The Caveman's Valentine Read Free Page B

attributed to the recent wave of arctic air. On Tuesday, an elderly Brooklyn man was found dead near a heating vent in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Yesterday an unemployed construction worker died of burn injuries he received when sparks from a cooking fire set ablaze his crude cardboard dwelling on West Street.
     
    O farrago of lies! Lies and distortions.
    The ol’ North Wind, sure. AKA
Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant.
    Mr. Gates’s body will be transferred to the Museum of Classical Ice Sculpture in SoHo, where it will be attended by seven vestal virgins from the Fashion Institute of Technology. If there’s ever a power failure, the remains will melt into a puddle and Stuyvesant’s minions will mop up that puddle and rinse it away and it will burble down the drain and into the sewers and the rivers and into the Atlantic Ocean and you can rest in peace
then,
Andrew Scott Gates, there’s not much more the bastards can do to you.
    Easy,
Romulus. Back off on the rage. Easy on the bitter visions. Remember that iniquity and injustice such as this are all in a day’s commerce here. Detach. Smile. Get out that sheet music and play.

8
    T he bankruptcy lawyer was one of the best in New York, a man to whom even the grimmest of grim tidings brought enrichment. And as the tidings from all points of the compass were very grim indeed these days, he whistled cheerfully as he walked up from the corner, where the car had left him, to his apartment house.
    Then he saw the bum. The bum was sitting on the sidewalk with his knees drawn up, and he was reading something and his head was rocking from side to side. He was in some kind of bum’s rapture. He was a big black man. He wore a pot for a hat, and several coats, one on top of the other, and out of the pocket of the topmost coat stuck the ends of a bunch of bananas—coal-black, oozing at the seams.
    The bankruptcy lawyer was not dismayed by the sight of bums and beggars. As symbols of abysmal failure they also stood, of course, for his own prosperity. But more than that, he thought they represented—in the constancy, the intractability, of their numbers, despite every attempt in every age of humankind to eradicate them—some stubborn and gloriously perverse willfulness in the human spirit.
    Something to draw a kind of courage from.
    Not that he ever gave them a penny.
    But tonight was such a cold night. Tonight he saw this poor vagabond and felt, despite the firmness of his principles, a twinge of guilt. He veered to the edge of the sidewalk, to give the man a wide berth. He strode quickly and purposefully, hoping the crazy wouldn’t surface from his trance in time to badger him.
    But not quickly or purposefully enough. The bum raised his eyes, fixed him, and said:
    “Hey mister. You got a pencil?”
    The bankruptcy lawyer waved him off. And was halfway down the block before he realized the man had asked him not for money but of all things for a
pencil.
    He turned around and came back.
    “Did I hear you right? You asked for a pencil?”
    “You got one?”
    “This isn’t just to get me in conversation so you can hit me up for a dollar?”
    The bum stared at him. The bankruptcy lawyer said:
    “What do you want a pencil for?”
    “I want to balance it on the end of my nose.”
    “I mean—OK, you just want to write something, huh?”
    “Right.”
    “Well, I don’t have a pencil. I’ve got a pen.”
    “That would do.”
    “I don’t have a cheap pen.”
    “No?”
    “But here. What the hey.”
    The bankruptcy lawyer handed over a gold Parker Executive. Foolish gesture. But one that triggered a little warmth in his breast.
What the hey.
It was just such foolish gestures that kept the Ghost of Christmas Future at bay.
    Even in late February, a bankruptcy lawyer was wise to keep one eye out for the Ghost of Christmas Future.
    He said to the bum, “Maybe if I ever see you again, you’ll give it back, OK?”
    “OK.”
    The bankruptcy lawyer started off again. Looked