Button Man

by Paul Lyons

13

  NUBIAN CZAR

  Seymour is a wizened old jerry-rigger, chop-shop artist, contract cleanup man, and general problem solver who lives and works out of a large garage a few blocks from Hawk’s loft, two stops over the Broadway Bridge into the Bronx. The garage houses the Blue Elephant, Hawk’s car, though Seymour’s CLEAN SWEEP boys use it most of the time. NUBIAN CZAR is painted in large black letters on a plywood board over the doorway.

  Seymour’s an old guy with gray-white Jeri-curls and lots of miles on his odometer. His eyes don’t match, one squinty, the other open and roving. His forehead’s a map of creases. He rocks back, ensconced in his vinyl living room chair, then hunches forward behind his heaped desk, a small blowtorch and a hammer acting as paperweights. There’s some sort of yellowing social-worker degree framed on the wall in the cluttered office of the garage. He works with a halfway house, organizing recovering addicts into CLEAN SWEEP crews. A hard bunch of kids, with raised welts on their arms, caps turned partway around, they sweep their asses off after parades or block fairs getting the streets ready for the rollers, or do heavy interior scrapping and lot-cleaning projects.

  Seymour wears expensive shirts that look like they haven’t been washed in two years under country-jean overalls. He always addresses Hawk like his mind is his car.

  “Your car’s been groaning a little over the hills of Central Park. I ask the boys if they’s forcing the car. ’Cuz all things gotta flow at their own pace, find their own rhythm.”

  “Yes, Dharma Seymour,” says Hawk.

  Seymour always has this half grin forming when he begins analyzing Hawk and/or his car. Hawk can’t ever tell for sure when his chain’s being yanked, though Seymour gives the impression that if behind all the practical advice he’s messing with Hawk in some way, it’s all in Hawk’s interest. Like the man has some well-oiled fuel line and valve to the Way and the Truth. Old men at the IHOB seem to seek Hawk out as someone to explain the world to. Maybe Hawk’s role in life is to receive advice, all of these scholars of the art of living knowing what’s best for him. They imply that if he could learn to stop thinking for himself and do everything they said he’d be happier. The trick was to listen more fluently.

  “You think the car’d make it for a trip out in the country?”

  “You fixing to go somewhere?” Seymour says, looking up from a colorful take-out dish that Mikey calls a “Czar Salad” that he gets from the Cuban-Turkish-Chinese restaurant on the corner. They sit in Seymour’s office while he mixes scrambled egg and ham hocks into multicolored noodles with a chopstick.

  “Just a trip with my lady, and I don’t want the car breaking down.”

  “Not to worry, Hawk. I got the whole thing lined up nice, but I don’t like to mess with a man’s car ’til he gives me the absolute green light.”

  “You mean the greenback,” Hawk says, though Seymour has never charged him more than ten bucks for any repair and is constantly grafting parts to the car. “How long you think it’ll take?”

  “I said relax, it’ll be ready.”

  “I got a riddle for you,” Mikey says, later, on the street, sky flat green-gray and streets lined with trash mounded up like body bags. They’re headed to Sammy’s to pin buttons for the Broadway Festival on the weekend.

  “Ten birds on a fence. You shoot one. How many you got left?”

  “Nine,” Hawk said.

  “Zero. You ’spect those birds to sit and say ‘shoot me next’?”

  “You ever think about splitting town?” Hawk asks Mikey. “Like, go to fucking Wyoming or Montana?”

  “Why would a brother go there?”

  Mikey busts his ass all over the city carrying his shoe-shine box, hands out his card in front of the Plaza Hotel next to the carriages and the men saying, “Buggy ride? Help put a horse through college.” Mikey’s got clients who stay in the hotel who give him fifty dollars to come to their suite and shine all their shoes and talk with them about basketball. Mikey hands out his business card:

  King Mikey

  MOBILE ROYAL SHINE

  “The Right Scuff”

  It has a crown on it and Seymour’s address and phone number. Or midmorning Mikey’ll come by the cart and Hawk will fix him a sausage the way he likes it and someone’ll ask Mikey if he’s working and he’ll shine ’em up right there and the customer might order a sausage and Hawk and Mikey will work the morning together, commenting about the day’s events and the state of the world with the customers while making small business.

  Mikey has a cot in Seymour’s garage and manages the CLEAN SWEEP crew at the block festivals and events. If there’s something Seymour needs done Mikey sees that it’s handled. Otherwise, he’s up and out early looking for business types or pimps.

  “Great worker, but he ain’t strong in the area of personal planning,” Seymour says.

  So Seymour got Mikey to put a part of every VA check in a long-term interest account. Just a small part he couldn’t touch that went in direct deposit against a rainy day.

  “You two both gotta take care of your no-thinking selves,” Seymour says. “There ain’t always enough love to go around.”

  “Man, I feel lucky tonight,” Mikey says when they’re out on the street after two hours of pinning. “Let’s play a little poker. They got a rotation game on tonight. Seven Stud, Hold ’Em, and Hi-Lo Omaha. Man, I feel like I’m gonna hit the numbers.”

  “Fuck the numbers,” Hawk says. “I just want my money back.”

  “Someone says they’d give you back all the money you’d lost. Only you could never gamble again. Would you do it?”

  “Would you?” Hawk asks.

  14

  DARKNESS WITH A CHANCE OF STARS

  Hawk gave Armand six grand against the ten he owed him and paid Phil down to four grand again, so tonight he only has a couple of hundred dollars to lose. Phil the Pot is a numbers man. You don’t have to pay him more than a small, flat-rate interest, but that way it takes a lifetime to sweep clean your debt. The American way, like Armand says. Pay the vig, ignore the principal. Fives asks no interest beyond an initial charge and a one-time 60 percent penalty for nonimmediate repayment in full. If Hawk had paid Armand after Earth Day weekend he’d have owed eleven-five. Otherwise he owed Fives fifteen thousand and after a first payment of a grand he had to meet his obligations. No late fees or mounting interest. They cut him off. Like American Express.

  “You in or what?” says Fat Frankie.

  “Not tonight,” Hawk says. “I’m playing poker.”

  “They allow slightly Jewish people in that game?” Marcus asks.

  “He’s come to have lessons and to pay for them too,” the Rubber Rabbi says, so named for the quality of his checks.

  “Can you make that rabbi stop talking?” Hawk says.

  “No,” Marcus says, shaking his head sadly. “He has no super ego.”

  “What part of you’s Jewish?” No-Way asks Hawk. “I thought you was one of us.”

  “One of what, No-Way?” Marcus says. “They haven’t found a culture for you to be in yet. Be patient, they’re still looking.”

  “Get my batting helmet,” Frieda says when Hawk and Mikey enter, and everyone smiles. It’s never good when people in a poker game all look happy to see you.

  “The Hunchdame of Notreback,” Hawk says. “How you been?”

  “Kicking ass and taking names and tattooing them on my butt.”

  “Whatchew peddling?” Boardwalk asks Hawk. “Where’d you get that sunburn?”

  “In here,” Larry Lawyer says.

  Hawk takes two Earth Day buttons off his lapels with color photos of the planet on them that read, LOVE YOUR MOTHER EARTH.

  “My old lady would love this shit, man. How much?”

  “Two bucks for you, Boardwalk. Sells for four on the street.”

  “Two bucks? It’s got an old date on it. Probably cost you five cents to begin with.”

  “Don’t buy ’em. That button’s a three-color job. Cost a buck e
ach to print.”

  “Three-color hand job,” Boardwalk says. “You take chips?”

  “Play cards,” says Lawyer Larry, sitting there with the tongue of his loosened tie resting on the felt of the table and his chips stacked neatly on the tie.

  “Hey Larry,” Hawk says. “Is it true they’re using lawyers in lab experiments because there’s things rats wouldn’t do?”

  Tuna, the dealer, looks like a rat with sunken cheeks and a pin nose. He’s light and indifferent with the cards, like a casino dealer waiting for suckers to bust. His skin is gray and his beady eyes close and flicker just a fraction under his visor as he pinches a few chips out of every pot for the house, or raps a toke tip against the drop box before putting it in his dealer apron. Mikey holds his cards close, peeks under the corner, pitches. Gonna play tight. Hawk’s gotta play loose. The few outright known suckers in the mix usually get knocked out fast, and most of the regulars can read Hawk’s face like a Daily News headline if he tries waiting for hands. Better to mix speeds and pump and try and get lucky.

  Around nine, pork in the hole, Hawk pitches, phones Carla at work. He can hear Carlos’s letter-cutting machinery humming behind her.

  “Can you talk now?” Hawk asks.

  “Yeah, I’m taking a break.”

  “You think anymore about Monday? Seymour says my car’s supposed to be fixed. It could be fun to get out of the city, drive up the Hudson. Or Jersey, take Zoey to Six Flags Adventure, or is it Seven? They got rides. You know, just drive.”

  “Just drive?” Carla says.

  Silence.

  “Yeah. Hey, Carla. You okay?”

  “Nelson called an hour ago. Drunk idiot bitch. Apologizing. Wanting me to have a drink with him. I could kill that bitch.”

  “Let me know if I can help,” Hawk says.

  “I should be so lucky.”

  “Look, don’t worry about that moron, okay? We’ll be out front of Zabar’s after the Broadway Festival tomorrow. You could stop by and we could talk about Monday.”

  Hawk walks back to the table, thinking he played the hand cool.

  “What’s the news?” Mikey says.

  “The Ginsu knifer’s on the loose again.”

  “What?” Frieda says, lighting a cigarette from her previous.

  “This bozo stabs one of my girlfriend’s other boyfriends with four Ginsu knives. Like he wanted to try out the whole set.”

  “If you play poker with him you’d be fined by Gamblers Anonymous,” Frieda says.

  “Hawk, man. You don’t mind my saying so, looks like you could use a little metal, maybe,” Tuna says, with a wink.

  “Funny you should ask.”

  “And if you need,” Tuna says, “I got.”

  “You could pass me a couple of aces,” Mikey says.

  “’Cause I’m holding this extra .22—brand spanking new,” Tuna continues. “I mean, out of the box.”

  The rat salesman, whiskers moving.

  “It’d run you a hundred and I could throw in a box of bullets.”

  “Does it include instructions?” Boardwalk says. “So Lamb Chops here doesn’t shoot his other foot.”

  Hawk can’t help staring at the gun on the table. He picks it up. It’s light and cold in his hand and a blue-green gray. Not much heavier than the plastic machine-gun squirter Zoey spritzes him with in the park. A cop shot an eleven-year-old who had one of these squirters a few blocks from his building and claimed it was self-defense. Hawk examines the empty clip, snaps it in, holds it to his head, squeezes off a few rounds.

  “This thing stop somebody?”

  “You hit ’em in the head or the chest it’ll bring ’em down.”

  “Otherwise it’ll just make ’em mad,” Boardwalk says.

  The table’s watching him.

  Hawk knows the simple truth: if you don’t want to buy a product from a salesman, you shouldn’t even peek in its direction.

  “Your basic bargain-basement personal security system,” Tuna says.

  “Hawk,” Mikey says. “What you want with that gun?”

  “Okay if I pay in chips?”

  “You better leave that thing in your house,” Mikey says. “Cops find that, it’s called carrying a concealed weapon. You ain’t got a permit, they put you out of circulation.”

  “Unlawful possession of a firearm, carrying a concealed weapon,” Lawyer Larry says. “Punishable by up to a year.”

  “Since when do we worry about permits?” Hawk says to Mikey.

  “Don’t worry,” Boardwalk says. “Larry will defend you. He got a guy off once in 1983. With his hands behind his back.”

  Hawk puts together a minor streak, splits a few pots containing mostly his money, and has that sure and slow feeling of being processed. Tuna shuffles faster and looks dead. Flat voice calling “stud” in the rotation. Nun to the nun, heart to the possible. The long hand of the wall clock sweeps the grime of the night into the dust pan of the short hand. Omaha-lows counterfeited. Hawk’s chips come and they go and they go. He tries to action things up, feel the magic.

  “One more time, all in,” Hawk says, shoving in his last chips and showing trips when he’s called.

  “You starting to sound like Count Basie,” Mikey says.

  “No fool, no fun,” Frieda says, flopping her hole cards to show that the river made her boat. “No vacancy!”

  “Goddamn river!” Hawk yells.

  “If there weren’t a river,” Frieda says for the millionth time.

  “There’d be no fish,” Hawk says, easing back.

  “Wanna hold a few C’s?” Mikey asks.

  “Just as soon try to catch a few z’s before the show.”

  No-Way pokes his head in, crinkles his nose. “What stinks?”

  “Frieda just barbecued a Hawk,” Larry says.

  Hawk leans against the wall, rifles the Post to unkink.

  He knows he won’t sleep. He might have slept less than any man alive. Tomorrow he’ll rise and rub his face with cold sink water and rinse off assorted layers of jinxes and then be zonked in the sun, handing out napkins and straws and sodas while his eyeballs slide down his face. Sweaty tourists will ask him where Bloomingdale’s is like he’s Rand McNally. He reads a column about a guy under a collapsed building for ten days who ate cardboard and drank rainwater and survived. The centerfold of the paper shows an old guy being handed a cardboard replica of a check for five million by Miss Housewife New Jersey. More advice, predictions, horoscopes. You could dial in for the winners.

  “You just miss the lottery again?” Frieda asks.

  “Just checking the weather forecast for tomorrow.”

  “The forecast for tonight,” says Simon from the shoe store, “is for darkness, with a chance of stars.”

  15

  THE BLUE ELEPHANT

  A car is more hassle than it’s worth in New York, but Hawk keeps ownership of the Blue Elephant, which began as a sky blue Cutlass S convertible, but is now a combination of cars, to which Seymour keeps grafting parts. The car feels like home, and in a pinch it has been. Hawk lived out of it for a few months before he started caretaking Sammy’s loft. You could get a coffee at McDonald’s in the morning and wash off. There were winter months too when Fat Frankie gave him the key to a padlocked room at the IHOB, as long as he didn’t bring any other cold souls back with him from the bars.

  For a year and a half Hawk drove a van as an off-the-books delivery man for a backgammon pigeon from the IHOB who owned a warehouse in Long Island. So many hours of his life went bye on the L.I. Expressway, brakelights igniting road slush for miles. Other than the traffic, it wasn’t a bad gig, crashing in the man’s warehouse when he needed to and harvesting a few bills off him at backgammon now and then playing heads-up for low stakes.

  Hawk’d had the one picture he owned of his father dangling and spinning from the van mirror in a credentials holder. As a young man, his father had been a speed skater, and the shot was of him in tight black pants, leaning against th
e rink, a pair of speed skates around his neck. In Hawk’s faded memories he has a pot belly, receding hairline, and looks late for something. Now the picture’s pinned by magnets to his refrigerator, along with one of him and the b-gang with Sammy at Yankee Stadium.

  Then there was a stretch before Hawk met Witold and started with the sausage cart when he owed everyone in the world at least four dollars so that when he walked into any neighborhood bar the drunks turned with that got mine? expression. They’d duck back into their beers when they saw how broke he was in his face.

  Witold owned the cart outright but got a better job as a head janitor in a midtown office building. He had the stock all lined up and after Hawk got his vendor’s license all they had to do was wheel the cart out in front of the garage of Witold’s building and to the corner. Hawk just had to call when he felt like working and cash out with Witold at the end of each day.

  “It was Seymour made me name the car,” Hawk told Carla on the way over to Seymour’s garage the day before for Hawk to pay for the repairs. “He says, ‘You gotta establish relationships with things.’”

  “A sensible man,” Carla said.

  “It’s more like his car anyway. Him and his boys. I use it when I need to. Why not? I never have to pay for parking.”

  When Hawk, Carla, and Zoey entered the garage, Mikey and Seymour were immobile in front of a Go board. It looked to Hawk like the kind of game where you make a move every hour and recite mantras in between.

  “Have a cup of red,” Mikey said. “It ain’t half bad.”

  “This man’s a connoisseur of box wines,” Seymour said. “Pull yourself a chair, Carla. Mikey’ll get you a cup of the nasty.”

  Carla picked up a blowtorch, spun it in her palm, flexed its neck.

  “Carla makes signs,” Hawk said. “With neon.”

  “You could use you a sign in here,” Carla said to Seymour, looking at the board with NUBIAN CZAR painted on it. “I could hook you up cheap. It would change the atmosphere in the place.”

  “Maybe it would at that.”

  “If you put a sign in here, someone gonna rip it off?” Hawk asked.