Potter's Field

by Rob Hart

  I’m tired of temporary.

  After more than a year I want some permanence.

  The woman in the aisle seat leans over to look out the window. She’s been asleep for the majority of the flight. Her eyes are soft and hazy, which confirms the theory I formulated when I climbed over her to hit the bathroom a few hours ago and she didn’t stir: popped some sleepytime pills before we took off. I don’t blame her. Nine hours is a long time on a plane. At least we were granted the mercy of an empty seat between us.

  I tried to sleep myself, but found I couldn’t—part discomfort, part anticipation—so I worked through four seasons of SpongeBob SquarePants on the seatback television. My brain feels like pudding that’s sat on the counter too long.

  “About to land?” she asks, stretching her hands above her head.

  I nod at her. “Just about.”

  When we got onto the plane we did the dance of strangers seated in close proximity—smiled and nodded without looking directly at each other, before she turned into a lump of frizzy blonde hair and purple eye mask and gray airline-issued blanket. Now she’s all warm and smiles, like we’re pals.

  She does a doubletake when she gets a good look at my face. Patch-worked with bruises, fading from eggplant purple to snot yellow. She can’t even see the full tapestry: there’s plenty more covering my torso, visible through the plastic wrap cinched around my waist holding together what is either a broken or a badly-bruised rib.

  At least, that’s what the stabbing pain when I cough or laugh or breathe too hard makes me figure.

  Souvenirs from my time in Prague.

  She notices I’ve noticed her looking at my face so she goes looking for a more comfortable topic of conversation. “How was the flight?” she asks.

  “Uneventful. Dinner options were chicken or vegetarian. I got the chicken.”

  “How was it?”

  “Not terrible.”

  She nods. Glances out the window again, watches as the plane descends, details coming into focus. The thickness of traffic on the Belt Parkway. We pass over Coney Island, the Wonder Wheel like a child’s erector set from this height. My heart flips in my chest.

  “Coming or going?” she asks.

  “Sorry?”

  “Are you coming home or going someplace else?”

  “Coming home,” I tell her. “You?”

  “Visiting family. What do you do?”

  The real answer unspools in my head: amateur private investigator, though for a long time I preferred to think of myself as a blunt instrument. Point me at a job—carry something, find someone, scare someone—I got it done, and usually accepted cash upon completion. Though I would gladly take drugs or alcohol because I was fine operating on a barter system.

  That answer used to tickle me. It felt cool and dangerous. Now it seems silly.

  I settle on telling her, “Still trying to figure that out. How about yourself?”

  “Paralegal,” she says. Extends her hand. “Ashley.”

  I laugh. Pain shoots through my midsection, like someone digging a pen into my side, and I wince. Take her hand and shake it. “Me too,” I tell her. “But everyone calls me Ash.”

  She chuckles. “I’ve never met a male Ashley before.”

  “It used to be a boy’s name. Good Irish name. That changed around the 1980s.”

  She nods. “So you’re from here, then? From New York?”

  “Born and raised.”

  “Been traveling?” she asks.

  I nod, not really wanting to expand on that.

  “I was born here,” she says. “Had to leave though. It just got to be… too much.”

  “It can be that,” I tell her, watching as we hurtle toward a runway at JFK. “And sometimes it doesn’t feel like enough.”

  She smiles like I said something clever, though truthfully, I’m not entirely sure what I meant. It just slipped out. The important thing is, the only thing that matters as the wheels touch down and the plane jolts and shudders is: I am home.

  The line through customs feels nearly as long as the flight. Once I clear that I hunt for a place to exchange my Czech crown, pulling thick wads of bills out of my toiletries bag, feeling a little sad to part with it because I really came to enjoy the Monopoly-money aesthetic of European cash.

  I end up with a little over four grand. Which is not great. In this town, that’s one month’s rent and a sandwich. Not even a good sandwich. I’ve got a little money in the bank, but all together I’m not sure it could cover first, last, and security on a new place. I plan on being careful with my money, but then see an electronic kiosk offering no-contract cell phones, so I stop and navigate the touchscreen until it spits one out. On the way to baggage claim I toss my useless European-band phone into an electronics-recycling bin. No great loss. It was a burner anyway.

  After retrieving my duffel bag from the carousel I head to the cab line, step into the kind of cold that makes it seem like the air is angry with you. Climb into a yellow cab, suck in the smell of body odor and spilled food and old leather.

  May as well be perfume.

  “Macdougal and West Third, please,” I tell the driver.

  He says nothing and drifts from the curb. The television screen screeches at me with some cutesy news program aimed at tourists. A perky woman sits on a stoop, interviewing a celebrity I don’t recognize. I jab at the corner until the touchscreen registers my frustration.

  The cab speeds through the arteries of the airport until we hit Linden Boulevard and things slow down. I pull out my new phone, get it set up, check my e-mail—finding nothing—then key in the only two phone numbers I know off the top of my head: Bombay and my mom.

  I open up the text message screen and type ‘mom.’

  Hover over the message field.

  Think about my face. The bruises. Having to explain them.

  Delete ‘mom’ and type ‘Bombay.’

  Write: Home.

  Almost immediately he writes back: What’s the plan?

  Need a place to crash.

  Last time you stayed here someone trashed my apartment.

  You’re right. I’ll get a hotel, like a fucking tourist.

  Living in St. George now. I’ll send you the address.

  Love you.

  Bombay responds with a smiley-face emoticon, followed with an address on St. Mark’s Place.

  Last I heard he’d moved to Brooklyn. Moving back to Staten Island might be a money thing—the rents are cheaper—or a nostalgia thing. I wonder which.

  The driver picks up speed and I doze until we hit the Manhattan Bridge, and even though its freezing outside I tap the button for the window to bring it down a little, let the air wash over me and wake me up as the city roars in our path. It is old and grand and dirty and beautiful and I have missed it. I didn’t leave on the best of terms. All problems of my own making, and it’s probably been long enough that nobody really wants to do me harm anymore. Still, it raises the question of what kind of welcome I’m going to get.

  I think back on my conversation with Ashley. About what I do. About not knowing. That wasn’t entirely true. I know what I want to do with my life. Now, after all these years, running around like I owned this town, playing games and acting like a tough guy, I get it. Where I fit. What I want to be.

  A private investigator.

  No more ‘amateur’. No more moonlighting as a hired thug. No more barter system.

  This is what I want to do with my life.

  Now I just have to figure out how to make that happen.

  The cab stops. I hand the driver a wad of cash and climb onto the street, the sidewalk so crowded I immediately have to duck and dance to avoid getting trampled.

  The sun is setting. Macdougal doesn’t look much different. A tangle of restaurants and shops, kids from NYU who haven’t yet gone for the holidays wandering around like insects afraid of the lights, on the hunt for a sloppy drunk. Yellow cabs speeding down the block to catch the green at Bleecker. Filthy sn
ow on the ground, collected in thin strips along the edges of the sidewalk.

  The night before I got on a plane and left New York, I sat in the middle of this street during a freak snowfall. Early for the year, and a hell of a thing to see. No cars, no people, nothing, just the vast emptiness of MacDougal covered with a layer of white. Seeing it now makes it feel like I went to sleep and woke up and found everything like I left it, the snow cleared and trampled and the city going on with its business. Just another day. Like the past year didn’t happen.

  How sometimes when you’re having a dream where you’re late for something, and you wake up angry at yourself for being late, but then you realize: no, I’m not late. I’m here.

  Then I look across the street and find the coffee shop where I spent years of my life sitting on the worn armchair in the back is now a Korean barbecue joint. My heart shatters on the asphalt.

  Before I left, that would have sent me into a spiral of drinking and yelling at people. Now it’s just a heartbreak. It’s sad, for sure, and I wish I could have been here to say goodbye, but that’s the nature of New York. We are constantly losing the things we love in favor of whatever can afford to take their place. It’s not the reality I want, but it’s one I have to accept.

  Mamoun’s, at least, is still here.

  I’ve been thinking about this place the entire flight home. I’m glad to have access to decent pizza and bagels again, but right now all I want to eat in this world is a shawarma. Roasted lamb and lettuce and onion and tomato in a pita with tahini sauce. The most perfect thing in the world. Doesn’t matter how hungry you are, just one and you’re content. Not hungry, not stuffed, just satisfied. And even though it’s fast food, there are vegetables on it, so you can feel good about yourself.

  There are more falafel and shawarma joints in this city then there are rats, roaches, and tourists, but none of them come within screaming distance of Mamoun’s. The line is long and the price has gone up by a dollar but I don’t care. I get my shawarma, wrapped in foil and shoved in a brown paper bag with a pile of napkins, then step outside, stand at the curb, drop my duffel bag to my feet, and dig in.

  It tastes like I remember. Like a million nights standing in this spot, being happy, but not happy like the way I am right now, which is the kind of happy you only get when you know the things you love were almost lost to you, but you found them again.

  As I’m finishing off the last of it—still proud of myself for being able to eat one of these things without getting my hands covered in tahini sauce—a black Escalade with tinted windows pulls to the curb. It stops in front of me and the flashers go on.

  Out steps Samson.

  Still big like a childhood nightmare is big. Still wearing his leather duster and sunglasses.

  Still doesn’t seem to like me, either.

  “Ginny would like a word,” he says.

  I take the remains of the aluminum foil, stick it in the paper bag, ball the whole thing up, and toss it into the trashcan next to me. “My plane isn’t even refueled. How does Ginny know I’m back?”

  “Ginny knows all.” He opens the back door. “Get in.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  He doesn’t answer, because he knows I already know what he would do.

  I grab my bag, toss it into the car. It has that new car smell. Vinyl and plastic. That smell is actually volatile organic compounds. Toxins seeping into the air. Most people find that smell comforting, but it’s not good for you. So, pretty much the perfect analogy for getting into this fucking car.

  The door slams and Samson lumbers into the driver’s seat, the car dipping down under his shifting weight.

  This ought to be interesting.

  Because the last time I saw Ginny, she tried to kill me.

  I was wondering what kind of welcome I’d get. It matches the air temperature, which numbed my fingertips and burnt my earlobes while I ate my shawarma.

  Cold as fuck.

  I had forgotten a notebook in my locker. My teacher let me duck out to grab it. Gym classes were over so the locker room was silent, that lull before the end of day, when various teams would file in to get ready for practice.

  I was just closing my locker when I heard the sound of a thud.

  Something heavy hitting something flesh.

  The locker room was laid out like a barbell. A room filled with lockers and benches on one end, connected by a narrow corridor of showers and toilets, with another set of lockers and benches on the other end. Beyond that, a special locker room reserved for the football players.

  I stuck the notebook in my pocket and wandered to the other side of the locker room. Curious more than anything. As I got closer I heard more sounds. The kind of sounds you hear and they set you on edge.

  Heavy breathing.

  A low, raspy growl.

  The register that accompanies violence.

  I peeked into the football locker room, saw one of the linebackers. I didn’t know his name, didn’t care to know his name, all I knew was he looked unfrozen from a block of ice. The kind of person you can figure sometimes misspells his own name.

  His beefy arm was wrapped around a scrawny kid’s neck. The kid was clawing at the linebacker’s arm, trying to get free, but it may as well have been a cat swiping at a brick wall. The kid’s face was purple and his eyes were rolling back in his head.

  The bomb I carried in my chest went off. This was when was angry in ways I didn’t know how to handle, except to be constantly looking for an outlet.

  “Hey dummy,” I said.

  The scrawny kid looked at me, on the verge of passing out. The linebacker didn’t acknowledge me. So I picked a helmet off the floor and flung it at him. It smacked him on the forehead.

  That got his attention.

  He threw the kid into a bank of lockers hard enough I winced, and then came at me like a locomotive.

  I’d heard rumors about kids on the football team taking steroids and the coaches looking the other way. I’d heard another rumor about a linebacker having a roid-rage freakout on a teacher and the whole thing getting brushed under the rug because he was a D-1 recruit.

  Given the steam coming out of the guy’s ears, I figured the rumors were true.

  In a fair fight he would have eaten me as a snack. But the thing about roid-rage is, it doesn’t make you smart. So it was a simple matter of sidestepping and using his momentum to ram his face into the exposed brick wall.

  There was a wet smack and his head snapped back, his nose gushing red. He stumbled to get his footing so I kicked the back of his knee and he went down. I threw a hard right into his chin, which spun him around so that his face cracked off the bench. As he tried to get up something small rattled on the stone floor.

  I thought it might have been a chip of stone off the wall but it turned out to be a tooth.

  Before he could stand up to full height I proceeded to stomp him. Aiming for body shots. I didn’t want to kick him in the back of the head and sever his brain stem or anything, but I wanted to make sure he would remember how it felt.

  The pain. The helplessness.

  I wanted him to remember.

  After a little while, the scrawny kid grabbed me. Pulled me away. Said, “You’ll kill him.”

  I snapped out of it. Turned to look at him.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I said. Not really sorry. The linebacker wasn’t moving, so I knelt down and checked to make sure he was still breathing. Which, yes.

  The scrawny kid was Italian, with aquiline features and more five-o’clock shadow than you’d expect on a high school student. He was angry, too. Like he wanted to get some stomps in himself but knew the guy wouldn’t notice at this point.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  The kid’s eyes darted around the room, like he was trying to come up with an excuse for being in the locker room with a football player at a time that probably no one would stumble across them. It took me a second, but then I put i
t together myself.

  “You know what?” I told him. “We don’t need to talk about that.”

  He smiled. I figured at that point we should leave, but reality was setting in: the football players were going to want revenge. I had probably benched this kid for the season. I could have argued self-defense, but that was before I beat him into putty. And if history was any indication, the administration would take his side.

  “We have to protect ourselves,” I said.

  The kid nodded. “Don’t worry about that. We’ll be fine.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “Oh, I have contingencies.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  The kid smiled again. This time it was sharp.

  “Pictures,” he said.

  He leaned down. The linebacker stirred and groaned as the kid poked him in the shoulder.

  “You hear that?” he asked. “I’ve got pictures.”

  The linebacker seemed to nod.

  “Well, that’s good,” I told him. “Now we need to go.”

  As we made our way toward the exit, the kid put his hand on my chest to stop me. Looked me square in the face. I knew what he was going to say before he said it.

  “You’re that guy. Your dad…” His eyes went soft and his hand went to his mouth. Involuntary.

  I expected him to say what most people said—some pabulum about my dad being a hero, about how sorry he was—but he didn’t. He studied my face, which was revealing way too much about how I was feeling in that moment, about how much I hated being an object of pity and curiosity. That bomb in my chest ticking again.

  Finally he said, “You know what? We don’t need to talk about that.”

  My shoulders dropped. “Thank you.”

  “Why did you do it?” he asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Intervene.”

  I glanced back toward the locker room. “I don’t like bullies.”

  “You could have gotten hurt.”

  “I didn’t.”

  The kid nodded. Offered his hand. “I’m Paul.”

  “Ash.”

  “Ash? Like short for Ashley?” He laughed, and all the fear fell away. He stood up a little straighter, taking on the quality of something I didn’t know then, but looking back now I can say was the poise of a confident women holding a martini glass. He said, “That’s a girl’s name, darling.”