Willing

by Scott Spencer

  I was Osip, too, for now. I hurried to call Chelsea, not wanting to give Deirdre’s last words a chance to work their way through me. Are you standing in front of the building now? she asked me. I’m right here, I said. What are you wearing? she wanted to know, and though none of it seemed right to me, I just went along with it—getting robbed and beaten or even arrested seemed, for the moment, a better alternative than walking back to my apartment. I stepped back, looked up at the building’s uncovered window, thinking I could catch a glimpse of her, or at least see something that would tell me in no uncertain terms that it was time to flee, and I told her what I was wearing. A man in the largest Yankees shirt I had ever seen, a morbidly obese guy in his forties, with dark circles under his eyes, and mournful, downward sloping eyes, stopped for breath right next to me, eclipsing me. I don’t see you, Osip, Chelsea said, and I said Just wait a second. Oh, okay, Osip, I see you, she said. Now turn around—see that building right across the street, between the deli and the parking garage? That’s my building, and I’m in apartment 402. Okay, I said, be right over. It was a homey little high-rise, narrow, about fifteen stories high, porcelain-colored bricks, and a jaunty little green awning over the front door, like a card dealer’s visor. The only discomforting note: standing in front was a guy in a leather jacket, shaved head, a Roman nose, with a red-and-yellow scarf hung loosely around his neck.

  I crossed in the middle of the block, as we do in New York. I squeezed between the rear bumper of a shiny white Jeep and the front bumper of a beat-up Toyota with several parking tickets fluttering beneath its windshield wiper. My heart was with the scofflaw, the perpetrator of the victimless crime. Apartment 402, I reasoned, must be facing front. How else could she have seen me?

  A high percentage of people driving cars around New York City drive professionally—cab and limousine drivers—or, in the case of couriers and delivery people, as an integral part of their profession. Compared with traffic in other cites, where custom and design allow and even encourage the casual driver, the traffic in Midtown Manhattan is largely made up of cars whose drivers know the streets very well and know how to keep their wits about them, and who view stoplights and double-parked trucks and unpredictable pedestrians as part of the workplace, as a factory worker would see the furnaces, the lathes, the eyes-in-back-of-his-head foreman.

  Which is to say that what happened next was almost certainly my fault. I darted out from between two parked cars and then found myself directly in the path of a Lincoln Town Car. Judging from the lichenlike rust on the chrome around the headlights, and the slightly off-the-grid quality of its midnight blue paint job, the car was about ten years old, probably picked up second-or third-hand by the driver, who had scraped together enough money to go into the livery business himself.

  The misery was divided into three parts. First—and perhaps fore-most—was the psychological, all the fearful images that flashed through my mind as I saw what was about to happen to me. I saw death, I saw paralysis, I saw myself lying in a pool of my own blood, I felt tires running over my torso, and all of it occurred in the space of a heart thump, one wretched squeeze. I was sick, frozen, deluged with fright. If fear were snow, it was as if a winter’s worth of it had fallen in one second. And then my troubles really began. I stuck out my arm, my hand, Superman stopping a speeding car. I skidded backward as I pressed my palm against the Lincoln’s sun-baked hood. Distantly, I heard my voice saying Whoa, whoa.

  I experienced this first contact with the car as a surge of sudden heat, a wild leap of my internal temperature beginning with the heel of my hand. It’s amazing how much you can see in less than a second. I saw the driver, a man in his forties, with rich brown skin, with blue-black hair wet-combed straight back, small, decisive eyes, abrupt brows, a broad flared nose. He wore a blazer, a white shirt, a red and yellow tie. A guide to the city streets was fixed to the top of the dashboard by a chain and a suction cup. A couple of dowdy old pigeons were hopping and shaking around a puddle on the side of the street, taking a sad afternoon bath. A skinny white girl was practically bent over while pulling a huge amplifier down the street on its unreliable wheels; she was following a tall black man in a black gaucho hat with a pink silk band, who took long magisterial strides, with his chin thrust forward, and who carried two guitars crossed over his chest. An elderly woman in a Chinese silk jacket was spitting something out into a wire trash basket.

  The front bumper knocked into my shin. Any pain in my shin is electric, unbearable—feeling it makes it possible for me to imagine myself being mauled by a lion. Being hit in the shin—blamelessly, by the corner of a table; punitively, by my third father, Norman Blake, and his five iron—makes me frantic, as if I were being suffocated. I would rather be punched in the nose or kneed in the balls than have my shin hit with any force. The edge of the bumper sliced right through my Dockers, and the next thing I knew I was tipped up into the air, and falling forward, which was the setup for part three of my small catastrophe. I landed on the hood, slid along the hot metal sticky with sap and soot until the side of my head collided with the windshield, not with enough force to spiderweb the glass, nor even with enough force to render me unconscious—at least not for more than a moment or two—but with a dull cracking noise, a kind of muffled crunch. Like stepping on a glass wrapped in a towel. Beneath the heavy-hanging grayish sky, which sagged above me, come to think of it, like a chuppah.

  4

  THERE WAS an antiwar demonstration in Central Park, and a small contingent of protesters, frustrated by the orderliness of the march—why should the protests be so peaceful, while the war, anything but peaceful and orderly, went on and on?—stirred up some trouble around Columbus Circle. Nothing of any great impact, considering the stakes. Disrupting traffic, spray-painting NO BLOOD FOR OIL on the side of a building. But the police were having none of it—maybe they were as frustrated as this activist faction of young protesters over the essentially pro forma nature of the Central Park march, and they were looking for a chance to show their collective muscle, and their patriotic scorn for the antiwar kids. Several hundred officers, nightsticks drawn, surrounded the fifty or seventy-five protesters. All of them were arrested, most of them were roughed up, and quite a few of them were hurt badly enough to end up at the nearest hospital, which was Roosevelt.

  They began arriving minutes after me, and though the hospital was not unlike a police station, the sudden influx of cracked skulls, broken hands, and missing teeth created enough chaos to make me suddenly a low priority. I sat alone on an examining table, dangling my feet, and making calls on my cell phone, ignoring the sign on the wall directing patients and visitors to keep their cell phones off. I called Deirdre, though I wasn’t sure what I would say to her. I did think she ought to know that I had been hit by a car and that I was in the ER. However, she didn’t answer my call, and the next thing I knew I was calling my mother, though I had no idea what a call to Costa Rica would run me. She, too, failed to answer, but this time I didn’t just hang up. Hey, Mom, I said, not to worry but I wanted to tell you I got hit by a car this afternoon and now I’m sitting here in the hospital, waiting for someone to take a look at me. That’s about it, except Deirdre and I broke up. Well, Deirdre broke up with me, and I was on my way to doing something a little stupid when I got hit, so maybe it’s all for the best. Anyhow, it’s not too bad, just a bump on the head. In fact, just forget I made this call. Sort of a mistake. Bye.

  Shortly after, a doctor came into my little curtained cubicle, looked at me with palpable impatience, as if I were some crazy person who was constantly showing up in the emergency room and he had had enough of me. The bleeding on the side of my head had already stopped, and the doctor said stitches might be in order, but it was up to me. If it’s up to me, then I’d rather not, I said. What was mostly bothering me was I couldn’t really remember how I’d gotten here, but I didn’t dare say that for fear of being further detained. He shrugged and said It’s your call, but I have to tell you I think you’re
making a mistake. But he didn’t really give me a chance to change my mind. He simply left, and I sat there for a few minutes, feeling a bit dizzy, with a kind of underwater fullness in my ears, and a little neck soreness, until I remembered that I was supposed to meet my uncle Ezra for drinks at the Oyster Bar, and I simply put my shoes back on, checked over my shirt, gazed at myself in the looking glass over my cubicle’s little sink, was satisfied that I didn’t look all that much worse for wear, and walked out of the emergency room, through the corridor and the waiting room, where some of the protesters were making calls to families, friends, and lawyers while they waited for medical attention. I walked out of the hospital, where, as luck would have it, an air-conditioned taxi was waiting.

  I was going to see Uncle Ezra, which was also a lucky thing. Ezra had always cast a kind eye upon me. As my father’s older brother, he may have carried some guilt over my father’s suicide. Ezra was the type who liked to fix things for people, and he may have wondered if an emergency loan of a few thousand dollars might have saved Ted Kaplan’s young life.

  Ezra had gotten rich off buying insurance settlements from poor people at about forty cents on the dollar. If, for example, a poor woman had the wrong teeth yanked out by a hasty dentist and managed to win a settlement for, say, $50,000, that money in many cases would be paid out in installments, say, over the course of five years. The plaintiff, especially if she or he were poor, often could not wait for the entire payout. Enter Ezra, who would pay a lump sum $20,000 for the value of the suit. Instant, though diminished, gratification! The theory behind the business was Ezra could afford to ride out a five-year, or even ten-year, payout, collecting a drip here, a drab there, while a poor person generally needed a lump sum ASAP, the day before yesterday if possible, to make a car payment, get a beagle neutered, rent a motorized wheelchair. Ezra’s clients were the people who could not wait, and even as he picked up the rights to their insurance settlements for a song, he imagined himself as a benefactor. When he was younger, he had enjoyed delivering the larger checks himself. His office displayed several color photographs of Ezra being embraced by grateful recipients of his largesse.

  Ezra was an operator, and now, near sixty, he looked it, too. He was stout and sleek. On either side of his smooth polished skull, he had two well-tended swaths of hair, black as the fenders on an old Buick. He was a bit of a dandy, especially for a man who spent the best part of the day on the telephone. He wore jewelry, nail polish, and his clothes were all high quality, custom tailored, with notched collars, working buttons on the sleeves, and cut in a way that streamlined him. (When Ezra brought me to the Russian steam bath on East Tenth Street, I was surprised to discover that beneath all that cleverly cut cashmere Uncle Ezra had more or less gone to pot: his skin hung off of him like melted candle wax, and he was covered in brown spots.) Unless Ezra and his wife, Sheila, were on Long Island or otherwise traveling, or I was away on a writing assignment, Ezra and I met on the first Wednesday of every month, at the Oyster Bar, in Grand Central Station. American Transfer Rights was just a few steps away, on the tenth floor of a nearby office building—and what a dive that place was: nicotine-tinged air, dusty Venetian blinds, rows of metal file cabinets, and a staff of three stooped, clay-complexioned clerks Ezra seemed to have spirited from the nineteenth century.

  Ezra’s preferred spot at the Oyster Bar was at the counter—he thought it looked a bit fruity for two men to sit together at a table, with a flower in a vase between them. Side by side at the counter, like sitting at a bar, with plenty to look at. Ezra was usually fifteen minutes late, his way of letting me know he had many irons in the fire, and today was no exception. I took a seat at the counter and resolved not to tell Ezra that I had just sneaked out of the emergency room. He would have little patience for someone careless enough to walk in front of a car, and he would worry, too. All those years on the outskirts of the insurance game had filled his head with stories of unlikely disasters, and the delayed catastrophe was one of his specialties, people being in worse shape than they imagined: the food poisoning that hits twenty-four hours after the meal, the whiplash that appears a week after the fender-bender, the belated discovery of a surgical sponge lodged in your abdomen. If I told Ezra what had happened, he would more likely than not insist on taking me back to Roosevelt Hospital or, failing that, to his own personal physician.

  Look at you, Ezra said, sliding onto the stool next to me, you not sleeping or something? You look like something the cat dragged in. And what’s that on your head? Ezra reached for the little clot of blood above my ear, but stopped before touching it.

  I just bumped my head, I said, smiling. I’m fine.

  You bumped your head? Why would you bump your head?

  Well, it’s not as if I meant to. It’s like you said. I’m not sleeping all that well. Ezra narrowed his eyes, pursed his lips. He was simply a man to whom you told things. You couldn’t just say Hey, I’d rather not talk about it. So I said, Things are a little shaky, and he nodded sympathetically. It’s a very competitive field you’ve chosen. I don’t know how you stand it sometimes. I hated to tell Ezra about Deirdre’s infidelity—Ezra barely knew Deirdre, referred to her mostly as Your young friend, treated the whole thing as a dalliance, a by-product of the footloose life. But I didn’t want my uncle to think that I was suffering over career problems. Somehow, right now, that seemed the greater humiliation. It’s not that, Uncle Ezra. It’s Deirdre. She’s been—I stopped myself, suddenly feeling choosy about what words to use. She’s been somewhat less than loyal. Ezra’s little round eyes opened to their fullest aperture. She’s fucking around? She’s doing that to you?

  I made a helpless gesture. Handing over to Ezra the raw materials of Deirdre’s behavior and letting him shape them according to his own understanding of the world was like asking a gangster to help you collect a debt—things were going to be a little rougher than you might prefer. I felt I must come to her defense. She feels as bad about this as I do, just about. Oh, I’m sure, I’m sure, Ezra said, his voice shimmering with contempt. I’m sure she’s all racked up. A waiter was approaching to take our order, but Uncle Ezra waved him away. Then he laid his hand over mine. I’m sorry, Ave, I know it’s rough. But I’ll tell you what. You want to know what I think? To me, Ezra pointed to himself, Deirdre was a perfectly nice—Is, Uncle Ezra, not was; she’s not dead. Ezra put up his hands in a pantomime of surrender. I never said I wanted her dead. It’s just that the moment I met her, do you want to know what my first impression was? I thought this is a very nice girl, big, sexy, looks like a lot of fun, and certainly bright, with her history classes and all those family connections. He held up a finger, perhaps to say that was point number one, perhaps to keep my interruptions at bay. Too young for you? Sure, but what the hell? It’s her choice, right? And let’s face it, the girl’s never too young for the guy, the guy’s too old for the girl. Anyhow, it’s not like she’s in it for the money or the security. I winced, but it didn’t seem as if Ezra were trying to insult me; he was just stating the case. There was no second finger, though the first one remained aloft, and then, as if keeling over from its own weight, it slowly began to point directly at me. Main problem? He went silent, and remained so until I gave him a so-say-it-already look. Sure you can take it? Ezra reached into the little bowl of oyster crackers, picked up a few, rubbed them between his well-manicured fingers, let them drop. She put me in mind of your mother. My mother? I exclaimed far too loudly. The walls of the place were black and white tiles like the inside of the subway and sound bounced around. I’m surprised you didn’t see it, Ave, to me there was a lot of similarities. Similar bodies, that sort of sexy bottom-heavy situation. And they both are not set up to look after anyone but themselves: they’re not caregivers, you know? Not the maternal type. Me? I like the maternal type. Which Sheila is, by the way, even though we were not blessed with children of our own. This Deirdre’s shrewd, like your mother.

  I shook my head, No, no, my mother’s not shrewd. If any
thing she’s a little spacey. Ezra winced as if tasting something sour. It’s an act. I’m sorry, Ave, but that’s how it is. When your father died it took two seconds for your mother to find someone else, and when that didn’t work out…Well you know the story, it was your life. One man in, another one out, a revolving door, and meanwhile there you are, her one and only child, who she should have been putting first, there you are, the most confused kid on earth, not even allowed to keep your name, afraid of your own shadow, never knowing which way was up.

  I was fine, I said, my life wasn’t so bad. I tried to summon up the will to defend my mother from Uncle Ezra’s attack, but, in fact, since Gene Jankowsky’s death, and her move down to Costa Rica, I hardly ever saw her, and we spoke on the phone only occasionally, and those conversations were generally taken up with whatever had happened to her that particular day, matters mainly pertaining to the social life of the little tropical expatriate enclave where she lived, a Pacific coast town called Nosara where enterprising Costa Ricans lived with hundreds of tourists who had come to meditate, study yoga, and take digital photos of the howler monkeys.