-1-

February, 1981

t was an unusually cold night, even for February in New York, but the two couples walking down Broadway didn’t seem to mind.  Ann, the tall blond in the raccoon coat, had just turned 25 and she, her lawyer boyfriend, her brother David and his wife Liz had just left the restaurant where they were celebrating.  They were all laughing after much champagne as they passed a group of derelicts hovering over a fire in a metal garbage can.  Two of the bums stepped away from the flames as they walked by, asking for money.  One was polite and pathetic; the other was belligerent and grabbed David by the arm.  David shook him off and they continued walking, all still merry but David, who became suddenly solemn.

“Don’t let them bother you,” said Liz, indicating the group around the fire.  “This is New York.”

David looked thoughtful.  “No…it’s just…I think I know one of those guys.  I think the one who grabbed my arm is my Uncle Leo.  Wait here.”

He left them standing in shocked disbelief.  “What’s he talking about?”  Liz demanded.  “Who’s Uncle Leo?”

“Well, we did have an Uncle Leo,” Ann said, hoping desperately it wasn’t this derelict, “but he disappeared years ago.”  They watched, suddenly shivering, as David talked to the man, then to the group, and then pointed over to Ann.  “Oh my God,” Ann said, “it must be him.”

David motioned them over.  Just as they reluctantly approached the shabby group, David said “O.K., now!” and suddenly all six of them burst into a loud, off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday,” sung directly to Ann.  They even sang “Happy Birthday dear ANN SCHWARTZ,” as David sang along in delight and Ann looked frantically, futilely for a place to hide.  She didn’t know whether to cry or scream.  When the song ended, she chose screaming.

“I’ve never been so humiliated in my life!  How could you do this to me?  People for blocks around heard that!  My last name, even!”

David chucked gleefully, handed “Uncle Leo” a five dollar bill, and they all continued on down the street.

Left behind in the freezing night were five men and one woman, all homeless and friendless.  Although some of them had known some of the others for years, none considered the others his friends.  They were just people to stand around the fire with, to mutter to, sometimes to sleep near in a doorway of a particularly bad neighborhood.  Lately there had been a rash of muggings of bag ladies and bums because of a rumor that many of them were really rich crazies who carried thousands of dollars stashed in their filthy clothes.  “Uncle Leo,” whose name, by an incredible coincidence, actually was Leo, had once known someone like that.  He was known as Mr. Deal.  Leo, who had never had more than $200 capital at one time in his life, couldn’t imagine why a rich person, even a crazy one, would ever choose to live in the streets or in one of the shelters set up around the city.

Leo was as unscrupulous as he was poor and tried for years to come up with a way to part Mr. Deal from his money, but failed.  He even tried to rob him in his sleep (there being no particular honor among derelicts) but Mr. Deal had befriended a skinny but still menacing German shepherd which guarded him day and night.  Unfortunately for Leo, the dog outlived Mr. Deal who, upon his death, was found by the police to be carrying $112,000 in large bills on his person, plus the key to a safe deposit box holding over a quarter-million dollars worth of IT&T stock.

The media loved the story and really played it up.  It was one of the few news stories that Leo and the other bums followed and discussed.  They were filled with dismay to read that all of Mr. Deal’s holdings went to his only surviving relative, a niece who lived in Miami Beach and was married to a plastic surgeon.

There was one other guy standing around the fire now who Leo suspected might possess more than he let on.  His name was Donald Fuller, and Leo thought he might be related to the Fuller Brush people.  Leo—and everybody else—knew Donald’s last name only because, on one layer of clothing which sometimes showed up, depending on which season it was, Donald wore a name tag reading “Hi!  I’m Donald Fuller,” and under it, in smaller letters, “Elmira, N.Y,” implying, at least to Leo, some sort of important life before he fell into his current state of disgrace.

Also, Donald was even more of a loner than most, and even more paranoid and distrustful of people both within and outside of their world.  Leo didn’t realize that much of that attitude applied to him only, because of his constant prying.  Leo was sure Donald was hiding something and went out of his way to find out what, but Donald would not cooperate. 

Donald was a wino who went on periodic binges, which should have made him an easy mark for his fellow derelicts who were not winos but only bums.  But he was also smarter and shrewder than the others and so far had managed to avoid all confrontations by simply disappearing when he was at his most vulnerable.  He would reappear several days or weeks later.

He never revealed where he’d been, but that wasn’t especially unusual as people came and went every day on the streets.  Sometimes they came back, sometimes they didn’t, sometimes they’d be found dead in an abandoned building or curled up, frozen and stiff, under a pile of garbage.

Donald was sober now, or reasonably so, but he hoped that wouldn’t be for much longer, now that they’d come into the $5 for singing happy birthday to those people from New Jersey, or maybe Brooklyn.  Donald had been to New Jersey at least two or three times in his life, but never to Brooklyn.  He’d never much wanted to go before, but in thinking about it now, it had a sort of exotic ring to it.  Brooklyn.  Maybe he’d take a trip there when it got warm.  But right now, all he wanted was a shot or two of Thunderbird or whatever they could get a gallon of for $5.

Leo, who held the money and therefore considered it his, had other ideas.  For $5, he could get a room in one of the fleabag hotels nearby, and tonight, with the wind chill factor at minus nine, that sounded especially appealing.  He also could eat for a couple of days on $5.  Leo did not think of getting wine.  In his own strange value system, he considered drinking degrading and morally wrong.

But Donald and the others who were alert enough to have seen the $5 felt that the money should belong to all of them, for they had all sung for it.  Willie, an old toothless black wino, was the most insistent.  “I wants my cut, man.  This here is a democracy.  Let’s vote on it.”  Two of the men immediately raised their hands, before the choices were announced.  The lone woman, Tiny, who was wearing three coats, mumbled over and over, “What’s going on here?  I’m so confused.  I’m so discombobulated.”  Harry, a tall, thin, elderly man who looked surprisingly clean and well-dressed, at least from a distance, walked away.  A former vaudevillian who still referred to himself as “in show business,” he felt it was beneath him to argue over such a petty sum.  He would only beg when not in the presence of his fellow beggars, and even then he would lie.  “Pardon me,” he would say in an affected voice, “I seem to have lost my wallet.  Could you possibly spare a dollar or two for a cab?”  Sometimes it worked.

The last man around the fire, Cap, who claimed to have once been a captain in the merchant marine and loved to tell tall tales and sing sea chanties and even recite things like “The Face on the Barroom Floor” when he was lucid, looked as though he were back at sea now as he stood swaying over the fire, staring into the distance as if searching for land.

Donald, who was getting colder and thirstier, suddenly lunged for the money, which Leo was trying to put in an inner pocket.  Leo, who was small but surprisingly strong, shoved him back and he fell to the ice-covered concrete, hitting his head on the garbage pail and passing out.  Leo immediately walked away, with only Willie following him, still claiming his share of the money.  Everyone else scattered in different directions, as they usually did at any sign of trouble.  They did not believe in taking care of their own.

Donald woke up sometime later and saw an unfamiliar woman standing over him.  She had set her three shopping bags near his head and the stench was so overpowering that Donald, though used to unpleasant odors, gagged.  He, like most of the street men, carried no bags.  He wore all his belongings on his back; when these clothes became too rotted to wear, he’d simply exchange them for something better at the Salvation Army or a well-stocked trash can.  But the women, no matter how far gone, seemed to retain some of their nesting instinct and carried around bags and bundles overflowing with old newspapers, rotting food, clothes, a few leftover relics from their past, often more normal lives, and an incredible assortment of junk picked up in their travels through the streets.  The bags, like the women who pushed, pulled or carried them, always smelled.  But this was the worst Donald could remember.

“Christ, what have you got in there?”  Donald said as soon as he had scrambled far enough away to breathe again. 

“My cat,” the woman answered in a small, flat voice.  She too was small, or looked as though she might be under all her layers of coats, sweaters, pants and scarves.  “My cat died and I don’t want to leave him.  He was a good cat.”

Donald vaguely remembered seeing a bag lady with a cat on a string a long time ago.  He didn’t remember the woman but he remembered the cat.  “Was it a big black cat with a crooked tail?”

The woman looked startled, then suspicious.  “No, that was Ralph, he ran away a long time ago.  This is Eugene, he’s orange.”  They stared at each other in silence.  “How did you know Ralph?”

“Oh, I’ve been around,” he said, a little proudly.

“Ralph was very smart,” she said, “but he liked to explore.  Eugene was a very dumb cat but he was good.  He never tried to run away.”

“Why don’t you take him to the ASPCA?”

“No!  They’ll burn him up, I don’t want him to burn up.  He likes cold weather, he gets very tired in the heat.”

“So why don’t you bury him?”

“I can’t.  I don’t have a shovel.  Could you help?”

Donald couldn’t remember the last time someone had asked him to do something.  Even blind old ladies sensed enough not to ask him for help crossing the street.  He didn’t know now whether to be annoyed or pleased.  He stood over the almost dead fire and rubbed his head where it had hit the pavement.  No blood.

“Please,” she asked, looking awfully small to be on her own anywhere, no less living on the streets.  “He’s just a little cat.  He was my friend.”

Donald thought about it for a long time.  “You got any money?”  She shook her head.  He thought more.  What had she ever done for him?  He didn’t even know her name.  “What’s your name?”

“Joy.”  That seemed to convince him.

“O.K.  But you’ll have to carry everything.  I’m not carrying those bags.”

She smiled at him, and Donald realized he couldn’t remember the last time someone had smiled at him.  “Where will we go?” she asked.

“To the park.”  They were only a few blocks from Central Park, which would be deserted at this time of night.  “We’ll look for something to dig with on the way.”

In the gutter, they came across a part of a car, or maybe a bicycle.  Donald wasn’t too mechanical, so he couldn’t be sure. 

Central Park would be scary to anyone but them at this hour.  But they walked very slowly into its depths, slowly mostly because Joy, with her three heavy, overflowing shopping bags bumping against her legs, couldn’t go any faster.  Donald was impatient and walked quite a ways ahead of her.  He also wanted to avoid the smell.

They walked a long way.  Every now and then Joy would call out, “Isn’t this a good spot?” and Donald would yell back, “Keep going, keep going.”  He didn’t know why it wasn’t a good spot, it just wasn’t.  Finally he turned off the path into a little clump of trees and bushes.  There was a full moon so it was quite bright, and Donald at once began to dig with his car or bicycle part.

The ground was nearly frozen so it was a lot harder to dig than he’d expected.  He’d never have agreed to do this if he’d known how difficult it would be.  Yet somehow there was something satisfying about it.  It felt like real work. 

The hole wasn’t very deep when he decided he was finished.  His hands hurt.  Enough of this real work.  “O.K., stick the cat in,” he said to Joy.

She rooted around in one of the bags for a while, the D’Agostino one, but couldn’t find the cat.  She got frantic and started throwing things onto the ground and in the bushes.

Then she stopped.  “Wrong bag,” she said as she began to gather up the things she’d thrown out, including the old newspapers, and shove them back in the bag.  The second bag—Bloomingdale’s, a favorite with the bag ladies—proved more fruitful:  she lifted out the rotting remains of her cat, which had obviously died several days ago, before the freeze set in.  Donald stepped back, but watched closely as she placed the cat in the grave, lay a newspaper on top of it (he got a glimpse of a headline in the moonlight:  Presley Death Ends Rock Era  Drug Abuse Ruled Out) and began covering it with clumps of dirt.

When she had finished, the dirt didn’t completely cover the paper.  She stared at it for a moment, then walked on top of the grave and stomped her feet for several minutes.  It didn’t seem to help much, although it made a horrible, crunching sound.  Finally she stepped away, picked up her bags and started to walk off.

“Don’t you want to say something?” Donald asked.

Without looking back, she said, “Oh yeah.  Good bye, Eugene,” and continued walking.

Donald tried to remember a prayer, but the only one that came to mind was “Now I lay me down to sleep,” which didn’t seem too appropriate, so he shrugged his shoulders and walked off behind Joy.

In a minute, he had passed her and when another minute later he turned to look back at her, he noticed a dark shape approaching the grave.  He realized it was a dog, a half-starved German shepherd (maybe Mr. Deal’s) which began to dig furiously at the grave.  He didn’t know whether or not to tell Joy.  Then he told her, and they watched together as the dog began to pull the cat out by the head.  When he started to tear viciously at the neck, they turned without a word and continued walking slowly down the moonlit path, Joy a few steps behind with her bags bumping heavily against her legs.

-2-

hen Donald had graduated from the sixth grade, his teacher asked him to write the class prophecy and read it at assembly.  Donald made most of his friends sports heroes and the girls were either mothers or salesladies.  He made himself a spaceman.  He wasn’t far off.

When Joy was in the sixth grade, she was the fastest runner in her class.  Faster than the boys even.  She was still running, but she wasn’t winning any more.

-3-

onald didn’t expect ever to see Joy again.  They traveled in different circles.  He spent the next few months trying to keep warm.  He thought a lot about getting in shape.  He always thought about getting in shape toward the end of winter because that’s when spring training started, and Donald had been a runner on his high school cross country team.  Every spring he thought about jogging, but he never did it.  Last year he even suggested to Leo that they jog together.  Leo always seemed to be hanging around him anyway.

Leo didn’t want to jog.  He thought Donald was completely out of his mind to suggest it, and it convinced him even more that Donald came from a rich family.  Only rich people jogged.  Like lawyers.

But Donald knew he’d be 39 or 40 or 41 soon, and he had to stay in condition.  Life on the streets is tough.

One day in April he decided he was really going to do it.  He’d had a good night’s sleep on the 7th Ave. IRT (he’d only been woken up twice by a transit cop) and by a great stroke of luck he came across a left sneaker on the sidewalk which almost matched a right one he’d found several days ago, and was only a couple of sizes too big.  It was a very warm day and he remembered from his spring training days that it was unhealthy to overdress, so he went into Central Park, hid behind some bushes (very near where he’d buried Eugene) and stripped to his shorts.  They were striped boxer shorts he’d gotten from the Salvation Army only a few weeks ago, so they were still relatively clean.  He was sure they looked just like running shorts.

He shoved his clothes well back in the bushes, then remembered to do some warm-up exercises.  He made four or five attempts to touch his toes, did a few jumping jacks and then emerged from the bushes and embarked on his run.  On one foot, the one with the green sneaker which was a little tight, he wore only a woman’s white anklet.  On the other foot, the one with the black sneaker that was too big, he wore three sweat socks, the top one with a green stripe which exactly matched the other sneaker.

He hadn’t run in years, but he was confident it would all come back to him.  His life now was much harder than it had been in high school.  He started off fast and was feeling very pleased and proud of himself until he realized he was running downhill.  When he reached a flat path, he had to slow down considerably, but he still felt he was doing well and thought how impressed everybody would be to see him, except there was nobody around.  Then he heard the footsteps of another jogger approach from behind.  He looked over his shoulder and saw a young man wearing Adidas shorts, an Adidas sweat shirt, Adidas sneakers and color-coordinated socks and sweatband.  The path between the bushes was very narrow here, and the other jogger said “Excuse me” a few times to Donald, who had no intention of letting this kid beat him.  Finally, realizing Donald was deliberately not letting him pass, the kid said “Get out of the way, you fucking asshole,” and shoved by him.

“WEIRDO!”  Donald shouted after him.

In a minute, he came out onto a path lined with benches filled with people.  Now they could admire him.  But instead of admiring him they laughed at him or made faces or turned away.  He couldn’t understand it.  He thought he looked as good as any other jogger.  But he was used to people’s negative reactions so he just kept on running, slower and slower but still running, until a little girl pointed at him and said “YUCK” very loudly.  Then he decided it was time to stop, so he turned around, took a different, emptier path and very slowly now, breathing hard, walked back.

When he got to the spot where he’d hidden his clothes, he was quite startled to see Joy standing there, staring down at the slight indentation in the ground which had briefly been Eugene’s grave.  She had acquired another shopping bag.

She looked up when he approached but didn’t seem to recognize him.  “Your penis is showing, you know,” she said.  He looked down and indeed, it was protruding through the fly of his boxer shorts.  He turned modestly and stuck it back in. 

“What are you doing here, Joy?” he said.  Her mouth fell open.

“How’d you know my name?”

“I helped you bury your cat, remember?  Right here.”

“Oh.  Well, that’s why I’m here.  I’m visiting his grave.”

“But he’s not here any more.  Don’t you remember the dog ate him?”

“You’re a very smart person.  Who are you?”

He started to put on his pants.  “I’m Donald Fuller and I won first prize in the science fair for my moon terrain.”

She looked impressed.  “Wow.  The moon.”

“Well, I’d never actually seen it of course, up close, but I have a lot of imagination.”  He began putting on the first of his three shirts, over which went two sweaters, a jacket and an overcoat.  His “Hi!  I’m Donald Fuller” name tag was still attached to the outermost sweater.  That was his good sweater.  He’d even had it dry cleaned once, although the dry cleaning man had been reluctant to take it and only finally agreed when Donald offered to pay in advance.  For his address on the receipt he’d put “The World Is My Acorn,” and chuckled.  The dry cleaner didn’t smile.

Then he had forgotten what he’d done with the sweater (he’d lost the receipt almost immediately) until two months later when he passed a dry cleaners and it came back to him in a flash.  Except he couldn’t  remember which cleaners he’d taken it to, so he spent days going from one cleaners to another (sometimes back to the same one several times) asking if they had “a nice blue sweater size large.”  He finally hit the right place.  The man didn’t remember the sweater, but he remembered Donald.  “It’s been here over two months,” he said, looking at the receipt attached to the sweater.  “That’ll be another two dollars for storage.”

Donald didn’t have two dollars, so he had to leave without his sweater.  It was hard, seeing it hanging there all clean and not being able to take it.

“Do you have a card?” he asked the man, so that this time he wouldn’t forget where it was.

“Get the fuck out of here,” the man snarled, and put the sweater back on the rack.  Donald slept in a doorway right across the street that night and first thing the next morning, after smearing eight or nine car windshields with a slimy, spit-coated rag and collecting $2.10 from the sometimes annoyed, sometimes nervous drivers, he went back to the cleaners.  He was so excited about picking up his sweater.  They even gave him a hanger and a plastic bag.

Donald continued talking to Joy as he carefully pulled this sweater over his head.  It certainly needed cleaning again, but he didn’t know if he could handle it.  It had been such an ordeal.  “I’ve always been fascinated by outer space,” he said through the sweater.  “Haven’t you?”

“Not especially.”  She looked up now into the sky.  “It’s so far away.  I don’t exactly understand it.”

Donald’s head finally emerged from his sweater.  He looked at her closely.  She was small and dark and looked like she probably used to wear lipstick.  “Want me to explain it to you?”

They sat together on a park bench for hours that warm April night, and Donald told her about outer space.  He told her as much as he could remember, which was quite a bit considering he couldn’t even remember how old he was.  A lot of things she already knew, like there were nine planets in our solar system and all the planets rotate on their axes and revolve around the sun (he thought that was a very sophisticated piece of information and was disappointed when Joy said disdainfully, “Oh, I  know that.”).  But most of what he told her she didn’t know, or didn’t know she knew, and, when she was able to pay attention, she seemed impressed.  Donald was very pleased to be impressing someone today, after his miserable failure as a jogger.  He talked on and on.  Sometimes she listened, then her eyes would glaze over and she’d begin to mumble to herself, or to sing.  At last, in the middle of his discussion on infinity, she announced, “I’m hungry.”

Donald said nothing.  He was hungry, too, but his feet hurt from running in the wrong size sneakers and he was exhausted.

“I’ll go get something,” she offered.

“See if you can pick up a bottle of something, too.”

Donald watched the small, shapeless figure in the red coat disappear into the darkness.  She took all four shopping bags.  Maybe she wouldn’t come back.  He didn’t really care—his head was too full of outer space. 

Joy walked around the park, slowly, as usual, because of her shopping bags, and stopped at an occasional trash basket to look for food.  She hadn’t yet found anything when she came across a young couple having a picnic on a bench just inside the park.

She put her bags down and sat on a bench right across from them, watching them intently.  At first they ignored her, but when they realized she was staring at their food, they became uncomfortable.  They had a large assortment of Chinese food in little cardboard containers.  Joy knew they wouldn’t eat it all.  People never did.  She waited patiently.

They realized they were full long before they really were, gathered up the remains and threw them into a trash basket, smashing the containers down into the other garbage as they glared at Joy.  Then they went back to the bench to pick up their belongings—a blaring transistor radio, a camera, a large Tiffany’s shopping bag (Joy would love to get her hands on that).  Joy immediately walked over to the trash can and pulled out the soggy paper bag with the squashed containers inside.  She opened one of the containers and began to eat its contents with her hand.  The couple looked on in horror.  They had seen derelicts eating out of garbage cans before, but never eating their garbage, gnawing on their discarded bones.

The girl started to gag and yanked her boyfriend off down the path, leaving the Tiffany’s bag behind.  Joy walked over and picked it up.  It contained only a newspaper.  She was thrilled.  She put the rest of the Chinese food in it, picked up her other bags, and slowly made her way back to Donald.  

They slept on adjacent benches in the park that night.  Joy woke up several times during the night and looked over to see if Donald was still there.  He was, sleeping soundly after his good Chinese dinner.

When he woke up the next morning he ached all over.  It felt good.  Joy was already awake, and was sitting on her bench holding two donuts.  She walked over to him and handed him the chocolate one.  He didn’t know where she’d gotten them, but he did know this was a good woman.  Breakfast in bed!

“That was fun last night,” she said.  “Like school.  But better.  No tests.”

“Whaddya mean, no tests?” Donald said between bites.  “What’s an asteroid?”

“I don’t know.”

“What does the moon do to the earth?”

“I forget.”

“The TIDES, God damnit.  What’s in Saturn’s rings?”

“I don’t know.  Some stuff.”

“JOY!  What’s the matter with you?  Don’t you remember anything?”  He was quite exasperated, not aware of how much he forgot every day.

She started to cry as she stood over him, holding her half-eaten donut.

“Oh, stop,” he said gruffly.  She didn’t, she just stood there crying.  He didn’t know how to deal with this.  It seemed much more complicated to him than surviving in the streets with no food and no money in the middle of winter.  “C’mon, don’t cry,” he said, his voice a little softer.  He knew it was his fault that she was crying, and he couldn’t look her in the eye, although she seemed to be oblivious of him anyway.

Finally he grabbed her arm and pulled her down on the bench next to him.  She stopped crying immediately and sat very still and quiet.  He put his arm around her.  She lay her head on his shoulder.

“Oh shit,” he muttered.  “Now what the fuck have I done?”

-4-

hey were inseparable from then on.  They slept side by side every night, although the most physical contact they had was the morning Joy had put her head on Donald’s shoulder.

It was very unusual in their community for a couple to be formed, and they were considered strange even by their fellow derelicts.  They were teased mercilessly, sometimes hostilely.  Leo was especially hostile, for he felt that any money Donald may have would now certainly be grabbed by Joy.  He resented her tremendously and totally ignored her.  The other men in Donald’s loose circle of acquaintances resented her simply for being a woman.  In spite of their current life style, most of them were actually quite conservative and traditional, and they believed that women belonged at home.  They weren’t proud of being down-and-out, but it was at least acceptable.  But not for a woman.

Tiny, the only other woman who regularly frequented their hangouts, was too overwhelmed by life to care about Donald and Joy’s relationship, or even to notice.  She was aware only of her own confusion and was terrified by it.

Cap, who had the reputation of a dirty old man, may actually have approved of Joy and her relationship with Donald, but he had disappeared sometime during the spring.  It was rumored he had died in the charity ward of Bellevue, but no one knew for sure.  Or cared.

Donald spent the first several weeks of his new life with Joy in a drunken stupor, partly because he knew she was there to watch over him, partly because he was very frightened by being this close to anyone, and mainly because Joy was much more adept than he at begging, and willingly handed her money over to him.

She would stand in heavily populated areas, such as in front of Macy’s or Bloomingdale’s, and sing spirituals in a surprisingly sweet soprano.  Sometimes she would preach, too, and then she would be very loud and forceful as she waved her arms about and pointed at people and recited disconnected verses from the Bible.  Sometimes she’d preach on the subway during the morning rush hour, and her voice was even louder than the roar of the train.  Here, people gave her money to get rid of her.

When she sang on the streets, however, people dropped money into her little yellow plastic cup because they thought it made them virtuous.  They’d throw in a nickel or dime and feel good for the rest of the day.  And Joy seemed to be a worthy person to give money to.  She was doing something, not just standing there with her hand out.  And although she was obviously somewhat less than middle class, she looked more strange than repugnant.  She was relatively clean for a bag lady.  Her shopping bags overflowed with garbage, but she tried hard to keep her body and her clothes reasonably clean.  In high school, she had studied home economics for three years, and there was great emphasis on cleanliness.

Of course, it was impossible to be too clean on the streets, but at least she wasn’t covered with sores and, when she moved away from her shopping bags, she didn’t smell too much.  And she took very good care of her feet.  She didn’t want them wrapped in fetid rags like so many of the other street people.

Donald was very pleased that she took such good care of herself, especially of her feet.  “Maybe some day we’ll jog together,” he told her during a sober moment.

Every morning when Donald would wake up sick and hung over, he’d say “I really gotta stop, I really gotta get myself together.”  Joy would shrug her shoulders noncommittally, and he would take that as a cue to ask for more money.  She didn’t care; she gave him everything.  This made some of the others even more resentful.  He was being “kept,” whereas they had to earn their money by a hard day’s begging or windshield cleaning.

Willie, who had a stronger sense of self-preservation than most derelicts, was filled with rage.  Once, while wiping the windshield of a man who immediately rolled up his windows and locked the doors, obviously not intending to give him anything, Willie happened to glance across the car’s hood at Donald, who was sitting comfortably in a doorway, drinking out of a quart bottle of almost-respectable wine that Joy’s money had paid for.

The combination of the hardass, rich (it was a Cadillac) white man and Donald’s lounging in luxury was too much for Willie, and he began pounding furiously on the Cadillac’s side window.  The driver, nervous but not willing to give in, began honking his horn at the car in front of him, which was stopped at a red light.  The other car didn’t move (the driver seemed somewhat amused by the scene behind him, which he watched intently in his rear-view mirror) and Willie pounded harder until there was a crash and his hand went through the window.  The Cadillac’s driver and Willie were equally startled, but the driver recovered first and swerved his car around the car in front and through the red light, leaving Willie standing in the middle of Ninth Avenue holding a large chunk of shatter-proof glass.

The light changed to green but Willie remained standing there as traffic moved around him.  By the time the light changed back to red, he was waving the piece of glass triumphantly over his head.  “You better pay me for my services, man,” he yelled to the next car that stopped, “if you want your car INTACK.”

The next several drivers gave him money and he was delighted with this new ploy until he realized he had collected enough money for some whiskey.  He threw down the piece of glass and never remembered to use it again.

One of the new bums who had turned up during the spring was Cecil.  Donald and Joy were already a couple by then and he seemed to accept them as such from the start.  “You know, you kids oughta get married,” he often told them.  “Get married, settle down, get a little place, have a couple of kids.”  He looked at Joy.  “Are you too old to have kids?”

“I don’t know,” she’d reply.  “But who wants kids?  They tie you down.  I like my freedom.”  In the eighth grade, Joy’s class had been asked to write on “What I Want to Be When I Grow Up.”  She handed in her paper with six words written on it:

Free

Free

Sounds good to me

She flunked.

Cecil’s favorite money-making scheme was to walk into a bar (there were scores of them in the Times Square area alone) and take money off the bar.  Sometimes he could grab a couple of dollars at a time that way, until the bartender or a patron noticed what he was doing.  He was an undistinguished looking character, small and pale with wire-rimmed glasses, which helped.  And he could even go into the same bar a couple of times a day, if he made sure a new bartender was on duty each time.

There was one bar that he especially liked, because it was close to the flophouse where he often spent the night and because its layout made it easy to take the money and run, but there was a big, furry, friendly-looking dog which hung out there a lot.  The dog belonged to two of the bar’s regulars, a grossly overweight woman and her pathetic, mousy husband who waited on her hand and foot, often bringing her Cheese Doodles, Twinkies and Doritos from outside because the bar didn’t stock them.  Their dog, who wasn’t as friendly as he looked, growled every time Cecil would enter the bar, even if he was on semi-legitimate business, like using the men’s room.

Cecil tried hard to befriend this dog and its owners, but they didn’t fall for it.  Stealing money from bars seemed more of a challenge to Cecil than a matter of desperation, though.  Every few weeks he would disappear and come back several days later with a pocketful of money.  Then he’d treat everybody around to a couple of bottles of whiskey or sometimes a couple of buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken or some Big Macs from MacDonald’s.  Nobody ever returned the favor, but he didn’t mind.  “When I got, we got,” he’d say grandly.

He was especially generous toward and protective of Joy.  He always gave her extra food, and promised her if she and Donald got married he’d buy them a wonderful wedding present, like a vacuum cleaner.

Donald and Joy didn’t consider marriage even a remote possibility.  Like the other people who lived on the streets or in the flophouses, they lived one day at a time.  Donald remembered his father using that phrase over and over, particularly after attending one of his AA meetings.

When he was a boy, Donald had gone with his father to a number of AA meetings.  He found it fascinating to listen to the almost unbelievable stories some of the members told.  His own father’s story he found boring.  All he ever did was come home drunk with a silly grin on his face and fall asleep, and in the morning be guilt-ridden and apologetic.  His mother’s stories would have been much more entertaining, but she vehemently refused to attend a meeting.  Donald suggested to his father that he spice up the stories a bit, perhaps borrowing from his mother’s experiences, but his father saw no virtue in parading around the yard nude or falling down the stairs and breaking three ribs.  He was a quiet, peaceful man, until his wife drove him to violence.  But that was only when he was sober, so he didn’t see any reason to mention it at AA.

Cecil went to AA meetings quite often, but only to get the free coffee and cake or to get out of the cold.  He tried to get Donald and Joy to go but they wouldn’t.  But Donald thought about it a lot.  Sometimes he’d ask Cecil to repeat the stories he’d heard, and Cecil would, although he got them all mixed up.

“Well, there was this guy, Bill,” he’d begin.  “No, not Bill, that was another guy, this guy was, let me see now, what was his name, Tom?, no that’s not it, well I forget, let’s say it was Tim, just for the hell of it, so anyway, so this guy Tim, let’s say, he has a nice house and everything, and a car, or maybe two cars, and a wife and a coupla kids, so one day Tom takes his kids…”

“Who’s Tom?”  Donald broke in.

“Tom’s this guy here, who do you think?”  Cecil replied in exasperation.

“I thought his name was Tim.”

“Whaddya, crazy, his name is TOM, my FATHER’S name is Tim.  This guy is Tom.”

“In a small but defiant voice:   “Tim.  You said Tim.”

“AS I WAS SAYIN’,” Cecil continued, “so this asshole TOM takes his kids out for a nice little drive one night when he’s loaded and one of ‘em gets car sick and pukes all over the front seat so Tom gets pissed off and slams the kid in the head and the kid starts to scream and everything and then when Tom turns to slam him again to shut him up, he rams the car into a tree and bang, just like that, the kid’s dead.  And Tom’s hand is still hanging there waiting to hit the kid but he’s dead, the kid’s dead, but Tom still hears him screamin’ in his head, even now he hears him screamin’ in his head, it kinda got stuck in there because that’s the last thing he heard, you know?  So that’s the story.”

“That’s a terrible story.  Why’d you have to tell me that story?”

“I don’t know.  I made it up.  You wanted a story, I told you a story.”

“You know what’s wrong with you, Donald?  You’re confused.  If you wasn’t so confused, you wouldn’t be here.  You’d be a regular guy just like Tom there, slammin’ your kid in the head for pukin’ in the car.”

-5-

fter those initial few weeks, Donald and Joy, in their own unorthodox way, did settle down.  Donald became accustomed to and less frightened of Joy’s presence, and felt less need to be constantly drunk.  He usually managed to stay sober throughout most of the day, and then would put himself to sleep at night with a bottle of wine.  A lot like his father.

Joy was still willing to give him her money.  She was quite trusting and fearless, and Donald worried about her.  He thought she was very naïve for someone who lived on the street.

Now that the weather was warm, they slept outdoors almost every night.  Donald spent much of his time in the park, watching the joggers and thinking about jogging again himself.  He talked a lot about it to Joy.  “As soon as I get some real running shorts and some sneakers that fit,” he’d say.  He didn’t want his penis flopping out again, and his feet were still blistered from his last attempt.  He still talked about their running together.  She wasn’t interested, but she always encouraged him.  “I think that’s very nice, Donald, ” she’d say.  “I don’t like to run (except alone).”

When Joy was five, in kindergarten, she could outrun the whole class.  One day the children were lined up at recess for a race.  The teacher, a strict, outspoken and imposing older woman said, “She always wins.  This time, let’s beat Joy!”

At “ready”, before “set” and “go”, Joy took off across the field, left the school ground and made a beeline for a tree.  She quickly climbed it and wouldn’t come down until recess was over.

Joy kept herself very busy.  She went off every weekday morning to preach on the subway, and every afternoon, except Sunday, she’d sing on the street.  Donald never went with her on the subway—he didn’t like being trapped with all those people, and Joy’s religious fervor made him uncomfortable.  But he sometimes went with her when she sang.  He thought she had a beautiful voice, although he tired of her spirituals.  He tried to convince her to sing other songs, but she couldn’t think of any and he could think only of Christmas songs.  So sometimes she’d sing “Jingle Bells” or “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” but Donald noticed she collected less money with these songs, so he told her to stop.

Then he remembered “Swanee River,” one of his old favorites.  Her audience became very moved when she sang it, especially the part about the old folks at home.  They thought she really meant it, and gave her more money than usual so that she could get back to her family. 

When Donald was little, a relative had given him a tiny red piano for his birthday, along with a little book of play-by-number songs.  Donald wasn’t very musical, and the only song he’d ever learned to play was “Swanee River.”  He played it over and over, much to his parents’ annoyance.  Finally they took the piano away from him but he’d still pretend to be playing it, using the table top as his keyboard.

His mother forbade him to sing it in her presence, so to taunt her he’d sing it silently, moving his lips and pounding on the table.  That infuriated her even more.  Once she hit his hand with her big wooden cooking spoon and broke two of his fingers.  He never sang it again.  But he loved hearing Joy sing it, and his fingers moved in the air as though he were accompanying her.

Joy loved music and she loved to sing.  She especially loved singing Donald to sleep at night, although the wine usually beat her to it.  During the summer, after returning from one of his mysterious disappearances, Cecil bought her what was to become her greatest treasure:  a radio contained in a big orange plastic headset.  Donald thought she looked wonderful in it.

It opened up a whole new repertoire to her, and she began wearing it when she sang on the street, singing along as best she could to whatever was playing.  She usually knew very few of the words, but what words she did know she sang out loudly and happily.  She didn’t realize that other people couldn’t hear the music on her radio, so all they’d hear would be her singing a word or a phrase or two.  Most people found it very amusing.

One day Cecil told Joy about a place he’d discovered in his travels on the Bowery.  It was a men’s shelter called Open Arms.  He’d spent an occasional night there if it was cold and he was stuck in the area, but he considered Times Square his home.

He encouraged Joy to go there because of a Saturday night program they sponsored called The All-Star Review.  It was a variety show in which virtually anyone could participate, and did.  The audience was made up not only of local derelicts and crazies, but also the old people from a near-by senior citizens’ center.  They were much more tolerant of those who lived on the fringes of or outside normal society than most people, perhaps because of their age and their own relative poverty. 

Joy was very interested.  “I’d like to go hear music,” she told Donald.  To Donald, it sounded like going out on a real date.  He agreed.

That Saturday night, they took the subway down to Houston Street.  They were very excited—the farthest from Times Square they’d been in months was Bloomingdale’s, except when they slept on the subway, but then they never got off the train.

They arrived in the middle of the first act, a juggler dressed in a clown suit who kept dropping the balls.  “It’s all part of the act, folks,” he reassured the audience, “it’s all part of the act.”

Donald and Joy caused quite a commotion when they walked in because of Joy’s rattling, thumping shopping bags.  Everyone in the incredibly quiet audience turned to stare at them.  “Hey, you’re making me drop the ball,” the juggler complained, forgetting that it was “all part of the act.”

Donald and Joy sat down in the back.  Joy was disappointed no one was singing; she wasn’t interested in jugglers.  Donald, though, was very content.  He put his arm around her.  He remembered going to a drive-in movie once, and seeing a horror film.  This reminded him of that.

The next act was a comedian, and although no one understood any of his jokes or thought anything he said funny, everyone laughed at what seemed like inappropriate times.  The comedian, a neatly but shabbily dressed little Jewish man, was encouraged by the laughter and went on and on.  The people running the show began giving him signals and motioning him off the stage, but he happily ignored them.  Finally, one of the Open Arms’ staff members slipped unobtrusively over to the outlet where the microphone was plugged in and unplugged it.

The comedian just spoke louder and everyone could hear him fine, but one of the other staff members yelled “Mike’s out!  Can’t hear you!” from the back, then walked up onto the stage and made a great show of trying to fix the problem as the old man tried to yell even louder.  But the audience took this as a cue to clap so he finally gave up in defeat.

“You didn’t hear my best material,” he said as he walked off the stage flapping his arms.  “I got a million of ‘em.”

To Joy’s delight, the next act was a singer, among other things.  He was wearing a frayed black tuxedo with a bright pink ruffled shirt and a lot of jewelry.  Also an obvious hairpiece.  He was introduced as “The fantabulous, the stupendous Roy Urg, straight from Las Vegas!” (She read off a card which Roy had given her.)

His act consisted of a number of imitations of other performers.  They were all unrecognizable.  He announced who most of them were beforehand (Dinah Shore, Milton Berle, Pat Boone, Rodney Dangerfield) but a few of them he asked the audience to guess.

“O.K., here’s a good one.”  He sang “Danke schön” with a western accent.  Silence.  “C’mon, this is one of your favorites.”  Finally someone yelled out, “Marlene Dietrich?”

“WHERE have you people BEEN?”  He seemed astounded.  “It’s WAYNE NEWTON!”

“O.K., try this one.  This is an easy one.  If you don’t get this one, you all go to the funny farm.”

No one laughed.  The comedian who’d been on before him was stone faced.  “He thinks he’s funny,” he said to the deaf old lady next to him.  “He ain’t funny.  He don’t know what funny is.  I’M funny.”

The impressionist began to prance around the stage, grimacing and making strange, jerky movements with his arms.  Anxious for him to finish, the audience yelled out a barrage of names:  “Groucho Marx!  Lucille Ball!  Jerry Lewis!  Mae West!”  His movements became more frantic.  “Miss Piggy?  Ed Sullivan?”

At that he stopped.  “It’s RICHARD NIXON!” he screamed.  Shaking his head in disgust, he left the stage.  A few people clapped, Donald among them.  He had thoroughly enjoyed the performance.  Joy liked only the singing.

The next act was two old black tap-dancers who sprinkled a little sand on the stage before they began.  They were very good, and received a very enthusiastic response, even from Joy.  She mostly enjoyed the piano accompaniment, even though the piano was tinny and out of tune.  Donald whispered to her during the performance, “I used to play the piano.”

Joy was thrilled.  “Donald, that’s wonderful!  Maybe you could play for me sometime.”  He didn’t reply, but “Swanee River” immediately began to run through his head.

The last two acts were singers—an Irish tenor and a woman who attempted an opera aria.  Donald had never seen Joy happier.  She usually seemed content, but now she seemed transported.  Both singers were terrible, but she clapped and clapped and even yelled “Bravo!” to the opera singer.  People turned to look at her.

After the show, there was coffee and donuts.  Donald and Joy ate without speaking to anyone else, then headed uptown to Times Square.  It had been a glorious night.

-6-

onald and Joy continued to go to The All Star Review every Saturday night throughout the summer.  A few other people tried to talk to them, but they kept to themselves.  Many of the acts were repeats, and Donald sometimes fell asleep during those.  Joy always woke him when a new act came on.

After every show, Joy would try to convince him to play the piano for her so they could perform together at the Open Arms.  Donald always insisted he’d have to rehearse first, and he had no piano.  He told her to perform by herself—after all, she did it almost every day on the street and in the subway.  She refused.  She had never performed on a real stage with a microphone before, and she was too frightened to do it by herself.

“These people are PROFESSIONALS,” she’d say.  “I just sing on the street.”

“Joy, you’re the professional,” he’d say.  “You get paid for your singing.  It’s like your career.”  But she remained in awe of the stage and all the performers, no matter how bad.

The summer slipped away.  It was an easy season for them.  It was warm and they didn’t have to worry about shelter.  When it rained, they slept in the hallway of one of the deserted buildings in the area.  They didn’t know of any coed shelters, and they couldn’t afford hotels.  They brushed their teeth and washed as best they could at an open fire hydrant or a water fountain in the park.  At night, they washed their clothes in the boat pond and spread them on bushes to dry.

Joy continued to be the main breadwinner.  If she didn’t earn enough money to buy food, Donald would scrounge for it in garbage cans (leftovers were plentiful in the summer thanks to the picnickers) or he’d clean some windshields.  He didn’t believe in standing on a corner with his hand out, although he had no compunctions against stealing food from the outdoor food stands which proliferated on Ninth Avenue during the warm weather.  Both he and Joy were very adept at this, although they had to be careful not to frequent the same stands too often.  But they’d both forget which stands they had pilfered from recently, so they were constantly being chased away by the proprietors.

Tiny died one day while trying to steal a banana from one of these stands.  She tried to pick up only one but it was attached to a bunch and she was quickly spotted.  Still clutching the bananas, she collapsed and died on the street as she was trying to run away.  Lately Tiny had hardly been able to walk.  Her oozing, swollen legs and feet were wrapped in bandages which gave off an unbearable odor.  Some of the street people were glad she died.

When they did an autopsy at the morgue, it was discovered she had been suffering from a disease which destroyed her brain cells and made her senile.  She wasn’t just crazy.  Somehow this information filtered down to Joy.  She didn’t know why, but she was relieved.

Cecil remained closer to Joy than to anyone else.  He still encouraged Donald and Joy to get married.  Donald just shrugged his shoulders, but sometimes he would fantasize about them having a real home and he’d work and they’d get a piano.

Joy told Cecil about how they wanted to perform together at the Open Arms, but Donald needed a piano to practice on.  One hot Sunday afternoon, Cecil came upon Donald and Joy sitting on a doorstep.  He was carrying a package which he thrust at Joy.  He hadn’t seen them in several days and the package was torn and dirty.

Joy opened it like a little girl on her birthday.  It contained a little red piano.  Joy was thrilled.  “Oh, Donald, look!  Now you can play for me.”  She handed the piano to Donald, who stared at it in awe.  It was almost exactly like the one he’d had as a child.

“Thank you, Cecil,” he said, overwhelmed.

“Don’t thank me, thank her,” Cecil replied, pointing to Joy.  “She gave it to you.”  He walked away.

Although Donald understood what Cecil had done, he felt flooded with love for Joy.  He put his arms around her and kissed her on the mouth.  It was their first kiss.

“Ugh.  That’s disgusting,” said a teenager to his buddy as they walked by.  “Those people shouldn’t be allowed to do that.”

Donald picked up an empty beer can and threw it at them.  It missed, and they laughed as they walked on.  Donald didn’t care.  With Joy at his side, he began to play “Swanee River” on his new piano.

-7-

he next Saturday night, Donald asked the emcee of The All Star Revue if they could perform.  The woman, a gushing, social-worker type, said of course, of course, any time.  Donald became immediately anxious.  “In a few weeks, maybe,” he told her, already considering backing out.  But Joy had overheard and was very excited.

“Just think, Donald,” she whispered during a pathetically obvious magic act.  “We’re going to be All-Stars, just like him.”  She indicated the old man on the stage who shook violently as he tried to pull a stuffed rabbit out of a hat.  Everyone had seen him put it in the hat, so it wasn’t much of a surprise.  But everyone applauded enthusiastically.

Donald was too nervous to stay for coffee and donuts that night.  He needed a drink right away.  They left after the last act and were headed for a nearby liquor store which Donald had discovered after their first night at the Revue, when he spotted someone familiar sprawled on the sidewalk, the scarred, bald head gleaming under the streetlight.  At first Donald couldn’t remember who it was, then he realized it was Cap, who everyone thought had died months ago.

“Cap!”  We thought you were dead!”

Cap looked at him indignantly.  “I ain’t dead,” he said.  “I just moved.”  His eyes shifted to Joy.  “Who are you?”

“I’m Joy.  Who are you?”

“I don’t know any Joy,” he said, and then began to chuckle.  “I don’t know any Joy,” he repeated gleefully, “but I sure could use some.”  He continued chuckling and babbling to himself as Donald pulled Joy off to the liquor store.

They began practicing together every night after that.  Donald’s fingers went automatically to the right keys on the piano, although it had been over thirty years since he’d last played “Swanee River.”  They could barely hear the faint, tinny piano over Joy’s mournful singing, but Donald knew it would be fine with the big piano on the stage.

He became more and more nervous, though, and started drinking heavily again and talking about outer space.  It seemed to give him confidence.  Joy tried hard to pay attention, although she had no idea what “black hole” and “big bang” meant.  She thought they sounded obscene.

As Donald got more anxious, Joy got more excited.  She told everyone they were going to perform on a real stage and invited everyone to come.  No one was too interested except Cecil, who felt responsible.  He asked them to run through their act for him, and was disappointed that they were doing only one song.  “It’s the only one I can play,” Donald explained.

Cecil applauded heartily when they finished.  “A sure-fire hit,” he told them.  “It’ll bring the house down.”  Joy wasn’t sure what that meant.  She hoped it was good.

The only other person who was interested in their act was Harry, who still talked constantly about his triumphs in vaudeville.  He wasn’t interested enough to hear them rehearse, however.  But mention of their performance gave him an excuse to ramble on about himself.  “I was a real star once, you know,” he declared.  “None of this small-time stuff.  I mean vaudeville.”  He said “vaudeville” as though it were sacred.  “I was a song and dance man, myself,” he said for the hundredth time.  “I didn’t just sing, I did it all.  I sang.  I danced.  I did a little comedy, a little magic.  A real Renaissance man.”  Donald and Joy nodded, bored.  “Maybe I will come see you kids, give you a couple of pointers.”

Leo, who had given up hope of obtaining any of what he believed to be Donald’s fortune, saw no reason to associate with him any longer.  He had befriended someone else who seemed to have more possibilities.

Donald confided his fears about the performance to Cecil one day in a Flame Steak restaurant.  They went into these self-service restaurants as much as they could get away with to escape the heat, the cold or the rain.  And also, of course, to eat.

They never had to buy anything.  There were always huge amounts of  food left behind on the tables—steak, baked potato, garlic bread, salad.  There was usually only one over-worked busboy to clear all the tables, so if they went at a busy time there were always many uncleared tables.  It usually took a while for the busboy to notice them.  When he finally did, he would angrily snatch away the tray with the remaining food and tell them to leave, but he never demanded that they put down what they had in their hands, so they always held onto as much food as possible in both hands and ate as fast as they could.

As Donald was trying to tell Cecil of his nervousness with a mouthful of baked potato, he was interrupted by a teenage girl wearing designer jeans and expensive boots asking for a handout.  They were both startled.  “Sorry, dearie,” Cecil said, “You got the wrong table.”  She walked off to the next table.

As they ate, they watched her go to several tables.  “I wonder what a girl like that is doing here,” Donald said.

“There’s six million stories in this city,”  Cecil said dramatically.

A few minutes later, she sat down near them with a tray loaded with food.  Someone must have given her money.  She ate ravenously, although not as fast as Donald and Cecil, who were almost finished and still hadn’t been noticed.  As they ate the vestiges of the previous diners’ desserts, a nun in a long black habit came in, asking for donations.  She went from table to table, holding out a tin cup and asking in a singsong voice, “Please give to help the Lord’s work.”  A few people dropped in a coin or two.  She scrutinized Donald and Cecil and passed them by.

When the teenage girl noticed her, she became very agitated and stopped eating.  She turned to a man at the table behind her.  “Is she a real nun?  She’s not a real nun.  She’s using God to get money for herself.”  She pointed at the nun and began to shout:  “Fake nun!  Fake nun!  Fraud!  Fraud!”  The nun ignored her and continued on her rounds.  When she was done, she walked up to the girl and spoke to her very quietly.  Donald and Cecil couldn’t hear what she was saying.  By now they were finished eating and they got up and walked out right behind the nun.  Donald had seen her around for years, and had often wondered if she were a legitimate nun.  He decided to ask.

“Pardon me,” he said politely, just in case, “but are you a real nun?”

She turned to him, her eyes filled with hate.  “You degenerate scum,” she hissed.  “May your flesh turn to shit and stink in hell forever.”  In the same breath, she turned to a man just walking in and said in her singsong voice, “Please give to help the Lord’s work.”

-8-

onald managed to put off their debut for another two weeks.  He drank heavily every day, so Joy made him rehearse with her in the morning, before she left for the subway.  He was hung over and testy, but at least he was sober.  She was delighted to find a book on astrology in the gutter one day.  It was called “The Stars and You,” and she thought it was about outer space.  She gave it to him hoping it would distract him.  After determining that he was a Scorpio and she a Pisces, he read their horoscope for the night they were to perform.  Joy’s was benign but his was ominous:  “a cataclysmic event.”  He interpreted that to mean he was going to forget the music or in some other way ruin their performance.  He drank even more.

Two days before they were to perform, he read his horoscope for that day.  It said to concentrate on his health, it would pay off in the future.  He decided to stop drinking.  He was quite sick that day and worse the next.  Joy stayed with him and brought him soup from Chock Full O’ Nuts.  Cecil tried to convince him to have “just a couple,” but he was adamant.  He didn’t want to jeopardize Saturday night.

“I’ll have a drink on Saturday, if I don’t feel better,” he said.  But he’d been through this before, and was confident he’d be fine.

Saturday was a beautiful August day.  Donald woke up feeling better than he had in weeks.  He was a little weak and still nervous but Joy stayed with him all day and let him ramble on about the stars and music and his parents.  “My father was a good man,” he told her, “just boring.”

They got cleaned up as best they could and headed downtown after Joy splurged on a Filet o’ Fish and french fries for both of them from MacDonald’s.  They arrived at the Open Arms very early.  Donald handed the emcee a slip of paper on which he’d written the name he wanted them to be introduced as.  Then he sat at the piano and began uncertainly to pick out the notes of  “Swanee River.”  After a few false starts—his red piano had only eight keys—he found the right keys.  Joy stood by the piano and watched in awe.  “You can really do it,” she said.  “You can really play the piano.”  Donald gained confidence and played louder, even experimenting with the pedals.  Then Joy began to sing along.

They rehearsed their one song over and over until people began filtering in, Harry and Cecil among them, although not together.  When Donald and Joy went to sit in the audience, Donald’s anxiety returned.  They sat through several other acts, Donald too nervous to pay attention, Joy filled with excitement.  Then the emcee announced, “I am pleased tonight to welcome a new act to our stage—ladies and gentlemen, let’s give a warm welcome to—she glanced down at the paper Donald had given her—“The Astronoids!”  Joy bounced up eagerly and even with all her shopping bags moved quickly to the stage.  Donald followed reluctantly behind.  His hands were sweating so much he was afraid they’d stick to the keys.

Joy lugged her bags onto the stage, but left them off to the side.  Donald sat at the piano and Joy stood in the center of the stage, her hands clasped.  She was wearing what she considered her best dress, a baggy blue dress with little sprigs of flowers.  Her hair, which she had washed only three days before in the ladies room at Penn Station, was neatly combed.  Donald was wearing his good blue sweater, even though it was a hot August night.

The applause died down.  There was a long pause.  Joy looked at Donald.  His hands were frozen in his lap.  He was sure he’d forgotten the notes.  From the back of the room came an annoyed voice:  “C’mon already.  I’m on next.  Let’s go.”  It was the old Jewish comedian.

Donald began to play, one note at a time.  It sounded surprisingly loud in the hushed room.  Then Joy joined in, her voice strong and clear.  She felt as though she were singing at Carnegie Hall.  They performed flawlessly.  When they finished, the audience clapped politely, as always, except for Cecil, who applauded wildly, but Joy heard the cheers of thousands.  Donald stood beside her and held her hand.  It was as much to steady himself as anything else, he was shaking so.  Joy was almost crying.  It was their moment of triumph.

Suddenly Donald’s hand gripped Joy’s very tightly, his eyes rolled up in his head, his entire body stiffened and he toppled to the floor, his body jerking, making strange, animal-like sounds.  When he fell, he pulled Joy down with him.  She couldn’t free her hand from his white-knuckled grip, and she lay beside him screaming “Donald!  Donald!”

After a moment’s stunned silence—some people wondering whether this was still part of the act—the emcee rushed onto the stage yelling, “My God, somebody bring me a spoon or something for his mouth!  He’s having a convulsion!”  Cecil, who had lived on the streets for many years and who had seen many things, jumped onto the stage and yanked Joy’s hand out of Donald’s.  “Call an ambulance!” he shouted.  Then, quietly to Joy he said, “I knew he shouda had a drink.”

Harry left quickly.  He didn’t think they were very good anyway.

-9-

onald was taken to Beth Israel Hospital.  The ambulance attendants would not allow Joy to come with him.  They asked if she were his wife.  “No, I’m his…I’m his…”  She couldn’t come up with a word.  As the ambulance pulled off she ran after it screaming:  “His friend!  I’m his friend!  His friend!”  But the ambulance, with its sirens screaming, weaved through the traffic and disappeared.

Joy stood on the sidewalk sobbing.  Suddenly Cecil was there beside her, panting heavily from having carried all four of her shopping bags from the Open Arms.  He set them down gently and put his arm around her.  “Let’s go home,” he said.

“Where?”  Joy asked.  “I don’t have a home anymore.”

***

They slept in the park that night, after talking long into the night about Donald.  “I don’t understand it,” Joy said.  “He’s really very healthy, you know.  He’s a runner.  And he’s very strong.”  She looked at her hand, which still bore the marks of Donald’s nails.

“He stopped too fast,” Cecil explained.  “Sometimes it happens.”

When she woke up the next morning, she looked immediately at her hand.  The marks were still there.  It reassured her somehow, as though a part of Donald were still with her.  She woke up Cecil and said she wanted to visit Donald in the hospital.  Cecil didn’t want to go; he said he had other things to do.  Joy shrugged her shoulders, picked up her bags and headed out of the park by herself.  A few minutes later, she was back.  “Where is he?” she asked Cecil.  He wrote “Beth Israel Hospital, First Avenue and Seventeenth Street” on a scrap of paper.

It took her two hours to get there.  She kept getting lost and no one would give her directions.  When she finally found the hospital, she had no idea where to go.  She decided she’d just go from room to room until she found him.  Before she could get past the first desk, a nurse called out sharply, “Can I help you?”

Joy generally did not get a very positive response when she asked for help, so she usually avoided doing so.  But here was a woman asking her if she could help her!  “Oh yes, please, I’m here to visit Donald Fuller.  He’s my very good friend.  Do you know where he is?”  All the nurses behind the desk looked at her suspiciously.

“He’s not here,” one said.

“Oh yes he is,” Joy retorted.  “They brought him here in an ambulance.”

“I said he is not here,” the nurse repeated.

“Well, where is he then?”

A big black nurse walked out from behind the desk.  “He’s not here, and if you don’t get out of here, I’ll call the police,” she said.  Joy walked out as the nurse reached for the phone.

She decided to try another entrance, but as soon as she walked in, she was stopped by a security guard.  “What are you doing in here?” he said gruffly.

“I’m looking for my friend, Donald Fuller,” she answered firmly.  “He got sick and they brought him here in an ambulance.”

 “Look, lady, you can’t come in here.”  He stared at her shopping bags.  “This is a hospital.  Sterile, you know?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Sterile.  Clean.  You can’t come in.”

“I’m clean.”  She was horrified.  She was still wearing her good dress.