Providence Noir

by Ann Hood

  Luis grabbed the railing for balance, hoping he could jump off and over the tub of the grinder. Unfortunately, his sweaty right hand slipped and he fell swiftly to his death, but not before cursing Jose with his last breath: “Jodio negro.”

  In the commotion, the grinder’s exhaust chute got knocked around from the pile of wood chips to the pile of split wood, and a wide spray of red covered the tree guts, just as the sky broke open in one of those New England thunderstorms that seem to come out of nowhere. Jose was taken aback, not by the scene of his cousin being pulverized in a few seconds, but at his lack of feeling for what had just taken place. With a mixture of righteousness and relief, Jose thought, All is good in the world again.

  * * *

  As the final bonfire faded, the crowd slowly left downtown. The crew on the boat high-fived another successful WaterFire, and once the boat was tied to the dock everyone headed to the Brewhouse for a well-deserved drink.

  When Jose lifted his beer to toast to his first night on the job, the bartender pointed to his index finger. Under the dim light of the bar, Jose’s finger was red with what was obviously blood. Maybe from the night before, or maybe from the logs he’d solemnly placed on the fires tonight.

  Jose lifted his finger to his lips and placed it to his mouth. “Don’t worry,” he said, “this is my own blood.”

  THE SATURDAY NIGHT BEFORE EASTER SUNDAY

  BY PETER FARRELLY

  Elmhurst

  After graduating from Rollins in ’74, Roger Tenpenny returned to Rhode Island with the understanding that he would never have to work or worry a day in his life. At twenty-one, he’d kicked off a trust that the men at Industrial National Bank quipped could support the lives of one hundred ne’er-do-wells. Owing, however, to an astonishing four divorces in fifteen years, and several business misfires, all the money was back in circulation before Reagan was steered out of office. Although Tenpenny considered himself a private person, the divorces were the one thing he wore on his sleeve. Most were stunned to meet a four-time loser still in his thirties, but Tenpenny had discovered that a certain set found this odd fact charming, and naturally that was the crowd he played to. When asked why he would possibly marry a fourth time, he always responded with the joke: “I missed the cheating.” This could be counted on for a laugh, but stung him in a place that most were unaware, for the truth was he had been the fucked-over one at least twice.

  Like many multiple divorcées, Tenpenny had bouts of unbridled optimism, and he was in such a frame of mind in March of ’92 when he met his neighbor Ellie. Although he was still doing time in the Elmhurst section of town—a triple-decker neighborhood filled mostly with Providence College students—the tide had turned in his favor. Almost free of his marital debts—for the blessed fact that there were no children in the mix—he felt chipper enough to write a couple long letters to old girlfriends, shots in the dark. He’d even begun to outline a business plan for a chain of sporting goods stores that catered to women only. (No one had ever done that before, as far as he could tell.) Even this blue-collar street gave him comfort, as it protected him from running into anyone of importance. Once he’d righted his ship, he’d make a triumphant return to Newport and the people that mattered.

  Tenpenny was parking in front of his apartment when he spotted his neighbor walking back from class with a friend. Ellie had moved in beneath him just after Christmas, and, from the lack of visitors, he’d assumed her to be a transfer student. Though clearly attractive, the silver light of winter had disguised just how so. He’d watched her come and go for two full months with nothing more than businesslike nods. Then a bright yellow spring arrived and as layers of wool and down were shed, her breasts seemed to thaw and expand, and—well, that was enough for him.

  “See you on the Saturday night before Easter Sunday!” Ellie called to her friend heading away down the hill.

  “What did you say?” Tenpenny asked as they were converging in step toward the house. “Did you say the Saturday night before Easter Sunday?”

  She looked at him oddly.

  “I’m sorry, did you just say those words—the Saturday night before Easter Sunday?”

  “Um . . . yeah.”

  “That’s the name of my book! How weird is that?!”

  It was a crazy lie, a stupid lie, the kind of lie that good liars rely on. She gave him a hesitant, uncertain smile. “You’re a writer?”

  “I mean, it’s weirder than you even know. I’ve been having second thoughts about that title ever since I started getting offers from the houses, and I’ve been struggling with maybe changing the name. You know, is it too oblique? Too confusing? Maybe it doesn’t say enough? But this is like a definite sign! I’m not changing it—that is the title, that should be the title, I think it’s a great title.”

  Her flickering smile had ignited into a glow by the time he was done with this rant. No big surprise. Published writers are Spanish fly to coeds, oldest story in the book. And she’d just played a part in naming the thing. This could easily become a big part of her identity in the coming months—certainly if she did coke.

  At twenty-two, one can tell the difference between a nineteen- and a twenty-one-year-old, but Tenpenny was at an age where he could only break it down to decades. Eighteen to twenty-eight, he guessed. Twenty-three, it turned out—he’d been right on the nose. They hung out for a few days—a couple coffees in her apartment, a few wines in his—as she filled him in on her life. For financial reasons, she’d been forced to drop out after freshman year to work, and was just now, four years later, returning. Though pleased to be back, she was having a hard time relating to the younger students. He liked her burlap voice and she his patience and authoritative air. They’d flirt and he’d cut it off. As a young man Roger had been swayed by beauty, but experience had left him cold toward it. He could take it or leave it, and that was his advantage. Quickly, she let down her guard. One morning a card game got her down to her bra and panties while they watched cartoons. Not so he could make a run at her, but to show that he wouldn’t. This flipped the tables, clarified who was calling the shots, made it all inevitable.

  One Saturday Tenpenny packed crustless cucumber-and-pimento-cheese sandwiches and drove them to Newport in his orange Saab. He showed her the church where JFK had wed, and Purgatory Chasm, then took her along the Cliff Walk, past the gilded-age mansions, a neighborhood Tenpenny knew well. He slid them through a row of privet and helped her over a fence and they set up a picnic on the expanse of lawn behind the Breakers. He poured them each a Dark ’n’ Stormy—the correct way—Barritt’s ginger beer, short glass, stiff, the Gosling’s floating on top. This had been his drink of choice back in his St. Croix days and the whiff of ginger beer and sweet rum brought back memories of making money in the sun.

  He’d moved to the islands in ’81 with Wife #2, running from Wife #1, and he’d fled four years later with #3, running from #2. Despite the drama, those had been mostly good years for him, and the one time in his life that he’d managed to come out ahead financially. This had not come without hurt feelings from some associates he’d entered into a land deal with, but that’s the way business worked. There were winners and losers and this time his name had ended up on the correct legal documents and he’d been the winner. When one of his ex-partners (a former prep school pal and sometime cokehead named Wellsy) eight-balled out of control and died, Tenpenny was called all kinds of libelous names in the Caribbean press. He chalked this up to small-town pettiness and, rather than suing their asses, returned to Newport with Wife #3, where, as destiny would have it, he was soon to meet #4.

  Of course, Tenpenny had been divorced-four-times long enough to read a crowd, so he kept most of these details from Ellie.

  “How old are you?” she asked as he was mixing the second round. It was low tide and he could smell the rocks that had risen from the water.

  “Thirty-eight,” he said, though he was thirty-nine. He made a mental note to stop lying like that. One fucking year�
��what was the point? He should’ve said thirty-four. Or twenty-nine. Thirty-eight was like breaking into Fort Knox and stealing a hundred bucks.

  Tenpenny feared he’d just messed things up, but before they’d finished a fifth of the fifth, they were screwing.

  Sort of.

  She might’ve overreacted to sinking her fingers into relatively old ass-cheeks for the first time, or maybe it was his disappointment at finding large, depleted breasts on a college kid, but it was unmemorable for both.

  This cooled their friendship and they didn’t see much of each other after that, except in passing, where, to his annoyance, Tenpenny had to maintain the book lie. “How’s your book?” “Who’s publishing your book?” “When’s your book coming out?” “Next fall,” he would say, or, “Leaning toward St. Martin’s,” or he’d mumble something about “publishing seasons.” Doubly annoying was that he detected a trace of skepticism in her tone. A good part of him wanted to just tell her the truth: She’d fucked a guy because she thought he was a writer. Deal with it.

  But Tenpenny wasn’t raised that way. Ellie was a sophomore and would be doing her junior year abroad—certainly he’d be long gone before she returned—so he resolved to be the bigger man and play out the lie for a couple months, rather than throw her shallowness in her face. Thankfully, time kept to its schedule and when school ended Ellie went back to whatever part of Connecticut or Virginia she’d come from. Though they’d ended on less than stellar terms, Roger recognized the growth in being able to have a relationship with a beginning, middle, and an end that didn’t involve lawyers, and he took heart in this.

  * * *

  So we come to the day that young Beresford came banging unannounced on his door. It was the following October and the leaves were just starting to lose their green. A few yellow ones were stamped to the wet pavement, returned to sender.

  “You’re a writer?!” the smiling Brit blurted out as Tenpenny opened up. Beresford was tall with short, reddish dreadlocks. He reeked of sweat and pot and some cologne that was doing a bad job of drowning out the sweat and the pot.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m told that you’re a writer. I’m a writer too!”

  “Who the hell said I’m a writer?”

  “Eleanor who used to live downstairs, she told me that . . . ? Are you Roger?”

  Good lord, Tenpenny thought. It had been a mistake to protect her. No good deed goes unpunished.

  “Yes. I write. What’s your point?”

  It should be noted again that Tenpenny had been high on the day he met Ellie six months earlier—high on life—as he was inclined to be every four years or so, for the better part of a season. His shrink would describe his mood in more clinical terms, but it was happening to him, not to Dr. Samuels, and Tenpenny had a clearer insight into his own emotional ecosystem. He believed that every person had many people inside them: the angry guy, the happy guy, the loudmouth, and the quiet guy; the guy who always wanted to make him late for everything, and so on. When he’d met Ellie, the fun guy had been present and Tenpenny had taken advantage of him, but now that guy was gone and on the day that Beresford arrived someone else answered the door.

  “Um, no point,” Beresford said, reeling a bit. “I just never met another real writer before, so . . . just wanted to say hello.”

  “Yes. Well . . . nice to know I’m not alone.”

  This was the realist Tenpenny, the one who recognized that women don’t give a pig’s ass about sporting goods stores, and his bank account was still shrinking, and the old girlfriend letters could officially be deemed unanswered, and he was still living on Admiral Street in a part of Providence he considered beneath himself—and now this Simply Red–looking idiot was standing there.

  “So . . . anyway . . .” The kid leaned timidly toward the stairwell. “Eleanor told me to send her love.”

  “Really,” Tenpenny said, not as a question but in that declarative, upbeat way. He was surprised but pleased that she’d chosen to remember him fondly, and this softened him enough to step from behind the door. “How’s she doing?”

  “Okay, I suppose—she seemed fine.” Then: “To be honest, I don’t really know her all that well. I met her on a tram in France this summer, and when I told her I was a writer and was moving to Providence, she said, You’ve got to look up my friend Roger—he’s a writer too. I wouldn’t normally just pop in like this, but . . . she made kind of a big to-do about it, so . . .”

  Ah, now it made sense. Ellie wasn’t helping the Brit, she was busting Tenpenny’s chops. Then Beresford opened his backpack, revealing something wrapped in brown paper.

  “Here,” he said, “this is for you.”

  Tenpenny lifted the package and opened it, revealing a half-gallon of rum.

  “Ellie told me that’s what you drink. It’s Cuban.”

  This took Roger aback. “What? No. What? You’re shitting me . . . ?”

  Beresford held out the backpack and said, “You can stuff that paper right back in here—I’ll reuse it.”

  Roger Tenpenny had been raised to always ring a doorbell with his elbow, and the fact that this poor, smelly Englishman lived by that same tenet gave him hope for all humanity.

  “Well, come in, come in!”

  * * *

  Tenpennys had lots of tenets—like those about drinking too early or too late—but the fact that Beresford had gifted him with a bottle of Havana Club threw those rules out the window. This was an occasion, as opposed to a habit, which freed him up to enjoy a rare Monday-afternoon cocktail while the kid spilled his life story.

  Charlie Beresford looked like any other British tramp running amok in America, but was in fact nothing like one. He was an Americanophile who had huge aspirations—a long-term plan, in fact—and, though still a few months shy of twenty, he had the confidence of a much older man. Two years earlier he’d been admitted to King’s College before deciding, to everyone’s chagrin, to stay home and kick out a novel. Now that he was finally in the States, his life was just beginning. His book had been sent off to one publishing company—Knopf—and he’d applied to one college—Brown University. While waiting to be admitted as a January transfer student, he was living a shit-stained version of the Kerouac life at the Providence YMCA. He wrote at night and bussed tables at the Rusty Scupper (Scuzzy Rubber, he called it) by day, trying to save up enough cash to put a first-and-last down on an apartment, preferably one not on the south side of town.

  “So what’s the title of your novel?” Beresford asked. “I want to get it.”

  “Sorry, you can’t.”

  “Why not?

  “Not out yet.”

  “Oh? When’s it coming out?”

  “Not for a long time, I hope.” Tenpenny smiled as he handed Beresford his drink.

  “But Eleanor said it was getting published this fall.”

  “No, no, I told her they offered to publish it. But I politely declined.”

  Beresford made a sour face. “Why?”

  “I take it you don’t know much about the publishing world, Charlie?”

  “No. Well . . . no, not really.”

  Tenpenny lit a cigarette. “Publishers ruin writers. Yeah, it seems like a good deal—a little dough, your work’s finally getting out there, and so on—but ultimately, being published is the kiss of death.”

  “So you said no?”

  “I did indeed.” He held up the Viceroys but Beresford waved him off.

  “Then why’d you submit the manuscript in the first place?”

  Which, Tenpenny realized, was an excellent question. He took Beresford’s drink back to the counter and sullied the rum with tonic water. “You like lime?” he asked, as he worked out this riddle.

  “No, I’m good. So . . . I don’t get it—why’d you send it to them if you didn’t want to be published?”

  “Send it to who?”

  “The publishing houses.”

  Tenpenny slowly stirred Beresford’s drink as he deliberated. “
See, I have a writer friend and I gave it to him—you know, I needed fresh eyes, typos and whatnot—and he took it upon himself to pass it on to a few editors without my knowledge. Prick. Well, he was just trying to be nice. Next thing I know, I’m in the middle of a very modest bidding war, which was kind of flattering, I guess—no, I admit. But then I started having nightmares about it, so I pulled the plug and told them I didn’t want it out there until after I die.”

  Beresford blinked. “Wow. That’s . . . wow. May I inquire why?”

  Tenpenny finally returned his drink. “Well . . . for the same reasons the Catcher in the Rye guy refuses to publish his new stuff.” (Despite his Rollins education, Tenpenny had always gotten Caulfield and Salinger confused, as far as who was the writer and who the whiner.)

  “Because making money off it is a form of prostitution?”

  This remark chafed at Tenpenny’s genes and, though being agreeable would’ve tied a nice bow on the discussion, he snapped, “There’s nothing wrong with making money! Nothing! Not ever!”

  The channeling of Tenpenny’s objectivist grandfather had shrunk Beresford, so Roger throttled it back a bit. “It’s just . . . I choose not to publish my work for the simple reason that once it’s out there, you’re no longer pure. You start writing for the public, or worse, the critics, and once that happens—when you start caring what other people think—you’re tainted.” Then he added, “That’s true in life too.”

  “I suppose. But even Salinger published four or five books.”

  “No he didn’t. He did?”

  “Catcher, Franny and Zooey, Nine Stories, a couple others.”

  “Oh.” Then: “Well, I don’t intend to make the same mistake.”

  * * *

  It was three days later that the package addressed to Beresford arrived. Tenpenny wasn’t the least bit curious of its contents and spent the afternoon writing a new business plan—this time for a life-settlement start-up. This was a new AIDS-inspired industry that allowed people to cash out their life insurance policies early, but at a steep discount, and then the new beneficiaries would claim their fruits “at the time of harvest,” as stated in his presentation.