“That my mom,” the boy said. He was short—the top of his head came only to the knot in Eddie’s tie—but the boy’s neck was as big around as Eddie’s thigh, and the boy’s shoulders were twice as broad and thick as Eddie’s. “Why you makin’ trouble for my mom ?” the powerful-looking young man asked.
Since Eddie had left the New York Athletic Club, it was the fourth mention of “trouble” that he had heard. It was why he’d never wanted to live in New York.
“I was just trying to see my stop—where I get out,” Eddie said.
“This here your stop,” the brutish boy told him, pushing the signal cord. The bus braked, throwing Eddie off balance. Again his heavy briefcase slipped off his shoulder; this time it hit no one, because Eddie clutched it in both his hands. “This here where you get out,” the squat young man said. His mother, and several surrounding passengers, agreed.
Oh, well, Eddie thought as he got off the bus—maybe it was almost Ninety-second Street. (It was Eighty-first.) He heard someone say “Good riddance!” just before the bus moved on.
Minutes later, Eddie ran along Eighty-ninth Street, crossing to the east side of Park Avenue, where he spotted an available taxi. Without thinking that he was now only three uptown blocks and one crosstown block from his destination, Eddie hailed the cab; he got into the taxi and told the cabbie where to go.
“Ninety-second and Lex ?” the taxi driver said. “Christ, you shoulda walked —you’re already wet!”
“But I’m late,” Eddie lamely replied.
“Everyone’s late,” the cabbie told him. The fare was so small, Eddie tried to compensate the taxi driver by giving him his entire ball of change.
“Christ!” the cabbie shouted. “What do I want with all that?”
At least he didn’t say “trouble,” Eddie thought, stuffing the coins into his jacket pocket. All the bills in Eddie’s wallet were wet; the taxi driver disapproved of them, too.
“You’re worse than late, and wet,” the driver told Eddie. “You’re fuckin’ trouble .”
“Thank you,” Eddie said. (In one of his more philosophical moments, Minty O’Hare had told his son to never look down his nose at a compliment—there might not be all that many.)
Thus did a muddied and dripping Eddie O’Hare present himself to a young woman taking tickets in the crowded lobby of the 92nd Street Y. “I’m here for the reading. I know I’m a little late. . . .” Eddie began.
“Where’s your ticket?” the girl asked him. “We’re sold out. We’ve been sold out for weeks.”
Sold out ! Eddie had rarely seen a sell-out crowd at the Kaufman Concert Hall. He’d heard several famous authors read there; he’d even introduced a couple of them. When Eddie had given a reading in the concert hall, of course, he had never read alone; only well-known writers, like Ruth Cole, read alone. The last time Eddie had read there, it had been billed as An Evening of Novels of Manners—or maybe it was An Evening of Comic Novels of Manners. Or Comic Manners? All Eddie could remember was that the other two novelists who read with him had been funnier than he had been.
“Uh . . .” Eddie said t
o the girl taking tickets, “I don’t need a ticket because I’m the introducer.” He was fishing through his drenched briefcase for the copy of Sixty Times that he’d inscribed to Ruth. He wanted to show the girl his jacket photo, to prove he was really who he said he was.
“You’re the what ?” the girl said. Then she saw the sodden book that he held out to her.
Sixty Times
A NOVEL
Ed O’Hare
(It was only on his books that Eddie finally got to be called Ed. His father still called him Edward, and everyone else called him Eddie. Even in his not-so-good reviews, Eddie was pleased when he was referred to as just plain Ed O’Hare.)
“I’m the introducer, ” Eddie repeated to the girl taking tickets. “I’m Ed O’Hare.”
“Oh, my Gawd !” the girl cried. “You’re Eddie O’Hare! They’ve been waiting and waiting for you. You’re very late.”
“I’m sorry . . .” he began, but the girl was already pulling him through the crowd.
Sold out ! Eddie was thinking. What a mob it was. And how young they were. Most of them looked as if they were still in college. It wasn’t the typical audience at the Y, although Eddie began to see that the usual people were also there. In Eddie’s estimation, the “usual people” were a grave-looking literary crowd, frowning in advance of what they were about to hear. It was not Eddie O’Hare’s kind of audience: absent were those fragile-looking older women who were always alone, or with a deeply troubled woman friend; and those traumatized, self-conscious younger men who always struck Eddie as too pretty, in an unmanly sort of way. (It was the way Eddie saw himself: too pretty, in an unmanly sort of way.)
Jesus God, what am I doing here? Eddie thought. Why had he agreed to introduce Ruth Cole? Why had they asked him? he wondered desperately. Had it been Ruth’s idea?
The backstage of the concert hall was so muggy that Eddie couldn’t tell the difference between his sweat and the rain damage to his clothes—not to mention the remains of the giant mud puddle. “There’s a washroom just off the greenroom,” the girl was saying, “in case you want to . . . uh, clean up.”
I’m a mess and I have nothing interesting to say, Eddie concluded. For years he had imagined meeting Ruth again. But he had pictured a meeting vastly different from this—something more private, maybe lunch or dinner. And Ruth must have at least occasionally imagined meeting him. After all, Ted would have had to tell his daughter about her mother and the circumstances of that summer of ’58; Ted could never have restrained himself. Naturally Eddie would have been a part of the story, if not the principal villain.