Bosstown

by Adam Abramowitz

  “I thought this was a rush job,” I said, eyeing the exit.

  “You’ve got a few minutes.”

  “Will a limerick do? I’ve got some really dirty ones.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “How about some Charles Bukowski?” I offered. “He’s always drunk and fun.”

  “After last night’s Drinkapalooza? I think it’s a little early.” She tilted back in her chair, crossed her long legs. “Know any Octavio Paz?”

  “Who?”

  “Elizabeth Bishop? Mark Doty?”

  “Can I interest you in some Lou Reed maybe?”

  “I think I’d rather hear him do it.”

  “I don’t blame you, I’m nine octaves high anyway. How about a deep knee bend followed by a crisp about-face. Would that suffice?”

  “I think it’ll have to.” She frowned.

  I went out past the same guard, freed my bike from the same meter, and poured the contents of my thermos over my wheels and chain, while the guard looked on stone-faced, like he saw this all the time. Foot traffic had picked up some, but it was still early. A handful of parking spaces were up for grabs; the Fashion Police had yet to make an appearance and issue citations. Give it an hour, the street would be mobbed, and you could make a nice living auctioning outdoor seats at Starbucks.

  I draped the heavy link chain commando style off my shoulder and pedaled the wrong way up Newbury toward the Public Garden, blondes and coffee—preferably something high-octane—on my mind but not necessarily in that order.

  Decaffeinated ghosts steamed off my wheels.

  I hooked a right onto Arlington Street, cut through two lanes of traffic. With one hand, I plugged in my iPod, and Gang of Four kicked into a live recording of “I Found That Essence Rare,” so I didn’t so much hear as feel the loose-strut rattle of the battered Dodge van as it caromed out of a pothole behind me, careened past, and sideswiped the Subaru directly in front; two smoke-black fingers erupted from the pavement as the driver Flintstoned his brakes.

  Fuck me.

  I cut sharply across the skid, skimmed the Subaru’s bumper with my front wheel, and flew blind into the next lane’s angry traffic. When I gained the van’s window, a pair of scarecrows in worn flannel were slam-dancing the windshield as Iron Maiden implored them to eat their young at twenty decibels.

  “Hey, Numb Nuts!” I punched the door hard before spying the wake-and-bake joint burning steadily between the driver’s lips, thick smoky pillows curling out the windows toward the street.

  Breakfast of Champions.

  “Wha?”

  “Never mind.” I pardoned the kids with a salute, inhaled a loose cloud, and rolled toward the intersection. When I spotted a break in the Boylston Street traffic, I ran the red light in front of us.

  I don’t know where the gold Buick came from.

  Somewhere behind the stoners, I suppose. It gunned the red light like a heat-seeking missile with a bad case of the munchies, a blast furnace firing beneath the hood.

  Accelerating!

  I stood up on my pedals, leaned hard, and flew through the intersection at warp speed. The Buick’s grill ate my back wheel like cotton candy, the crunch of metal reverberating like feedback, earsplitting, unforgiving. I thought I heard the lyric run to the hills, run for your lives, and then nothing at all as air thudded out of my lungs and something solid connected with my back, sending me hips over shoulders, still stuck in my toe clips. If my life flashed before my eyes, I either missed it or was so bored by the rerun I forgot it instantly, commercials and all.

  The street flew by beneath me, black and calm, a darkened pitted sea. It was only after the acrid stench of hot asphalt and burning rubber filled my nostrils that I realized I’d already landed and might have sunk too deep.

  And once the street has you, it never lets you go.

  FOUR

  Will Meyers is watching Harold and Maude when the phone rings. There’s something about Harold and Maude that speaks to him: young Harold, who has everything yet nothing, Maude, who’s lost everything but manages to live with that, within that. Will’s seen this movie a hundred times already, but the message still resonates. Once he was Harold; now he is Maude.

  The phone rings, and Will looks to Van Gogh Capizo, the cushions trench-sagging from a weight that doesn’t just come from fat. Capizo is rounded but solid, a human stack of cannonballs topped by a gleaming bald dome reflecting the TV in surround-vision. Will could watch his head and not miss a thing if only he’d sit still.

  Lot of water under the bridge between the two of them, not the least of which includes that AWOL ear. The details elude Will now—the random eraser of his Alzheimer’s seeing to that—but still, he’s got a notion if it hadn’t been for something he’d done, intervened on Van Gogh’s behalf, the rest of that giant melon would have gone along with it. That, at least, explains the man’s vigilance, his drool-dog loyalty.

  Van Gogh—it’s a fuck-hard name to forget, and Will’s thankful for that. Names are the low-hanging fruit on the memory tree, and once they’re gone, they’re gone for good.

  “You gonna get that?”

  “Get what?” Van Gogh shifts his double-barreled backside, the couch practically seesawing as the springs levitate in chain reaction.

  “The phone. I can’t hear the friggin’ movie.”

  “The phone ain’t ringing.” Van Gogh frowns, looks to Will. “Anyhow, what’s to hear? Just watch.”

  Will watches. The big man is agitated, but Will blocks out his waves of distraction. That’s his gift—even now—to tune out the false signals, manufactured tics, even the unintended obfuscations, the natural signal jammers everybody throws off.

  Focus: Harold. The noose. The crystal chandelier. Which is why, minutes later, it’s Will who doesn’t right off realize Van Gogh has vacated his cushioned hole, the house cell pressed tightly to his only ear.

  Yes, now he remembers! Van Gogh doesn’t listen, gambling debts, a runaway addiction to action—sports, not cards—bookies controlled by the DiMasis looking to set a meaningful example but settling for his ear, a symbolic message. Will doesn’t wonder what Van Gogh’s hearing now, what the man is saying on the other end. To him there’s no mystery. The devil always calls collect.

  Van Gogh hangs up, adjusts the gun in his belt, unable to get himself comfortable at the couch. So it’s more for Van Gogh’s sake than his own that Will asks, “Him again?”

  “Him who?” Van Gogh pulls the gun from his waist, covers it discreetly with a magazine. There’s a strange look on his face, sweat dotting his brow. “It was a woman.” Van Gogh shrugs, laces thick hands across his belly. A giant white pearl clamming up.

  A woman?

  “What did she say?”

  “Nothing. She didn’t make any sense,” Van Gogh says. “Since when do they make any sense?”

  “You hung up on her?”

  Van Gogh reaches for the remote. “Are we watching the fuckin’ movie or what?”

  He restarts the film, Will watching the flickering images on Van Gogh’s sweaty brow, Cat Stevens singing “Don’t Be Shy,” a song he wrote for the film, which went on to be a big hit for him. The phone rings, but this time it is Van Gogh who Zens it out. That myth about the other senses kicking into overdrive is a load of nonsense—Capizo reads with bifocals, has the taste buds of a teenager—but maybe Will’s taught him something after all.

  Will picks up the landline and listens. It’s only when Will mutters a barely audible yes into the receiver that Van Gogh pays him any mind. “Yes.” Will hangs up and sits back down; Van Gogh looks at him, a question in his eyes.

  “It was my wife,” Will says.

  “Your wife.” Van Gogh frowns deeply. “Diane?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t hear the phone ring,” Van Gogh says. “Are you sure it was ringing?”

  “I just told you it was Diane.” Will’s voice is raised, angry. Since when does he get angry so quick, show everybody what he�
��s thinking?

  “Okay, take it easy. What’d she have to say?”

  “That’s none of your goddamn business, a private conversation between husband and wife.”

  “Okay.” Van Gogh lets it go, turns back to the movie.

  “She said she’s dead.”

  Van Gogh sticks a finger into his one ear as if trying to remove an obstruction. “Dead?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “Huh. Anything else? I mean anything that isn’t, y’know, fuckin’ privileged information?”

  “Yes. She said that now that she’s dead, I’ll know what to do.”

  “That right? Do you?”

  “Know what to do?”

  “If that’s what she said.”

  “Yes.”

  “Swell,” Van Gogh says. “Now can we watch the movie?”

  “Dead.” Will mouths the word, settling in, not so much saying it as trying to taste it, trying to get the feel of it inside him.

  Dead.

  He looks to the television, Harold stepping into air, the noose snapping tight around his neck, Harold’s mother entering to find him twisting from the chandelier, a look of severe disappointment crossing her face. She seats herself and dials a number from the same model rotary phone Will has just answered, the only difference being the inch of frayed wire jutting from Will’s set, a ghost line plugged into nothing.

  “I suppose you think that’s very funny, Harold,” Harold’s mother says in a clipped British accent, which causes Will to laugh aloud. Because for all her self-indulgence, her ignorance and vanity, for the first time Will recognizes that Harold’s mother knows exactly what he knows: Nobody dies. He’s come to understand that much, at least, as the plaque on his brain renders his memories a mosaic of sea glass, behind which everything goes mist.

  Nobody dies. Why is it Will’s the only one around here who understands this? Nobody dies. They just disappear. Slowly at first. In pieces, a little at a time; then suddenly, completely.

  And then they buy back in.

  FIVE

  Boston is a Celtics snow globe, a punch-drunk parade of green snow, blue sky, and pandemonium. I blink toward open blue, but what comes into focus is a short pink skirt over a pair of white lace panties high up on a set of strong legs. The legs seem highly tanned for early June, and they make the panties seem ridiculously white in contrast. Or maybe they are super white. It’s hard to focus when little amoebas are doing the Slide and Hustle across my eyes.

  Given a different set of circumstances, I’d say maybe this was my lucky day. Only Keith Moon’s inside my head doing his best to dent his snare drum, the green snow morphing into a downpour of dead presidents all around me.

  The woman with the panties is in excellent shape, knows how to use her elbows, and despite the frenzied competition, seems to be doing all right for herself. The intersection’s a mosh pit, people skittering across the pavement chasing dollars and the dream, though it’s Pink Skirt who worries me most, her high fuck-me pumps clicking inches from my face each time she lunges to snatch a bill from the air. Leave it to me to survive a collision with a Buick only to be shish-kebabbed by a pair of thousand-dollar Manolo Blahniks.

  Something warm and wet rolls down my face as one bill, then another, swirls toward me and sticks to my forehead. Pinky glances at me, momentarily contemplating risk/reward before briskly stepping away. Money changes nothing; I have that effect on a lot of women.

  I pull the paper off, blink at Ben Franklin and Andrew Jackson bleeding profusely from head wounds before stuffing them down my shorts. And as suddenly as the cash appeared, it’s gone, the second wave of fortune hunters stumbling about as if they’ve collectively misplaced their wallets and car keys, the blood apparently not bothering them much. My blood. They plod around me as if I don’t exist; it’s a miracle nobody flips me over like a sofa cushion.

  Fuck it.

  I brace myself with my hands at my sides, tiny pebbles burning craters into my palms. Boylston Street, gridlocked for blocks, tilts sideways, and I have to admit it’s a pleasing sight. Short of stump-jumping a Mercedes, it’s every messenger’s dream to control the flow of traffic for a change, instead of just reacting and avoiding it. Everything you’ve ever heard about Boston drivers is true: Signaling is for the weak. Side-view mirrors are purely decorative. Stop signs are optional.

  Arlington and Boylston are parking lots, car doors flung open like pinball flippers, waves of heat—the staple of sitcom flashbacks—shimmering off blinding front hoods. It’s enough to make me smile, only the ringing in my head is painful, a sharp, high-pitched static buzzing between my ears and driving me crazy.

  My iPod.

  I reach to yank the earbuds, but they’re already gone, tossed with my bag, chain, and Motorola. Rotating my head to my shoulder brings the opening notes of a familiar song into proper frequency, but as I touch my chin to my chest, the tune fades into static, making it official: I’ve become a set of rabbit ears. Radio Shit Shack. A twisted coat hanger stuck at an odd angle to pick up an elusive signal.

  I tilt into the opening beats of Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City,” a lullaby my father would tuck Zero and me into bed with on the rare nights he was home. Only now it’s accompanied by the reverb buzz of a hostile crowd realizing they’ve missed the windfall and are just late for work. But since there’s nothing much I can do about it, I focus on my breathing instead, let my eyes drop closed, visualize the steady stream of ice-cold plasma and menu of prescription painkillers I’ll soon call mine.

  Stevie fades to static. I try opening my eyes, but they’re glued shut. Don’t sweat it, I tell myself, sinking into the pavement, into the deep black I just swam out of. The rush is over. The pain will pass; it’s only a matter of acceptance now. The city and its mixed-up streets will have to wait on me for a change. They’ll work themselves out. One way or another, they always do.

  SIX

  Will doesn’t know the woman on his front porch, knows for sure he’s never seen her before in his life. But there’s a crackling buzz rising off her, which he recognizes as a frequency only people with dark secrets emit.

  “Hello, William.” The woman smiles through a drunken patchwork of crooked scars that make him think of zippers—what a face! And yet he doesn’t avert his eyes as others must, doesn’t look away or feign normalcy, and she seems to appreciate that. Although she doesn’t say it, her coral gray eyes say it for her.

  “It’s been such a long time, William. You don’t recognize me, do you?”

  “No.”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised. I don’t look the same since, well…” She frames her face with her hands, flutters her arms as if to flap nonexistent wings before pirouetting quite nimbly for someone so large and soft. “Not a clue, huh?”

  “No.”

  “That’s all right. I figured as much. The years haven’t been kind, which is why I brought pictures. Can I show you some pictures, William? Maybe that will help?” She reaches into her handbag and comes out with photographs and newspaper clippings. Will looks at the photographs; the clippings have black-and-white ones too at the bottom. Now, this woman, this woman he knows.

  “Leila,” he says with wonder, and looks harder at the pictures, almost like he’s trying to see through them. “Leila Markovich.”

  How could this be? Leila Markovich is a beautiful young woman with dark skin and long straight auburn hair as in the pictures, not a face of zippers, a face of pink wormed scars and a thin-lipped mouth pasted into a pale strip. Yet Will looks into her eyes and knows this is exactly the same woman; there’s not a doubt in his mind, and perhaps this is the one gift of his disease, not for Will necessarily, but certainly for the women he’s known who have crossed into old age, into soft weight, wrinkles, and scars: He sees them only as they once were, forever young and beautiful.

  “May I come in?” this new Leila Markovich asks. She is no longer smiling. Not the lips, not the eyes.

  “You’re going to s
tay?” That’s the other thing the disease has given him: a directness that doesn’t mince words, waste precious time. It’s not quite a gift, but neither is it a curse.

  “Just for a little while,” Leila says. And as he opens the door wide, Will notices, for the first time, the black gun she holds in her hand.

  SEVEN

  Even through her rubber gloves, the EMT’s hands are ice-cold, a minor fault I’m willing to overlook, considering the rest of her is straight-up Asian knockout: willowy, smooth skin, a geyser of oil-slick black hair sprouting high atop her head. She moves with urgency, those cold fingers riding the pulse in my neck before moving toward the throbbing pain above my right brow. Blood stains her gloves. Her eyes tell me she’s been here before, seen worse. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for her partner, a steroid abuser with T. rex arms and a crew cut as flat as the bracing board he brought with him.

  “Goddamn!” He whistles, catching sight of me before angling the board to shield his view. “Where do you want it?”

  “On his other side,” she directs him. “Where’s the AED?”

  “Oh, shit. We need it?”

  “No.” She glances down, beams me a well-trained smile. Rule Numero Uno they teach you at EMT school: Never let the patient know he’s a goner. “But it should be here. And you left the van running. Hey, there, my name’s Michaela, and I’ll be your EMT today. Can you tell me your name, babe?”

  “Zesty,” I squeak. I’m back in middle school, and the prettiest girl just asked me to slow dance.

  “Hi, Zesty. How’re you feeling?”

  “Nauseous,” I tell her. “In love.”

  “That sounds about right. Can you feel where I’m touching you, Zesty?”

  “Yes. Your hands are cold.”

  “They’ll warm up.” She winks, wraps a blood pressure cuff around my arm, ignoring the crowd circled in to share the reading. Finished, she shines a light in my eyes, has me wiggle fingers and toes. “Good. So, Zesty, aside from nauseous, how you doing?”