Someone picks out chords on a tinny harpsichord, bass kick drum and medium-ride cymbals. Pause. Bass grace note. “I’ll Be There.”
I sit back on the banquette, watch the tireless stream of people and cars go by. I feel the espresso wearing off—so quick it was, so mild—and sleep. I close my eyes, lay my hands on the table and feel them pulse and fade. It spreads, up my arms, down—my back and legs pulse and fade and disappear. I hear Michael’s voice coming from that vacant space.
I’m gone, too. Into that space where everything has been fading. I don’t want to go. I snap my head up, open my eyes as wide as they’ll go, but my vision seems to fade. Michael’s baby-pitched voice, adolescent earnest and manish boy hurt that came too soon. Fuck—that song. I used to hear it in my head while I waited leaning on the windowsill three stories up on visitation Sundays. Lila’s inscrutable hiss. I don’t know if she was cursing him or mocking me, waiting for him to show. He wouldn’t call, either. He wouldn’t mention his absence unless I brought it up when I did see him. “Car wouldn’t cooperate. I got tied up in all sorts of things.”
Something in that space, or the space itself, moves—peels itself away—the darkness of the void. Becomes a shape, slouching in the emptiness. The darkness keeps collecting around it, growing the form—a black blob nowhere.
“I knew you were sleepy.”
I snap up and bang the table, mumbling. “I’m up.”
“Why don’t you go home?”
“No. No.” I try to enunciate, but it comes out as a panicky mumble.
“Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you for so long.”
“Quite all right.”
She lets that little tooth peek out, not a smile, but some relief for her lip. She catches me staring but doesn’t seem to mind.
“Coffee?”
“Oh, yes. Thank you.”
“Are you hungry yet?”
I look down at the menu, but it doesn’t register. “Do you have a scone?”
“I think we might. Let me check. But I definitely have coffee.”
She spins away again. The older Jackson boys back up their brother’s ad-libbing. “. . .la la la, lala la la . . .” I try my best to straighten, to be alert, and almost knock over the water glass she snuck onto the table.
She comes back with my coffee and scone, carrying them on a molded orange tray. She serves them formally, lip pulled tight over that tooth. She’s taller than I thought. Her voice diminished her stature, but she is very thin, hardly a curve to her. I want to draw her, capture how that little bit of her lip is forced out, the struggle evident in the rest of her face—trying to hide, ignore, or bear the discomfort. The lights pulse once, inside and out—a collective surge. I’m awake again, with hardly a memory of sleep.
“Can I get you anything else?”
“I’m sorry, do you have paper?”
“Let me check.” She lowers the tray to her side and half skips to the counter. She comes back quickly, shaking her head.
“This is ridiculous,” she places a stack of napkins on the table. “But it’s paper.”
“Thank you,” I nod and pat the pile. She stays, waiting for something I’m not sure of. I look up. “Thank you.” She nods back and grins, though not enough to bare the tooth. She does her hair snap, spins, and disappears through the swinging door.
I take the Sharpie out of my bag and a napkin off the pile. I’m ready. I put the pen to the page and leave it. The point of black ink deepens and expands in the shape of a rough sphere. I lift the pen, circle the sphere, make a few dots out along the edges of the napkin. I get a new one but keep the pen away, creating similar shapes in the air just above it. I write:
Thursday is the cruelest day: scheming; needing; bleeding. You plan your weekend conquests—a shadow projection of the rest of your days—failures. Thursday afternoon we limp to bars after work. Happy—seemingly easy and free. Then Friday breath and bile from protracted happy hours; more drinking perhaps or perhaps sleep. And you know, in your own mind, the dreams of weekend empire are all lies.
I ball up that napkin, stuff it in my bag, and go back to tracing shapes above the page until finally, something else comes:
Big Nig was schizophrenic, that’s what he was told. So one day he stopped taking his medication. Nothing happened. So he went out, to be himself—walking streets that seemed familiar and strange at the same time. Familiar because they were the streets that he’d known as a boy, but now they were strange, too. They’d once been strange because they had been new—the names, where they led, how they would lead him back to where he’d begun. Now they were strange because he recognized them as layered. He’d seen, over the years, the men with the loud trucks and the heat and stink of tar. He’d walked them with both his mother and father and alone, fearing and fantasizing about the places they would take him. He’d run them, too, run away—being Big Nig, there was much to run away from. So Big Nig walks the multiply resurfaced streets of his now and then and they seem to move like giant black snakes, caterpillar-like, not serpentine in their locomotion, so it seems that they barely move—but they do—tendon and ligament and muscle under new skin set to emerge from the dull old. He does not know where he is going.
Big Nig was born in the summer of love, came into consciousness for Nixon, came of age in the age of Reagan. He was a late bloomer, so he didn’t become truly sexually active until the age of AIDS and Bush I. When the time of Clintonian plenty came—premium cigars, specialty vodka and caviar, steak and small-batch whiskey, escalating stock and real estate prices—he went under-ground. He missed hip-hop and grunge rock. He played his old vinyl 33s bare.
I hear the back door open. Ponytail says something to someone, drops what sounds like a box on the floor, and leaves again. On the bottom of the napkin, I try a quick sketch of her standing behind the counter, but the lines are too blurry. I get a new one. I don’t know where I’m going with this so at the top of the new page I write “Notes for a novella,” a disclaimer against charging myself with nonsense later on. Notes, these are only notes. I’ll fill in the rest later.
Big Nig slides a note to the bank teller. He feels guilty. Not because of what he’s about to do, but because of to whom he’s about to do it. For some reason, he based his plan solely on memory and not up-to-date research. He’d remembered when all the tellers were white. Then they became machines. Now they were all brown and for an instant he confuses the teller with the institution—that they are the same. He doesn’t want to cause her any trouble. He wonders if she can lose her job over this. She isn’t young—perhaps fifty. There aren’t many jobs for middle-aged women whose first language isn’t the King’s English. Big Nig pauses and then pauses within that pause, wondering if his hesitation will cost him dearly later. No matter, he needs the break. He has to do this and it’s too far gone now to stop. But her chubby face. Are those moles or freckles? The way her hand took the note. His hand on the white faux-Carrera.
“Are you trying to put us out of business?” a deep voice asks from above. A man who looks startlingly like me stands before the table, with a hand opened to the napkins. He leans, just a bit, pretending to read the blurry ink. He straightens again and produces from behind his back a small writing tablet. “Joy,” he calls back to the counter in a high-end basso. “Do you see what I’m doing?” She pretends to focus on him. “I’m not wasting napkins.” He places the pad on the table, picks up the remaining napkins, and clears his throat. “How are you?”
“I’m well, thank you.” I gesture at the used napkins. “I’m sorry.”
“No need. I’m just asserting my right—one overly dramatic moment a day per person. I figured this could be mine.” He straightens, puts his hands behind his back. “How is everything, okay?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Anything else you’d like, or are you set for now?”
“For now, thank you.”
“We have lovely sandwiches.”
“Thank you.”
/> “You’re welcome.” He turns to the back. “Joy?”
“Yes.”
“There’s no music. Will you put some on, please?”
“Sure. What do you want to hear?”
He leans toward the table. He really doesn’t look like me at all, just the shape of his body, but his face is round, small, his skin tone has much more yellow, his eyes are almost black.
“Excuse me,” he croons. “Do you like reggae?”
“Oh, yes.”
He straightens again. “Joy, would you put that reggae mix on?”
“Sure.”
“And would you bring him some more coffee, please. I’m going outside to kill myself.”
“Oh, Ben,” she moans, hitting notes I would’ve thought to be too low for her. He puts a finger to his lips, silently shushes her, and leans into the door to open it. He gives me a warm smile just before he exits. I try to reciprocate, but I’m too slow.
Drum roll. Marley scats, introducing “Ride Natty Ride.” Joy appears beside the table with the tray and matching pitcher. She looks down into my full cup, to me, and then back to the cup. I lift it quickly, swallow half of it, and put it back down. She shows me that funky tooth, warms the cup, and spins, slower this time, away.
Ben is smoking a cigarette, watching people walk past. He goes to lean against the window and catches me looking at him. He gives me the same smile, warm, too warm to seem genuine, but what other reason would he have for flashing it? Behind the counter Joy tears into that box and begins arranging things on the hidden shelves. Her thin leg and little foot stick out into view. She half hums, half sings along. She can’t sing very well, but the fact that she is singing, discreetly, but without shame, makes me want to listen. I stack the used napkins, fold the pile in half, and put them in my pocket. I sit back with my coffee and watch Joy rotate her ankle back and forth in time.
I remember moving day in our old apartment. The boys were confused and moping among the stacked boxes. I put the stereo on—one of the few things left unpacked. The boys jump to their feet, ready to dance and sing. “. . . the stone that the builder refused . . . ,” sings Bob, “. . . shall be the head cornerstone . . .” They twist and dip and jump, moving so far out of time that any particular rhythm ceases to matter—it never mattered. My girl uses my leg to pull herself to standing. I bend down low. “Fire!” Bob and I cry. “Fire!” yell the boys in response. My girl, only a few months steady on her feet, rocking her head and body, smiling, watching her brothers: C, the silent brooder, the magician with his alchemical potions of toothpaste and juice and spit. X, the stomping tyrant lizard king, the warrior, little lord of the flying head butt. Everybody’s dancing. “Fire!” Teaching my boys, right in front of their Brahmin mother, to hold the burning spear. Whipping them into righteous rage and indignation—the young lions. C, the griot enchanter. X, the Brahmin eater. The song ends. The boys are panting and sweaty. My girl, still rocking, waits for our eyes to meet and blows me a kiss.
I stand up abruptly and almost upset the table. I catch it and step into the aisle, ready to do something, but I’m not sure what. I should go, but I don’t know where. I think about the soccer store, the Ronaldo shirt, and admit that it’s not in the budget—nothing’s in the budget. Claire’s pants will have to go back, too. The image of empty-handed me telling her, “I got to go . . .” I shake it off, get out the list, and still standing, copy it from the sandpaper to a clean sheet from the tablet. I start to write down what I have in my pocket, but it seems that such an act would concretize the amount—make it much more difficult to alter: Twenty-four hours to go, over twelve thousand dollars short, and I’m in a little café doing nothing. I’ve got to go. Ben has disappeared. Joy’s foot is gone. I hear myself weakly call out to her like a half-doped patient asking for his nurse.
“Excuse me?”
“Yes,” she answers in that strangely low voice, peeking around the wall as she does.
“I need to step out for a moment. Is that okay?”
“Sure, honey,” she’s squeaky again. “You’re not chewin’ and screwin’, are you?”
“Me, no. I just need to find a phone.”
“No cell phone?” she asks somewhat disbelieving.
“No, sorry.”
She thumbs at the counter. “You can use this one. Ben wouldn’t mind.”
“Thanks, but it’s long distance.”
“Oh,” she exaggerates. “I think there’s a pay phone across the street.”
“Thank you.”
She looks at the scone, crinkles her face, and fakes a pout. “You didn’t like it?”
“Oh, no. I haven’t started.” I look down at the little menu. “I was thinking that I’d like a sandwich.”
“Really?” she perks up. “So you’re saving that for dessert?”
“Yes,” I lie. “I’ll have the grilled cheddar.”
“Great. Go make your call.”
I go outside to call Claire—the preemptive strike. I have to go up the avenue a ways to find a working pay phone. I dump a pound of Marco’s change in.
“Hello?”
It’s Edith. Tight-jawed Edith. I suppose it’s good to know that she addresses everyone like this—formal and suspicious. Closed to anything moving or new.
“Hello?” she asks again, raising the tone, perhaps an eyebrow, as well. Someone, I think X, shrieks with pleasure or rage in the background. Edith’s growing cross at both of us. I speak.
“Hello, Edith?”
“Oh, it’s you. I didn’t think anyone was there.”
“Sorry.”
“Quite all right.”
“Hey, is Claire handy?”
“No.”
I don’t expect the negative response to a formality. I stumble.
“What’s going on there? What’s she doing?”
“She’s out.” She says it with too much relish—especially for a woman like her: Edith the ghostless; Edith the sexless—no boyfriends—only vague peripheral suitors; Edith of the closed wallet, who, in spite of her only child’s pleadings still maintained that public school—something she’s never experienced—would be fine for grandchildren.
“Out?”
“Yes, out.” What had she said to her late husband as he prepared another miniature for a sculpture that wouldn’t sell? Thank goodness they both had trust funds. He drained his to make art and put his daughter through school. She added the proceeds from his life insurance policy to hers.
“Where’d she go?”
I try to imagine her with faceless people at the Sizzler or Red Lobster out on Route Six.
“Boston.”
“Boston?”
“Yes, she’s meeting some of her school friends.”
“When will she be back?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“No sense in making the trip back late, is there?”
“No. No.” I try to regroup—to keep her from hearing my head winding up, preparing to spin. I don’t want it to spin. Not in that way. Hotels. Mojitos—or whatever those murmuring, smarmy, preppy fuckers are into. “We’re having drinks with fun names, so that means we’re having fun.” Claire would never fall for that shit.
“So she’ll call you—when?”
“May I speak to the kids?”
“Which one?”
“Whoever is near.”
“Hold on. I’ll see if they want to talk.” She lowers the phone to her hip, in part to keep from having to talk to me, but also to muffle whatever she’s saying to the children—what they’re saying back to her. “No, I don’t feel like talking.” Getting kids to talk on the phone is second in difficulty to getting them to perform in public—it’s mood based. Edith is censoring my children’s response for me. She’s not all bad—perhaps not bad at all. Second Avenue, the pale sun is like a yellow bruise, pain spreads dimly from the center. Light on the sky, on the six-story tenement walk-ups. The East Village has changed—Mercedes southbound on the avenue, j
ackets and ties. Upscale eateries. Strollers and well-groomed young mothers. Where are the squeegee men and the junkies? Where is the shopping cart brigade? The stolen-goods sidewalk sales? Where are the flamboyantly gay boys walking alongside the old Ukrainian women pulling their pushcarts, the bag of rugalach on top? Maybe it’s just in this moment that I’ve chosen to look up that they are gone. The sky is like a fading contusion on white skin; the sun, the center of the blow.
“Daddy,” lisps X. His voice dispels the sky. His face fills the void.
“Hey, kid.”
“I’m not kid. My name is X!”
“Sorry, X.”
“Oh, it’s okay, Dad.”
“What are you doing?”
“Playing.”
“Are you playing dinosaur?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I’m playing ancient sea creature.”
“Do you like sea creatures now?”
“Ancient sea creatures, Dad.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Oh yes!” I hear the jump in his voice and then the thump of his landing.
“Which ancient sea creatures?”
“Oh, I love Archelon.”
“Archelon, who’s that?”
“He’s a giant sea turtle.”
“Wow.”
“I also love Hybodeth.”
“Hybodus?”
“Yeah, Hybodeth.”
“Who’s that?”
“He was one of the first sharks. I love sharks, Dad.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Oh yes. They’re cartilaginous.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes. But Dad?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know who my favorite ancient sea creature is?”
“Who?”
“Megalodon!”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“Oh, yes, Dad. His name means giant toof.”
Man Gone Down Page 31
