Red Hook

by Gabriel Cohen

  Jack opened his landlord’s door and took the man’s arm to lead him in, but Mr. Gardner pulled away. “Okay now. G’night. You gave a good party.”

  Jack thought about Michelle waiting for him out in the garden. He figured Mr. Gardner could probably make it to his bedroom by himself.

  “Sleep tight, Mr. G.,” he said. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

  He sat down on the picnic bench and Michelle leaned back against him. He inhaled her soft scent, slid his hands over her silky blouse, cupped the liquid weight of her breasts. She started to tremble.

  Ten minutes later they were inside lying on his bed. Jack tried to get her bra off, but the hooks snagged. He gave up for the moment and traced his fingertips down the smooth valley in the center of her back. He thought of the ripe strawberries; pictured her licking the juice off the side of her hand.

  He leaned over her and pressed his lips down to hers. Desire surged, and tenderness. He had a vision of a life like this, in which time was something to be savored rather than gotten through.

  Michelle raised her head from the pillow and tucked her hair behind her ear. “Maybe you should check on him.”

  “What?”

  “Your landlord. Maybe you should go up and make sure he’s okay.”

  “He’s all right.” Jack thought of Mr. Gardner mowing the lawn; building the barbecue brick by brick. A strong old man. Vigorous. He reached up again and this time the bra unhooked like magic. He pulled Michelle’s panties down over her hips.

  A few minutes later he pushed into her, that sweet moment that made this world seem like the perfect place to be. He pressed his face into the sweaty crook of her neck.

  Michelle moaned and circled her hips up to meet him.

  nineteen

  JACK WOKE AT ELEVEN A.M., head throbbing. His mouth felt as if it were stuffed full of socks. He stretched out his arm, but the other side of the bed was empty. He had a vague recollection of Michelle getting up early and kissing him goodbye.

  Should he get up? He didn’t have to work today; if he wanted to, he could spend the rest of the morning asleep. He rolled over; memories of the night came back and he smiled. Until more memories returned.

  He sat up, listening. Usually, at this time of day, Mr. Gardner would have the radio on loud in his kitchen.

  Silence.

  He got out of bed, pulled on some boxer shorts and a T-shirt. Heart knocking, he opened his apartment door. The hall light was still on. Mr. Gardner turned it off without fail at sunrise every morning.

  He stood still and listened carefully: no sound from Mr. Gardner’s apartment upstairs. Maybe he just went out. Jack told himself.

  He returned to his apartment and stepped into a pair of pants. He went back to the front hall. “Mr. Gardner?”

  Silence. Motes of dust settled over a big plastic plant in the corner.

  Gingerly, he climbed the stairs.

  He paused outside the door. No sound within. He knocked softly.

  No answer. The old guy was pretty hard of hearing. He rapped on the door again.

  “Mr. G.?” he called out. “It’s Jack.” No point in giving the man a heart attack by sneaking up on him.

  I’ll call, he thought. Maybe he’s just in the back and didn’t hear the door.

  Ignoring his own aching head, he jogged downstairs. After he dialed the phone, he heard it ring upstairs. One ring, two rings…Six rings…Nine.

  Panic sheeted his heart. He went out and climbed the stairs again. “Mr. Gardner?” he shouted. He tried the doorknob. It turned easily and the door opened. His stomach dropped. Mr. Gardner would never have gone out and left his door unlocked.

  Tensing, he pushed the door fully open.

  The kitchen was empty. The air inside was stuffy and warm; the apartment smelled old. He looked around carefully, as if entering a crime scene. There was the massive stove, there was the lazy Susan with the butter cookies, the Tupperware container with the grocery coupons—but there was no sign of the old man.

  He stood in the doorway to the back hall. “Mr. Gardner?” His voice sounded hollow and weak.

  No answer.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” he called out. “It’s Jack.”

  Halfway down the hall, he peered into the living room. There was the giant old TV, the same one that Mr. Gardner and his wife had probably watched The Jack Paar Show on decades before. A flattened pair of leather slippers lay on a throw rug in front of the La-Z-Boy. No Mr. Gardner.

  Holding his breath, he turned down the hall toward the bedroom. The house was so quiet he could hear the kitchen clock ticking behind him. He pushed the half-open bedroom door. The dry hinges creaked.

  Mr. Gardner was on the floor, half lying, half sitting, propped against the edge of the bed. He had pulled a quilt off the bed and it was clenched in his left hand. His head shifted an inch. He opened an eye and stared up at Jack. He was trying to say something but one side of his face wouldn’t move.

  twenty

  WHEN THE PHONE RANG Ben was enjoying a guilty pleasure, watching America’s Funniest Home Videos on TV when he should have been working on videos of his own. He set down a handful of popcorn, wiped his hand on his pants leg, and picked up the phone.

  “Hello?” a man said gruffly.

  “Yes?”

  “Is this Ben…Ben Leetner?”

  Every time he got a phone sales pitch, they invariably screwed up his last name.

  “It’s Light-ner. And I’m not interested.”

  “Is your father named Jack?”

  Ben sat down slowly. His father’s job was dangerous. His dad had always minimized the risks when he talked to his family, but all the same, in some back part of Ben’s mind, he had been dreading this call since he was old enough to think.

  “Is he…Is he dead?”

  The man laughed. “Hey, fellas,” he said to someone in the background. “The kid wants to know if his old man’s dead!”

  “What’s going on?” Ben said, angry now. “Who the hell is this?”

  It took almost forty-five minutes for the car service to pick him up and get him to Midwood. Once there, the driver couldn’t seem to find the address. They finally stopped a Hasidic man striding past. He seemed irritated by the question, but he pointed the way.

  Monsalvo’s. With its old Rheingold sign blinking in the window, the bar looked like a dive.

  “Can you wait here for a minute?” Ben asked the driver. “I should be right out.”

  “No problem,” the man said, picking up a copy of the Daily News from the seat next to him and shifting forward to catch the light from a street lamp.

  The door swung shut behind Ben. Even though it was a weeknight, the place was crowded and smoke hung thick in the air. The big, red-faced bartender noticed him looking around anxiously and walked over to the near end of the bar.

  “You Jackie’s son?”

  Ben chewed the inside of his cheek and nodded.

  “He’s in the back room. Come on, then.”

  The man came around the bar and led the way toward the back, parting the crowd brusquely.

  “How did you know to call me?”

  “His wallet was on the bar. Your name was in the wallet.”

  “Is he all right?” Ben asked as they made it through the last of the drinkers.

  The bartender shrugged. “He’ll live if he can make it past the hangover. He’s in here.”

  Way in the back, between stacked cases of Rolling Rock and Schmidt’s, three steps led up to a little door.

  “If he was a stranger, we would have tossed him out, but you father’s a friend.” The bartender stooped as he passed through the door. Wincing, Ben followed.

  A bare bulb illuminated a storeroom packed with cases of beer and industrial-size boxes of pretzels. His father sat on a couple of cases, slumped over a card table. Ben could smell the liquor on him from six feet away. Hard liquor, whiskey or Scotch. He was shocked—he could never have imagined his dad like this. A little ol
d man who looked like a garden gnome sat on a case next to him, evidently making sure he was okay.

  “This is the son,” the bartender told the old man. He turned to Ben. “Just so you know, he never drinks like this. He nurses one or two beers for an hour, then he goes home.”

  His father’s head rested on his arms. He muttered something.

  “What did he say?” Ben asked the old man.

  “He’s a cop, right?”

  Ben nodded.

  “He keeps talking about the PD.”

  Jack Leightner’s head rolled back. He raised it a few inches off the table, but he didn’t see his son. He had the ugly, twisted face of a man who wants to cry, but can’t. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled to no one in the room. “Jesus, Petey, I’m so goddamn sorry.”

  twenty-one

  A NEED TO PEE woke Ben early in the morning. Squinting, he got up and plodded into the bathroom. When he came out, he headed back toward his bedroom, but stopped in the hall. Listened.

  Snoring.

  He tiptoed toward the front room. His father was curled up on the futon couch. The sheet that Ben had spread over him the night before was clenched under his chin. His head was smushed down into the pillow and his hair was so cow-licked up that Ben grinned. He held his breath and watched for a moment. The old man didn’t look like the tough cop—he looked like a little kid. Ben had always imagined his father as a take-charge guy, surrounded by cop buddies. Giving people orders.

  It occurred to him now that maybe his father was lonely too. Living alone. Having a beer after work in an old-man bar.

  He went back to bed, but lay awake for a while, puzzling out a new emotion. For the first time in his life, he felt sorry for his father.

  Bright light beyond his eyelids called Jack awake. He cracked an eye to sunlight jabbing in through a window, direct to a pain center in his brain. He pressed his eyes shut, then opened them abruptly. He didn’t recognize the window. Groaning with the effort, he lifted his head a few inches off a soggy spot on the pillow—he didn’t recognize the room either. He had no idea how he’d gotten there.

  He was lying on a sort of couch that felt like it was stuffed full of sand. He looked down, distressed to see that he was wearing all of his clothes from the day before. His watch told him that it was seven-thirty. A.M., evidently.

  He pressed his palms against his eyes. He’d been in a bar the night before. Monsalvo’s. Christ, he hadn’t been drunk in years, and here he was hung over for the second morning in a row. He couldn’t remember how the night had ended, but the events of the previous day started coming back. The shock of discovering Mr. Gardner. The guilt he’d felt when he called the old man’s son to break the news. He almost never drank on the job, but by the end of the afternoon he’d needed a quick one before his shift.

  His shift. He groaned again, and reached down to his belt. His beeper was there, but at some point early in the night he must have turned it off. He had never simply not showed up to work—Sergeant Tanney must be going crazy. He had to get up and find a phone—it would help if he knew where he was.

  The room was a mess, cluttered with stacks of books and piles of magazines. It seemed like every inch of wall space was covered with pictures. Paintings, album covers, postcards, photos. Two big film posters dominated the far wall: one for a movie he recognized, Raging Bull, and one for a picture he’d never heard of called The Scent of Green Papaya.

  The posters did it: he’d just realized that he must be in his son’s apartment when a phone rang on the desk. Ben emerged from a doorway, bleary-eyed, in his underwear. The last time Jack had seen him walking around like that, his son had been eight.

  “Good morning,” Ben said, noticing his father lying awake on the sofa. He picked up the phone. “Yeah?…What do you mean? Nobody told me we were working today…No, she didn’t call me. Are you sure you told her to?…Right now?…Fuck. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He hung up, then stood awkwardly, staring at his father. “You alive?”

  Jack nodded, embarrassed. He ran a hand over his head, smoothing down his unruly hair.

  “That was my boss,” the kid said. “I have to rush in to work.”

  “What kind of a sofa is this supposed to be?”

  “It’s a futon.”

  “This is a futon? I always wondered what the hell those things were.”

  “Dad, are you okay?”

  Jack pushed an old blue blanket off himself and gingerly sat up. He considered how to explain.

  “My landlord almost died yesterday.”

  “You guys were that close?”

  He grimaced, “You have any aspirin?”

  “It’s in the bathroom, down the hall. Listen, I’m sorry, but I have to run off to work. There’s eggs in the fridge and some bread. You can let yourself out; the door’ll lock behind you.”

  “Do you have a shirt I can borrow?”

  “I guess.”

  “A nice one. I have to go to work.”

  “I don’t own too many business-type shirts, but you can check my closet. Most of the stuff is Salvation Army, but you’ll probably find something. I’ve gotta jump in the shower. Hey, Dad?”

  “What?”

  “You gonna be okay? I mean, what happened?”

  “I’m fine. Don’t worry. I don’t want you to be late for work. Tell you what—I’ll call you later.”

  Ben turned to leave, but stopped in the doorway. “Do you remember what you were saying last night?” He shook his head warily.

  “I know you don’t like to talk about this, but…what happened with Uncle Peter?”

  Jack blanched. “What did I say?”

  “Nothing, really. You just kept saying his name.”

  “This is not the time. You’re going to be late.”

  “I know. I was just wondering…I know a whole lot about Mom’s family, but hardly anything about yours.”

  “Why do you need to know?”

  “I don’t need to know. I just figured it’s important to learn about the past. Your history is part of my history, you know?”

  “Sometimes it’s better to just let things be.”

  “Maybe, but I think it’s weird not knowing anything—”

  “Just drop it, goddammit!” He looked up at his son’s face and knew he’d spoken too harshly. He was hung over; he’d slept in his clothes, said things he couldn’t even remember the next day. Now he was barking at his son…He sounded like his own father. If there was any point to life, he should be doing a better job of parenting than the old man.

  “Look, I’m sorry, kiddo, I’m just not feeling so great right now. We can talk about this some other time, okay?” His son looked disappointed, but he nodded. Jack rubbed his hand over his mouth. “Uh, there’s one other thing. I might need a place to stay for a couple of days.”

  Yesterday, after Mr. Gardner’s son had visited the hospital, he’d come back to the house to talk. Jack didn’t know Neil Gardner well; they’d only met in passing when Jack visited the Sixty-first Precinct, or on the rare occasions when the clerk paid a visit to his father. Neil was a small-shouldered guy who wore big suits, who teased and patted his black curly hair into a strange puffy unit in an attempt to make it look straight.

  They sat in Jack’s kitchen, drinking instant coffee.

  “How’s he doing?” Jack asked. “When I was at the hospital, they said it was hard to guess how much damage the stroke had done.”

  He’d spent the afternoon in the miserable waiting room of a city hospital while doctors ran a battery of tests on Mr. Gardner. In one corner a homeless man rocked silently back and forth, his rotting body entirely covered in a sheet. Two rows back, a Korean woman held her aching stomach, singing some sort of lullabye over and over for hours in an attempt to soothe her pain.

  “We still don’t know. It looks like he’s gonna have to stay there for a while.”

  “And then?”

  “They said he might never fully recover. It looks like a nursing home will be the
best option.”

  Jack took a sip of his coffee. He squinted, not because of the hot liquid, but what he feared was coming.

  “Listen,” Neil said. “I don’t have a lot of time, because I have important things to take care of. I was looking through my dad’s papers upstairs and I didn’t see a lease for your apartment.”

  “We didn’t have a lease. We were friends, you know. I just paid him every month and it worked out pretty well.”

  “Oh,” Neil said. “Listen, since you found him and everything…I was wondering: if he had the stroke late at night, like they suppose—why do you think he was on the floor instead of in bed?”

  Jack scratched the side of his mouth, shrugged.

  “He was able to talk a little bit,” Neil said. “It was hard to understand him, but…”

  “He told you about the party?”

  “Yeah. Sounds like you all had a pretty good time. Like you gave him quite a bit of alcohol.”

  “I didn’t give him any alcohol. I mean, he wanted it.” That didn’t sound much better.

  Neil Gardner stood up. “When I told you about this apartment, I didn’t expect you to take care of my father, but this is ridiculous. You should have used better judgment. The man is eighty-six years old.”

  Jack, still hung over, was in no mood for a lecture. “He’s a grown man. He had a right to have a little fun, for once.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Neil snapped.

  Jack took one look at Neil’s face and regretted the comment—the guy obviously felt guilty about never coming around to visit. “All I meant was, he doesn’t have a chance to get out much.”

  Neil pointed at Jack. “Getting out? You give my father a stroke and you call that getting out?”

  “Whoa,” Jack said, his patience run out and his own guilt feeding his irritation. “I’ve had just about enough of that. All I gave the man is a happy few hours, which is more than you can say.”

  Neil Gardner drew himself up, livid. “I’ll tell you what, Leightner. I want you out of here. Immediately.”

  “He can’t just kick you out like that,” Ben said. “Without a lease, he can do whatever he wants.”