman."
"I don't know the name of half the shit I'm carrying."
"Oh, shut up. You know you've tried half of it in Hollywood."
"*Tried,* not illegally trafficked."
"But illegally consumed."
"I never did cocaine. Gigi DuBois did. I just threw her into cold baths...though I'm not sure how much that helped...that stuff made her crazy enough."
"You know I pity you sometimes."
"Why?"
"Half the world would call you a whore and all the decadents call you a prude. At least everybody sure exactly what's wrong with me."
"God dammit, there's nothing wrong with you. Curse all you like in front of adults, sleep with whoever you want and run your God damn business!"
"That's just your crazy liberal opinion, you see," I rolled my eyes, but not at her. "You know a proper young lady isn't even accustomed to being kissed before she's married."
"To hell with propriety," I said. "Let's get the cocaine, and marijuana, and other things we shouldn't be speaking about to Martin." Funny I said that. I helped Hans Martin and his people bootleg about once a week. I never once saw the man.
"But I'm glad to know you'll let me fuck whom I want. It's nice I have your permission."
"Em, I don't want to know about your men."
"If I had it my way, none of you would know any of my men."
"Too late. Sonny," I reminded.
"Rose..."
"What?" I said, grinning.
"Sometimes!"
***
"Sometimes when I see Barnes I want to take that stupid mustache of his and yank it off so much that the ugly face of his starts bleeding! I wanna punch him in the face every time I see him!" George said to himself as he wrote out a report on his desk. It was early May and I was bringing him lunch–he wasn't expecting me to, but I doubted he was eating well lately.
George was recently informed to keep his *big nose* out of affairs that he wasn't in charge of. He was sick of Emily being a pawn, granted she was using them too. And he was sick of his ethnicity being tied to everything. He was now the precinct red.
"Glad to see the tension has died down."
"I mean I *love* him." I loved it when talked like that–I mean actually loved it. I wasn't always sure how healthy his bitter sarcasm was, but I thought it was so funny. I became addicted to it sometimes. But that last statement was fueled.
"You need to quit," I said flat out.
"I'm in over my head already and so are *you.* We're in a lot of shit, you know that?"
"Yes, Calvert, I do!" I spat, annoyed. I looked around the room, thinking. "Sorry."
"It's okay, I'm sorry too," he mumbled, "Sometimes I feel I'm getting too old for this." I watched him purse his lips as he thought on. He knew I was watching him pretty directly, but he didn't care. He watched me too. It never felt strange.
"You're only thirty."
"I know but a few years ago I felt so much younger. The world was so big and full of everything. Now...it's nothing. One day I'd love my job and get married and have a family. And here I am nobody with no one."
"You've got friends and your parents and brothers."
"Of course. But it doesn't feel like enough anymore. I sound like a jerk for all I've got, you know? But it feels like it's not going anywhere. There's no bright beacon shining on the horizon. There's shit there. That doesn't sound awful to you, does it, Rose?"
"No, George... the road used to seem endless and wonderful to me too." Jack had left me an interesting legacy, that was becoming more of a dull parasite than a dream.
"Where did the time go?"
"Where did the fire go?"
"I'd feel worse," he said, "if I could feel anything anymore."
"Let's leave," I'm squeezed his arm excitedly. Descending back into a sort of blissful and uncharacteristic immaturity.
"I have to stay late today."
"No. I mean *leave.*"
"We can't."
"We can just pick up and go. This place is hell."
"And some of us are damned to stay here."
"You need to get away more than I do."
"My family across the river. I can't leave them."
"You have a brother out in California. Go there. Go anywhere!"
"It isn't that easy. I wish it was." He looked right into my eyes in a way that should have made me uncomfortable. "I'd go with you..." Originally, I had this wonderful fantasy of George, Em, and even Sonny going to California early with me and dancing in the sunshine everyday–forgetting how unhappy I was back in Los Angeles. But I liked how he just attributed it to the two of us. But who said I was happy here? They certainly weren't. "But I can't."
"Take it from me– " I hesitated, "it is." Too late. I was already rejected and didn't have the will to argue anymore.
"I've got business here. More than business as usual."
"Like what?"
"Johnny Culbreth works for Hans Martin."
"Who the hell is he?"
"He was involved in a brawl with Carmine Andolini three years ago that killed one bystander. Last year he knifed Carmine on Eleventh Avenue. Sound familiar, Rose?"
"He'll kill all of us before you kill him," I warned ridiculously. One, by assuming we were going to die–the idea had become so common to me. And two, by assuming George planned to kill him.
"I'm not going to kill him," he said passively. He was silent for a moment. We were both thinking of Mary. My heart started skipping when I learned that her killer had a name. Until now it just felt like she died in an accident.
Now there was another new feeling. I didn't like talking about Mary with George or pertaining to George. What kind of person gets *jealous* of their dead friend? God, I despised myself sometimes.
"What are you working on?" I inquired, changing the subject.
"Not much–not much as in there isn't much to work *with.* Emily's cousin. Her life doesn't seem to be going anywhere either," he said with a touch of irony, "she wants to find Jack. She knows it's pretty useless but she wants to try. At least she's got something to salvage. But I don't think it will work."
It was funny because I felt like someone was choking me from the inside. The beautiful thing about me and George and our friendship is sometimes we could just sit there and feel like there was nothing between us at all and nothing ever to hide. Now there two great blond walls that stood between us–and it was a wall within me as well. It should have brought us closer, but I had never told George about Jack. He could only guess. And now I was falling in love with him. I got up abruptly, scraping my chair on the floor. I thought my heart was going to beat out of my chest.
"Late for the Bolshevik meeting?" he joked, sensing my urgency but trying to glaze over it.
"You're the Russian," I said distantly and distracted. I was looking to grab my coat and forgetting in was spring and I didn't have one.
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing. I have to go."
"Where?"
"Home. I–I left the oven on."
For an actress I was a terrible actress.
"To bate a fish withal: if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million, laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian where is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."
We were sitting, Sonny and I, in the backroom of his family's grocery store, Geneco. I had promised to teach him Shakespeare, an apology for calling him a misogynist and pegging him as stupid. Sonny was reading aloud.
"I never thought this could be so easy to understand," he commented.
"I think you were just shying away because of the Old English and crazy metaphors."
"I guess that too, but what I really mean is that I didn't think I'd agree with him...at least with Shylock. I don't know what Shakespeare thought. Shit ain't changed."
"Maybe it'll change one day."
"People have been saying that forever. Wanna here my deal?"
"Sure."
"I seen a lot different people...Negroes, Irish, Germans, Italians like me, Jews like George, rich, poor,...immigrants right offa the boat...they'll always hate each other. Not everyone, but there's always gonna be someone hatin' the other guy just because he's the other guy. No one bothers to really take a look at another person. It's like we're too lazy to like each other."
"That's frightening...because I agree. I spent a year rallying for voting rights, now I've got them...I'm not treated any differently when I go in for work. Directors don't listen to me unless I'm half-dressed, the army won't give me veterans' benefits, and it's implicit everywhere I go that I'm some sort of prostitute because I live on my own, travel on my own, and sleep with men."
"I know. You know why I was never faithful to Em?"
"Why?"
"Because that's how I could get to her...everyday when we were kids, she'd bully me...Yeah, she'd bully me because she liked me and didn't want to admit and 'cause I was an annoying kid, but every time I was a 'fuckin' guinea' or a 'fuckin' wop.' I knew Em don't have anything against Italians or nothin' but the fact that she thought she could–that she could get to me using that. I was kid so–I believed it....so then I slept with another woman every time something went bad–you know when she was my girl. It was what made me felt like a man. I could hurt her that way. I could get to her, ya know? 'Yeah, I was the man and it was okay.' I mean my father did it to my mother and no one said a God damn thing, not even Mama. If Em could make me feel like some sorta dirty white, I could make her feel like she was just a stupid woman. I don't think women are any worse than men and I know Em don't care about what blood's in anybody, but everything around us...it made it okay to use it against each other."
***
Emily had done it. By April we were in New York's trafficking scene. If serving alcohol to the Irish mob every night at Joe's hadn't made it apparent enough delivering drugs from the Eleventh Avenue warehouse had.
We were walking on the scenic streets of Hell's Kitchen, past a brawl in an alley, to which we paid little mind. We must have been somewhere on 53rd between 9th and 10th when I starting schvitsing.
"No one's going to stop us," Emily said, "you're paranoid. Suitcases, Rose. Yeah, real suspicious. We're delivering because no would suspect a couple of seemingly nice young woman."
"I don't know the name of half the shit I'm carrying."
"Oh, shut up. You know you've tried half of it in Hollywood."
"*Tried,* not illegally trafficked."
"But illegally consumed."
"I never did cocaine. Gigi DuBois did. I just threw her into cold baths...though I'm not sure how much that helped...that stuff made her crazy enough."
"You know I pity you sometimes."
"Why?"
"Half the world would call you a whore and all the decadents call you a prude. At least everybody sure exactly what's wrong with me."
"God dammit, there's nothing wrong with you. Curse all you like in front of adults, sleep with whoever you want and run your God damn business!"
"That's just your crazy liberal opinion, you see," I rolled my eyes, but not at her. "You know a proper young lady isn't even accustomed to being kissed before she's married."
"To hell with propriety," I said. "Let's get the cocaine, and marijuana, and other things we shouldn't be speaking about to Martin." Funny I said that. I helped Hans Martin and his people bootleg about once a week. I never once saw the man.
"But I'm glad to know you'll let me fuck whom I want. It's nice I have your permission."
"Em, I don't want to know about your men."
"If I had it my way, none of you would know any of my men."
"Too late. Sonny," I reminded.
"Rose..."
"What?" I said, grinning.
"Sometimes!"
***
"Sometimes when I see Barnes I want to take that stupid mustache of his and yank it off so much that the ugly face of his starts bleeding! I wanna punch him in the face every time I see him!" George said to himself as he wrote out a report on his desk. It was early May and I was bringing him lunch–he wasn't expecting me to, but I doubted he was eating well lately.
George was recently informed to keep his *big nose* out of affairs that he wasn't in charge of. He was sick of Emily being a pawn, granted she was using them too. And he was sick of his ethnicity being tied to everything. He was now the precinct red.
"Glad to see the tension has died down."
"I mean I *love* him." I loved it when talked like that–I mean actually loved it. I wasn't always sure how healthy his bitter sarcasm was, but I thought it was so funny. I became addicted to it sometimes. But that last statement was fueled.
"You need to quit," I said flat out.
"I'm in over my head already and so are *you.* We're in a lot of shit, you know that?"
"Yes, Calvert, I do!" I spat, annoyed. I looked around the room, thinking. "Sorry."
"It's okay, I'm sorry too," he mumbled, "Sometimes I feel I'm getting too old for this." I watched him purse his lips as he thought on. He knew I was watching him pretty directly, but he didn't care. He watched me too. It never felt strange.
"You're only thirty."
"I know but a few years ago I felt so much younger. The world was so big and full of everything. Now...it's nothing. One day I'd love my job and get married and have a family. And here I am nobody with no one."
"You've got friends and your parents and brothers."
"Of course. But it doesn't feel like enough anymore. I sound like a jerk for all I've got, you know? But it feels like it's not going anywhere. There's no bright beacon shining on the horizon. There's shit there. That doesn't sound awful to you, does it, Rose?"
"No, George... the road used to seem endless and wonderful to me too." Jack had left me an interesting legacy, that was becoming more of a dull parasite than a dream.
"Where did the time go?"
"Where did the fire go?"
"I'd feel worse," he said, "if I could feel anything anymore."
"Let's leave," I'm squeezed his arm excitedly. Descending back into a sort of blissful and uncharacteristic immaturity.
"I have to stay late today."
"No. I mean *leave.*"
"We can't."
"We can just pick up and go. This place is hell."
"And some of us are damned to stay here."
"You need to get away more than I do."
"My family across the river. I can't leave them."
"You have a brother out in California. Go there. Go anywhere!"
"It isn't that easy. I wish it was." He looked right into my eyes in a way that should have made me uncomfortable. "I'd go with you..." Originally, I had this wonderful fantasy of George, Em, and even Sonny going to California early with me and dancing in the sunshine everyday–forgetting how unhappy I was back in Los Angeles. But I liked how he just attributed it to the two of us. But who said I was happy here? They certainly weren't. "But I can't."
"Take it from me– " I hesitated, "it is." Too late. I was already rejected and didn't have the will to argue anymore.
"I've got business here. More than business as usual."
"Like what?"
"Johnny Culbreth works for Hans Martin."
"Who the hell is he?"
"He was involved in a brawl with Carmine Andolini three years ago that killed one bystander. Last year he knifed Carmine on Eleventh Avenue. Sound familiar, Rose?"
"He'll kill all of us before you kill him," I warned ridiculously. One, by assuming we were going to die–the idea had become so common to me. And two, by assuming George planned to kill him.
"I'm not going to kill him," he said passively. He was silent for a moment. We were both thinking of Mary. My heart started skipping when I learned that her killer had a name. Until now it just felt like she died in an accident.
Now there was another new feeling. I didn't like talking about Mary with George or pertaining to George. What kind of person gets *jealous* of their dead friend? God, I despised myself sometimes.
"What are you working on?" I inquired, changing the subject.
"Not much–not much as in there isn't much to work *with.* Emily's cousin. Her life doesn't seem to be going anywhere either," he said with a touch of irony, "she wants to find Jack. She knows it's pretty useless but she wants to try. At least she's got something to salvage. But I don't think it will work."
It was funny because I felt like someone was choking me from the inside. The beautiful thing about me and George and our friendship is sometimes we could just sit there and feel like there was nothing between us at all and nothing ever to hide. Now there two great blond walls that stood between us–and it was a wall within me as well. It should have brought us closer, but I had never told George about Jack. He could only guess. And now I was falling in love with him. I got up abruptly, scraping my chair on the floor. I thought my heart was going to beat out of my chest.
"Late for the Bolshevik meeting?" he joked, sensing my urgency but trying to glaze over it.
"You're the Russian," I said distantly and distracted. I was looking to grab my coat and forgetting in was spring and I didn't have one.
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing. I have to go."
"Where?"
"Home. I–I left the oven on."
For an actress I was a terrible actress.