by Ivy Pochoda
“Perdoname,” the wino says, clutching Cree’s hand. “Perdoname. No era usted. No era usted.”
“He says it wasn’t you,” Des says. “How about a dollar?”
“Fuck your dollar,” Cree says.
Cree stares into Des’s face, searching, as he always does, for any remnant of Marcus in his uncle’s withering skin and cloudy eyes. But there’s nothing.
The lights are out in the living room. The apartment is silent. Cree drops his keys on the kitchen table and listens to them skid across the Formica.
“Acretius?”
Cree jumps at the sound of his grandmother’s voice.
“Turn on the light, Acretius.”
Cree switches on the overhead in the kitchen. Grandma Lucy is sitting at the far end of the couch. Her hands are folded in her lap. A small valise is next to the window. “Where’s Celia?” Cree says.
“I sent her home. Everybody in this family is running from something. I’m tired of it. Sit.” She pats the spot next to her on the couch.
Cree pulls out a chair. Grandma Lucy fingers her pendulum. “Don’t think for one instant I don’t know how badly you want to talk to Marcus’s spirit. But let me tell you something. A spirit is not something you see or hear. It’s something you feel. An idea. And you can’t go looking for it. It comes to you.”
“But not to me,” Cree says.
“Is that so?” Lucy folds her arms across her chest and stares at the silent television. “Is that so?” she says again. “You have less sense than I imagined. You can switch off the light.”
Cree stands in the dark for a moment, aware of his grandmother’s irritation. He hears the knife edge of her breath. “Good night, Grandma,” Cree says, crossing to his bedroom.
“You ever think about why this boy’s come for you? You ever think about that?”
“Not until I had to,” Cree says.
“Well,” Lucy says, “if you thought about things the way I do, you might alight upon the idea that this boy is the means by which Marcus talks to you. But that is a decision you’d have to make for yourself.”
Cree hovers at the bedroom door for a moment, but Lucy is done.
In the morning when he gets up, Lucy has run Gloria’s bath, fixed coffee and toast. The two women are looking through an incense and oils catalog and don’t notice when Cree slides out the front door.
He rushes down the stairs, dashes through the courtyard, and breaks into a run on Lorraine Street. He arrives at the lot. The boat is gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
When the taxi is midway across the Brooklyn Bridge, Jonathan squints at the numbers on the meter, trying to distinguish them from the numbers on the radio and the glowing digits on the clock, which are all jumping up and down and melting into one LCD trail. His eyes swivel in their sockets. His optic nerves shake. He tries to focus on one number, but it jitters side to side, then disappears completely.
The radio is turned to KTU. Dance music is flooding the cab. Jonathan’s jaw is tense. His head, lolling against the vinyl headrest in the backseat, is velvet and heavy. He closes his eyes and the insides of his eyelids feel like satin. His stomach is melting. The window is open and one of his hands is trailing outside the cab. The air between his fingers seems mentholated.
Dawn is next to him. He rolls his head to one side to get a look at her, but he can’t focus well enough to see how disheveled her drag is. He feels her vibrating next to him, her head dropping toward his shoulder as she caresses his knee with her hand. Jonathan worries if she stops rubbing he’ll come down.
The drugs had been Dawn’s idea—one E each to celebrate a successful night during which they’d brought down the crowd with a showcase of “Patriotic Songs of War.” Dawn had worn a floor length red, white, and blue sequined dress, with a sash that read “Miss America.” She’d chosen a blond wig that reached for the stars. She topped it off with a tiara.
A week ago a man who claimed to be a talent scout from a cruise line gave them each his card. Dawn nearly shoved her tongue down his throat in appreciation. Tonight the scout was back in the audience. He told Dawn that he loved her act. “We’re going international!” she said, squeezing Jonathan’s ass.
“Yeah, I can just see myself on the lido deck,” he said. “When that ship sails, you’ll be cruising alone.”
“Don’t be a dead fish. Let’s celebrate.” She pulled a pillbox out from the crevice between her falsies. “One pill doesn’t do anything,” she said, forcing the capsule between Jonathan’s lips before their final set.
Now Jonathan’s in the cab with Dawn. He draws a deep breath, which takes forever to fill his lungs. He sits up and wills the clock on top of the Watchtower building to hold-fucking-still for a second so he can find out how late it is or how early. The suspension cables on the bridge collapse and separate.
The driver’s yelling at them over the music.
“Fuck you two say you’re going?”
Jonathan steadies himself on the divider between the front and back seats. He rests his chin on the hard metal lip. “Take the expressway,” he says. “Toward Staten Island.”
They overshoot the exit and have to double back below the expressway’s dirty underbelly. They thread their way through the projects and pull onto Van Brunt.
“You sure know how to treat a lady,” Dawn says, stepping out of the cab. Jonathan notices that she’s wearing jeans, a fur jacket, a girl’s T-shirt, and the white platforms. She’s brushed out her wig so it falls around her shoulders.
Jonathan overpays the driver and slams the door without offering to direct him back to the city.
Dawn had taken E to celebrate, but Jonathan had other reasons. He knew the drug would lift his spirits. He disregarded the inevitable comedown—the morbid Sunday of self-reproach that awaited him.
When he kissed Val in the dark corridor behind his front door, he knew he’d made a mistake. He was aware of the relief coursing through her body. So he kissed her because he believed that’s what she wanted. At least, that’s how it started.
It had been nice, Val’s mouth on his, the quick excitement of her breath giving way to the easy flow of their tongues as the kiss found its pace and rhythm. There was none of the smoky char of kissing Lil’s barrel-aged mouth—the sour aftertaste of whiskey and beer. There was nothing needy or demanding in the simple movements of Val’s lips. With Val, Jonathan realized how much he missed being kissed by someone who wanted to kiss him because he was Jonathan and not just because he was the last man standing at the end of another long night.
This was something he’d skipped in high school. He’d preferred to tangle with bad girls, the ones brave enough to talk their way into stale-smelling dive bars on Second Avenue—the ones for whom kissing was a gateway drug quickly abandoned in favor of more serious pleasures.
Jonathan had let the kiss go on too long. He’d pulled Val in tighter, as if he was trying to squeeze everything out of the moment. Because he knew when he let go, that had to be the end of it.
When he returned from the bodega, Val had made herself comfortable on his couch. There was no way for him to avoid the expectant look on her face that told him she wanted more. But he didn’t kiss her again.
All day, he consoled himself with the fact that it could have been worse. In his deep, drunken stupor, he could have rolled over and grasped her. He could have mindlessly gone through the motions, only regaining consciousness when it was too late. He couldn’t think about that. That’s what the E was for.
He and Dawn stand shivering on Van Brunt. Jonathan takes a moment to collect himself. The Dockyard’s vibrating neon signs come to a standstill. The street feels solid beneath his feet.
“Jesus,” Dawn says. “This fresh air is going to kill my high. Get a girl inside.” She heads for the door.
Inside, the night has wound down to its hollow core. No one is tending bar. A few drinkers are huddled at a table near the window, one slumped, his head wedged between a stand of empties, while t
wo others talk at each other over his rounded back. Jonathan is too gone to determine who they are.
“What’s a girl have to do to get a drink?” Dawn says.
“The question is not what but who,” Jonathan says. Then he sidesteps before Dawn can pinch his ass.
Of course Dirty Dan is there. His hangdog, puppet face is distorted with a sloppy smile, which widens when he sees Dawn, who has taken off her fur bolero, revealing a tiny T-shirt that ends a few inches above her navel. “I didn’t know chicks with dicks were your style, Maestro.” Dirty Dan lets out his cackle.
Even though Dirty’s trying to cling to youth by wearing skater clothes, Jonathan can tell what he will look like when he’s old—a spindly, withered drunk with a booze-distended belly.
Fucked up as he is, Jonathan knows the best thing to do is let Dirty ramble until he runs out of fuel. The reason Dirty doesn’t get thrown out as often as Jonathan is that he’s the only drug dealer who sticks around until late, using more than he sells, then giving it away for free.
Jonathan taps Lil on the shoulder. “Is it open bar tonight?”
Her face has a late-night gloss of sweat and booze. Her eyes are narrowed.
“Nothing wrong with experimenting, Maestro,” Lil says. “It’s good for you to play with someone strong enough to carry you home.” She gives Dawn a half-mast stare. “He was mine first you know.”
“I just want a drink,” Jonathan says.
“Help yourself,” Lil says.
Jonathan slides behind the bar.
“Real chic scene out here,” Dawn says. “How come you never invited me over before?”
“I didn’t think you’d like my friends,” Jonathan says.
“These are your friends?” Dawn arches a penciled eyebrow. Then she pounds her drink like a sailor. “Well, that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.” She kisses the top of Jonathan’s head. “I’m going to powder my nose.”
Jonathan watches her walk to the back of the bar. There seems to be a little more hip and dip to her walk as she transforms the Dockyard into her personal runway. Dirty Dan catcalls as Dawn passes. She stops walking and turns to face him.
“Oh yeah?” she says.
“Yeah,” Dirty says. But there’s a glitch in his gab. Dirty Dan is tall, but in her heels, Dawn towers over him.
Dawn takes Dirty by the shoulders as if she is about to kiss him. Then she pushes him away. “Not with these lips, honey.”
Jonathan’s high has lowered his guard. He doesn’t notice that Paulie Marino is standing in front of him. Paulie has to bang the table to get Jonathan’s attention.
“You little fucking pervert,” Paulie says.
Jonathan’s eyes widen as he tries to get his vision to stop shaking.
“You little perv.”
Jonathan struggles to his feet, but slips and slides back to the bench. The muscles on either side of Paulie’s neck are twitching. The group in the back of the bar turns from their game and stares at Jonathan.
“I couldn’t find my kid all day, then I learn from your druggie girlfriend that my little girl carried you home last night.”
Jonathan’s head is spinning so fast he can’t figure out how to glower at Lil.
“You don’t get it,” Jonathan says. He glances over at Lil and her crowd. But no one steps forward.
“What the fuck did you do to my little girl?” Paulie’s voice rises above Lil’s wheedling country music. “Tell me.” He takes a step closer.
The things that get forgiven in the Dockyard—the late-night slipups, the guys Lil’s hooked up with after their girlfriends went home, the couples who’ve been discovered naked in the storage room, the two-day benders that have wrecked marriages, the people who’ve vomited, who’ve wet themselves, who’ve propositioned police officers, the people who’ve stolen and destroyed—all of them excused when the sun rises. Jonathan’s mistake is not one of these.
Lil’s crew watches with detached fascination—immobile and riveted, eager to see what unfolds so they will have a story to tell the next night.
“Lil?” Jonathan says, hoping she’ll step in, deflect the inevitable, and preserve the night’s debauchery. Lil doesn’t move.
Jonathan doesn’t resist when the first punch lands on his right eye. The second summons a warm gush of blood from his nose. The third splits his lip. His eye is already swelling shut. He struggles to keep the other one open, which is how he sees Dawn stride over and clock Paulie in the jaw.
Paulie staggers back.
“You wouldn’t hit a girl, now would you?” Dawn says. She squats down at Jonathan’s side. Her wig is in place. Her makeup is refreshed—her lips relined, her cheeks matte. She wipes blood from his nose. “Oh, baby,” she says, “what have you done?”
Jonathan tries to speak, but his bruised and bloody mouth won’t let him.
Dawn helps him to his feet. “Excuse us,” she says, pushing past Paulie. She turns and waves her glossy red nails at Lil and Dirty Dan. “Now, you all know how to show a girl a real good time.”
Jonathan’s face throbs. His swollen eye has its own pulse. When he talks, his busted lip feels as if it’s going to explode. Dawn stays with him for two days. She borrows his clothes. Except for her carefully shaped eyebrows, in Jonathan’s black jeans and T-shirts, she is simply Don from New Jersey—a trim, well-muscled man with glowing skin. Don knows how to take care of the wounded with icepacks, hot compresses, tea, and steamed vegetables from the bulletproof Chinese. But these attentions only ease Jonathan’s physical discomfort.
Eventually Dawn has to return to the city. She has a meeting with her cruise ship talent scout. She does a pretty good job of hiding her disappointment that Jonathan won’t accompany her.
“You’ll knock ’em dead on your own,” Jonathan says. “How many times have I told you that you don’t need me?”
After Dawn leaves, he turns the radio on for company. A jingle he wrote a year ago for a used car dealership plays on a constant loop. Its artificial joy is a rebuke. He wishes he could drink less and sleep more, but he does the opposite.
By Tuesday morning, the area around his eye looks like the inside of a plum—concentric circles of purples, pinks, and yellows. His lip is still busted and cracked. He takes a long shower and shaves carefully. He finds his cleanest clothes. Despite his battered appearance, he’s determined to go into work.
Fadi notices Jonathan’s bruises but doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t charge him for his coffee. When Jonathan exits the bodega, Valerie is standing at the bus stop. He raises his hand to cover his swollen eye. She’s wearing pink knee socks with her loafers—a direct violation of St. Bernardette’s dress code. An open textbook is in her hands. Twice she glances up from the page and into Jonathan’s apartment. He resists the urge to call out to her. Valerie looks down the street for the bus. Then she closes her textbook, slides it into her book bag, and begins to walk to school. As much as he’d like to catch up to Val, he can’t risk being seen with her in Red Hook.
While Jonathan was watching Val, a black teenager has come down Visitation and stopped in front of the mural of the cruise ship someone painted on one of Fadi’s roll gates. He paces in front of the painting. Eventually he catches Jonathan’s eye. It takes Jonathan a moment to place him. It’s the boy Val jumped into the bay with the day of June’s vigil.
“S’up?”
Jonathan nods. If this is the first person Valerie kissed, then Jonathan is the second. Even he has to admit that this is not a step in the right direction.
“You cool?” the boy says.
He remembers how this boy had stood on the pier, watching as Jonathan dressed Val. He feels like an adulterer, a thief. Next to this kid he feels deformed.
The boy shrugs and rubs his bald head. “Okay, man. Enjoy your day.”
The 61 rumbles into the stop. Jonathan dashes toward the open door.
Every time the bus hits a bump or pothole, Jonathan’s eye throbs. He anchors his chin with his hand, soft
ening the impact. As the bus crosses from Red Hook into Carroll Gardens, Jonathan catches sight of Val. She swings her arms as she walks. Her chin is tilted upward, her eyes trained on something in the sky. It was enough to rescue her that first time. The second time he found her in the water, he should have let her be. She didn’t need him. It was the other way around.
He waits for the steps to clear of students before entering St. Bernardette’s. He will take the back stairs up to his classroom and hide behind his piano. He will keep the lights off and show the girls another film of an opera. The second bell rings. He can hear the lobby quieting down, the last footfalls of students rushing to class.
He is alone in the lobby when the school secretary pokes her head out from behind the door that leads to the chapel and administrative offices. “Sister Margaret needs to see you, Mr. Sprouse.”
Perhaps Valerie was looking into his window this morning to warn him, as if she could spare him his fate. Jonathan enters the administration wing. The swinging door closes behind him, shutting him off from the rest of the school.
Sister Margaret sits behind her desk, watched over by a stained-glass window of the Blessed Virgin. She and Jonathan have had little to do with each other since he was hired two years ago. A manila folder is open on her desk. She does not look up when he enters.
“Take a seat, Mr. Sprouse.”
Her wimple throws her face into shadow.
“I’m going to ask you a question plain and simple, and I’m going to expect a plain and simple answer.”
Jonathan glances around the office. He inhales its scent of musty paperwork, old wood, and pencil shavings. This is the last school where he will work.
“Mr. Sprouse, did you tell two of your students to shut up?”
“What?”
“Did you use inappropriate language when addressing your class?”
Jonathan laughs. “I believe, Sister Margaret, what I actually said was shut the hell up.”
Sister Margaret looks up from her file, noticing Jonathan’s face for the first time. “You may teach music, Mr. Sprouse. You may think of yourself as a bohemian, but that doesn’t give you the right to speak like a heathen. Even a music teacher must abide by our rules.”
