Doorman Wanted By Glenn R. Miller - 34

CHAPTER 32

Friday, 6:41 am

I come down early the next morning from Wendy’s apartment, fully dressed in my doorman outfit. A threshold has been crossed, so to speak, within our relationship and although I would prefer to go up to the penthouse for my morning ablutions, that, clearly, is out of the question. As far as Wendy knows, my apartment is located in Queens, not four floors above her.

After a bit of straightening up in the lobby and the making of fresh coffee for the soon-to-descend denizens, I head outside for my front stoop duty, sweeping and hosing down the sidewalks. When I am nearly finished, in the shaded light of early morning, I see a familiar figure approaching slowly from the park.

I haven’t seen Terry since I turned him away—him and his request to help Cadillac. I feared that he would no longer come around to L’Hermitage following that encounter.

“Hey, Scrape,” he says, somewhat mutedly, with a gesture resembling something between a half wave and a swat at a fly, “you got any extra coffee for me this morning? Today I’ll take one of your handouts.”

“Yes, of course I do,” I say. “Wait here for—” And then, I pause. “Come on in, Terry. Why don’t you wait inside while I pour it for you?”

“Nah,” he grunts. “Too claustrophobic in there for me. Too santa -claustrophobic in there. You know what that is, man? The fear of getting gifts in small places—and your lobby is way too small for me,” he says. “Whyn’t you go tend to the coffee and bring it to me al Fresca. Gimme that hose—I’ll finish taking care of the sidewalk for you. We can call it earning my keep, okay?”

I head inside and go to the coffee station. Mr. Harrison has taken his seat in the lobby, already working on his crossword. Mrs. McAdoo and Mrs. Cooper are talking quietly in the mailroom, their two dogs leashed and ready for their morning promenade. I greet them all, pour Terry’s coffee, and head back outside. Terry is halfway down the block toward Madison, spraying the sidewalk, the trees, the parked cars, and even the second-floor windows.

“Very good, Terry,” I say. “I think you’ve adequately doused the neighborhood. Here, I’ll swap you the coffee for the hose.”

“How do you hit those flowers up there?” he asks, referring to the second-floor window boxes. “That takes some pretty good aim to squirt them. I gave them a shot, but I noticed that a couple of the windows were open. That ain’t good. I might have gotten some of the indoor plants, too.”

“We have a service that tends to those, normally from the second floor. Thank you, though, for giving it a go.”

“Damn, this tastes good,” he says, taking a loud slurp of his coffee. “Bit of a nip in the air this morning, have you noticed?”

“I did notice, yes,” I say. “I’m glad you’re enjoying the coffee.”

After a moment, I begin. “Terry,” I say, “there’s something I wanted to talk to you about.” I pause a moment before taking the plunge. “Is Cadillac doing alright?”

“He’s doing a little better, I guess,” Terry says. “They messed him up bad this time, though. Real bad. Bunch of fucking animals went after him that night. College kids on a drunken spree. What the hell do they teach these kids in their fancy schools, huh?”

“Is he in the hospital?” I ask.

Terry snorts, almost spilling his coffee. “Naw, Scrape. No. Old Caddy ain’t in no hospital. Caddy ain’t exactly a hospital kind of guy. I know I came here asking you to help us get him in one and all, but that was probably pretty stupid on my part. I kind of panicked after finding him. Didn’t know what else to do or who else to go to. There’s no way—even with you—that he would have gone to the hospital. Naw, that ain’t Cadillac. We were able to hunt down his daughter the next day—which he was none too happy about either. He hadn’t seen her in months. She came into the city and picked him up. She’s from somewhere out in Jersey—Baskin Robbins or some such shitsville or something.”

“How did you ever find her?” I ask.

“He had a little book on him. Was always pulling it out and writing notes and stuff. I knew he kept some phone numbers in there and I knew her name, too, from his having mentioned her over the years. Anyway, he’s gone now. I don’t expect to see him again. His daughter will put him away somewhere in Jersey—sure as hell not Central Park.”

He pauses and takes another sip from his coffee. “Yeah, old Caddy’s gone, mm-hmm,” he says.

“I want to ask you something else, Terry. Actually—a few things, if you wouldn’t mind. Wendy and I were talking the other night. What do you do with your artwork?”

“We sell it, as best we can. Set it out on sidewalks and stuff.”

“And do people buy it?” I ask.

“Hell, yeah, they do,” he says, adding a proud wiggle of his shoulders to support his statement. “Course they do. How do you think I live the high life like I do? Beg? Shaww—I’m an artist, man.”

“Yes, I know you are. You and Tomata, right? And the others?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” he says. “Tomata’s terrific. Great landscapes, a little more abstract than I sometimes like, but he’s good. Johnny’s the best, though, of all of us. His stuff’ll blow you away, Scrape. And Suze, well, she builds these incredible—I don’t know what you’d call them even, little sculptures or something, from the shit, uh, from the crap . . . from the stuff she finds out on her rounds. Turning other people’s garbage into things of beauty. She’s incredible. Little crazy at times, but what artist worth their salt isn’t, huh?”

Yes, a triumph over chaos. I look at him as he displays a broken-toothed smile, not directly at me, but in my general direction.

“And, may I ask, Mister Terry, where do you store the art that you don’t sell? Or the art that is in progress? Do you keep it all in the park?”

“Yeah, kind of,” he says. “Some of it we keep in grocery carts and boxes and tuck it in under bushes in the park. A lot of times it gets destroyed—like the other night—or picked up by the park cops and tossed. Used to be easier to hide it away than it is now. Some of the shelters let us keep it in their lockers and stuff. You know, Scrape, it ain’t like we each got tons of canvases or sculptures that needs a big warehouse. We each get a few things together and then hold our little art bazaar wherever the spirits move us. Or where we think the cops ain’t going to hassle us.”

“What if you were to have an indoor display space?” I ask. “What if you were to have an actual gallery to display your works and a studio to create them in?”

He looks at me for a moment with a sideways smile and one squinty eye, as if trying to comprehend what it is I’ve just asked him—or offered him. As if trying to read my face to determine if I’m pulling his leg, something I’ve never done with him before.

“Yeah, well, that’d be a pretty cool thing,” he snorts before taking another sip of his coffee. “But what are you asking me for? Are you joking? If you are, I guess I don’t get it.”

“No, I’m very serious, Terry. What if you and your colleagues were to have a studio space, here on the Upper East Side? Is that something that would be of interest to you?”

Again, he stares at me, trying to read the meaning in my face. In a world in which people pass him every day without acknowledgment, connection, or even eye contact, being presented with the offer of a space—an indoor space, at that—in a prime storefront in New York City for the display of one’s artwork is highly unusual. A smile begins to form on his face, but then, just as quickly, a dark expression takes over.

“Wait a minute,” he says. “What’s the hitch, Scrape? What would I have to do—for you, I mean?”

Oh, yes. I see. The trade of the streets.

“Paint, Terry. That’s what you’d have to do—just paint. Nothing more than that. Create product. You and your artist friends would keep a majority of the proceeds.”

We go back and forth—somewhat tediously, I might add—in this vein for several minutes. Neither of us is particularly good at it, this back-and-forth questioning and answering, if that’s how it can even be characterized. He is not in the habit of knowing how to acknowledge offers; and I am not in the habit of personally extending them. At last, he admits being open to the concept of this proposition.

“I’ve got to go talk to my partners about this,” he says. “You know, we get a little set in our ways, Scrape. May not want all the pressure that comes with your idea. We kind of like it just the way we got it. You may be trying to solve something that ain’t looking for a solution.”

“Terry,” I say, “this is an unusual opportunity. I am merely saying that, if you’re interested, I would explore the possibility of converting this building’s retail space into a display room—a gallery—for your and Tomata’s, and Suze’s, and anyone else’s artwork. I admit that it would be a very unusual gallery in New York. It would own a niche, shall we say? But there are many hurdles to be leapt on my end before anything is a done deal. And before I can begin leaping those hurdles, I need to gauge your interest.”

“No shit, man,” he laughs. “You got tons of hurdles. I don’t doubt you’re a great doorman. And I have no doubt that people inside the building like you and give you their five-hundred-dollar tips come Christmas. But what the hell, Scrape? How much clout you think you got? They ain’t going to give you the fucking store in their building,” he laughs.

“You may be right,” I say. “But I’ll tend to my own hurdles. In the meantime, here’s what I suggest—get to painting. Do nothing but paint over the next couple of weeks—you and Tomata and the rest of them. Come back tomorrow and I’ll have some paint supply money for you. Come early . I’ll need your best examples as I float the idea by the residents.”

“Shit, and people think we’re the crazy ones,” he says, turning back toward the park. “Damn, Scrape,” he shouts, “you are on-ne un-use-u- al doorman. Ain’t no other doorman like you in this city. No where, no how!”

He lets out his high-pitched cackle as he walks, limping, down the street. As I reenter the building, Mr. Harrison shouts from across the lobby.

“Ah, there you are Mr. Hanratty! Where on earth have you been? I’m horribly stuck,” he says while holding up his folded New York Times . “What are they going after with this clue: ‘Easy peasy’? Ten letters, starting with N-O-P, ending with E-M-O, and several blanks in between. That E-M-O looks wrong, wouldn’t you say?”

“‘No problemo,’ sir.”

He looks at me, not too dissimilarly from the look Terry just gave me when I offered him retail space, but perhaps a wee bit more subtly.

“Your answer, sir. ‘No problemo.’”

“Ahh. ‘No problemo,’ indeed. A most extraordinary young man,” he says, shaking his head, filling in the blanks.