The Town: A Novel

by Chuck Hogan

  “Itches like a fuckin’ disease,” she confided, scanning the room as she shimmied up the twins before taking another swallow and hustling on. “Don’t you guys lose those jackets or wander off nowheres. Pictures in a little while.”

  Gloansy stepped up in her place, rapping fists, looking foggy and dazed. “Fuckin’ shoot me now,” he said.

  Doug said, “She mentioned pictures.”

  “I know, I know. But it’s her wedding, man. I’m already ducking out on my own honeymoon, ain’t I? Your wife gonna let you do that?”

  Dez set him straight. “Elisabeth Shue will have absolutely no say in the matter.”

  Doug said, “Okay, Dez is blotto, but you better not be. Where’s Jem?”

  “Fuck knows. Lighting fires somewhere.”

  “Try to keep him cool too, all right?”

  Doug smacked fists with Gloansy and watched him slink away after his wife. He never liked that Joanie knew about their exploits—assuming she knew at least as much as Krista learned from Jem, which was much too much. Doug never understood that, telling your girlfriend, your wife, your Irish twin. At times he wondered how much his mother must have known—how much had been enough for her to leave. This was another reason they were so tough on outsiders. Heisting was the sort of thing you had to be born into.

  Dez said, “I better go check on Patrice,” and started toward the doors, walking chair back to chair back. Doug sat down again and watched an old couple dancing alone out on the parquet floor, cheek to cheek, the photographer shadowing them, flashing away. The shutterbug wore a cheap magician’s tux, his gold hair slicked back, something iffy about him in general. He was also the videographer, whose prying lens Doug had spent half the afternoon avoiding.

  “This seat taken?”

  Another prying lens he had been avoiding. Krista sat down and Doug focused on the clumsy dancers, clapping politely when the swing tune ended.

  She sipped her soda water lime, making certain he saw her do so. “Any idea why Dez’s date is crying in the bathroom?”

  Doug shook his head. “I don’t think she feels welcome.”

  “You haven’t said anything about my dress.”

  “It’s nice,” he said, not having looked at her since she sat down. He was in a cruel mood. That usually warned people away, but not Krista.

  “They say it’s good luck at a wedding if a bridesmaid and a groomsman hook up.”

  A new tune started quietly, the annoying DJ saying something about a special request. “Well, your girl Joanie needs all the good luck she can get.”

  She toasted that, drinking again, then leaning closer. “You know, I don’t think we ever did it straight. Sober, I mean. Think about it. Even once, all those years, I don’t think we just looked each other in the eye and went at it.”

  He heard, from the direction of the bar, voices cheering his name now and saw bottles and pint glasses going up in salute. He recognized the song then, “With or Without You,” the tune Doug had sung at Dearden’s wedding.

  More cheers and catcalls followed, and Doug nodded through his anger, glowering at the crumbs and gravy stains on the tablecloth.

  Krista touched his elbow with hers. “Dance with me?”

  “I don’t think I’m in a dancing mood.”

  “It’s a slow one. I bet I could change your mood. We don’t even have to dance dance, just stand together.”

  He looked up halfway, saw a few couples out there moving slow. He felt sluggish, like a candle burning down, the flame winking out.

  She laid her hand over his, rubbing the raised veins there. “You know you sang this song to me?”

  She turned his hand over, revealing its softer palm, nestling hers inside. Doug went blank for a while, determinedly so, until her hand slipped away again. She sat back.

  “Maybe I should ask Dez then.”

  Doug shrugged, feeling snuffed out. “Maybe you should.”

  Dez was cutting back across the room now, as though summoned by the music. He smiled their way, then in response to some motion of Krista’s, pointed to his own ruffled chest and changed course, heading over.

  “Hey,” he said, checking Doug, uncertain of what he was stepping into.

  “She leave?” asked Krista.

  “Yep,” Dez sighed. “She’s gone.”

  Krista swung her legs out from beneath the table, the dress falling off them. “Doug won’t dance with me. I need to dance.”

  It took Dez a moment to realize he was being asked. He checked Doug to see if it was okay. All Doug did was drink his drink.

  “Don’t look at him like he’s your boss,” she said, getting to her feet. “If you want to dance with me, take me out there.”

  “Sure,” said Dez, emboldened, seizing her offered hand. She finished her drink, pointedly setting the empty glass back down next to Doug’s. He was certain she had a look for him as she started away, but Doug wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of a glance. This was what happened when people break up but don’t leave each other, he thought. Scars itch and get picked at. Scabs form but never heal.

  Jem came up along the edge of the dance floor—he the solar center of this never-leaving, the rest of them spinning in his orbit of nostalgia, his scarredknuckle sentimentality, his bullying and unweaned devotion to the old ways of the Town. He was jacketless, half his shirttail hanging out, a High Life tangled in his fingers. Psycho glee in his face, white fire in his eyes. “Hey, to the bar. Toast to Gloansy.”

  Dez and Krista hadn’t gotten far, and Doug saw Dez let go of her hand. “You already made your toast,” said Doug.

  “That was for the corpses here, you know.” He came around and pulled Doug’s underarm, lifting him out of the chair, Doug smelling adrenaline on him as they moved. “How we lookin’, huh? Everything cool?”

  “Everything’s cool.”

  “I got the pieces, I got the vests.” He was close, talking in Doug’s ear as he pulled him along. “Got jumpsuits from this air-conditioning repair company outta Arlington—fucking perfect.”

  “We got a lot of work to do tonight. Cutting the fence, finding a truck to boost. Said you’d go easy, right?”

  “Ah, sleep—fuck needs it?”

  Alarming, the blue-white snap in Jem’s naturally fucked-up eyes. It was raining outside, but there was no mist in Jem’s penny-brown hair. “Where you been? What you been doing?”

  The grin. “It’s a party, man. Great occasion.” He pointed out the World War II medals under glass behind the bar. “Ever tell you my gramps was a war hero?”

  “Only every time you drink Car Bombs.”

  The laugh. “Hey—am I fuckin’ crazy, or what the hell was the Monsignor doing holding my sister’s hand?”

  The others assembled around Gloansy now, the commotion drawing in more guests and even a few ladies. “Just cool it,” said Doug, “all right?”

  Jem snarled a laugh—then broke from Doug’s side to rush up on Gloansy, fist cocked, following through with a fake sucker punch in slow, hard motion. Gloansy’s head snapped back, his toad lips spraying beer over their audience, with Jem’s cackle leading the dowsed guys’ laughter, the routine succeeding in scattering all the ladies except Krista. She remained close to Dez, trying to throw Doug looks.

  “Here we go,” said Jem, parting the group, revealing a cluster of a dozen or so High Life longnecks, uncapped and waiting.

  They went fast in the confusion, passed around like rifles during an ambush. Doug found one in his hand, cold and smooth. Jem said into his ear, “Gloansy’s big day, don’t be a fag.”

  Doug looked at the bottle in his hand, its grip familiar and icily sure. He missed most of the ribald toast, the bottle sweating cold into his hand—Jem saying something to the effect that while marriage and fatherhood were known to change a man, he was confident that Gloansy would always remain faithfully, resolutely, 100 percent gay. It ended with another explosion of drunken laughter and the old Irish salute: Here’s how.

  Doug’s b
ottle got clinked hard by Jem, who then turned his up to the ceiling and opened his throat to drain it at a swallow. Every bottle went up and empty around him.

  Doug’s life now: a drink he couldn’t swallow; a fortune he couldn’t spend; a girl he couldn’t date.

  It wasn’t the thirst that shook loose the first few boulders of the cave-in: it was this self-disgust. This worthlessness. And the feverishness of his friends, the box they had him trapped and suffocating in.

  Then the bottle was gone from his hand—Dez at his elbow, draining Doug’s beer with a wet-eyed wink of confederacy. Krista wiped her lips behind him, an empty in her hand. When she was drunk, she wanted to be sober; sober, she wanted to be drunk.

  Doug was halfway across School Street outside when Jem’s voice turned him around. “Yo!” he heard through the rain, Jem holding the door to the VFW post open at the top of the brick steps. “’S’up? Where you headed?”

  “Nowhere,” Doug told him, moving on. “That’s my problem. See you at midnight.”

  THE NAME NEXT TO the doorbell, hand-printed in all capitals, read KEESEY, C. The door opened wide, and her eyes followed suit.

  “Hey,” Doug said, breathing mist into the rain. “Wanna go for a walk?”

  She looked him over, his soaked tuxedo. She was barefoot with rosy pink toenails, wearing loose, maroon shorts and a soft gray T-shirt, warm and dry. She checked the street behind him, as though for an idling limousine. “What are you doing?”

  “I was just in the neighborhood.”

  She stepped aside. “Come in here.”

  He moved onto her white-tile landing, arms held away from his trunk like sopping branches. “Kick off the shoes,” she said, all business, pointing him ahead. “Hang your jacket in the shower.”

  In damp socks he padded over a lemon-carpeted living room to a bathroom of old black tile. He peeled off his jacket and draped it over the curtain rod, the pale pink shower curtain billowing, the sash of the frosted-glass window raised a few inches on the rain-swept back alley.

  Back out in the living room, clothes clinging, he took a good look around. Prints on the wall, the Maxell-tape guy being blown back into his chair, a couple kissing on a street in Paris. Her diplomas, high school and college. She had a decent Sony stereo set on a steel-wire hardware-store shelf unit, some CDs spilled around it. A cozy breakfast table stood outside the kitchenette, half of it taken up by mail, a checkbook, and statements in sliced envelopes, banded together. The centerpiece was a large wineglass with a small pink flower floating in it, which Doug looked at twice, believing it to be the glass from their night in and out of the Tap.

  She returned from her bedroom and made to toss him a clean, mocha towel—then pulled it back, holding it hostage. “Why haven’t you called me?”

  He was seeping into her carpet. “Because I’m an idiot. Because I’m a jerk.”

  “You are a jerk.” She tossed him the towel.

  He buried his face in it, hiding a moment, then went to work on his hair. He blotted uselessly at his pants, water running off him. “I probably shouldn’t have come.”

  “Unannounced? Dripping rain all over my place? No, probably not. Now sit down.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sit.”

  He eased down into the soft tan leather sofa, trying to minimize the damage. She sat on the coffee table opposite him, gripping its edge, bare knees facing him.

  “Are you coming from a wedding or something?”

  “I am.”

  “Yours?”

  He smiled only at the thought of it. “No.”

  “Your date dumped you?”

  “She sure would have, if I’d’ve brought one.”

  She studied his eyes, finding no lie in them, then wondering about the accuracy of her own internal polygraph. “Look at my hectic Sunday afternoon. What are you doing going to weddings alone? Why haven’t you called?”

  But before he could answer, she got to her feet and thrust out her hands, stopping everything. “You know what? Don’t even answer. It doesn’t matter. Because I’m past all this. I am past the dating games, the waiting games.”

  “I’m not playing games—”

  “I finally figured out that the reason my life feels so out of my control is because I haven’t taken control. Of it. And that is something I have to change.”

  “Look, don’t—can I tell you something? This is how messed up I am. Waiting outside your door just now—every time I’m about to see you, I tell myself, ‘She’s not going to be as pretty as you remember her. She’s not going to be as sweet. She’s not going to be as great.’ And every time I’m wrong.”

  She looked at the floor and blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. “I guess you’re entitled to your opinion,” she said, showing some game.

  “I try to tear you down in my head. Nothing against you—just reducing my expectations. Suffering through the breakup without even… is that crazy?”

  “No,” she said. “No, I know all about that.”

  He felt himself puddling on the sofa. “I’m sorry for showing up like this. It’s stupid. I’ll leave whenever you want me to.”

  She thought about that, then held out her hand for the towel as though the time to go was now—then threw the towel over his head and went at his hair vigorously with both hands. When she was done, she dropped down onto the sofa next to him, him pulling the towel down around his neck.

  She said, “I saw your picture yesterday.”

  That stopped him cold. The light smile on her face baffled him.

  “God, you look stricken,” she said. “It wasn’t that bad of a picture. On the wall at the Boys and Girls Club. You playing hockey.”

  Doug had imagined mug shots, surveillance photos. “Jesus. Right.”

  “A local hall of fame they have there.”

  Now he was squirming. “Please.”

  “It was a Bruins uniform you had on.”

  “Providence Bruins. Like minor leagues.”

  “You were drafted? You played professional hockey?”

  “There was a time, yes.”

  She waited. “And?”

  He was feeling her air-conditioning now, his shirt and pants going cold. “It didn’t work out.”

  She read the disappointment on his face. “Well—you gave it your all, right?”

  “Actually, it was worse than that. I got kicked out. I got into a fight with another guy on my own team.”

  She was almost smiling. “On your own team?”

  “This guy was better than me. I can say that now. Not much better… but I had never faced that before, someone with stronger natural skills. He was a shooter, all finesse, and sort of expected me to run interference for him. Me to take the hits and the penalties, him to get the shots on goal and the glory. And the coach supported this, everything about the team geared toward grooming this guy for his pro debut. What ignited me that day, I don’t remember. An accumulation of things. Both teams tried to pull me off him. I don’t even think he’d ever been in a hockey fight before in his life. The only shot he got in on me was as they were dragging me back. Kicked me with his skate.”

  She reached for the scar that split his left eyebrow. “Is that how you got… ?”

  “Yeah. Marked for life.”

  He remembered showing up hungover for practice the next day, and the coach coming up to him in the locker room, telling him not to lace up. Then the long walk upstairs to the general manager’s office, his agent waiting inside. The office windows looked down over the ice, and Doug watched the team practice as the GM waved around an unlit Tiparillo and berated him. Dollars and sense—how much Doug had cost the franchise, how little sense he had shown. And still, they weren’t shit-canning him completely. Take some time off, get your fucking head on straight, kid. Keep up with your workouts and stay out of trouble. They would have taken him back in a couple of months. But Doug returned home pissed off, back in the Town with a will to self-destruct. Getting loaded with Jem, pulling the n
ail-gun job. His agent wrote him a letter, something about the possibility of starting over in Hungary or Poland or somewhere. Doug never even called the guy back.

  Good, he thought, all this flashing through his head with Claire sitting right there next to him. Remember it all. Don’t blow this shot too.

  “You know,” she said, “when I first opened the door, I thought you’d been drinking.”

  Doug smiled, sad but determined, thinking of the wedding toast near-miss and shaking his head. “Not drinking. Thinking.”

  “I thought maybe you thought you were showing up here for a booty call.”

  “Ha!” he snorted. “How could you even… oh, man. No. I mean, unless you’re into it.”

  Not even a courtesy chuckle. He was only 70 percent joking, but her eyes effectively told the other 30 percent to take a hike. “What did you come here for?” she asked.

  The difficulty of that question sat Doug back. “This wedding reception I left? It was more like a farewell party. My own.”

  She nodded without understanding, needing more.

  “Let me ask you this,” he said. “Am I your boyfriend?”

  She smiled at the word. “‘Boyfriend?’ I haven’t had a boyfriend since sixth grade.”

  “Am I your guy? Could I be?”

  “I don’t know.” She didn’t flinch, eyes near and unblinking. “Could you?”

  The question hung in the air between them, her eyes inviting him to close the gap. He did—kissing her for as long as he could hold his breath—then he sat back, his question answered. “That’s what I came here for.”

  24

  THE SURV

  ON A SURV, MURPHY’S LAW reigns: forgetting your camera is the only way to guarantee that something photo-worthy will happen.

  Tailing Desmond Elden that drizzling Sunday afternoon brought them to St. Francis de Sales at the top of the real Bunker Hill (the famous monument actually stood atop Breed’s Hill; Dino assured Frawley it was a long story) for a May wedding, with Magloan, the car thief, apparently the groom. Frawley decided against risking entry, waiting curbside with Dino until it was over, then falling in with the attendees making their way down to the Joseph P. Kennedy Post of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, a stand-alone brick building located at the foot of the hill, behind the Foodmaster.