SHORT STORIES: Black Shoes

I was living in a rooming house in the South End of Boston and I was behind in the rent. The guy who owned the place, Sid – a fat, sweaty compulsive gambler who always had a cigar in his mouth – was hounding me for it, threatening to throw me out. I was able to subsist on the seemingly endless supply of white bread, baloney and bananas that some local grocer who owed Sid money was paying off the debt with. Sid left it on a table in the TV room each day for his guests, which was how he referred to those unfortunate enough to wind up there.

Most of Sid’s ten or so guests were old drunks and gamblers with nowhere else to go. Between the rent and gambling debts, Sid usually dispossessed them of whatever money they got from their monthly checks. I wound up there as a fluke. Manpower – the day labor outfit – sent me out on a moving job with a crazy Vietnam Veteran who concluded that we weren’t being paid enough for the job. He was a big burly guy with long hair and a beard. He told me that he earned the nickname Psycho in the Marine Corps. We piled up all of some rich woman’s furniture and boxes halfway between her apartment and the moving truck. The Veteran then called up Manpower to tell them that we were going to quit unless they agreed to pay us double the usual hourly wage. They caved in and agreed.

When we finished the job and went to pick up our checks, they told us that they would no longer need our services. We didn’t care. I had nowhere to go, so after we cashed our checks, we bought a case of beer, a quart of Jack Daniels, a couple of steaks, and some Rice-A-Roni. We took the stuff to a roach-infested room the Veteran was renting in the Fields Corner section of Dorchester. He did the cooking on a hotplate.

Roaches were crawling all over us while we ate. We bullshitted through the night while we got hammered, and I couldn’t help but tell him, “Man, you gotta get outta here. This is no way to live.” He agreed. Another Veteran had told him that the Welfare Office had some sort of arrangement with a rooming house in the South End that was roach-free, so he decided to check it out in the morning.

I woke up in a chair with roaches in my hair, but I was too hungover to care. The Veteran was taking a whore’s bath in the sink, and when he was done, I stuck my head under the faucet. He insisted that I go with him to the Welfare Office and try to get some kind of help. I was nineteen years old and a long way from home, so he took it upon himself to take me under his wing. Since Manpower was no longer an option, it seemed like a good idea. We got some coffee and took the T into Boston.

At the Welfare Office, it was hard to tell whether the Veteran frightened or charmed a nice young lady into giving us one-month vouchers for rooms at Sid’s place. She suggested that he apply for Veteran’s benefits as well. I was surprised that she didn’t tell both of us to take a hike. We stopped for a few beers at a bar before heading over there. It was pleasing to learn that there were no roaches at Sid’s, but there was always a noisy card game going on at all hours of the night.

After six weeks, Sid started harassing me about the rent. The Veteran would always come to my defense. On one occasion I thought he was going to kill Sid when he threatened me with, “You’re gonna be out on the street if I don’t get my money tomorrow.”

“You throw him out and I’m gonna throw you through the fuckin’ window, you piece o’ shit,” responded the Veteran, enraged. Sid, along with everyone else at his rooming house, was scared of him. It looked like he was going to get his benefits, so Sid never bothered him. We spent a lot of time smoking pot by the window in the Veteran’s room, listening to the The Doors. He loved the The Doors, and he told me a lot of horrible stories about Vietnam.

Sid’s place was a dump, and I soon grew sick of being there. I was able to keep myself in smokes and pocket change by going to the package store for the old guys who were busy playing poker; they didn’t want to leave the game. I was starting to forget what a regular meal consisted of, so I got a job.

A security guard company had an ad in the paper. When I went to the listed address near Government Center, they hired me on the spot. I told the woman who interviewed me that I’d work as many hours as possible. I wanted to avoid Sid. She gave me two uniform shirts and wrote down an address for me to report to the next day at 8:00 AM. She stipulated that I’d have to wear black, laced shoes.

I thought about steak as I walked back to Sid’s place. When I entered the TV room, I announced that I found a job, making sure that Sid heard me. All of Sid’s guests were happy about it. Any new form of income was always a big deal at Sid’s since it was construed as a new source for borrowing money. When I told them, “I need a pair of black, laced shoes,” a big commotion ensued. Everybody wanted to kiss my ass because they thought I’d have a paycheck soon. Two old guys soon emerged carrying pairs of black shoes. I tried on the pair belonging to the one I knew to be more concerned about hygiene, and fortunately for me, they were a perfect fit.

As I walked around the TV room, trying out the shoes, Sid asked, “When do you get paid?”
“Well, they said I’ll get paid every two weeks, but they hold the first check,” I answered, poker-faced. “It’ll be about a month.” I had already figured out that I’d get my first check in about a week and a half, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. I already owed him a couple of hundred bucks, but I determined that a gambling man like Sid would chance it.

Sid was pissed. He said, “Ya got four weeks. If I don’t get my rent then, you’re out.” I was surprised that he didn’t call the security company to confirm the check story.

I arrived at my assignment on a Friday morning with a bag containing two baloney sandwiches and a couple of bananas. I had managed to talk Sid into unlocking the kitchen in order to bring some food with me. After a big speech about rent and his rules, he relented and let me take my lunch early when the Veteran walked up behind him.

I’d been assigned to an office building in the financial district, and when I got there a short, chubby sergeant from the company was waiting out in front for me. He stared at my shoes as I approached. The sergeant wore a complete uniform, including a fancy hat with gold wings, and he carried a bullhorn. His black shoes glistened in the morning sunlight, and it was obvious that he took a great deal of pride in his uniform. He was the antithesis of Sid. I introduced myself, extending my arm, but he wasn’t interested in shaking hands.

He showed me around the building which was about thirty stories high and still under construction. Apparently, the construction workers were on strike, and my job was to guard the building for their employer. They were concerned that someone would come in and steal tools and materials.

There was a telephone in the lobby, and the sergeant announced in an emotionless, professional manner, “This phone is to be used in emergency situations only. No personal phone calls are allowed.” He acted as if we were in the Marines, and he was starting to irritate me.

“Were you in Vietnam?” I asked.
“No I was not,” he replied, and it was clear that he was annoyed by the question. He gave me a set of keys for the building, then snarled, “Stay off the phone.”
“Don’t I get a bullhorn?” I kidded as he was leaving. He didn’t reply, but I could tell by the expression on his face that he was riled.

Before long, I was extremely bored. Within an hour, I was on the phone with my brother in New York. He said my parents were worried about me. They had thrown me out of the house three months earlier, and they had no idea where I was. I spent the whole morning talking on the phone with a number of people, all of whom were several hundred miles away. At around noon, I decided to eat lunch on the roof.

The view from the roof was spectacular. It was a clear day, and I could see most of Boston and the entire harbor. As I ate a sandwich, I looked down over the ledge at the people in the street. I suddenly got the urge to fling a slice of baloney off the roof. I laughed as I watched it descend. I flung another slice off like a frisbee. When the baloney was gone, I squeezed the bread into a ball and tossed it. Then I ate one of the bananas and aimed for a crowd of businesspeople at a crosswalk with the peel. People in the street started staring upward, so I decided to head for the lobby. As I rode the elevator down, I was thoroughly amused, wondering what it feels like to get hit with baloney from thirty stories up.

I tossed some baloney off the roof the next day, but since it was drizzling out it wasn’t as much fun. Late in the afternoon, the phone in the lobby rang. A dispatcher from the security company informed me that I was being reassigned to the graveyard shift at another building a few blocks away.

The next night, the short, chubby sergeant with the magnificently polished shoes was waiting for me outside the new job site. He had a sarcastic smile on his face, and his demeanor led me to suspect that he had arranged my new assignment, probably as payback for my bullhorn comment. It was a twelve-story office building with a bank on the ground floor. A bare desk – except for a telephone – was situated in the lobby, adjacent to the bank.

After explaining what my duties were, the sergeant announced, “This phone is to be used only in emergency situations. No personal phone calls are permitted.”
“Does that mean that the same rules for the phone in the other building apply to this phone?” I asked.
“That’s exactly what it means,” he responded.
“Well then why didn’t you just say that?” I chided. He gave me a dirty look and left.

I didn’t like my new assignment at all. Every night at 3:00 AM, I had to do a walk through and punch a card into some contraption built into the wall on each floor. The place gave me the creeps. As I made my rounds, I was reminded of a movie I’d seen – The Shining – wherein bloody, ghoulish people with axes make a habit of showing up in deserted hallways. I didn’t feel much safer in the lobby. The four elevators were broken, and throughout the night they would move at random from one floor to another. Every once in a while I’d hear a bell, and one of the elevator doors would open. I always felt uneasy when it happened.

I kept myself occupied by listening to the radio and using the phone. Boston had a very good oldies station back then, so I kept calling up and requesting “King of the Road,” by Roger Miller, until they played it. If they didn’t do so right away, I’d call back and request it in a funny voice. They must have thought there was a great demand for the song because they always played it, eventually. When that got monotonous, I’d make crank phone calls. I’d look up funny names – like Lipshitz – in the phone book. When they woke up and answered the phone, I’d say, “Good evening Mrs. Lipshitz. I’m calling on behalf of the American Dental Association, and we’re conducting a survey. Would you mind telling us whether or not you brushed your teeth before retiring this evening?” I was surprised by the number of people who took it seriously.

One night, someone broke into the bank. When I heard glass breaking, I ran outside and called 911 from a pay phone down the street. Two cops arrived in a couple of minutes, so I called the security dispatcher while they were checking the building out. The sergeant with the bullhorn soon showed up. He was pissed off because I called 911 instead of him. He wanted to be a hero.

The cops determined that someone had broken a window in the rear alley and tried to climb in. Whoever it was, they were long gone. The sergeant suggested that it was me.
“Why would I climb in a window when I have the master key to the whole building?” I asked. The cops agreed.
I told the sergeant, “This job sucks and so do you. Go fuck yourself.” He was arguing with the cops about paperwork as I walked away.

The next afternoon, I went to the security company’s office and returned the two shirts. I had worked for them for about a month, and I had already gotten paid three times. I told them to mail the last check to my mother’s house in New York. I went back to the rooming house, packed my belongings, and said goodbye to the Veteran before managing to sneak out via the fire escape. He always talked about what a wonderful place Wheeling, West Virginia was, so I bought a bus ticket for there. Sid never got a dime.

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