Bloodbrothers

by Richard Price

  "S—Sooky?"

  "What?" The cops supported him.

  "Asthma," Chubby panted.

  They helped him into the back seat and the car screamed uptown to Roosevelt Hospital.

  ***

  An hour later, the phone in the back of the bar rang.

  "Hey, Tom!"

  "Yo!" He leaned back to see who was calling him.

  "It's for you." Ray Buckley stood half out of the booth.

  "Who is it, Ray?"

  "Don' recognize the voice, some guy." He extended the mouthpiece as Tommy walked over.

  "Hello."

  "Tom."

  "Who's this?"

  "It's me."

  It was Chubby. He was wheezing so badly it sounded like braying.

  "Whassamatter?" Tommy's face darkened.

  "I'm inna fuckin' hospital."

  "Asthma?" He could hear only gasps and wheezes on the other end of the line. "What hospital?"

  "Roosevelt."

  "I'll be right down."

  Tommy sat with Chubby on a wooden bench in a deserted room at Roosevelt Hospital. Between them stood two Styrofoam cups of cold coffee. Hunched over, Chubby stared glassy-eyed at the wall. The doctor had given him four shots of epinephrine to cut his asthmatic wheezing. He wanted Chubby to stay overnight, but Chubby refused. The doctor respected his wish but asked a nurse to hang around just in case.

  "I can't even fuck no more, Tom. I got on top a her, an' I start gaspin' like I needed a oxygen mask." Chubby's hands were trembling from the speedy effects of the shots. He rubbed his forehead and yawned nervously.

  "It's just an attack, babe, you had 'em before."

  "No, no, it's gettin' bad, Tom. Soon I'll be like Jimmy O'Day. Can't fuck unless I got a nitro pill under my tongue."

  "C'mon, Chubby, be right." Tommy opened a crumpled brown paper bag. "Here, Banion sent this for you."

  Chubby accepted the pint of Haig & Haig with a grunt, setting it on the bench. "She was bored, Tom. I was just an old bag of shit to her." He shuddered and yawned again.

  "Hey, c'mon, Chubby, she's just a Times Square pump."

  "I know, yah fuck!" Chubby shouted.

  The nurse popped her head in the door. "Is ev..."

  Tommy waved her out of the room.

  "Oh shit!" Chubby collapsed against the bench, eyes wildly searching the ceiling.

  "Tommy, I feel so lost, what am I gonna do? What the fuck am I gonna do?" He blinked back tears, shaking his head from side to side.

  Tommy squeezed Chubby's knee, patted his leg.

  "I'm so lonely sometimes, Tom..." he gasped and his face wrinkled in an effort not to cry. "I feel so god... damn lonely sometimes. I sit, an' eat, and I watch TV. I wake up sometimes an'..." Chubby doubled over in slow motion as if he had just been kicked in the gut. Tommy put both arms around his brother, leaning his cheek on Chubby's shoulder. Chubby rocked back and forth. Tommy's tears ran down his nose. Chubby rocked them both. Tommy squeezed Chubby until his arms trembled. The nurse peered through the window confused, not sure she should be looking.

  "I feel so old, Tom," Chubby whispered hoarsely. "I'm gonna die soon, I can smell it. I'm too fat. I ain't gonna last. I got a wheeze what makes me feel like I live in a box.... I was thinkin' a Pop the other day."

  Tommy wiped the tears from his nose and held on tight.

  "You remember that night? He just sat up an' said, I ain't sorry for nothin'!' That was it. I didn't cry 'cause I thought he woulda gotten up again just to punch me out." They almost laughed, rocking. "It's so scary, babe, it's so hard to get outta bed some days. I'm gonna be fifty come April." Chubby coughed and blubbered. Wrenching free from Tommy he stood up and shouted, "I was just eighteen!" He punched the wall. "What the fuck is goin' on!" Tommy grabbed him. Chubby didn't resist. He just looked into his brother's face. "I read this Reader's Digest once, you know, in a couple a years I'm gonna start gettin' pee dribble in my drawers in the mornin'." He tried to laugh. Tommy broke the seal on the Scotch. He handed the bottle to Chubby.

  "Here, you can get a head start now."

  Chubby snorted and took a long swig. Tommy took a longer one. Chubby laughed, took another. Tommy took another. Tommy laughed. Chubby took a long belt and gargled, half of it running down his lime green shirt. Tommy licked the Scotch from Chubby's chest, laughing.

  The nurse, totally confused, was afraid now to walk in. Tommy and Chubby noticed her face in the window. They looked at each other and roared. Simultaneously they ran to the door, whooping and hollering, and chased her down the corridor.

  ***

  Chubby and Tommy faced each other in the warm night air in front of the hospital.

  "C'mon, babe, I'll drive you home." Tommy started walking toward his car. Chubby held back.

  "C'mon."

  "Nah, you go ahead, Tom, I wanna walk a while. I'll be home later."

  "You sure?"

  "Yeah. I jus' wanna do some thinking, you know." Chubby was pulling back again. Tommy was worried. "You O.K.?"

  "Yeah, I jus' wanna walk a while."

  "You want me to walk with you?"

  "Nah, I wanna be alone for a while. I'll go home soon."

  Tommy hesitated. "Call me when you get home, yeah?" Chubby hugged his brother. "Go home, Tom."

  "You call me."

  "Yeah, I'll call you. Thanks for comin' down, babe."

  Tommy walked to his car, looking over his shoulder at Chubby. Chubby stood there with his hands in his pockets until Tommy drove away, then started walking down Eighth Avenue. He thought of trying some pussy again, but he was too scared. The Scotch was starting to make him spin a little. He kept thinking of his father, gaunt and wasted. He thought of pee stains in his underwear, helpless. The wheeze crept back into his lungs. He leaned against a parked car. He needed to sit. He went into a topless bar and sat staring at his drink for half an hour, oblivious to the fishnet and pasties dancing above his head. Sooky was a woman. The only real woman he'd ever known.

  "I ain't sorry for nothin!" Chubby declared to the barmaid.

  "O.K., then," she said unimpressed, taking his money and ringing it up.

  He started weaving in his seat. "She was a real woman. You ain't shit!" She gave a little nod to a big Puerto Rican in a double-knit suit who came up behind Chubby. "You jus' a whore." He gestured at the dancers. "You all jus' fuckin' whores. You—" Chubby felt himself lifted off his seat and shoved out onto the street before he could finish his sentence.

  He stood bewildered in the middle of Eighth Avenue looking around for his drink.

  ***

  Summer night Forty-second Street was luminous black and slick wet. Strange and dangerous. Chubby walked past the gaudy neon, weaving through multicolored crowds, his lime green shirt open to the waist. Cardboard blowups of tits and fists wrapped around his head like a red band. In Chubby's rageful dream state he could only see blurred colors. Voices came from far away like he was dozing at the beach. The subway—go home.

  "Blood, you got twenny-fi' cent?"

  Chubby turned from the head of the subway stairs. A tall, young spade in a bright plaid shirt stood behind him, hands in pockets.

  Chubby scowled.

  "What you lookin' at, sucker?" Chubby turned to go down the steps. "Fat mothafucker."

  Chubby stopped, took a deep breath. Mumbled something to himself. Turned again. He kept his head low, chest-level. The young spade's shirt was box plaid. Big boxes. Yellow-red-orange-green. Chubby hesitated until the kid's hands came out of his pockets empty. Then he zeroed in on a red square over the heart. Two quick strides, fingers closed around a chicken neck. Chubby slammed him twice in the same spot, lifting him off the ground both times. The kid grunted, dazed, finding himself on the pavement. Shouts. A crowd forming. Chubby swung around to face the crowd, they stepped back in unison. Chubby laughed. Taxis flew by in the street. Yellow blurs. Bruce Lee devastated a cardboard enemy across the way. Chubby lifted the kid with one hand, thumb digging into the soft flesh un
der the chin. The kid's eyes wild, teeth bared clenched, hissing in pain. Chubby carried him three steps to a parked Cadillac, sat him down on the hood, the crowd closing in. Laughing. Chubby held out a nickel.

  "I don't have a quarter, blood, all I got's five cents." With his thumb he jammed the nickel into the kid's mouth. Pinching the back of the kid's neck, shoving it GAG ACK down his throat. Two hands slapped down on Chubby's shoulders, yanking him away. Chubby wheeled around, ducked, came up swinging from the ground. A 300-pound fist smacked into open crotch. Chubby backed off, lowered his head and charged, ramming the crippled cop into a woman into a newsstand in a splash of girlie magazines and newspapers. Laughing, the crowd danced around Chubby as if he were a Pamplona bull. Chubby turned to the kid doubled over and gagging between parked cars. Chubby drop-kicked him into a double somersault. Screeching tires. Screams. The neon bubbled furiously around the marquees. Chubby looked up at the stars. The woman buried under hundreds of Daily Newses screamed for blood. Chubby saw the word "SURCHARGE" in all the headlines. The cop was unconscious. The news dealer stood there in thick glasses and a white apron. Chubby sniffed, buttoned his shirt and pushed through the crowd down into the subway station. Sirens. Some of the crowd followed him from a safe distance, but he got on the train alone.

  Chubby sat on the rocketing train, swaying back and forth like a moron. He saw everything as if he were wearing tinted glasses. White skin had the pastiness of death, black skin looked sickly green. He had his fat man's wheeze again, sitting hunched over, hands dangling below his knees. There was blood on his shirt. He sniffed it. The nigger kid's.

  "He begged me, heh, heh." Chubby grinned and his eyes lit up as he talked to the white poles in front of him. "'Please, mister, please, mister,'" Chubby whined. "I said, I said, heh, heh," he cackled. "'Please, mister,' he said to me, whining, 'Unh!'" Chubby leaped out of his seat, lunging with an invisible sword at the groaning doors as they opened at 72nd Street. "Heh, heh." Collapsing back into the gray molded seat.

  A middle-aged dumpy black lady in a brown coat and horn-rimmed glasses made a face as if she smelled shit, and moved away from Chubby. Chubby laughed and thrust his sword at her. She walked faster, banging into a pole.

  "He said, 'Please, mister, I'm sorry.'" Chubby rolled his eyes and licked his lips. "Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah." Resting his head on the subway map, shutting his eyes, rubbing his palms over his face. His belly peeked out under his lime green shirt.

  "Sooo-ky!" he moaned loudly. From the back of his throat came that eerie whine like a demented croon.

  The sharp rap of a nightstick on the metal seat made him jump. "Hey, whatchoo doin', man?"

  Chubby looked up into the bland face of a big black T.A. cop. He smiled like a little boy with his hand caught in a cookie jar and shrugged. "You be cool now. hear?"

  Chubby winked and got off at the next stop.

  The South Bronx. Fort Apache. The pits. Chubby wandered the humid streets like the last survivor of World War Three. Human shadows shifted along brick walls like rats. Building entrances like one-way tickets. Latin music sifted through the air high above his head. Chubby laughed, kicking a can into the gutter. A man in a flowered beige shirt and a denim beach hat passed him on the street. He called out something in Spanish and three more men strolled out of a candy store. The four of them followed Chubby for two blocks, until Chubby turned around, thrust his sword at them, laughing, and ran like hell for the safety of a bar.

  "Tommy."

  "Hey, Chub."

  "Come an' get me."

  "What?"

  "Come an' get me. I'm in a bar in a very bad neighborhood."

  "Whatta you talkin' about?" Tommy stood up and shut off the TV. "Chubby, where the fuck are you?"

  "Sweetheart"—Chubby leaned out of the phone booth and smiled at a heavily mascaraed woman in a blond wig at the end of the bar—"sweetheart, where am I?"

  She said something in Spanish to three people sitting next to her. They leaned back from their barstools and stared at him.

  "Hey, where am I?" Chubby repeated.

  "You lost." They all laughed. Chubby looked out over the sky-blue-painted pocked plaster walls of the room.

  "They won't tell me, Tom." Chubby laughed. "Oh shit," he sighed.

  "Who won't tell you?" Tommy passed the living room, the white cord of the phone trailing him like a tail.

  "I dunno." Chubby picked his nose. "I'm somewhere aroun' a Hunnert Thirty-fifth Street, I think."

  "Just stay there!" Tommy shouted. "Don't move!" Chubby froze like a statue, then burst out laughing again.

  Tommy hung up, ran into the kitchen, grabbed a long steak knife, slipped into his pants and ran from the apartment in his bare feet.

  Chubby sat down at the red and white Formica bar and lit a cigarette. Everybody at the bar stared at him. A loud pachanga played on the juke box. Chubby got up, one hand flat on his gut, the other raised at a right angle in the air, and cha-cha'ed into the street. He cha-cha'ed for two blocks down 172nd Street to Vyse Avenue before a forearm whipped around his throat, arching him backward. A mustached face came out of the darkness in front of him. The black barrel of a Saturday Night Special was shoved into his mouth.

  "Ssh!" The man with the gun put a finger to his lips. "Just suck on it, like a tit." Chubby's lips formed a pink, fleshy O around the gun. He wasn't scared, just curious. Three men led him into a small hallway.

  "Lay down." The gun was held in his mouth as he slowly lay back on a rolling wave of cracked, warped mosaic tile. As the three of them quickly searched his pockets, as he calmly sucked on the gun, as he stared up at the ornate brown plaster ceiling with its dim yellowish solitary light bulb, he thought for the first time in forty years of the time he had his tonsils taken out; sitting on his mother's lap, the doctor working without an anesthetic, cutting and yanking like a dentist, not able to scream, the sharp burning singeing pain like a starving rat in his throat, his mother's hands wrapped around his body, the doctor yelling at her to stop shaking her leg, the blood like a bib on his chest...

  Chubby was crying as he lay spread-eagle on the broken floor. He was alone. Latin music drifted over the rooftops.

  ***

  Chubby let himself into his dark apartment and felt his way to the bathroom. He sat on the fur-covered toilet lid in the blackness and smoked a cigarette in painful slow motion, flicking the ashes after each puff into the sink. His arms and legs felt stiff and heavy. His head felt huge—too big to be supported by his neck, and he let it droop onto his chest. When he eventually stood up to lift the lid and drop the butt into the toilet, his whole body ached as if all his joints and tendons were inflamed. Sitting on the edge of the tub, he ran his thick fingers through his hair, then slowly began to unlace his shoes. He took off his socks, flexed his toes and lit another cigarette. This one he ditched in the sink. Every once in a while he thought of Sooky and his body would twitch as if he'd just received a small electric shock. If a clear image or a vivid moment flashed across his brain, he flinched it away in a muddy blur. The cigarettes helped. He chain-smoked, ignoring his strangled lungs, his raw ripped throat. A smoky haze drifted through the small room. He followed a slow snaky wave of smoke until it wandered ghostlike into the hallway.

  Chubby refused to collect his thoughts. He concentrated on each puff, listening to the soft crackle of tobacco and paper. He tried to say her name, but all that came out of his mouth was a stuttering hiss. Leaning over the tub, he peered through the partially open tiny frosted window at a vast field of buildings and a scattered grid of lit windows. Elbows on the window ledge, he watched as the constellation of lights randomly diminished by ones and twos. He was reminded of the logo for "Million Dollar Movie," the shot of the clapboard superimposed over the nighttime New York skyline, the theme from Gone With the Wind playing in the background. Jackie Gleason came to mind. Many years ago, some of his friends called him Ralph because he looked like Ralph Kramden. He absently hummed "Melancholy Serenade," the theme song from
"The Honeymooners." "To the moon, Alice!" he muttered, then chuckled. His back started aching. He pushed himself erect, away from the window, slowly rubbed his hand across his expansive belly, and ran tap water to wash the ashes down the drain. He squeezed an inch of toothpaste into his mouth and ran his tongue across his teeth, spitting the toothpaste out under the thin stream. He sucked air through his tingling mouth, spat again and turned off the water. Chubby felt his way down the foyer to the bedroom, running his palm against the cool wallpaper, making a smooth sliding sound until he got to the doorway. As he sat on his side of the bed, Phyllis moved under the blankets.

  "Whachoo makin? harden oranges sit down," she mumbled, then turned on her side and was silent again. Through the wide window over the bed he saw a grid of fluorescently lit parkways with occasional speeding headlights. Far in the distance he could see an elliptical string of lights, the curved contours of the cables of the George Washington Bridge. He reached for another cigarette in his chest pocket, decided against it, achingly slipped his shirt from his shoulders, stood up to drop his pants, quietly slid under the warm covers and fell into a mercifully dreamless sleep.

  ***

  "Chub!"

  Chubby bolted upright in bed.

  "Chub, it's nine o'clock. You're late."

  Phyllis' warm hand lay on his naked shoulder. Chubby swallowed. His throat felt like sandpaper. He rubbed his fingers briefly and fell back down on his pillow.

  "I'm not goin' in today, hon. Do me a favor an' call for me."

  "Whassamatter?" She frowned. Her scent drifted over to him as she rearranged her bathrobe. A familiar smell.

  "My back hurts."

  "Ya back?"

  "Yeah, I pulled somethin'."

  "Tommy called last night."

  "What for?" Chubby reached for his cigarettes in the pile of clothing on the floor.