Forsaking All Others

by Jimmy Breslin

  “Help you, Mac?” the bartender said.

  “Beer,” Myles said.

  The bartender reached for a beer glass in front of him, stopped, turned around for a bottle of whiskey, poured himself a shot and, downing it, returned his attention to the beer glass for Myles.

  Myles checked the bar, saw there were three sets of change, cigarettes and plastic lighters to match the three guys playing shuffleboard, then walked over to the ladies’ room door and pulled it open. It was empty.

  “Wrong one, Johnny,” the bartender called.

  “I’m getting punchy,” Myles said. He walked into the men’s room, saw it was empty, as he expected, came out and stepped out a back door of the bar and into the alley running alongside the bank. His breath caught as he heard voices at the end of the alley. Putting his feet down soundlessly, Myles went to the end of the alley, then suddenly stepped out into a parking lot where four boys, about twelve, played Frisbee under a streetlight.

  “I thought you died,” the bartender said when Myles came back.

  “I was just checking,” Myles said.

  “Checking it out, eh?” the bartender said. He reached behind him and brought out the whiskey bottle. He poured a double shot, stared at it, sighed and then threw it down.

  Myles held out his badge. “I’d like to talk to you.”

  “Sure, Mac. What department is that, anyway?”

  “New York.”

  “Yeah, but we’re here in Suffolk County.”

  “This is different,” Myles said. “I’m part of a statewide drug task force.”

  “Yeah?” the bartender said.

  “Do you get young girls in here?” Myles said.

  The bartender began to laugh. “Twelve year olds,” he said.

  Myles froze.

  “Hey, fellas,” the bartender called out, “do we get a lot of young girls in here?”

  “Thousands,” one of them called back.

  “We get young girls in here, all right,” the bartender said.

  “How old?” Myles said.

  “We get Betsy Ross in here,” the bartender said. He reached for the whiskey.

  “Well, I want to tell you something,” Myles said.

  “What’s that, Mac?”

  “I’m part of a state team fighting drugs,” Myles said. “I might as well tell you. What we’re doing, we’re sending very young girls around to bars and if people give them beer and dope, these young girls report to us and then we bust the joint. State Police, State Liquor Authority, federal drug agents. We got a statewide team working this. Young girls come in a bar underage and get beer and dope and then old men look to take advantage of them. Know what I mean?”

  “No,” the bartender said.

  “You don’t?”

  “No.”

  Myles stared at him. “You will if some young girl comes in here and you load her up and try and take advantage of her. You’ll know what it is then. Because you’ll be in the can.”

  Myles grabbed his change and went to the door.

  “How do you like him?” the bartender called out to the three guys at the pool table. “Twenty fucking years of whiskey later, I got cirrhosis. Now he calls me a junkie.” He patted his belly. “I haven’t seen my prick in the last ten years and he says I’m playing with little girls. I wish the fuck I was.”

  Myles went out the door with the light company guys laughing at him.

  He stayed in the shopping mall for another hour and a half, until nearly ten o’clock. Each time he went to the parking lot behind the bank, he found it empty. He drove past a small park on the far side of the parking lot and found that empty at all times. Finally, he went home, where his wife sat in the playroom watching television.

  “She went to the movies,” his wife said.

  “That’s not what I heard.”

  “I told you, don’t listen.”

  “Do you ever talk to this kid?” Myles asked.

  His wife exhaled.

  “Do you ever talk to her?”

  “She’s fifteen years old,” his wife said slowly. “What would she want to talk to me for?”

  “Then how do we know what she’s up to?”

  “We’ll find out in a few years. It’s better to hear when it’s in the past. She’ll do as she pleases anyway.”

  “What she pleases has me worried,” Myles said.

  “You worry and she’ll have fun. I don’t think what she does is as bad or as interesting as you think.”

  At 11:15, Myles was putting on his coat to go out on another patrol when he heard noise in front of the house. He ran to the door and saw his daughter waving good-bye to a car driven by her girlfriend Laura’s father. Tara ran past Myles into the house and in a moment was sitting happily alongside her mother in the playroom.

  “What’d you see?” her mother asked.

  “Trial of Billy Jack. It was great.”

  Myles opened a can of beer at the kitchen table; he was on his fourth when his wife and daughter went to bed. He sat at the table until 1:00 A.M., drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. As he exhaled, he followed the smoke until it wreathed itself about the face of Chita Gonzalez, her hair pulled back tightly.

  14

  THE MATTER WAS VERY simple, the other lawyer said. His voice rose as he arrived at his point. He stopped talking when the judge spun sideways, held out his glasses to the light and tipped so far back in his chair that his head, the color of dust, almost dropped out of sight. Long, dry hands methodically polished the glasses.

  “Your Honor,” the lawyer said.

  “Go on,” the judge said.

  “Your Honor, this tenant hasn’t paid rent since March first. We are now in the fifth month of nonpayment.”

  “He lie, man,” Albert Flores said.

  The judge’s head popped up. He snapped, “Yes?”

  “He lie, man.”

  Maximo put a hand on Flores’ thigh. “Let me do the talking, Mr. Flores.”

  “You let him lie, man, and don’t say nothing to him. Every time he lie, I say something.”

  Maximo sat in a stable. Officially, the place was Part IX, Bronx Landlord-Tenant court, but it was located in deepest municipal squalor, a basement room of the Bronx County courthouse. This was the only court in which Maximo was allowed to appear until he had passed the bar, and it was the first time he even had done this. He had on his only suit, blue denim, and a solid dark blue tie that he felt was conservative enough to appease the judge. The lawyer across from him, Maximo’s papers showed, was named Goldblatt. He represented landlord Theodore Caras, the owner of 1120 Maxwell Street, the building in which Maximo’s client, Flores, existed. Goldblatt, a tall shambles of a man, wore a tan suit which already, in this sticky July morning, was showing dark circles under the arms. At the table with Goldblatt was the building owner, Caras, a squat man with a square face who wore a yellow shirt with an eyeglass case and pens jammed in the pocket.

  “If I can continue,” Goldblatt said. “There’s nothing to discuss here that I can see. The man owes the money and refuses to pay the money. We want the money and we want the tenant dispossessed.” At each mention of money, the landlord Caras’ body jerked forward, as if copulating.

  “You lie, man,” Flores said. He was trying to stand up and Maximo had to grasp him by the elbow to keep him on the chair.

  “I don’t lie about money,” Goldblatt said, as Caras came again.

  Anguish sounded in Flores’ throat. He could not remain still. He had been in turmoil for many days as he prepared himself mentally for the court appearance. He had practiced answers in front of the bathroom mirror. “The babies suffer, your Honor,” he kept saying. Today, he was up at 4:00 A.M., smoking cigarettes in the kitchen. He dressed in his best suit, a light green, and with it wore a red and yellow flowered shirt and a blue polka-dot bow tie which he felt was particularly appropriate for court. Now, in this smelly room in the basement of the courthouse, with about one hundred people sitting on benches and awai
ting their turn, Flores, who had trained so hard for this fight, suddenly was told, right at the bell, to remove his gloves.

  “Your Honor,” Maximo said. “I’ve seen the living conditions in this apartment. For the months of December and January there was no heat in the building. In February, there was no water. Throughout the entire month this man and a family of six people, including two grandchildren, babies, had to exist in an apartment with no heat and no water. To get water, this family had to go outside and fill a bucket with snow and bring it up to the house and boil it.”

  “Dog piss all over the snow,” Flores said.

  “Mr. Flores,” the judge said.

  “What about shit?” Flores said. “No toilet. Shit in the lot!”

  “Mr. Flores.”

  Maximo put a hand on Flores’ shoulder and continued. “Beginning March first, when again there was no water, Mr. Flores withheld his checks from the landlord. He placed the money each month into a special banking account which he still maintains—”

  “—Your Honor, if there’s money here we don’t have to go any further,” Goldblatt said. “If I get a little something here today—”

  Flores was on his feet. “I shit in the lot, man. My grandson shits in the lot, man. This guy wants money?”

  “Judge,” Goldblatt said, “if we just get a little something for my client here today, I’m sure we can take it from there. Right, counselor?”

  Goldblatt turned to Maximo, but instead here was Flores, elbows flailing to keep Maximo away.

  “You ever shit in a lot?” Flores shouted. His voice rose and his arms cut through the air. “You use to the warm bathroom. Try it no water in the house you go outside. In the winter. You shit in the lot, you freeze your ass!” Flores’ eyes bulged like a trout. His mouth gulped for air. His body trembled.

  “Sit down,” the judge said.

  “What is that you say to me?” Flores said.

  “I said be seated,” the judge said.

  “You say this to me!” Flores shouted. His voice turned into a gargling sound and he pitched forward onto his face on the table in front of the bench.

  The court officer stepped over and helped Maximo get Flores onto the floor. Maximo loosened Flores’ collar and belt, his eyes darting for a minute to the front of the room, where a clerk sat at a desk with a phone. The clerk was motionless. Maximo said to Flores, “Just a little accident, Mr. Flores. Don’t move now, and you’ll be all right in a minute.”

  The court officer helping Maximo said, “Heart!” He jumped up and signaled to the back of the room, where another officer stood.

  “Heart!” he called loudly to the officer in the back.

  Flores was breathing heavily and Maximo was ready to fall upon him and give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

  “Heart!” the court officer shouted again. This caused Flores’ eyes to roll like pebbles. Maximo threw another glance at the desk in the front. The clerk had pushed the phone out of the way and was opening a sandwich.

  “If he has trouble, you start the mouth-to-mouth,” Maximo told the court officer.

  “I’m here, counselor,” the court officer said.

  A leg brushed against Maximo’s head. Another lawyer was stepping around him to get in front of the judge. Maximo sprang up and dived for the desk with the phone.

  “Watch it,” the clerk said, pulling away the wax paper on which sat a tuna fish sandwich.

  “What do I dial?” Maximo said.

  “Well, who do you want to call?” the clerk said.

  “An ambulance,” Maximo said.

  “There’s a court doctor, you know,” the clerk said.

  “Where?”

  “Well, let me look.” The clerk took out a booklet and began to go through it.

  “Do I dial nine to get out?” Maximo said.

  “Just let me see if we can get you the court doctor.”

  Maximo dialed nine, got a dial tone and called 911. He spoke slowly and enunciated carefully.

  “Tell them to use the Walton Avenue entrance,” the court officer with Flores called to him.

  Maximo said this loudly and repeated it. Then he hung up. As he started back to Flores, he found the space in front of the judge crowded.

  A small lawyer with a bow tie, standing with his feet about a foot from Flores’ head, said, “Your Honor, I have to be upstairs in front of Judge Dubin at eleven-thirty. My matter will take only five minutes. Could I please present it to you now? I just have to get a little something here today.”

  “Your Honor, I’m still appearing before you,” Goldblatt said. Caras, the landlord, was now standing up. Maximo dropped to his knees alongside Flores. Goldblatt bent over. “How is he?” Goldblatt said.

  “I hope,” Maximo said.

  “He’ll be all right in a minute,” Goldblatt said.

  “I hope,” Maximo said.

  “Can I talk to you for a moment?” Goldblatt said.

  Maximo didn’t answer. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Caras, the landlord, tugging at Goldblatt’s jacket.

  “If my client can just get a little something,” Goldblatt said.

  “What?” Maximo snapped.

  “Just talk to me for a minute,” Goldblatt said. “This can all be eased if I can just get even two hundred dollars as a show of faith to my client. Just a little something.”

  At the mention of money, Flores’ chest heaved. A thud sounded in his chest.

  “Will you stop talking?” Maximo said. “You’re exciting this man and you’re going to kill him.”

  Now up the aisle came a cordon of court officers, two of whom were unstrapping a stretcher.

  “We got it, counselor,” one of them said to Maximo. They rolled Flores onto the stretcher. “We called the ambulance but they told us they already had the call.” They lifted Flores.

  The judge, arguing with three lawyers who now crammed the area in front of the bench, looked up.

  “Is he leaving?” he said.

  “Yes, Your Honor,” one of the court officers said.

  “I see,” the judge said. He began to go through a sheaf of papers.

  Caras, the landlord, put a pudgy hand onto Goldblatt’s back and shoved the lawyer up against the bench.

  “Just a minute, Your Honor,” Goldblatt said.

  “Yes?”

  “Your Honor, before the man goes can’t I get a little something?”

  Maximo followed the officers out of the building, where a squad car pulled up and then an ambulance with paramedics, who took over. On the way to the hospital, a paramedic said to Maximo, “Did he have a shock in there?”

  “To his sense of fairness.”

  “He must have an attack every day,” the paramedic said.

  At the hospital, Maximo called Flores’ wife and waited an hour until she arrived in the emergency room. A Pakistani doctor tried to explain Flores’ condition, but did not know enough English words to do so.

  “He’ll live,” a black nurse called out. “Got him sedated for the day.”

  Maximo walked back to his office as if he had just finished a football game. It wasn’t until three o’clock that his energy returned, and then he worked slowly for the rest of the afternoon merely shuffling papers.

  Later, when he was about to leave the office to ride the train downtown to the bar review course, Maximo called Nicki at her office.

  “Where have you been?” she said.

  “Many things,” Maximo said. “In the office, in court.”

  “What court?”

  “Landlord-tenant.”

  “Oh, I thought you had something in real court.”

  “Landlord-tenant is a real court.”

  “The only real court is criminal court,” she said.

  “You wouldn’t think so if you saw what happened today.”

  “You can tell me about it when you see me.”

  “When?” Maximo asked.

  “Tonight.”

  “I’ve got that course until nine.”<
br />
  “Say the truth. You don’t have to go to it.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Then I’ll just see you after it.”

  “Want dinner?” Maximo said.

  “That would be fine.”

  “I’ve got a terrific place. Real Puerto Rican food.”

  “I don’t eat Puerto Rican.”

  “You’ll love this place.”

  “I said I don’t eat it. That kind of food is all right for Spics, but not for me.”

  “Well what am I supposed to be?” Maximo asked.

  “A Spic.”

  “Do you really mean that?”

  “Darling, you are a Spic. I don’t care what goes on here with us, but let’s not fool ourselves. You are a Spic.”

  After three years of white women in Cambridge stumbling over the word Hispanic while their eyes said Spic, this woman, open as the sea, was a unique joy.

  “Where will we eat then?”

  “I’ll bring it to your home,” Nicki said. “Tonight’s a suicide squad anyway, I’ll get home so late.”

  She said that she would go to her girlfriend Angela’s house and then meet Maximo at his place at 9:30. When Maximo hung up, the girl who typed legal briefs in his office stood in the doorway. Her name was Haydee and she wore a green T-shirt and Levi’s. She was quite pretty and very dark.

  “I feel like a drink,” she said.

  “I’ve got to run to my course,” he said.

  “Can’t you have one before you go?”

  “I’m late now,” Maximo said.

  “All right, then.” She walked back to her desk. Immediately, Maximo felt that he had burned a part of his insides and left a small pile of ashes. Of course there was time for a drink, he even felt like one, but his reaction without thinking had been to say no, for he had something that excited him and attracted all his sexual energy, a white girl, and better than just any white girl, the most distant of all white girls, an Italian girl. Haydee was a dark girl, far darker than Maximo. His reaction had been to turn toward something lighter, and as he realized this, he despised himself for it. He had allowed the craving of a sugar-field worker to seep into the base of his body. How could he, Maximo, who intended to wage war throughout his life against the weaknesses that slowed his people, allow his prick to think for him, even for an instant? He decided he would take Haydee for a drink. When he looked out of his office, she was gone.