God's Pocket - Pete Dexter

by Pete Dexter

  Mickey went to the end away from the argument, away from the kids. McKenna brought him a Schmidt's and a glass, and even though he was in a hurry he took the time to ask about the funeral.

  "Tomorrow afternoon,” Mickey said, “if you wouldn't mind lettin' people know."

  "That's good," McKenna said. "Saturday's a good day."

  "It's just a small service, up at Jack's." McKenna nodded.

  Mickey felt somebody wedge into the spot next to him, hurting his elbow, and then he smelled something wet and awful. He turned to look, and it was Ray and his neck brace.

  McKenna held his nose. "Awful, ain't it?"

  Ray spit on the floor, stepped on the spot like he was putting out a cigarette. "I can't take this off," he said to Mickey. “If I take this off, I could aggravate the injury."

  Mickey sucked on his beer. "Don't want to do that," he said.

  "It doesn't smell bad," Ray told him. "Can you smell it? It's medicinal, like a hospital, McKenna wants me to take it off` because of his criminal liability .... "

  McKenna said, "It's a medicinal smell, like you cut off your fuckin' lizard for a necklace."

  Ray said, "Mickey doesn't think it's so bad."

  "How do you know that?" McKenna said.

  "He's still standing here, isn't he?"

  McKenna said, "Yeah, but he's grievin'. You can't expect him to smell right." McKenna reached into the box and brought out another Schimdt's. Then he went to the other end of the bar to kill the argument again.

  Ray leaned closer to Mickey. "A shame about the boy," he said. He shook his head. The brace was stained at the edge where it met his neck. Mickey nodded, pulling away. There was class of people that couldn't talk to you when they were drinking without putting their mouth right up next to your face.

  "The whole neighborhood was sorry," Ray said. He was spitting too. "But there's no way anyone can entirely sympathize with you. It's like being black. You can feel for them, but you can't ever really understand what it is."

  The woman on the other side of him yelled to McKenna.

  "Ray's talkin' about the niggers again.” Ray was the only person in God's Pocket who liked colored people, and every time he opened his mouth about them in the HoHywood it was trouble. McKenna left the argument and came back to Mickey's end of the bar.

  He put a finger in Ray's face and said, "I told you before, no talkin' about niggers."

  Ray ran his hands over the neck brace, reminding him. "It's a free country,” he said. "We still have the First Amendment. Some of the people in here tonight fought for freedom of speech."

  McKenna leaned closer. "If you bring patriotic into it, you're flagged," he said. "You start talkin' about niggers and America in here tonight, I swear you won't get another drink till winter. You understand?"

  For an answer, Ray pointed to his shot glass, which McKenna filled with Old Hickory, locally brewed bourbon whiskey. Ray put his lingers around it and picked up where he'd been. A long time ago Ray had got used to being told to shut up. "What I was saying was, nobody can feel what you feel. They didn't live with the boy, they can't know what it's like."

  Mickey said, "That's the truth."

  "And they didn't live with Jeanie. They look at it from the outside and say this or that, but it's just talk."

  Mickey looked at him. "What's just talk?"

  Ray shook his head. "Doesn't matter, because they aren't there. They don't live in your house, they haven't walked a mile in your shoes."

  Mickey said, "Every fuckin' time you begin to say somethin', Ray, you throw in somethin' like walkin' in other people's shoes. That's why everybody thinks you're full of shit."

  "It doesn't matter what everybody thinks,” Ray said. "I was educated at the University of Pennsylvania. Do you see anybody else educated in this bar?” Ray looked down the bar, then in back of him. "There's nobody here who went further than twelfth grade," he said.

  "Not me," Mickey said. “I quit when I was fourteen." Ray nodded his head. "But you're an intelligent man," he said.

  "What are they sayin'?"

  Ray said, "Nothing. It's nothing. Everybody in this neighborhood quit thinking at the end of the Korean War. The ones that- didn't quit thinking got out." Mickey started to say something but Ray stopped him. "You want to know why I didn't get out," he said. "The truth is, I don't know. Maybe I like being the only educated man in the Hollywood Bar. Maybe . . ."

  "What I want to know," Mickey said, "is what everybody's sayin' about this."

  Ray shook his head. "To what purpose? They can't understand, it's like trying to understand being black. . . ." He'd dropped his voice to say that last part.

  Mickey said, "Because I wanna know. Because how somethin' looks to everybody else is sometimes how it really looks."

  "There are no absolutes," Ray said.

  Mickey found himself leaning into Ray's face to talk, ignoring the smell. "Have you ever noticed them old sayings?" he said. "Like, 'It takes one to know one', and, 'It's the early bird that gets the worm'? And, 'Nothin' is for nothin'?"

  Ray nodded. "Clichés," he said. "They have replaced thought."

  Mickey said, "Yeah, well, everybody says things like that, but when you sit down and think about it, they're always true. That's why everybody says them. Lemme tell you another one. 'Whistlin' past the graveyard'. You ever think about that, what it really is?"

  "The average American has substituted clichés for thought," Ray said.

  Mickey pulled away from Ray's face and drank the second Schmidt's. "Tell me what they're sayin' about me and Jeanie," he said.

  Ray closed his eyes, putting it together. He drank the shot of whiskey he'd been holding and tugged at his neck brace. "That she's fucking Richard Shellburn," he said. "And she's got you sleeping on the couch."

  "She ain't fuckin' Richard Shel1bum," he said.

  Ray shrugged. "It's not what I think," he said, "it's what they're saying." Mickey looked around the bar to see who it was looking in his windows at night.

  "She ain't fuckin' nobody," he said again.

  He'd seen the way she looked af him, but she wouldn't do that. He would of felt it, just being around her. Of course, he hadn't been around her. Not since the morning Leon had got himself killed. "She ain't," he said.

  For the first time since Mickey knew him, Ray didn't have a thing to say. "What, did she go somewhere with him today?"

  Mickey said. "She's got some idea that Leon got killed different , than the cops said, that's all. He's just helpin' her."

  McKenna had heard some of that, and he was back down in front of them again. "What the fuck are you startin' now, Ray?" he said.

  Ray pointed to his shot glass. "We were just talking,” he said.

  "I heard what you said," McKenna said. He was staring at Ray, Ray was looking at his shot glass. "The fuckin' funeral's tomorrow afternoon, and you're talkin' shit like that."

  "I didn't say anything that everybody else in here didn't say first," Ray said, and he looked back at the bartender to see how far he wanted to take it. McKenna got Mickey another Schmidt's out of the cooler.

  "Don't listen to nothin' he said, Mick," McKenna said.

  Mickey picked up the beer and drank most of it. "Fuckin' people talk about everything." McKenna poured Ray another shot and one for himself and put another beer in front of Mickey. "Forget about it," he said.

  Half an hour later, Ray threw down the shot and looked around. "You want to know the real reason I never left?" he said.

  He was drunk enough so some of the words were slurring now, and the thoughts slid into each other too. "The real reason?"

  Mickey stared at his hands. He was wishing Jeanie would get home. He wanted to be around her tonight, to see where it stood, but he didn't want to go home and wait. He'd had enough of empty rooms.

  Ray reached over and took the shot McKenna had left for himself on the bar, putting his own shot glass where the full one had been. "The real reason," he said, "is forgiveness." Mickey loo
ked up from his hands. "I want to be forgiven," Ray said. One of his eyes had crossed, and the spit had collected in the corner of his mouth and was running down his chin.

  "Don't worry about what you said," Mickey said. "It's just ta1k."

  Ray shook his head. "You can't forgive me," he said. "You're an intelligent man, but you don't know anything here. I grew up with these people. They've seen me lying in puke and I've seen them lying in puke."

  "I seen you lyin' in puke, Ray," Mickey said.

  Ray shook his head. "Everybody here has stolen something from somebody else. Or when they were kids they set somebody's house on fire, or they ran away when they should have stayed and fought. They've stolen from each other and they've lent money to the people they took it from. You're an intelligent man, but everybody here's seen everybody else naked. They know who's scared to fight and who cheats at cards and who slaps his kids around. And no matter what anybody does, we're still here, and whatever we are is what we are." His head was beginning to fall, a couple of inches at a time, and then he'd catch it.

  "And no matter what I am, they've got to forgive me, because I'm no worse than anybody else, I'm just different. The only thing they can't forgive is leaving the neighborhood." As he said that, Ray folded his arms on the bar, making himself a pillow, and then dropped his head, neck brace and all, from a foot above the bar, and went to sleep where he landed. He looked so peaceful.

  Mickey finished his beer, thinking about it. When McKenna came back and went through the formality of trying to wake Ray up, Mickey got another one, and then another one. About eleven o'clock he looked out the window and the lights in the house were on, and when he looked again at one, she had gone to bed. He thought about what Ray had said, and he wanted to be forgiven too. Not by the neighborhood—Ray was right, they didn't know anything about each other, him and God's Pocket—it was Jeanie he wanted to forgive him. He didn't know what for.

  McKenna gave last call at two and turned on the lights, and for a minute everything stopped. Mickey saw that Ray was attached by a line of spit to a puddle he'd made on the bar. And he saw the rest of them too, frozen in the light. Pale, soft faces, missing teeth, mascara run all down the girls' cheeks. A fat girl sitting six feet away—how long had she been here?—crying into a glass full of wilted cherries.

  People who would never leave God's Pocket, who couldn't. "Drink up," McKenna said.

  Somebody yelled, "Yo, turn off the fuckin' lights."

  McKenna went back to the wall and dimmed the lights.

  "Drink up,” he said again. And they did. They'd seen each other in the light once, and that was enough. They finished their drinks and left the bar in twos and threes, back to row houses and hangovers, and the mornings to get through.

  Mickey watched them leave, drunk as he'd been since he was a kid, and he knew in that moment exactly what Ray had been talking about, only he'd said forgiveness when he meant love.

  Mickey could see how you could get them mixed up.

  And he could see he'd never shown Jeanie enough of who he was. That's why she thought everything was his fault. He finished the beer in front of him and helped McKenna get Ray over to a booth. They tried slapping him awake, but when McKenna pulled up his eyelids, all there was was white, so they dragged him across the floor and laid him out in the booth. It was a hard fact that nobody alive could wake up Ray when his eyeballs went white.

  He left his change on the bar for McKenna and crossed the street, and there was something moving around inside his head that turned out to be an idea. Tonight he was going to wake her up and let her see him. He didn't trust himself to wait till morning. By morning, he'd pull back. He didn't know what he would say, but he was going to give her something to forgive, or love.

  He went through the house and checked the garage even though there was nothing in it, and decided what he would tell her as he was walking up the stairs.

  * * *

  Richard Shellburn had told her at ten-thirty in the morning that he loved her. He said, "Let me pick you up."

  Jeanie said, "I'm not sure, Richard. There's so much going on right now. The funeral, my husband . . ." It was the first time she called him Richard, she hadn't known what to call him before.

  He said, "I love you."

  She said, "Thank you."

  "Let me pick you up," he said. It didn't seem to matter what she said, it never changed him.

  She said, "I could meet you somewhere?

  "Bookbinders," he said. She met him there for lunch, and the owner had come over to the table to shake hands with Richard and make sure the food was all right. It reminded her of New York, and the way things could have been all along. When Richard had introduced her, the owner had taken her hand and said, "You're very beautiful to be with somebody like this ugly guy."

  And they all laughed like it was funny, and she liked that.

  And after he'd brought them a drink and left, Richard looked at her and said, "He's right." And she was special again, the way she was supposed to be.

  They left her car in the parking lot and took the Continental to Rittenhouse Square. The doorman at the Barclay opened her door and helped her out, and a kid in a bow tie and a dark red jacket parked the car. She'd never been to the Barclay before. He held her arm at the elbow and took her into the bar. They had Scotch there, and then he ordered champagne when they got to the room. It was on the sixteenth floor. She looked out the window at Rittenhouse Square, and there were a hundred people down there walking dogs—nice, little ones you could pick up and put in your purse. He came up behind her with a glass of champagne, putting his arm around her to deliver it. When she took the glass, the hand moved to her stomach.

  "I love you," he said. She was still looking out at the square, so it wasn't as uncomfortable as if they'd been face to face.

  “From the minute I saw you," he said, "I loved you." It turned her cold.

  She knew that was how writers wrote, so in a way it didn't surprise her that's how they were in person, but it turned her cold. He kissed her on the back of the neck and she let him. If there was a place to stop in all this, it was gone. His hand moved up to her breast, and then back down her stomach to her legs. She wished she was in the park, holding one of those dogs on a leash. One of the little ones that couldn't pull you off your feet. He kissed her again, and it ran a shiver up the back of her head.

  He did have a nice touch.

  Then he moved between her and the window and said it again. "I love you." She was looking at the floor, but he took her chin in his hand and brought her eyes up into his face. "I love you," he said. If he was going to do something, why didn't he just do it?

  She didn't know why she didn't want to look at him. She didn't know why she began blinking tears. "I'm sorry," she said. He put his arms around her neck and held her next to his ear. She could feel his hand and his hair and the edge of the champagne glass.

  "It's too much all at once," he said.

  And that was true, and at the bottom it was all empty. When Tom died, it had been enough. The looks at the cemetery, the things she overheard. "So beautiful, and with that poor sick little baby . . ." It took his place. And there was a way people treated her afterward, there was always a consideration.

  Jeanie Scarpato depended on that consideration, and accepted it naturally in a way that made it pleasurable to offer. On the day Leon died, there was no time to think of him at all. For that day, it was only the loss, the neighbors coming by with hams and salads, her sisters' shoulders. But somewhere in the time since, she had come to the bottom of it, and at the bot tom it was empty.

  She'd tried to turn them away from her toward what happened to Leon, to tell them he hadn't died in an accident, but it wasn't set up for that. They listened, and then they patted her hand or her shoulder, or they hugged her, or told her it would be all right.

  And it wasn't set up for her to refuse that, because empty as it was, it's the way it had always been, and she couldn't give it up. She stayed in Rich
ard Shellburn's arms five minutes without moving. Then he let go of her and got them both another glass of champagne. She took it like medicine.

  The room was quiet. Even with both of them there the air never seemed to move. That's how you could tell an expensive hotel. "I don't think I belong here either," she said. She sat down on a small couch facing the bed and wiped at her eyes. He sat down on the bed and watched her.

  "You want to take care of Leon first," he said. “And your husband."

  She shook her head. "I don't know," she said. "Everything happened at once, Mickey's somebody different. ..." She felt him staring at her.

  He stood up and walked to the window. "It's not the right time," he said. He stood there awhile and then he said, "It's better than a dog sneezing in your ass, though."

  She smiled at that and put her head against the arm of the sofa. She felt tired and a little dizzy. He said, "Why don't you lie on the bed?"

  She said, "I've got to leave soon." He pulled the champagne bottle out of the ice bucket and walked back to the window. He seemed ordinary to her now. She closed her eyes, and a little later she heard him talking on the phone. A few minutes after that, somebody came to the door with more champagne. She wasn't asleep and she wasn't awake, nothing was all the way anymore.

  When she opened her eyes again, the room was dark. She was thirsty and cold. "What time is it?" she said. He was in the room, she knew he was in the room.

  He said, "You were tired." She sat up and looked around. He was over on the bed, sitting cross-legged in the dark, staring at her. There were two empty bottles of champagne on the bed with him, and he took a drink out of another one in his hand.

  She went into the bathroom and turned on all the switches on the wall. Light, sunlamp, a fan. She brushed her hair and washed out her mouth with a little bottle of Lavoris the hotel left with the soap and shampoo. Her shirt looked like she'd pulled it out from under the front seat of the car.