Intruder

by Peter Blauner

  Jake turns and sees Dana entering the courtroom. Somebody must have finally called her. She wears dark clothes and tinted glasses, as if she’s attending a wake.

  “I guess he could put up the town house as collateral,” Susan is saying.

  Jake swallows and feels the back of his dry throat cracking. Offering up his town house, the home he’s worked all his life for, the place where his wife and son live. Isn’t that a little highhanded? Then he remembers he’s made similar offers without explicitly consulting his clients.

  “All right, five hundred it is.” The judge bangs his gavel.

  Jake’s mind starts whirring like an adding machine. Where’s he going to come up with the ten percent cash payment the court requires? After the huge down payment and all the house repairs, he’s not sure if he still has $50,000 in his account. Everything’s tied up in mutual funds and Treasury bills. And then he’s got a $4500 mortgage coming at him every month.

  Before he has time to figure it out, the judge is signing a paper and adjourning his case for a month. Susan touches his arm and another defendant steps up to take his place. A sweet-faced black kid in an eight-ball jacket and felony sneakers.

  Dana waits at the back of the courtroom. By the time Jake and Susan join her the judge has remanded the kid in the eight-ball jacket for thirty days on Rikers for holding two vials of crack.

  57

  After the arraignment, Jake stops by his lawyer’s office for a few minutes to talk things over. Then he catches a cab home and finds his wife sitting at the breakfast nook, smoking what as far as he knows is the first cigarette of her life.

  “I’m not sure whether I should curse you or throw my arms around you,” she says quietly.

  “Try the latter.”

  She gets up and hugs him tightly. He feels her fists balled up against his back.

  This day has already been brutalizing. At the office, Susan told him the DA isn’t giving him much play; Francis wants at least eight and a third to twenty-five years for his sentence and the revocation of his law license. They must think they have a strong case, but why? Jake wonders. The only witnesses he can think of are Philip and his cousin, and they’re accomplices. So what else do they have? He rifles his mind, looking for information, but he’s too tired to come up with anything.

  “You’re all right?” Dana says, too tense to ask for much assurance.

  “I’m all right. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  She pushes him away so she can take a good look at him. She has dark circles under her eyes and the vertical line in her brow has deepened by about a sixteenth of an inch.

  “I’m going to need some help with this, Jake,” she says. “I’m going to need you to explain this to me very carefully.”

  He lowers his eyes and goes into the living room to fix himself a drink.

  “We probably have about eight to twelve weeks until trial. There’ll be an indictment. Then we’ll file our papers and wait to see what evidence they have in discovery. Probably there’ll be a Wade hearing about the witness identification ...”

  “Forget all the legal crap.”

  Dana is standing at the kitchen pass-through. “What happened?” she asks in a voice as cold as the ice going into his glass.

  He doesn’t look at her. “I made a mistake.” He fills the left side of his mouth with air and lets it out. “I’m not sure what else there is to say. I thought I was doing the right thing. But I was wrong.”

  “That’s it?”

  He still can’t quite raise his eyes to meet hers. “Well, Susan asked me not to say too much.”

  “That’s it? That’s all you have to tell me? We’ve been married for twenty years!”

  “You don’t have to shout.” He glances at the staircase, wondering if Alex is home.

  “A reporter from the Times called an hour ago looking for you! Your son already knows you’ve been arrested. Now he’s going to have to read about it in the newspaper and see it on television. And all you have to say is, I made a mistake’?!”

  She deliberately drops the cigarette and crushes it out on the $500 area rug he bought for the hallway between the kitchen and the living room. He starts to protest, but her eyes warn him off.

  “Did you do this?” she says.

  He pours himself a scotch and flops down on the couch. “Dana, I . . .”

  “I asked you a question, Jake. Did you do this?”

  He looks across the room at her and feels the Atlantic Ocean opening between them.

  “No,” he says.

  “Then why are they accusing you?! I’ve heard you say it yourself a hundred times. Almost everyone you represent is guilty.”

  He closes his eyes and sees that flash of light again. “Well I’m not.”

  “Then why are they saying you did it?”

  Jake opens his eyes again. From the way her face is reddening, he can tell she’s already had a drink today. “Are they making it up out of whole cloth? Are you saying you had nothing to do with what happened?”

  The ice in his glass cracks and spits at him. “I was there,” he says softly. “I was there when it happened.”

  Dana sags. “Oh my God, it is true. You killed someone. I can’t believe it.”

  “Dana. . . ”

  He starts to come toward her, but she turns and locks herself away from him, bowing her head and hunching her shoulders.

  “Jesus,” she says. “I always knew you were this angry—”

  “It’s more complicated than—”

  “But I didn’t think you were capable—”

  “I wasn’t the one who—”

  “How could you do this to me?!”

  Her voice is like a gun going off. Everything stops for a second.

  “I had my reasons.” Jake puts his glass down and tries to begin again.

  “ ‘But you never said anything. I thought I knew you. You’ve been sleeping with me for twenty years. You held our son’s bare bottom in the palm of your hand. You slept at the foot of his bed when his brain was swelling and we thought he was going to die. ...”

  “I didn’t do it,” he says, opening his arms. “I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “But don’t you see?” She comes over and thumps him hard on the chest. “The fact that you didn’t tell me before makes me doubt everything you say now. You came in this house every night for three weeks, knowing this was hanging over you, and you never said a thing to me. You lay in bed with me! You made love with me! And you never told me our lives were about to fall apart! You never even gave me a hint. You were a stranger. Tell me how I should feel about that!”

  Her words echo through the white room and then die in the middle. Jake stares blankly at the space.

  “I thought I was doing it to protect you and Alex,” he says carefully, still feeling the scotch burning the back of his throat.

  “You lied and hurt me more deeply than I’ve ever been hurt before,” she answers. “It’d be easier to take if you’d just come home and told me you’d been having an affair. I feel like I’ve been married to a stranger for twenty years. You deliberately hid what you were from me.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “What if I told you I’d been married before?” she says in cold undirected fury. “What if I told you I’d had someone else’s baby?”

  He’s so tired he finds himself wondering if this could be true. But then he remembers the way Dana looked when she was nine months pregnant with Alex. The front of her summer dress billowing and her hands locked under her belly like she was carrying a secret garden inside. The memory of that time blazes up and then fades in his heart. He wonders if he’ll ever be that happy again.

  “Come on, Dana,” he says.

  “No, you come on.” She pushes him away. “You tell me that you’re trying to protect me and then you expect me to spend the rest of my life alone, waiting for you to get out of jail? What is that? What are you leaving me?”

  He puts the heels of his palms up to
his eyes. He’s already been grappling with the possibility that he might lose his license and go to jail in the next six months. Now does he have to worry about his marriage too? A kind of blueprint for sadness unfolds in his mind.

  “Dana, we can’t let this break us apart. We have to stick together.”

  “We’re going to. But that doesn’t mean I have to be happy right this minute.”

  Though they’re less than a foot apart, he still feels as if she’s stepping back and looking at him in a different way.

  “I need you,” he says.

  “I know.” She doesn’t cry. “I love you too, Jake. I’m just not sure I know you very well.”

  58

  Philip and Uncle Carmine are having coffee at a brand-new Russian bagel place on Twentieth Avenue in Bensonhurst. A white Ford Bronco pulls up outside and two pasty-faced Italian kids get out with their baseball caps turned sideways and their jeans riding low on their hips. A walloping hip-hop beat from their speakers rattles the windows of the restaurant.

  “Minchia, “says Carmine. “It’s gettin’ so you can’t tell our kids from theirs.”

  A pregnant-looking girl gets out of the Bronco and spits up in the gutter, like she has morning sickness. Then the three of them go into a Chinese takeout place across the street.

  “You know, I worry about your mother being here.”

  “Yeah?” Philip spreads butter on his bagel and looks over at one of the beefy Russian waitresses.

  “Ronnie too,” says Carmine. “He’s living over on Bay Ridge Parkway. He listens to all that rap music and wears all them nigger clothes. It’s like I raised a yom.”

  “Ah, Ronnie’ll be all right.”

  After all, the neighborhood hasn’t changed that much. The outsiders have made only minor incursions so far: a Korean sweatshop here, a Russian dry cleaner there. And some of them even pay tribute to the old-timers like Carmine for using his turf.

  He gives Philip a hard look. “I still haven’t worked out why they let the both of you go so soon,” he says.

  That hair tonic smell wafts across the table.

  “I told you already. We’re cooperating and making a case on the Jew lawyer.”

  “I don’t like anybody being a rat about anything.” Carmine’s eyes tilt back behind his glasses. “Especially not my own son.”

  “Hey, it’s not like we’re talking about you, C.”

  “You better not be.” He looks at the gold watch lost in the thickets of his arm hair. “Funzi was supposed to talk about me to the grand jury. Look what happened to him.”

  They found Funzi in the weeds near Kennedy Airport with something in his mouth that didn’t belong there.

  “Funzi was an asshole,” says Philip, thinking about the tape recorder the DA wants him to wear.

  A Russian waitress with raven hair and almost translucent skin brings Carmine his cup of espresso.

  “I hope Vladimir finally figured out how to make one of these things,” he says, taking the cup and saucer from her. “What’s the matter? You don’t know how to make an espresso in Russia?”

  The girl just rolls out her bottom lip.

  “Next time you see him, tell him he was a little short with the last envelope,” Carmine says.

  She shrugs, either not understanding the threat in his voice or not caring, and walks away.

  “Anyway,” says Philip. “No one’s going to bring you into what we’re talking about with the DA. It’s a murder case.”

  “I still don’t like it.”

  “Hey, C. It’s the only way out of this.”

  Steam from the espresso cup rises and condenses on Carmine’s glasses.

  He looks at Philip like he’s not really seeing him. “Why’d you have to bring Ronnie along when you whacked these bums? Now he’s on the spot for it.”

  Philip puts his bagel down.

  “No, C. He’s on the spot for what we did with Walt. Which you told me to bring him along for. Remember? ‘Show him the ropes’? So why you pointing fingers now?”

  Carmine puts his right hand over Philip’s left hand and squeezes until it hurts.

  “All I’m telling you is I’m holding you responsible for anything that happens to Ronnie,” he says in a low middle-of-the-night voice. “You’re my nephew. But if you cause me suffering, I’ll make sure you never forget it.”

  Under the table, he pushes his knee hard against Philip’s thigh.

  “How’s Nita?” He draws back his chair and stands up.

  Philip hesitates, wondering if Carmine’s heard about him moving out. Is this a test to see what kind of liar he is? He feels the disgrace of a man without a family.

  “You know.” Philip shrugs. “Women.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Carmine chucks him under the chin. “Bring the kids around one of these days. I feel like they’re growing up before I get to know them.”

  59

  John G. is back at the Interfaith Volunteers Center. A piece of brown cardboard is stuck over a window Yankel the Jew hater punched through after he stopped taking his meds. Geraldo Rivera is on the rec room TV, running down an aisle with a microphone in his hand.

  “Look at that Jew!” says Yankel, who’s back on Thorazine.

  “He’s not ajew,” says John G. “He’s Puerto Rican.”

  “I’m telling you he’s ajew!” says Yankel. “His real name’s Jerry Rivers.”

  “That’s his real name? Bullshit.” John rocks from side to side. “Jerry Rivers was a fake name. He’s always been Puerto Rican. Why would ajew pretend to be Puerto Rican?”

  Yankel smiles. “Because the P.R.’s are the ones who really run everything. The Jews are just a front.”

  “Maybe he’s a Puerto Rican Jew,” says a third guy sitting between them, a chunky, high-voiced black man who calls himself Shitskin. “Maybe his mama’s a Puerto Rican and his daddy’s a Jew.”

  “In my old nabe,” says John G., “the Puerto Ricans and the Jews hated each other almost as much as the blacks and the Jews.”

  “So maybe he hates hisself,” says Shitskin.

  They all just sit there for a minute, thinking about that.

  Over in the corner, a Dominican catatonic named Miguel dances in front of the fish tank, waving his hands like he’s trying to hypnotize the guppies.

  “Say, man, you wanna go see Scottie?” says Shitskin.

  “Nah, I just wanna chill,” says John.

  John stares at his fingers. He’s still tempted. Since he saw Margo the other night, he’s thought about getting high two or three times an hour. But he knows that if he falls again, he might not get back up.

  Easy does it. One day at a time. Keep out those bad ideas.

  “How’s it going?” A gruff man’s voice interrupts his flow.

  John G. turns and the first image that registers in his mind is a black fire hydrant. He takes a second to concentrate and organize his thoughts. The side of his brain that’s been having its way lately tells the rest of his mind that it’s not a fire hydrant. It’s a squat sloe-eyed black man wearing a gray golf cap. Possibly a new resident. Almost definitely another homeless guy, albeit without the dirty clothes and the funky street odor like a halo of flies around him.

  “How you doing?” he says a little louder, making sure John is listening.

  “I’m doing all right.”

  Just let me watch my show and leave me alone, John thinks. Bad enough he missed his last appointment at the clinic and showed up late at his NA meeting last night. Now they’ve got annoying friendly people at the center.

  Geraldo is screaming at two fat white women on the panel. “You’re both grandmothers! And you’re both sleeping with your granddaughter’s boyfriend! Do you expect people to feel sorry for you?!”

  The grandmothers’ boyfriend, a bristle-headed twenty-three-year-old mechanic, looks on sheepishly.

  “Ho, that’s fucked up!” says Shitskin.

  John’s reached a different kind of ledge in his life. On the one hand, he’
s not sure how to climb any higher; on the other, he’s afraid he’ll slip and fall into the abyss. The nights are what’s hardest. He finds himself waking up and calling out Shar’s name. The need to be with her and Margo, to touch them, to be lying in bed next to them is as bad as his craving for drugs.

  But then he remembers Margo is dying, and that yearning will never be satisfied.

  The past is the past.

  “You en-joying it here?” the man in the golf cap asks, sitting down between John G. and Shitskin. His left nostril and earlobe have the same skin pigment as a white man’s.

  “ ‘S all right,” John mutters, edging away from him down the couch.

  A commercial comes on the television. Nobody Beats The Wiz. Two happy, adorable children getting Nintendo from their parents.

  “Don’t give you much to do here, do they?” asks the man in the golf cap.

  “I don’t mind.” John G. has almost reached the edge of the couch and the armrest.

  “Hey, anybody ever say you look like Myron Cohen?” Yankel asks the man.

  “I’m just saying there are other kinds of places,” the man in the golf cap says to John G. “Some of these volunteer centers, they give you a place to sleep and they send you to NA meetings and that’s it. So where does that leave you?”

  “Hey, man, I’m trying!” says John, finally having enough of this fool and figuring the only way to shut him up is to talk back. “I’ve been clean for like a month.”

  Not counting the other night.

  “So what?” says the man. “Now you’re maybe on a par with the rest of the world.”

  He gets up and walks over to the window, gesturing to the fleet of taxis, buses, and regular cars making their way up Broadway. “Most of these people are clean too,” he says. “You come out of this place and say you don’t do drugs anymore, you know what they’re going to tell you?”

  He opens his arms as if he’s trying to pick up a boulder. “They’re gonna tell you, ‘Kiss my hairy butt sideways.’ There isn’t anybody who’s gonna give you an award for not doing drugs. ‘Cept somebody else in your program. And when they give you that little plastic me-dal-lion and a hug, how are you gonna trade that in for a steak?”