Arthur gave Jim a wave of dismissal. “Go away now and let me die in peace.” He shut his eyes.
“Do you want me to call a priest?” Jim asked, with a grin, remembering what Nora had told him about Arthur leaving the church.
Arthur got up on his elbows. “Get out,” he shouted and fell back, “with your talk of priests.”
“How come you’re leaving the Church?”
“Who told you that?”
“The pastor.”
Arthur was interested. “You’re joking?”
“Yes, I am,” Jim agreed.
“You little fartface. Get out.”
Jim laughed. “Maybe he’ll talk you into taking the pledge.”
“I’m taking no pledge.”
“You’re not keeping any, anyway.”
“Damn straight.”
“Why don’t you join AA?”
“Why don’t you get out of here. Bad as the father with religion, and priests and the like. A grown man and they lead him around like he was a sheep.”
“Nobody leads him around. He’s too pig-headed.”
“On his knees every morning at Mass,” said Arthur in disgust. “For what?”
“Because he loves God, I guess.” Jim was surprised to hear a sincere answer coming from his own mouth.
“Go over to the closet, and unzip the clothes bag, and get me the bottle.”
Jim did as he was told but he couldn’t find the bottle. Arthur then looked himself, to no avail.
“I think she dumped it out,” Jim said.
“No,” said Arthur. “She has it hid.”
He looked around the room, checking under the bed, behind the radiator, and in the clothes hamper.
“Maybe she hid it in another room,” said Jim.
“She wouldn’t go far with it,” said Arthur.
He pulled the drape aside at the window and there was the bottle. Arthur uncorked it, tilted the bottle back on his head and took a slug of whiskey. Jim had watched many of his relatives drink a shot as though they were taking medicine, making a face as they swallowed. But not his Uncle Arthur. Arthur loved the taste; he swished it around in his mouth before swallowing.
Sitting again on the bed, the bottle beside him, Arthur sighed and said, “Ah, shit,” softly, not with anger, but just for something to say. Then he sighed again, looking at the floor.
“Big head?”
“I must have spent the whole fuckin’ night on the subway,” said Arthur. “I’m sore all over.” He reached his hand over his shoulder to knead his back muscles. “I remember some big cop giving me a hard time. They pull them out of the trees and teach them how to use a nightstick and then they make them subway cops.”
Arthur looked up, and gave an impish grin. “Do you know what the best racket in the world is?” he asked. “Those guys who beg in the subway. Did you ever see them?”
Jim had, of course; but he stayed quiet, waiting for Arthur’s imitation of one of them—sure to be good.
“I have to get a hat,” said Arthur. “They always have a hat on.” He went to the closet and put a hat on, turning back the front brim. “They always have the brim turned up.” He went to the door of the room. “What’s that instrument they play?” He held one hand chest high, and the other waist high, and moved his fingers.
“Trombone?” Jim asked.
“That’s it,” said Arthur. “Okay, now you make a subway noise, and I’ll go outside and come in.”
Jim tried to imitate the sound of a subway train, going clickety-click, clickety-click, while making a throat noise, and at the same time banging his hand rhythmically against the bed board.
Arthur went out. When he reappeared at the door, he had dark glasses on; his mouth was shut, but held in such a widespread position it seemed he had a stirrer from cheek to cheek within; he was fingering the imaginary trombone; and all the while his feet were shuffling back and forth in the motion necessary to keep one’s balance in the subway.
It was so good an imitation, Jim screamed laughing. Arthur shuffled across the room, lurching, dipping, almost falling. He pretended a rider had his legs in the aisle, and cursed out the inconsiderate man. Jim laughed so hard his breath came in gasps, and he got the pain in his side. “Stop,” he said. “Please stop.”
Arthur took his fingers from the trombone to shake an imaginary tin cup with trembling fingers. He then lifted the dark glasses to see how much he had got. He cursed out the riders. Then he resumed his shuffle up the aisle.
Arthur took off the glasses and hat and took a slug of whiskey. He sat on the bed. “It’s a good living, walking up and down the subway.”
“You have a great talent,” Jim said to Arthur.
“That’s what they told me down at the paper,” said Arthur, “the last time they refused me a raise.”
“You should have become a comedian.”
“If I could become something now,” said Arthur, “I’d be a playwright like George Bernard Shaw.”
“Is he that good?”
“A laugh in every line,” said Arthur. “And not all jokes, either. The man knew what he was talking about. Did you ever hear what he said about getting married?”
“What?”
“Let me read it to you.” Arthur went to the bookcase and brought back a green-bound volume of Shaw’s plays.
He walked back and forth beside the bed as he read aloud. Then he turned to Jim. “That part where he calls a woman seeking a husband the most dangerous of all beasts of prey? Where he says that marriage is a trap?” Arthur stabbed the book with his finger. “There it is! In black and white!”
Jim laughed, thinking of Florence. “What play is that?”
“Man and Superman,” Arthur replied. “Listen to this too. It’s Don Joo-an talking to the girl who wanted to marry him.” Arthur read out a long passage where Don Juan accused a woman of learning to play the spinet to trick her suitors into thinking their married life would be full of melodies.
Jim gasped with recognition. “That’s Florence!”
“That’s every woman,” said Arthur. “Later on—on the same page—Shaw says she forgets about the music after the marriage. That she tosses away the bait once
