by Dodds, Colin
“I don’t know,” I said.
Joe started in again, his voice full of incredulity that I hadn’t been completely swayed by his earlier arguments.
“I mean, I don’t know if I have the money. I should get my last severance check this week and I have to see how much it is after taxes and COBRA. I may have to borrow money from you,” I said.
It was a lie, and Joe seemed to know that. But he left it alone.
We finished our pizza and headed over to his apartment. The place was tidier than usual, and too hot. Marissa was watching TV in the living room. We said hello and went into Joe’s room. I sat in his old desk chair and leaned so far back it seemed dangerous. Joe dug out a book he’d just read about Rommel and handed it to me. Then he got a phone call. Like any neglected friend in the cellular age, I took to picking through his stuff. He had a big, army-style footlocker. The lock was off, so I opened it and found a mess of fishing supplies, magazines, photos, action figures and, occupying one end, a stack of pictures of naked women printed off the internet. They were all Spanish with big cans—more-perfect copies of Escalita. On the phone, Joe went on and on into his cell phone about who was who, where they were, who they knew, what kind of people they were, how long they would be there.
“What’s up with all the computer printouts?” I asked as soon as he got off the phone.
“Oh. I print them up at work.”
“You go find the pictures on the internet and then print them up and take them home?”
“Yeah. It’s incredible, I mean,” he said, walking over to the footlocker. “Here, check out this woman.”
The grayscale toner on the office paper couldn’t diminish the smoky beauty of her Latin face, nor the enormity and spherical perfection of her breasts.
“I mean, Jim, someone somewhere on this same planet gets to fuck her. Just try to get your brain around that!”
“I’m sure that there’s also someone who’s totally sick of her. Imagine that.”
“He must have already fucked her.”
“Who was that on the phone?”
“It was a friend who wants me to meet someone down at the Dive Bar. They want some stuff.”
“So you know this person?”
“No, but a good, good friend is vouching for them. Do you want to come down with me?”
“All I’m hearing is Leominster Part Two. I mean, it’s a Tuesday for God’s sake. Let this one go. I don’t think you can keep counting on people’s good will the way you’re used to.”
“I think it’s cool. If you don’t think it’s cool, then you should definitely come and get my back.”
Joe squatted and unlocked a desk drawer. From it, he took one of three little tied-up wads of cellophane.
“You’re locking it up now?” I asked idly.
“I’m not altogether sure what’s up. But some people complained about light bags. I didn’t think that Marissa would take any of it for herself. But I’m not sure. I’d rather lock a drawer than be wrong and lose a friend.”
Marissa gave us a little wave from the couch as we left. The nighttime had clenched the air into a deep freeze that would crust the snow to ice.
Following Joe’s Skylark, we crossed all of Worcester’s asymmetry to Green Street. The ebb crowd of a Tuesday night filled the Dive Bar. I scanned the crowd for a face I’d recognize, looking for Sully or one of the guys from Rory’s apartment. I spotted Kyle. Like Joe, he had taken a hit to the nose, and wore a bruise that spread to both his eyes. He was chatting up a Chinese girl with tattoos on her arms and a graceful beer belly. Joe went the length of the bar to find the person he was looking for. I stopped to talk to Kyle.
“Jim, I’m glad I’m not the only one who got marked up in that scuffle. I told the guys who work for me that I got hit with a football outside my house.”
Kyle gave proper rhetorical time to guys who work for me and my house for the benefit of the Chinese girl. It seemed he had won her over enough for him to talk with me for a minute.
“Scuffle? It was more like a freaking ambush. What the hell was that?”
“That was the ass-whupping Joe had coming to him. We just got in the way, and got paid for our trouble,” Kyle said.
“Well, fuck it. I’m glad we were there. One of them had a billy club. It didn’t look like they were just looking for equal justice.”
Kyle had a way of retreating into himself before he spoke. Maybe it’s because he’d grown up a small guy and had to rely on his wits to get what he wanted. He retreated then.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love the guy like a brother. And I know he’s smarter than most people. But sometimes the dude is just an idiot. Did he tell you about Saturday night with Willie Brown?”
Kyle proceeded to tell me about how Joe and he were at Denny’s after a night at the bars. Joe went out for a smoke and met a black guy in a big white winter coat.
“So Joe’s like ‘do you know who this is? This is Willie Brown.’ And Joe says the guy is a legend in Great Brook Valley, and that he can get Joe a gun. But, the guy needs a ride back to the Valley, because his girlfriend took his car to go to the hospital or something. He had some story. Joe’s my ride, so we go to the Valley, and Willie Brown says he knows a place to get Joe a gun—all because we gave him a ride.”
“That sounds like a fair trade,” I said, and paid for my beer.
“So anyway, we give Willie Brown stops into this building and then that one. And the Valley, you know, it just sucks. It’s five degrees out and there’s all these crack heads standing around trying to sell us their jeans. There’s a fucking dumpster on fire. After a few stops, Joe says ‘I don’t think he’s going to get us a gun.’ Willie Brown is just making deliveries and we’re driving him around. But Joe won’t let me just ditch the guy. Finally, we get to this one building that no one is even parked near, with most of the lights on.”
“What the hell?”
“Right? And Joe’s my ride so, I’m stuck. And it’s gotta be at least four. So Willie says that he wants us to come in to this last place with him. I park where the other cars are parked, far a-fucking-way, and we walk over. Inside, it’s like a horror movie, like night of the living dead. And Joe whispers to me ‘this is an actual crack house,’ and starts cracking up laughing.”
“So what happened?”
“Joe had this thing, like it was important to be polite to Willie Brown. So after the crack house, he said to forget about the gun and then made up an excuse and we dropped Willie off at one more place. Speak of the devil.”
“Kyle, Shona, what’s up?” Joe said, reinvigorated. “Let me buy you all a round and a shot.”
“Someone tell Tarzan that it’s Tuesday,” Shona said and smiled.
Joe bought a round and few more shots. Drunk, we drank until too late for a Tuesday. It was a good time, laughing about old times and people we knew or didn’t know, laughing at Joe, and telling stories. It gave me a break from the growing sense that I had a terrible choice to make.
I drove mindful of the vigilant suburban cops of Shrewsbury and Westborough. A Walgreens and a CVS were still open, reassuring the traffic that with cough syrup and potato chips, Route 9 cared like a mediocre mother might. Eventually, I pulled into the Fountainhead. That night, I dreamed of boarding a ship and leaving too many things behind, leaving my pants behind and leaving my name behind.
39.
Wednesday, January 7
The buzzer was a surprise for all of a second. I buzzed the nurse up and mouthwashed away what I could. The housekeeper had been in the day before, but I was a less presentable sight, my face unshaved, my eye blackened, my clothes slept in, and my repartee off by a too-detectable half second from the hangover.
Sometimes people just don’t like you and there’s nothing you can do about it. Joyce, Dad’s nurse, was a good example. In her early middle age, Joyce was neither attractive nor unattractive. Attractiveness was irrelevant for her right off the bat, like it might be for a fire truck. I took her arou
nd the apartment, pointing out the bathroom railings like I was showing a report card. But the black eye had decided it for her. She told me what she would and would not do and looked at everything in the apartment except me. Joyce was clearly a vital second income somewhere, and I was one more obstacle in her day. I took her disdain to mean that she would do her job. She left before I had the chance to wake up much. I was glad to see her go.
I turned on the TV and slept until around noon. Still hungover and at a loss, I wandered the internet. Aside from the naked ladies, there was no encouragement there. The responses to my resumes and follow-ups all promised to keep me on file, and precious little else. Each form letter to my inbox was a tiny little kick in the balls. The e-mails from friends were no better—recaps demanding recaps in return, or jokes requiring jokey responses. Serena’s e-mail was within the same parameters of automata seeking reassurance. I reassured.
Eventually, I left the apartment. The day was one of those dreams where I couldn’t run, despite myself. My shirt took seven months to put on and my time with the toothbrush lasted longer than World War Two. It was two by the time I parked at the hospital.
“Hey, what happened? Did the cable guy come by again?” Dad said when I showed up. It came out lacking humor, despite his effort. He smiled up the corner of his mouth so it looked like a sweater caught on a nail.
“Sorry I’m late. I had the nurse come by and then I sent off some more resumes.”
It was, overall, a bad day at the hospital. Dad was taciturn and in pain. We sat most of the day in the hateful silence that descends on two people watching TV with too much or too little to say to each other. I knew that silence well. It had crept in and destroyed my parents’ marriage. Watching it, you wouldn’t guess anything was wrong. It’s so unexplosive, like the rain that seeps into cracks in the road and expands with the cold. It’s the least dramatic thing in the world, but it tears the road to shreds after a decade or so. I begged out around six-thirty and followed the traffic back to the Fountainhead, stopping at an ATM on the way.
Once in the apartment, I took off my pants and looked out the window at the flattened landfill and the lit plastic signs on and around it. I tried to imagine the woods full of Indians that burned Marlborough in King Philip’s War. But the cheap aurora borealis blasting out from the Wal-Mart parking lot lights rebuked me.
“Hey,” I said into my cell phone.
“Oh hey, what’s going on?” said Serena.
“I just got back from the hospital and wanted to talk to you,” I said, trying to inflect some charm into my voice.
“I just got back from work, actually. It’s so cold outside. Some people from the office wanted to go out for drinks. But I cancelled. I think I’m getting the flu. Actually, I was about to call you, it’s about the weekend after next.”
“Yeah, you’re coming up, right?”
“Well, I just heard from my mom. I guess my cousin Andrea is coming into town to visit NYU, and she wants to stay with me. So, can we reschedule for the weekend after?”
“I guess so. I haven’t booked the hotel yet. Let’s figure out a date.”
“Can I call you about that next week? I have to …”
Through her voice, I could hear her roommate, or someone, moving around in the same room, then a clatter of dishes. I poked the bruise under my eye to feel at least that. We talked some more about our daily lives, giving our recaps. The automata was reassuring, a dubious bridge over an unfathomable uncertainty. I told her about Worcester and Joe, saying only he was in trouble with some rough customers. She listened, but didn’t have much to say beyond that being too bad. She had lived in New York almost as long as me. Too bad was our response to a beggar on the sidewalk, or a drug addict holding up his pants as he limped quickly down the street. It was sympathetic, but terse. I didn’t bother getting into my dilemma and said I’d call later in the week to figure out a weekend for her to come up.
I dialed Joe, but hung up before it rang. Then I did the same to Volpe. I called Olive, but she didn’t answer. I sat down and stood up.
40.
I drove the short distance to Shrewsbury, down familiar streets with neat houses and yards full of child-trampled snow. I pulled up to the house we had moved to when I was in high school. An older couple had bought it. The walkway was shoveled, but the snow in the yard was untouched. The house across the street was unlit, so I idled in the street by it for a few minutes and eyed my onetime home.
With Dad’s SUV suspiciously idling on the silent suburban lane, I recited my dilemma, hoping it would become clearer to me. First off, Joe’s always-dubious plan had gone off the rails. And in the absence of a plan, blind forces take over. Coincidence, accidents, mistakes, forgetfulness, recklessness, alcohol and unconscious urges wind up deciding how things turn out.
What I could do was give Joe the money, and then tell Volpe about his stash of cocaine. That would get Joe off the streets for a stretch, keep him from buying a gun and give the feud with Sully time to cool off. Or, I could give Joe no money, tell Volpe nothing and hope it all worked out. I saw the curtains move in my old home and drove off.
In the end, I suppose I couldn’t bear the thought of one more thing being out of my hands. Pulling into the parking lot of Hickey’s Liquors, I called Joe.
“Hey, I checked and I got that last payment from work. I can lend you the money.”
“That’s awesome. Thanks a million.”
“Yeah, no sweat. I’m in Shrewsbury, where are you?”
“I’m home, come over. I swear, I’ll get you the whole thing back as soon as I can.”
I passed St. Johns High School and slowed down on my way to do its bidding in the worst possible way. I fortified myself with the memory of Sully’s ambush at the party, with the news of Smitty beaten into the hospital, with the image Joe waiting in an empty Leominster parking lot for a gun. The danger seemed real, but what did I know? Joe had tangled with dangerous people and put himself in dangerous situations before. And he’d always found his way out, if not smiling, then only damaged in temporary ways. The snow on the St. Johns athletic fields was pure and undisturbed.
Joe greeted me at the door. His hair hung loose and he was wearing a bright yellow t-shirt. We went into the kitchen. He was eating pasta with crushed tomatoes out of a Tupperware container. He offered me a plate of it. I said I already ate and asked what was going on.
“Just hurting. Man, work was no fun today. You ever have one of those hangovers where it feels like your bones are broken? That and my boss told me he needed me to, what was it? Yeah, he wants me to ‘take ownership’ of this whole bunch of bullshit busywork scanning old parking violations. I never even wanted to do it and now I have to ‘take ownership,’ whatever that means. It’s not like I’ll ever benefit from it. But I was so zoned out I just nodded. What’s up with you?”
I told him about Serena cancelling, Dad being surly and the live-in nurse being the antithesis of a Spanish girl with big cans. Then I said I had the money for him.
“Just tell me you’re not going to buy a gun with it,” I said.
“I’m most likely not going to. We’ll see what happens. By the way, did you hear about Matt O’Brien?”
“Who?”
“The guy who held horses mouths open for a living and beat me with a chair that one time at Tortilla Sam’s, with the crazy tattoo on his lower back.”
“Yeah, the nut job you kept taunting on the phone.”
“Him, well he killed two guys and almost killed another guy over at the Palladium. I heard he was trying to rob the place, but he shot the manager before the guy could get the safe open. It was after a show and he wanted the gate receipts. So he shot the three guys, couldn’t get into the safe and then couldn’t get out of the club. The cops had him at the door,” Joe said, satisfied and vindicated.
“Jesus Christ. That’s no joke. But, please man, promise me that you won’t buy a gun with this money.”
Joe took me up on this offer to be
serious for a moment.
“I promise.”
I gave him the money.
“I promise not to use this money to buy a gun,” he said, holding up the folded bunch of twenties I’d given him. He smiled his devilish grin.
“Just be careful,” I said.
“Careful’s my middle name.”
“It’s more like your fucking antonym.”
It was funny that something as abstract and bookish as an antonym could exist in same lives we were living. We chuckled. For a moment I could forget what I was doing there. I started telling him about my job hunt and the frustration of pleading for so many jobs I didn’t want.
“Well, that’s what it was always seemed like they were pushing us towards. The nuns, St. John’s were all getting you ready to efficiently do things you’d rather not do,” Joe said.
“I guess so. But what else are you going to do?”
“There’s hanging out. There’s getting drunk. There’s getting laid.”
“There’s all that. But it doesn’t add up to much.”
“What’s it all supposed to add up to?” Joe asked. The tone in his voice said he was gearing up for an argument.
“Some sort of purpose or accomplishment, some sense of moving forward.”
“Forward to what?”
“To more responsibility, more authority, more money, to things getting more interesting.”
“And so it’s authority, responsibility and money that make things more interesting?”
“They can,” I said, making a really poor case for how I’d spent the last decade or so, and having a hard time of it. I thought of what it was like for a Praying Indian, just before King Philip’s War, questioned in the woods by an old friend.
“That’s not my idea of interesting,” Joe said, shrugging, putting on the imperturbable smile that was his argument-face.
“Well, I have no choice but to work. And it kills the time,” I joked.
“It kills more than just the time.”
