Love on the Road 2015 Read Free Page B

bed and rested his head. The orderly gently placed two fingers on his wrist and checked his pulse.
    ‘I used to dream about my college graduation,’ said the orderly. ‘The dream seemed so real I could touch it. Like it was in fucking 3D. I was wearing that hat with the tassels, the long black gown, walking down the aisle. And there was my mama in the first row, crying and yelling my name. “Wardell! Wardell!” Sometimes the mind gets night and day confused. Hope and reality can get confused, too.’
    The orderly had an accent, a Caribbean lilt to his voice. Up and down like ocean waves, the sounds began to lull Monroe to sleep. His eyelids fluttered. A shiver jolted his hand.
    ‘Did you graduate?’
    ‘Had to drop out the first semester. My father died. Never had a chance to go back.’
    Whenever Monroe tried to remember his father, he couldn’t visualise his face or hear his voice. Only a heavy brown coat came to mind. Monroe would be in his pyjamas, listening with his mother to Molly Goldberg, when his father would open the front door and let the wind rush in. Then he’d throw his tan fedora on their hall tree, take off his coat, and hang it in the closet. Monroe remembered a cuff, a sleeve. His father would be dead by the time he was five. Cancer. The chemicals in the hat factory, his mother would say. To this day, whenever a draft chilled the room, Monroe would picture that sleeve.
    His uncle Hymie filled the gaps. If his mother was short with a mortgage payment, her brother would send acheque. When Monroe got a girl in trouble, Uncle Hymie made those arrangements, too. All those years he and Goldie tried to get pregnant and nothing happened. But when he had been only sixteen, his chest still as hairless as a child’s, he had knocked someone up. His uncle’s receptionist no less.
    For a short six months, he had been in love. Monroe was always a sturdy kid, built like a tree stump. Short, wide, grounded. When his uncle offered him a job at his furniture store, he couldn’t turn down the extra cash. Bureaus, beds, tables. There was nothing Monroe couldn’t lift. Soon he developed muscles he never knew existed. Bulges grew under his shirts.
    Gretchen noticed. She was in her twenties. Her face and neck were talcum-powdered, her nails and her lips painted a bright fire-engine red. No girl, let alone a full-bodied woman, had ever taken an interest in Monroe before. Soon she was lurking in the supply closet and bumping into him in the halls. For a few short seconds the world spun.
    When she told him she was pregnant, he couldn’t believe a momentary blip – her hand on his zipper, his hand on her breast – was all it took. Monroe was sure he’d lose his job. He dreamt at night about the Bowery, living in a one-room tenement with Gretchen, the baby screaming all day and all night. But his uncle surprised him. Another detour, thought Monroe. Another path in a whole new direction.
    ‘You know you’re not the only fella in this woman’s purview,’ said Hymie. ‘By God she has a black book! A black book with names!’
    Monroe had been wondering why his uncle had hired a receptionist who couldn’t type. Gretchen had a voice thatsqueaked like a rusty hinge. Customers hung up the phone when she answered.
    ‘And every other month she threatens to show the goddamned book to your Aunt Myra!’
    Maybe Hymie didn’t want competition in the bedroom. Weeks later, he farmed Monroe out to another businessman. Carl ‘Fits Like a Glove’ Yankowitz. He sold women’s shoes and accessories, whatever overstocks he could find. Monroe learned the retail-clothing business, and Hymie and Myra stayed happily married for almost fifty years. Friday nights, Monroe’s mother would cook them dinner, her small way of saying thanks. Hymie, his breath soured from cigarettes, his big belly tugging at the buttons on his shirt, would sidle up to Monroe at the kitchen table.
    ‘My friend Yankowitz, is he treating you right?’
    Monroe