by George Stantini
Originally published in Midnight Mind Number Six
MY LUCK HAD JUST stepped out for a breather and a smoke when in walked them two . . .
Two guys walk into a bar, right? Two guys: Mutt and Jeff. Two guys thinking: ‘He’s with me.’ Two guys thinking: ‘I’m: bad cop.’ Two guys, who think the other is the guy Eric Roberts played — two Mickey Rourke’s.
In the small hours of a weekday night, Brooklyn. Not just Brooklyn. I’m talking: fucking Brooklyn. Way out in the spooks. I’m talking Bed-Stuy here. Darktown. East New York — that Brooklyn. Physical Brooklyn. Mean Street.
If this is what I thought it was, a bag job, there’d be no witnesses tomorrow. The streets was dead; a victim of some heavy weather. A Chi-town cold had put this city in a lock. A nor’ easter named Handsome Jack.
“I think we just went dutch on a long night here. You and me did.”
“I’m sure one of us got it coming. No random acts.”
And in a city as big as this, it ain’t nothing personal either.
The tab I father’d.
My left ear had been ringing all day. I woke up to it. Somebody’s talking about me, I figured. Somebody getting paid by the word, the way it was being rung so hard for. A somebody who? The right ear means bad news, I remembered hearing somewheres. The left means good. It only shows how little I had to go on, that I even bring it up.
God’s got a pay’em no mind list, see. Some people, he started and lost interest in. I was under the impression, it was a long list. I’d spent the better part of a night listening to the guy next door break furniture. He was telling his story to an empty room. There was a woman’s name involved. Nobody called the cops. And eventually, he stopped.
I was standing over the kitchen sink, watching myself finish a plate of eggs, when a woman, the wife I guess, come home. The left ear was giving me trouble like I said, and I couldn’t get back to sleep. There were eggs in the frigidaire and some yellow american. I needed a project. Something to wear the edge off. The meal I made, I hadn’t the heart for no more. It was quarter past five now, and from the next room, I could hear a female voice ask, why. She addressed the man, Pigeon. Pigeon, I heard her say, why. I couldn’t make out his answer. Finally, after some time had past, I heard him sob something awful; the door open, then close and the sound of that woman’s shoes, walk back down the hall.
I didn’t see that woman, as she passed my room. But I heard them shoes she was wearing, trail off down the stairwell and onto the street. In my head, I followed her to the corner and lost her hailing a cab. After she’d left, I was praying for daylight, for both our sakes. I heard him call for his mother, the poor bastard. That chair I put in the door frame to keep stragglers off the line, I brought inside. At one point in the night, I’d left it there, figuring, if the call should come through, there’d be less the chance of missing it. Some people, they got a love affair with the telephone, you know. They talk and talk. You’d think they tell you something, some people. The chair, was meant to suggest brevity. For all the good it did.
I tried the bed again. Sleep came in waves. It was a tough bid. Mostly, I laid there. When I realized it was useless to even try, I put the chair back in the door and went through the motions with a pot of coffee.
I had been looking for a clean hanky, there in my dresser drawers, when I drew a bead on a picture card from my folks: dear gusboy, hope this note finds you well. hugs and kisses from 6th street, love mom and pop. A picture pulled from better days, I guess. Ten years, maybe more. My brother Junior’s going away party. He’d gone and joined the Navy on us. All the relations had turned out to give him a good send off. And there’s me: born without the big idea, no hands of gold, hawking the corner spot, trying to be mindful. I remember, I was fingering a thick stack of iou’s, when my mother, still living then, she pulled me aside, and in confidence she told me, she said, Gus, I couldn’t have made you better, if I’d built you piece by piece.
There’s only one good woman in this world, friend. Don’t let anyone tell you different. A mother’s love is an incredible gift. This from a guy in the know. Cause really, who better to tell you about such-and-such a thing, then the guy — for six years now — that’s gone without.
When enough time had passed, I dressed and went back down the hall. The clock said, twenty to. I waited a good long while, enough that I couldn’t wait no more. I remember holding the receiver like it were a pair of dice. And when it turned eight on the dot, I dialed.
I called my lady friend. The line picked up, but there was no hello. Betty, I said, you there? Betty. It sounded like I woke her. Betty, it’s me. I’m sorry. Did I wake you? No, she says. I thought I tasted vinegar, but I managed to shrug it. I said, Oh, ok, what’re you doing? She tells me she’s sleeping. I say, Didn’t I just ask you that? What I just said. She says, What’s wrong? No, I’m lying, she says: Is something wrong with you? I said, Wrong with me. What do you mean, Betty, wrong with me. Wrong with me, how? She says, You sound drunk. I said, I don’t know from drunk, Betty, eight o’clock in the morning, I mean —
Well, is something the matter? she says.
No, I tell her, I called. I called. Why’s it gotta be a federal case for: ‘something the matter?’ She says, You’re right, Gus. Hundred percent, she says: A hundred percent.
It was that second hundred percent, see? Had me thinking, she’d meant different. If it’s not at all, I told myself, I guess, it might as well be none.
So, it’s like that, Betty? A hundred percent.
Don’t let’s start, Gus. It’s silly. It’s my doing. I don’t want to quarrel when we don’t have to. Please. For me. I’ll be civil. I take it back. OK?
Right, I folded, you’re right.
A hundred percent, Gus?
Yeah, Betty, hundred percent.
I thought, we was coming out of it, whatever we’d stepped into there.
So how are you, Gus?
I’m fine, I told her. Just, I didn’t hear from you the other night, is all. I thought you would have swung by. Where you been? Around, she said. Just like that: Around.
Well, I said — trying to curb a funny feeling, I woke up with my ear ringing, right? And I thought you were talking about me. She says, No Gus, not me. Silence. Betty, you there?
Maybe you slept on it wrong, she says.
Wrong, I said. She says, your ear — maybe you slept on it wrong. Like when you catch a draft. How’s that, Betty? A draft, I mean, for the sake of conversation: A draft. Which ear, Gus? The left or the right. The left, I told her. Means good news is coming. Gus, she says, it’s the right ear means good news. The left means, the other thing. Oh, I said, thanks for the kid gloves, Betty. I mean, are you sure, cause maybe I woke you and you got yourself a little bit misconstrued there. Your facts maybe. Got’em queer. In a tangle. Gus, everybody knows which is which, she says. Why don’t you? Yeah, well, what do you know either! I said, losing my nerve. I feel a good day coming on anyways. Gus, you ain’t had enough bad days to know what a good day is.
Wow! Betty, what’d you take a Rita pill when you woke up this morning?
Rita was my ex, the wife I had way back when.
I didn’t catch that, Gus? What’d you go and say?
I rounded it off. I told her: Look, Betty, I can see you ain’t feeling yourself, so I’m gonna go now. That’s not what you said, Gus. But that’s ok. What’s the question? Once more. Like you were saying. Nothing, Betty. Don’t mind me. I ain’t got nothing to say. I ain’t had nothing to say in years.
I like you better when you don’t talk, Gus.
Yeah, people say that about me. It’s been said. Ok, Betty. Send my regards.
Say, Gus, wait, hold the line. It’s my monthlies talking. I’m sorry. I’m out of order. Just blood and milk, in a lather with nothing in-between, sometimes. Understand? I’m sorry, you’re right: thoughts are things. There’s a good day coming on. I’m sure of it.
She didn’t say she wanted to get off the phone with me, as such, but in her tone of voice, she intimated it. It was intimated. There was vinegar, I could taste it now for sure.
Am I keeping you, Betty? No, she said.
Can we get together today, for a drink or something, I’d like to see you. Need to. We gotta talk. I asked, everything ok? You want I should come over now?
She said, Parenthetically, nope.
Every morning less of me gets out of that f’in bed. I guess, this morning I’d left the house without my backbone and the sense to say, ‘when,’ when I’ve had enough. I think it’s from one too many mornings of waking up on the wrong side of a beating that I lost the shoes I was born with. Maybe one for the road, one too many. One too many mornings waking up, saying ‘Rita?’ to a space in my bed, the size of a parking lot. One too many mornings in the mirror covered in dried blood and rum-puke, looking like a tribesman in war paint; looking like something Picasso did to Dora Maar: eyes, nose, mouth gathered onto one side of my head.No love is worth the condition it leaves you in, see? Just makes another good for nothing man possible. And what a lollipop I’d been. She’d come down on me like a 23 count indictment. All butter and death, that was her ok. She had a thing about her — maleficence, is a word that comes to mind. Something in her plumbing, something that I could not, for the life of me, get a handle on or shake. A kind of Lillian Hellman sexy. Like handsome in a far-fetched way. A sexy that would not behave. She was part fuck-doll and part big drinker and she’d been a part-time heavy bag a lot more years than a woman should have to take.
She was fond of boxers. That was her kicks. Bruisers, and men of that ilk. Bruisers, in all pedigrees. She followed muscle culture. Had a thing for street guys. Liked to be made to feel the damsel. She liked them motherless. She liked them gruff mannered. She liked them none for talk and the none for talk the better. The story goes, if it wasn’t ordinary seamen, sailors & stevedores, it was boxers. And being landlocked like she was, it had been Christmas for boxers.
She’d been married to one. A fist exchanger, went by the draw, ‘Mr. Dukes.’ More a wrastler than a slugger, per se, this Mr. Dukes was. They’d met in Holiday City. Went and got churched on a bender. Upon introductions, it was a shoo-in for the courts. She’d been a runner-up in the Miss Five Boroughs pageant, that week. He was under the vig for twenty large. I mean, it was that kind of drink. A three-day bordella them two had — found them both in the local stew tank before it was through. Disturbing the peace was the charge. And p.s., it’s the night court judge himself, that marries them. As couples go, they were a matching set, he wasn’t Prince Charming. She wasn’t Prince Charming’s sister. They’d based religions on less. The rest of the story is as old as dirt, he drank, he gambled; when he wasn’t working the church-gymnasium circuit, he was home, always smelling of garlic. They’d go tough dancing, pretty regular, from what I understand. He liked to distribute his weight around — the problem; yell at her like a losing race horse. They hadn’t been married a week when he pasted her one — so you’d say, she knew the waters there. I guess, it must of went on like that for some time then. Till she’d had her fill. Details are sketchy. All I do know is, she did a nickel in Wackenhutt. And on her taxes she checked the box: ‘widow.’ When I asked her about the events leading up to her stay, she said, I parked where I weren’t supposed to.
She’d been out of hard college, just shy a year, when we’d met.
The first time I saw her, she was riding a johnny pump, at the corner of First and A — waiting on the light to switch to go. I had just walked into a newsstand, First and A., out of bright ideas, I’d landed there. I counted out three dollar bills. The last three dollars on Earth. I addressed each one, careful, across the counter. Three winners, I told the guy. He laughed. What I couldn’t do with a million dollars, he said. We traded funny looks for a time there. Rock beats scissors, and I thought, you win mack. I’d settle for that number, is what I said, but I remember thinking, if this don’t come true, I’m gonna hide that fucking mailbox. The guy handed me three scratch cards. I dug three ditches, right there in front of him. Hey, I told the guy, is that a nine or a four? Four at the door, he said. I was on my way out, onto the street, when I’d seen her.
She had her skirt bunched up, just so, hitched around the johnny pump’s tit, I remember. And on the inside of her left thigh, peaking out from under a set of sharp pleats, I spotted a line of ink there. In curly cue, what looked to me like it said: Okeydokey.
All that morning, I’d been cruising the numbered streets, wolfing around corners, in and out of doorways — back then, my M.O., was acts of mopery. A nothing thing when you got time and money on the same page, but I was, as always: to the cleaners, yours truly and on the outs with both. I was looking for some R&R from the inside of my head. It had been a bad month. Between some nonsense with my sister’s first husband, and everyone in general being so damn legit — as bad as you can think. The constant finagle, at this point in time, was wearing on me, and in truth, I guess, I went out looking for trouble. I had had a rash irk for something when I came to that day. Some trouble to take my mind off of my trouble. Trouble I could do something about. Seeing her stranded there, I told myself, and this is how you go about asking for it by name, Gus. Trouble.
She was having a row with that purse of hers, rifling through it in a awful stink. Now to qualify this some, I’ve had woman in both quantity and quality. So, as far as a Jane’s concern, I’d retired. And in this retirement from the female of the species, I’d found a peace of mind, that could not be found amongst them. Still, I got to tell you, all that said, I never seen nothing that had custody of me the way this woman did. The woman had wham. You know what I mean when I say, wham? I mean: oomph. I mean, like the word that comes after oomph. Like very, very, the oomph. Like twice the oomph. Like: sock’em. The woman had sock’em. A wallop’s worth. From the look of her, here was a woman built from wham and sock. And not for nothing, she had an ass that could break a lawn chair, too. I could count eight bites of the apple from where I was standing alone, with that dress she had on, holding it there like a pair of pliers — count number nine. And it was that, what I said it was, and it was them hips she had. Like baked goods, set in concrete and familiar, like Sundays. And feet. Feet so pretty, she could have put them to work as hand models. That was her feet. Interstates for legs. I-95, from her ankles up. And no rest stops, either.
It was all that wattage, in a baby-maker’s frame, would go and produce such a beautiful, heart broke feeling, bleeding there inside of me. Something like the way, hearing Frank on the A.M. radio channels always did. How the sound of that voice of his, poured from one of them transistor jobs, always times’d the sentiment, sad by two. How when I was a kid growing up, the old-timers would sit out on the stoop and listen for the track at Belmont, between a running gag of static — while card games were played and local disputes over parking spaces, settled. And how when Frank would sing, ‘what’s new?,’ they’d shake their heads and curse Ava Gardner.
She was all that Frank had ever sang, in the form of a woman; prepossessed and lonesome. In one breath, remind you of the last day of school and the other, that you’d left your house keys in a bar downtown.
And like I’d been saying, she was going at that purse — with intent, for I’d say, give or take, a serious five, ten minutes, when all of the sudden: a hammer fell out. A hammer! Thor’s hammer, the size of it. A big old masonry hammer. Had a head and claw, looked meant for mean business. Naturally, I pick it up. I hand it back to her. This thing had left a crack in the walk where it hit. ‘Lady,’ I said, ‘why you carrying around a hammer for?’ She didn’t even blink. You know what she tells me — she tells me: ‘Same reason you roll up your window when you go in the car wash.’
The light changed in her favor.
She gave up on her purse, tossed the contents in a pail — keeping only the hammer, and bounced to the curb in a huff. Crossing A., going south past Houston, and she was gone.
How those cans swayed like a sundress on a clothes line, I tell you, God must have had all day. It was right there and then, on that very street corner, watching her in motion, that I knew — knew deep, what Darwin felt, at Galapagos Island when he saw the finches at first light.
I recall, standing there, for some time afterward, trying to husband my composure. And as I’d finally made up in my mind, to call this day to bed, I look down, and there on the pavement, shook loose from a vagrant to-do of motel soap, pawn stubs and other upended medicaments — I’d go and spot the fin of an unmailed utility bill. No check inside, no stamp; it had been addressed to a one Betty Start. And for a moment there, I entertained, taking a walk to where it said she lived, over on Mott. To which, a block or so later, the idea flagged and I thought better of it. Instead, the next 36 dollars I come across, I stuck in that envelope, covered the postage and mailed in for her.
We laughed at the same jokes is what it was, you know, me and her — there was palship — a thing there between us that appealed to me. After the wife and me, went our separate ways, I did without relations, for some time. I had just lost the stomach for it. But with Betty, it was different. I liked having her around. She kept good company. We had history, now. Where others only had time served, we had history. And over a short amount of time, understandably, things get said. I mean, I’m no robot to the notion. We’d gotten beyond a fling. There’d been up’s and downs, as with any two adult people, and well, to tell you the God’s honest truth, there looking back at me, I’d started seeing my kids in her eyes.
When she wasn’t being eye candy and a bunny rabbit and a friend of mine, she was crocodile tears and failed suicide attempts. She was a woman with a staring problem and hand troubles when she drank, and when she drank, she drank with no tomorrow in mind. She was a two-faced in a jam. A nickel snatcher come the rent. She had a short fuse and a selective memory and a turnstile under her skirt if provoked. The worst of it though, the real heads up, the one I should have made peace with from the get: Here was a woman who’s lucky number was 18.
18, that number. How I saw it as a crooked omen, but refused to give it it’s weight. How that was my mistake there. Cause I knew better, and still, I went along. How from my father, I had fostered an uncomfortable relationship with even numbered things. And how 18 seemed like plain undoing to me. I mean: 18. Who has this number as their lucky number? I knew in my heart, that one day she’d hurt me for sport, and in all probability, I’d have my shoes on backwards for a long time there after.My Betty is your Helen is the next guy’s Ann. Whether she died on the table or she brought men home while you worked — she’s gone. She’s not here no more. It’s a goodbye story now. A ghost story. The particulars: the names and dates, are interchangeable between gents. ‘On such-and-such a day, at such-and-such a time . . . I come home from work. And she’s standing by the stove. And the stove is cold.’ An entire life story. Every guy’s entire life story. The gal who got away.
We’d come to a fork in the road over breakfast. It was an involved story. There’d been some bad housekeeping. Minor players turned out in major parts. Streets failed to coagulate with avenues. Where continuity didn’t gel with reason, she’d cut the difference with sweet talk. I asked, please, tell me the truth, now. Speak plain. I’ll forgive you anything. She promised me the truth. On her mother’s eyes — the stations of the cross. Later, when she’d come clean for the third time, I’d had had it up to here and I was drowning.
It would be the end of a sweetheart deal.
The ‘He said, she said,’ I mean, what good could come of it, from here; from this side of lonely street, from this side of a Dear Gus — I mean, what’s the use? I can vouch for this much, up until some hours ago, the woman had me answering to baby. And oh, well . . . I guess, you see, when it comes to men and woman, the moon is a brute. Sometimes, the worm turns on the fish, is how the saying goes and I guess, it was my turn. These are the breaks.
The wind up was: I was had for a song, on account of who’s singing. On account of some jane — I was made the monkey of. The nice times had, in the wash with a goodbye story and mark my words, friend, goodbye gets on everything.
The nights are the hardest, anyone will tell you. It’ll be black coffee. It’ll be sunshine from a can. It’ll be big tears, friend, big tears — for a while. Ain’t nothing forever, not even heartache. I’ll be ok. In review, I did: not bad. Compared to others, not bad at all. Not bad for a bum, right Betty?
Is X a thing of Y?
To tell you the truth, it was all this weather, had me thinking. Thinking about my number, numbers in general. Seeing as my left ear’d been ringing all day, it had occurred to me, even before these two walked in, that I’d come to the end of something. The road, I figured, in terms of Betty and me. And how, when we’d get together, just before, like she said, and it all came out; came out bad, one thing on top of the other, bad — I went ahead and made the connection.
But now, standing back from it, watching it happen, in real time, watching it walk through them doors, saddle up and take seats. I’m thinking it different. Betty wasn’t all it amounted to. There was more: That dirty math, at true value, had my number.
How a bad night out turned into a bad something else.
The bulls got pulled off the street. In three hours time, it would all be kneecapped: every ladder company, every bridge and tunnel, every 911. A surplus of weather had unionized over Philly, traveled north, and sat there, strong arming the tri-state. Midday sometime, they told the guy driving the ferry boat, go home. They were talking city curfew. Told the people, whatever your whereabouts: you’re booked for the night. You had, your buses and trains, out of service, stuck in the yard. Black ice had the roads. And salt trucks went tangled with light poles, mail boxes, parked cars, the like. Anybody left out there would be dead by morning, what the radio said.
The freeze-out turned each of the five boroughs into an island unto itself. Places like the Bronx, Queens and certain parts of Brooklyn — what run kind of lawless anyways, in times of crisis, rev up into Jungle Law. That and the fact the rent was due again.
The end of the month comes round and the food chain don’t have time to chew. Things get physical. And the worst of it empties into the street. On every corner, your former people, hopped up and off the leash. Guys with nothing left to sell besides their mouth and ass, standing around check-cash places, asking directions. While over in boystown, some retired beat cop, named Carl, hangs inside the Eye, Ear and Throat clinic, looking to make a push. You got junkies, out and about, stalking the avenue payphones, like it’s a day at the slots. The brokester, at the coin return, trying from zip, to build a fiver, a quarter at a time. It’s the guy you’ve known since kids, who makes each mortgage payment picturing his wife in a box, to the state raised juvee who’d farm out his own mother to float him through the weekend. This is the end of the month.
And whether, it’s your brother-in-law, with women not his wife or welfare moms rolling pennies — it’s the rent and it’s due. And anyone of these fine citizens would take the walk from your legs, were there cash involved. Not even a lot of cash. And for sure, a bad time to be gallivanting. I knew better.
Sometimes you go out looking for trouble. Sometimes, trouble comes looking for you. At the end of the day, it’s a draw. And here was another ‘no-no’ in the making: The G-train bailed at Nostrand Avenue and left me out in the projects, stranded, a leather car coat for shelter.
Up some tough bricks, traveling the few on the city grid still carrying electric, I went New Lots, Bushwick, De Kalb, till I come across a familiar set of markers. No boy scout, I followed a boneyard lit Knickerbocker Avenue, thinking to myself inherently: East — west. Out of my element, I backpedaled into the only joint alive tonight — which was a real scratch, until these two blew in.
Two guys walk into a bar, formerly Sunny’s. Two guys packing big hurt.
And I get to feeling, I’m about to be muther’d some. Things didn’t feel so smart no more. Things go bad fast. That’s how the outerboroughs travel, see? I had seen things go bad fast. I had been, on occasion, to be a thing gone bad fast.
I start fishing my gut for an amen. Dial up the little man in my head: the one that handles odds and calculations, Jersey plates, likely stories and the word for mercy in Spanish. The little man I like to call: The guy in the know.
What’s the price of eggs here, friend?
Under his belt, years of taking a beating, he says: Settle the bar. No sudden moves. Find your feet. Just up and adam. Nice-n-Easy-like, to the door and breeze.
Eye contact? None. Ok, I’m in, let’s jet.
It was only when I tried to make with those stairs and for the door that I realized how little say I had in the matter. Off my stool, I was struck down and fell into a three-point stance at the bar. I felt for the first time, gravity’s yank and the manwich of troubles trucked against me. A fist worked stiff into my pant pocket that had me bolted in place, but good.
By now, I had walked in here yesterday.
So for the time being at least, I was just a dog bone among dogs.
I looked over to where I thought she’d be sitting.
At some point in the night, names were exchanged and the barmaid, a colored number, had answered to Tandy. The way the place was lit, even the sound, at a distance, got swallowed up.
I was trying to read her expression for these two. Regulars? Boys from the nabe? Good Guys? Ballbusters? On a scale of one to ten, speaking in heft: Ten being trouble with a capital-T trouble, one being ‘boys will be boys,’ these guys are . . .
But she ain’t giving nothing away tonight. She’s gone pro.
Are we about to be tagged ‘It’ here, lady?Just come over so I don’t gotta make a move.
Once they take a tumble, clover to, that maybe I’m on the inside track here, that I know the what’s what — the jig’ll be up for the both of us. I give her a flash of the high beams: On then off. Then: On and Off, again: S.O.S, baby. Nothing.
Your name lady. I caught it. It escapes me.
“Don’t call me honey and I won’t call you sugar.”
Right.
The universal sign for: ‘What time is it, lady?’ gets the universal sign for: ‘Too late, white.’
And under that sundress — a pink slip. And now you know for sure, your time is numbered.
“Looking back, we should’ve locked that door.”
“These two’d just come in the window.”
There was a mirror above the till. From where I was sitting, I could make-out the front of the room, well enough. It was them two, taking their time with the place. Two mayors: Just browsing. And I guess, our shared lot in life now.
“Don’t need no hero, ok boo.”
I free some teeth from the death-head: My mug: going on forty, down for the count, bottle-fed, joyless. A nervous terse grin that says: No, no hero. Not me. The anti-hero. Yellow.
“You got any kids, lady?”
“Do I look like I do?” She was holding her gut at attention, slimming her dress with a free hand. “I look good for what I’ve been through?”
“What’ve you been through, lady?”
“I’ve been through life. The day to day. I’m no youngster. I’ve been worked for the money. Hey! I look good — I had three kids!”
“What? For lunch?”
“You’re funny, boo. Make me laugh.” And I’m thinking, what else can I make you do?
“Stretch marks the thing. My baby’s father told me Coco Butter do the trick. That man told me a lot of things. Stretch marks, boo, that’s the bad thing about having black skin.”
“Yeah. Thing: 436.”
She copped a face. And passed a hard-eye over a bar napkin, laid out there between us.
That name, that women’s name, written a hundred times. “Who’s Betty?”
“Woke up one morning and asked myself the same question.”
“Well these napkins are for snot and spit, not your sad fucking life story. Next time bring a writing tablet.” Half kidding around. Half the other thing.
“You got smokes, lady?”
“I got some bad news.”
“You’re all bad news. What’s the problem?”
“No problem.”
“A small problem?”
“A small problem. A situation.”
A soft-pack of Salems, crushed to hell. One last soldier. She lit it and started in.
“Yeah, OK, thanks for the company, lady. Travel, why don’t you?”
“Sorry, boo. When you pay my bills.”
“Yeah, I’ll pay your bills, lady. I’ll pay your hospital bills, how’s that? Now go see where you gotta go, already. I’m drinking here.”
She scratches her head. She rubs her complexion the wrong way. “Yeah: this is bad.”
“What’s your reasoning? What gives?”
“Things happen in three’s.”
“I agree. What’s the three though?”
“You. And them. I never seen this many white people in here at one time. Three white guys: It can’t be good.” She gives ‘em a full once over, twice and walks away mumbling,”I need a fucking door policy.” And I think, yeah, tomorrow, start tomorrow.
Shaking her head: ‘here we go again’ over a Jack and coke, she gives me one last look before it all goes to shit. “If they legalize drugs this place’s a parking lot.”
Somewhere out in Brooklyn, just east of easy, parked at the intersection of the Wrong Place and the Wrong Time: This bar: A one way street now. Fortune, inverse. Fate had the four of us, them two slicks, me and the barmaid, on roller skates now. And these were the four cards dealt: ship, captain, mate, crew. The four of us, actors — party to the same big bad idea.
I felt around for my Johnny-be-good: two rolls of quarters, fastened in a leather sack to a taut industrial spring — also called the Middleman. An all pocket frisk: Ass-out, nothing. Never leave home without it. “Managia mia!”
Managia Mia, Italian for: look what I have brought upon myself.
Not even a goddamn box cutter. I look down at my hands: piano-fisted, small marys. Still, I wish I had four guys like you right now.
“Hey chief, anybody sitting here.”
How is it that cement shoes always got my size like that?
I was birthing a sunk lonely feeling about now: A case of some swallowed wrenches. I had for these two, a lunch in my gut — a boy from the way it was kicking. I gave my all to try and stall myself out of a head trip. Baby-steps, baby, baby-steps: The day after Thanksgiving feels like a Sunday, but it’s not. Your feelings ain’t been square all day. Your feelings —
“Hey, chief?”
In my head: I take a drag off a cigarette. And for a minute there, I’m like watching this take place from over here. Like I’m watching it on television somewheres.
I take another drag and think, did ace over here just call me chief?
Not one to go dancing: “Come again, friend?”
“I says: anybody sitting here?”
A hundred empty cheap seats — the lap of the fucking land and these two wanna be cousins. It’s from no sense of personal space, that these two got.
In my head, one last hit. If I get out of this in one piece, I swear on my kid sister’s eyes: no more speeding. Find something legit. A business. Something I can afford. Even if I gotta go work.
I tap the cig out on a johnny pump — somewhere very far away from here right now — drop it dead to the ground, and once more with the bottom of my shoe, and think: I gotta give these things a rest too.
“Hey, chief, I sa—”
“Yeah, my foot, friend,” I says: “My foot. What’s with the crowd for so much?”
I mean, why’s always gotta be a job for Superman? Is there a sign over my head that reads: Friendship Rings? Do I look like the face of giving a shit?
Yeah, tough guy talk, id to cock, no filter.
“OK chief. You’re amongst friends. See? No hands. Just asking. It’s jake.”
Seeing as I had the look of a guy who had eaten his own shit twice today, seeing as I was just looking for an excuse, just a ‘give-me-reason’ away from topping off — taking me at my word, they found some stools some seats down.
But for a second there I could of swore, the guy to my right, the bigger of the two was counting under his breath, backwards from ten.
‘No random acts.’ The barmaid, had said as much, when they first waltzed in. Reminded me of my father. The old man told a familiar story. Something about how the universe don’t forget a face. How every bullet was on the books, that way; every stray accounted for. The things you do, good, bad or indifferent, all come back for you. However long it takes — it takes. To pat you on the back or give you a tall kick in the ass. It’s all payday, kid. There ain’t a thing you can say is random.’ This from a man serving out a sentence that don’t carry numbers. A man who knows a thing or two about the lumps. As a guy who took a life, he’d been the hand of fate: the hammer, an errand boy, the collections agent. And as a convict: a victim of it, the come around when it finally gets around, number 42454-053, somewhere out in Illinois, on federal time.
These two guys . . .
It’s from a type of person you get salespeople. That’s a type of person. Guys named Gibby are a type. Women named Goody. People who say: ‘failure is not an option’ — a type, and they scare me. Men that pitch their leg up to stand pipes and car fenders when they talk — they’re a type.
I try, whenever possible, to get things down on paper, see? On account of everything on paper is doable. I find that people run like clocks. That there’s a math to people’s actions. Ask any person how they feel about meter maids and you got them pegged. Asides that, you take a style of hair, a way of dress, his or her daily paper; take notice of how they count out money, their laugh, and of course, the most important thing, the sure thing: the handshake. With a head for figures, you can jot down somebody’s number in no time. Now, when these two guys fell in the joint, I didn’t need to be a goddamn mathematician about it: bad news. Been in trouble more than the letter ‘T’ been in trouble, and looking to spread the wealth.
Two guys walk into a bar, right? A Polack and a Viking.
Two guys, who for the sake of keeping things kosher we’ll call Guy #1 and Guy #2. The guy closest to me, the guy on the left, the Polack: horse-teeth, no-nosed, a roundhouse kick for a limp — which let me tell you, the effect is an A-1 mind-fuck: gives him a look that he’s coming and going at the same time — it’s a sight — he’s Guy #1. And the Viking, who in all likelihood, he’ll answer to Roy or Vince, a real bruiser, the mass-over-mind type — could break me — a freaking weapon: that’s Guy #2.
Now Guy #1, the Polack, and I call him a Polack — not out of malice, as much as it’s me, trying to help the little man in my head size up the situation here as quickly as possible. There are those decisions that need to be made in half-seconds, you know? I’m working in real time right now. If I were to tell the little man in my head: ‘The Polish Guy’ I’d be drawing blinders. The ‘Polish Guy’ registers as a complete something else. ‘Polish guy’ says to me, says to the part of me, that does P’s & Q’s in real time — the ‘Polish Guy’ says: right off the boat — Polish. The docile immigrant, all smiles, broken English, etc. That’s not what I’m saying here. This is no son of Poland — Polish, this is three or four times removed by now, probably tells people: I’m American — Polish. This guy knows his way around. He knows the very American way around.
Same goes for the Viking. Who again, ain’t no Viking, as much as a Viking-looking-fella, see: Norse. Guy #2: This Viking-looking-fella.
It’s only when I caught Guy #1 going at his nose, plugging away finger deep, that I realized I had this act wrong. Yes, fate had sic’d these guys on me, but the contract wasn’t out on my life — it was on my time. As far as I could see, I wasn’t on anybody’s short list here. I could feel no vibe. No agenda I should know about. And for a minute there, I felt my heart back in place. Then, from goddamn deep, my cock, rock hard said: Your feelings — fuck ‘em.
Guy #2: “Is this cold for here? New York, I mean: It’s cold.”
“Cold as it’s going to get, yeah.”
Two guys, strangers, at least to me. Two guys who came in the same cab. Took stools side by side. Sat like monks. Sat down like they meant it. Two guys, shoulders flush, who ain’t said word one to each other. Traveling companions, not fags or lads mind you, but girlfriends all the same. Lonely in each other’s company, looking for the deciding vote now. A third wheel to prick-up the slack. Two Indians lost for a chief. Two guys: cannibals hungry for virgin ears. Getting itchy, going stir silly on top of manic on top of caffeinated. Two guys: loose cannons. A luckless sandwich of bad to worse: always double-parked somewhere, sharing a victim’s soul, one oar between ‘em. Two of God’s poor fucking sods on Poor Fucking Sod’s day off. Twin humps. Two guys who should, by order of the courts, have ‘For Entertainment Purposes Only’ printed on t-shirts, both front and back. Two wack-jobs, fishing for an audience, a rookie to pitch to. Some unsuspecting sap to go: ‘Wow!’ at the close of each and every refried misadventure. Some sorry-ass, wide-eyed pilgrim, saying: ‘Get out! Really?’ It’s stories ending in: ‘You can’t make this stuff up!’ And it’s hours you can’t get back. Somewhere right now in the world, there’s tens of these two guys looking to make a long story — short, and failing miserably already.
I was in a bar, see? My father ran a couple of social clubs, growing up. One of them even being a topless joint. It wasn’t what you have today. These were the old men bars. The afternoon haunts. A safe house, where men would come, away from their wives, to drink over their men problems and hide. The girls served drinks topless, as a distraction. They kept their bottoms on. Told stories. And they never came out from behind the bar. It was harmless stuff. At the end of a shift, most of those guys and gals, walked home together. They were the daughters and sisters from the neighborhood. Girls trying to earn a few extra bucks, while they went for night classes in nursing or travel and tourism or more than likely, until their boyfriends in prison got straightened out. They would shim around to Bobby Vinton and Jerry Vale, with a slow sway that was like watching water for a boil.
And it’s from this, I’d seen the soup to nuts of the workaday boozer. These guys are the norm for that territory. Big talkers, so they don’t gotta think, they talk. Guys inched out over time and all they got is each other and they want a recount — every. fucking. night. The end result is a headache, always. Sit in any bar, for a good amount of time, for all three tours, six, seven days’ll do, and you’ve heard the history of man. Men born under a bad patent. Men with lost digits. Men that can’t never say they’re lonely cause they’re wanted in 14 states. Guys so mild they go ouch when it doesn’t even hurt. Guys that when you shake their hand they say, ‘Hey shake it, don’t break it!’
And by hook or by crook, it never fails, all bar talk leads out to sea. Even money, it’ll get around to the merchant marines, every set of stories does. And then we’re talking midshipmen and plebs and islands: ‘Too small to be on most maps.’ And everybody’s eaten dog but me. And somehow, I don’t know, one thing leads to another, I guess, every one of these tall tales ends with a story near, with, or around the Bay of Pigs, ‘I’m talkin’ Quba in 52, Man!’
But I was a regular, see? I’ve been around the mulberry bush some. I had the kind of ears they couldn’t digest: deaf ears. Not that they took the hint. Maybe if they’d confer some. Air it out amongst each other. Maybe if I’d took a leave for the can a whiles, they’d option me off.
If I could just find my feet . . .
One orders a soup, ‘if it’s possible.’ The other, coffee.
It’s two in the morning on a Wednesday night and the colored number says, ‘Decaf?’ as a reflex to the hour. A no brainer you’d figure. And Guy #1 says, ‘High test, no chaser.’
And I think, ‘Going to be a long night, huh?’
And friend here wants to know, what’s cold? For New York that is, what’s cold.
“This is cold,” I tell him.
And then I say: “OK!” to make a point: No more questions, see my meaning?
It’s a bar and it’s late and if you ain’t in bed with your loved one by now — then she’s gone. And my face says: Just passing hours in chunks. Wishing off days at a clip. It says: Don’t freaking try and engage me in small talk. I got too much head-jazz tonight to talk weather with you.
Now most would call it a day at that. No harm, no foul. Just back the fuck up some. Put some daylight between us, some breathing room and leave it be, right? Somebody with a half-way decent hand up his ass, maybe a dollop of common sense. A guy in the know would say to his self: ‘This gent here . . . this gent here is a town called punchy. And I’m going to let him be.’
Two guy’s thinking: ‘I’m the brains of the operation.’
Friggin’ partners in the Brooklyn Bridge. And Guy #1 says: “Did you catch the game?”
That’s what I love about man talk. All the fucking games played on the TV and now we got satellite even and a guy says: ‘Did you catch the game?’ And I’m supposed to know what he’s talking about. But tonight there’s only one game that counts and the Rangers fudged it.
“The Rangers choked.”
A: “Christ!” and A: “Fuck!” and A semi unison: “Mutherfucker!”
“What was the score?”
I mumble something about getting disgusted with Popovic in the second period and turning it the fuck off.
And then I give them my back — the universal sign for: Put an egg in your shoe and beat it.
“The soup ain’t all bad,” he says.
“I said, the soup ain’t all bad.”
“Can I get a pardon from you two already? Didn’t you girls walk in here together?!”
“Whad’a ya saying?”
“You know what, don’t mind me. It’s been a long full day of nothing. I’m wound up. I got a clear head. Ok. All I know about you guys is: I don’t know.”
Asking me questions at two in the morning on a Wednesday night. What would be on my mind but a broad and/or money. Fucking bills up the wazoo and some clumsy woman. Some big leg woman always being clumsy with me. And this one ain’t failed to disappoint. Mine’s a fickle broad, see? I’m talking about the woman that I left, oh . . . give or take . . . some eight hours ago in a bar across town. The one who just told me about something I should have known and now I do, but only cause I did the math. Only cause two and two is most usually four.
And I told her: thanks for validating my ticket, here.
And she said, ‘Gus, that’s not how it went.’‘
Something to hang my hat on,’ I told her.
Back-stabbed, sick of the knife by now. ‘People, man . . . there’s always something . . .
“What about you, Gus? Huh?! ‘There’s always something’ — what about you?!’
What about me?
The truth about my father’s life and how his life became my life, I guess. The four bodies. How I watched them kill a woman and her kid, the son of a rat, out in Astoria, Queens. How I drove the car that night. ‘Gotta make your bones,’ they said, ‘ . . . cut the string on the brochiol.’ How I stood the door and watched the hall. How when I tried to get out of my situation: I was in a drug store in Brooklyn and they put a gun to my stomach. And the other guy, the old-timer, the one my father always told me: ‘ . . . like a brother to me,’ took one of my balls in his paw, made a fist and said: ‘People live and die over handshakes here kid. Wise the fuck up already, capiche?!’ And I guess, there’s where the money comes from. Where the money goes. The three quarters of my wallet that comes from the street. The things I do for money. The things that money could, at least, rationalize doing. There’s the $100,000 dollars I blew on long shots and other woman’s kids. How I put Apt. 16 on the map. Yeah, what about me.
That there’s a girl named Thirsty who’s walking around St. Kitts with my name tattooed on her belly, says: property of, and a baby named Lily. A girl who gets mail every other week from Marion Prison saying: ‘18 more months baby — I’ll be up for parole.’ Saying: ‘I gotta keep away from these Washington’s yoms — one of them in particular, is gonna make me blow my good time.’ Saying: ‘Baby, baby.’ Saying: ‘ . . . and baby, could you please drop some cash in my commissary. I need some things. Love, a prisoner of love, Gus. And P.S., Tell your boss man, to go screw himself! That baby is Catholic and that makes his mom Catholic too and you don’t work on Sundays no more.’ How a guy named Freemont gets five dollars a page, takes a holding fee for stamps, and passes along the difference to my father in packs of cigarettes. I still love my ex, I guess, could be understood as: something I’m leaving out. That lost month in Staten Island. How when you called from the hospital, I was home.
“Yeah . . . I guess. Always something. People.”
“Gus, please. From me to you, it shouldn’t have been.”
“It shouldn’t of been.”
“It shouldn’t have been.”
“You do all right.”
“Gus.”
“Yeah, you do all right, for sure.”
“Gus, please.”
“You played me like a fiddle, Betty.”
“Gus, I don’t know how to play the fiddle.”
“Yeah, that’s maybe why it all came out sounding so bad for.”
“Somebody could do worse.”
“It’s got no legs. No more. You and me, we got. This thing of ours, got no legs.”
“No legs, huh. And where does that leave me?!”
“Look, let me get you a cab.”
“The hell it does!”
To the bartender: “How much I owe you, dear?”
“Twenty-nine.” A ten and a ten and a twenty. “Keep it.”
“Thanks.”
She started working my arm like a toggle switch.
“Where does that leave me? Huh? Gus? Answer me. Where does all this leave me?”
“At Susie Foo’s on the Bowery, between Hester Street and Grand. It leaves you right here. All this leaves you right here.”
And the guy with the soup, Guy #2 says: “I gotta take a piss.”
And there’s a tense five seconds where he’s coming around me, heading out of frame, when it could go six or seven ways. And that broken record starts in with me again.
A courtesy smile turns into a push and shove and flash: popped once in the throat . . . dragged into the men’s room toilet . . . laid out buffet-style . . . one holds me down while the other takes his turn cleaning my clock . . . fed a steady diet of knuckle sandwich . . . everything short of hugging . . . till I’m worked cripple and left for the shoemakers — singing mercy, mercy, with a mouthful of teeth.
If it comes to blows. Toe to toe, if we go wrastling. I can take the one on the left. No sweat. Pound for pound, weight vs. reach — he’s mine. You know, a punch — it’s all in the legs. Hard to believe when you see the cannons some guys got. Arms the size of bowling balls. Cinder-blocks for fists. But it don’t mean a thing, if it’s set up top a pair of chicken legs, see? That’s a punch with nothing behind it. A punch with no punch.
Now I ain’t a tough guy. I’m no black belt. I can’t kick the bottle. How would I go about kicking some guy’s ass? But, with that nancy leg of his, he ain’t but one foot in the grave to start. If it comes to blows here — Guy #1, I can take him.
In a perfect world, it would be an army of Guy #1, right?
When has it ever been a perfect world?
Unfortunately for me, as luck would have it, the Polack ain’t my worry here. You see, the one on the left is: the talk. He’s the man with the plan. The: ‘Ok, Roy, he’s had enough.’ You can tell from the clear nail polish that he’s here to supervise. No friend, he ain’t the problem.
The problem, my problem. My cross to bear. That’s the guy on the right. Of: walk the walk and talk the talk — he’s the walk. Guy #2 takes requests. He’s the guy you see doing chin ups on the train. The type that punches horses. The type, when tongue-tied, goes and breaks bottles of malt liquor in the school yard. Brakes them right over his head. Then he takes off his shirt and rolls around in the broken glass — wakes the neighborhood, hollering: I don’t feel a fucking thing.
This guy, the Viking, the reason we gotta lock our doors at night, the one we call Guy #2, he is standing . . . right . . . behind me.
“Hey, Mister.”
I reach for my drink, it was down to the rocks.
“You ever been to Portland?”
“Portland, Maine?”
“Oregon.”
Oh, here we go: ‘Yeah, yeah, you look like somebody I knew, no, no, I never forget a face, yeah, yeah, now I remember, I loaned you ten dollars and —’
“No. Why you ask?”
“Oh, well we just ran into a couple of guys from Portland, just before and I forgot to ask them what it’s like. The climate, I’m saying. I make a habit of asking, you know?”
“Yes. And no.”
“I meant nothing of it.”
“Yeah, well I hear it’s rainy.”
I get the not-so-fresh feeling he ain’t made his next move. That’s he’s just standing there like a fucking houseplant. A very dangerous fucking houseplant.
And I think about those six or seven ways it could go again.
I turn around so slow, friend. I just want to be so wrong, so bad, that the next twenty seconds age me in dog years . . . is this cocksucker counting back from ten?
“You want something brother? Ask for it by name?”
Life?
It’s a funny thing, ain’t it? Out here on the street, there are no pilgrims. Life’s a magazine and it costs a dollar and a quarter. These are some of the things that go through your head sitting here. And funny, you come to mind too, Rita. I think, only a fool asks, what do you want with my wife? Right? Look what you did here. Look at me on my fucking knees. Use to play Don Cornell on the victrola in your mother’s house and we’d dance close by the sink when they slept.
Never learned to swim . . . Never got past Jersey . . . This was your life, kid.
Once on napkin she wrote: am I going out on a limb?
“Mister, tell me something. If you could wish yourself away to any place in the world, right now. Where would it be?”
“I don’t know. Nothing comes to mind.”
“Ever hear of Wanda, Minnesota?”
“No . . . can’t say I have.”
“I hear they got horizontal rain.”
“Your soups gonna get cold, Cordy.”
The Viking-looking-fella, the guy with the soup, Guy #2, goes by the name, Cordy.
“Yeah? Yeah.”
Those six or seven ways it could go . . .
And it goes on, the way of the can, like he said. It goes can-ways.
And it’s me and the other guy, Guy #1. And the world is right for a while.
“Don’t mind my friend much.”
“No, no mind.”
“He’s like a step behind. Not backward. He just fucks things up a little bit slower than the rest of us. He was born right, you know.”
“You don’t say.”
“It’s that prison juice, man. It tweaks ya. Pruno ain’t for pussies. Pruno makes widows.”
“Yep.”
“Makes orphans.”
“Gotch ya.”
“Cordy’s ok.”
“Yep.”
“And a German sense of humor. He’s ‘like that,’ ya know?”
“I got ya.”
“Been Maytag on top of it. And funny like a German restaurant.”
“Yep.”
Then this guy starts telling me he’s got a Japanese number back at the motel.
“She’s party, party. She’s bought. She’s paid for.”
I kind of grunt. It ain’t a ‘yes — grunt.’ It ain’t a ‘no — grunt.’ It’s man talk. It’s talking: Man.
“You like Japanese food, chief?”
“Not especially.”
“We can’t all agree on everything, right? That’s why cars come in different colors.”
“You know, friend, if you don’t mind me asking. What’s with the soup and coffee routine? Ain’t that meter running?”
“My friend needed some perspective. I called a time-out. When he forgets himself, he’s bad with his hands. He gets: ‘like that.’ Like carried away. Like he’s still in cage-match-mode. That prison mentality thing. Institutionalized, they call it. You put a man in a cage, he’s an animal now, am I right? After ten calendars, you might as well throw away the key, for some of these guys. There ain’t no rehabilitation after ten years. But he’s a good kid. We go back. Catch him right, he’s the nicest guy’d you’d ever wanna meet. Give you the shirt off his back.”
“He’s a good kid.”
“A straight shooter.”
“No shades of gray.”
“Cut off his arm — ”
“I’m with you, friend, he’s a piece of bread.”
“I’m sorry mack. Just I know how people get the wrong idea. I could like hear what you’re thinking when he walked away. He’s good people.”
For a second there, I think he’s looking to find him a home or something.
“You just gotta let him talk it out of his system. I don’t know, his mother, she was a douche bag. The father worked nights and I mean, I heard stories . . . it fucks with your head. You know? Once your mom does you dirty, I mean, your mom gotta be like Mary to you. Am I correct? I’m saying, catch him right, he’d take the shirt off his back. That’s what I’m saying.”
I’d run out of dumb faces.
“So, like, the female, she’s still available if you want.”
“Nice of you, brother, but no thanks. I’ll pass.”
“No like MSG, Huh?”
“I think that’s Chinese food — MSG.”
“Chinese. Japanese. Look if you’re gonna cut corners, I don’t wanna chit chat.”
“Yep.”
“You know for the chinks. It’s the year of the rabbit.”
“Yeah, the year of the rabbit.”
I didn’t even hear him roll up on me.
He was at my side again, only he’d turned his shirt inside out.
“And the rabbit died, mister. We killed it.”
“Cordy. Was it the soap from the dispenser in there or was it the bar?”
“All that Made in Japan shit break, don’t it mister?”
“It do.”
“There’s no blame for it. Who’s the blame?”
“Cordy, I gotta go myself. Is it safe to go in there or what?”
“Let it breathe.”
“Let it breathe.”
“They just don’t make hookers like they used to.”
“Cordy.”
I chime in: “Your soup’s cold,” to get him to sit, play nice.
“Yeah, I’m feeling meat and potatoes now. Chops.”
“Hey chief, you know where we can get some meat and potatoes on a Wednesday night almost threeish.”
“I don’t know from meat and potatoes. There’s a McDonald’s down the block.”
“We passed it on the way in. It’s closed. I said to him before, Cordy right? I said: ‘Closed: Like what the fuck? What is it, Martin Luther King’s birthday or something.’ Right, Cordy?”
“Yeah: That.”
“Ain’t those things open 24 hours?”
“Pork chops, man.”
“Ok, Cordy.”
“Let’s just have a good night, where we don’t have to try so hard.”
The barmaid was paying attention. I’d forgotten she was there.
“There’s a diner off of Linden boulevard, at Holly Street. Open all night. Could walk it.”
“How many blocks we talking?”
“Out the door, make a left, and a left. Six. Seven blocks tops. Corner of Linden and Holly.”
“A left and a left, six, seven blocks — right.”
They pay their tab. Each one of them wants to shake hands, pony up.
Made me want to count my fingers each time.
On the way out, Guy #2, the one named Cordy, he tells me to remember to always pay my taxes. And makes for the door in a bolt and he’s off the charts — gone.
Guy #1, walks up to me, lays a fatherly hand over mine and says, “In all seriousness, avoid drafts.” He tugs my ear and strolls out like he owns the joint.
And it’s me and the colored number and Wednesday night, Thursday morning and a couple more hours to go, and maybe an answer to a prayer for sleep.
And her face says it all: should of went to college and you mister, is the cherry on top.
“If you had a dime, huh, lady.”