Out on the Cutting Edge

I didn't say much. I don't pay any more attention to politics than I have to. There was a woman at our table named Helen who'd been sober about the same length of time I had, and for a while now I'd been toying with the idea of asking her out. Now I placed her under covert surveillance, and I kept coming up with data that got entered in the minus column. Her laugh was grating, she needed some dental work, and every sentence out of her mouth had the phrase you know in it. By the time she was done with her

hamburger, our romance had died unborn. I'll tell you, it's a great way to operate. You can run through women like wildfire and they never even know it.

A little after eleven I tucked some coins alongside my saucer, said my goodbyes, and carried my check to the counter. Eddie rose when I did, paid his own check and followed me outside. I'd almost forgotten he was there; he'd contributed even less to the conversation than I had.

Now he said, "Beautiful night, isn't it? When the air's like this it makes you want to breathe more. You got a minute? You want to walk a few blocks?"

"Sure."

"I gave you a call earlier. At your hotel."

"What time?"

"I don't know, middle of the afternoon. Maybe three o'clock."

"I never got the message."

"Oh, I didn't leave one. It was nothing important, and anyway you couldn't call me back."

"That's right, you don't have a phone."

"Oh, I got one. It sits right there on the bedside table. It just don't work, that's the only thing wrong with it. Anyway, I just wanted to pass the time of day. What were you doing, looking for the girl some more?"

"Going through the motions, anyway."

"No luck?"

"Not so far."

"Well, maybe you'll get lucky." He took out a cigarette, tapped it against his thumbnail. "What they were going on about back there," he said. "Politics. I have to tell you I don't even know what they were talking about. You gonna vote, Matt?"

"I don't know."

"You gotta wonder why anybody wants to be president. You want to know something? I never voted for nobody in my life. Wait a minute, I just told a lie. You want to know who I voted for? Abe Beame."

"That was a while ago."

"Gimme a minute and I'll tell you the year. That was '73. You remember him? He was a little shrimp of a guy, he ran for mayor and he won. You remember?"

"Sure."

He laughed. "I must of voted twelve times for Abe Beame. More.

Maybe fifteen."

"It sounds as though you were highly impressed with him."

"Yeah, his message really moved me. What it was, some guys from the local clubhouse got hold of a school bus and ran a bunch of us all over theWest Side . Every precinct we went to I answered to a different name and they had a voter registration card for me in that name, and I went in the booth and did my civic duty like a little soldier.

It was easy, I just voted the straight Democratic ticket like I was told."

He stopped to light his cigarette. "I forget what they paid us," he said. "I was gonna say fifty bucks, but it could have been less than that.

This was fifteen years ago and I was just a kid, so it wouldn't take much.

Besides, they sprung for a meal, and of course there was free booze for the bunch of us the whole day long."

"Magic words."

"Ain't that the truth? Booze was God's gift even when you had to pay for it, and when it was free, Jesus, there was nothing better."

"There was something about it that defied all logic," I said. "There was a place inWashingtonHeights where I didn't have to pay for my drinks. I remember taking a cab there from way the hell out inBrooklyn

. It cost me twenty dollars, and I drank maybe ten or twelve dollars worth of booze, and then I took a cab home and thought I really put one over on the world. And I didn't just do this once, either."

"It made sense at the time."

"Perfect sense."

He drew on the cigarette. "I forget who it was ran against Beame,"

he said. "It's funny what you remember and what you forget. This poor bastard, I voted against him fifteen times and I don't remember his name.

Here's another thing that's funny. After the first two, three times I voted, I couldn't go in a booth without getting this urge to cross 'em up. You know, vote the other way, take their money and vote Republican."

"Why?"

"Who knows why? I had a couple of belts in me by then and maybe that made it seem like a good idea.

And I figured nobody'd know. Secret ballot, right? Only I thought, yeah, there's supposed to be a secret ballot, but there's lots of shit that's supposed to be, and if they can take and vote us fifteen times all over town, maybe they can tell how we're voting. So I did what I was supposed to do."

"The straight ticket."

"You got it. Anyway, that was the first I ever voted. I coulda the year before, I was old enough, but I didn't, and then I voted fifteen times for Abe Beame, and I guess I got it out of my system, because I never done it since."