by Robert Ward
He squeezed my arm then and smiled at me through his great-gapped teeth.
“We gotta stick together, Red. You know? I just gotta find something I can do. You hear anything, let me know.”
“I will, Doggie,” I said.
“Yeah, okay … Hey, I feel better. It’s just that I don’t know what the fuck to do. You know what I mean? I mean, what the fuck do you do against this?”
I had thought he was calmed down, but I could see it rising in him again, the panic, the fear, and suddenly I had to get away from him. I was afraid it would spread to me, and with the pill pumping through me and the garage facing me, I couldn’t handle it.
“Dog,” I said. “Go up to the church. I’ll call you later, okay?”
“Yeah, sure. Listen, Red, I got to tell you something, all right?”
“Sure,” I said.
“I love you, you son of a bitch. You know that?”
“Yeah,” I said, his words cutting through me so I could hardly breathe. “I know, Dog.”
He turned away from me and walked down the street. Jackie Gardner slumped up against the filthy pile of blackened snow. The bottle lay at his feet.
• • •
When I hit the garage I was covered with sweat, and I saw Leroy mopping up the water that had dribbled down the entrance from the night before.
“Hey, Leroy,” I said, “what’s happening?”
“Nothing. You the latest.”
I went into the office, turned up the heat, and sat down behind the gray metal desk. I told myself to do my paperwork, let the pill ride me over the rough spots, but the image of Dog out there in the snow, rheumy-eyed and half dead, kept flipping through my mind. That and Jackie Gardner in the street, and Ace thinking I was such an asshole, and Crystal leaving, and the way Wanda had made love to me. Like she was already gone and making it with a stranger, hard and hot, and who gives a shit?
Why was it like this? Was it the world or my own swollen pride?
I shut my eyes and rubbed my forehead, told myself to stop thinking about anything but my job. Get the pissant paperwork done before the mob of guys started coming in to get their cars.
But the pill kept flashing the pictures on-off on-off in my head. I wanted to slow it down, cut it out, but those photos were like a deck of cards which kept being dealt faceup over and over again. No way to stop them.
Sweat poured down my face, soaked my underarms through, and my heart beat wildly, jumping, starting, like an engine in some old wrecker. My throat was dry and stayed that way, even though I drank five Cokes.
I could feel that little man behind my eyes again, with his pinchers, pulling my skin tighter and tighter until the bones would break through and all I’d be was a naked, rotten skull.
It was then that our customers came in, and I saw them like a ghost looks at the living, standing there in front of me in their new winter coats, their polished shoes, and their sharp haircuts, and suddenly I wanted to grab one of them and scream “I’m still alive. I’m still fucking alive, you asshole, you hear me?” and this impulse became so strong that I said nothing for fear of not being able to control my tongue.
I knew they could see and, worse, smell my speed sweat. I knew they were laughing at the way my hair was matted to my head. Some guys I knew from Patterson, who had hated me for being the BMOC, guys like Steve Standowski, who had never been shit at basketball but had become a local lawyer. Though he didn’t say a word (because he knew I could still take his head off), I could feel the happiness my misery gave him.
I got his midnight-blue Chrysler for him, and he handed me a fifty-cent tip.
When he got in I wanted to slam the door on his left leg, and it took all the rest of my willpower not to.
Which was too bad, because that was when Martin came in. Jake Martin was a financial guy from Washington. He had bought out a friend of mine down the plant, Terry O’Connell, who had moved his whole family down to El Paso to try and get work in the computer business. Martin wasn’t a bad guy, just ordinary, pushy, trying hard to act and talk like big money. He was fixing up Terry’s house so he could rent it to the new lawyers in the neighborhood for three times the old rates. And damn if he wouldn’t get it too.
Only this morning was his unlucky day. The sight of him made me think of a time he’d come up the summer league and was playing on my team against Ace. Now Ace could eat him up around the basket, but two years ago he was still just finding his natural abilities, and Martin had elbowed him and pushed him and hooked him all afternoon until Ace complained. Martin had told him something like “Hey, kid, this is basketball, not the senior prom,” which had caused me to say that if he didn’t want the ball stuffed up his ass he might not talk like that to my kid.
It was all playground bullshit, and I’d thought nothing more of it. Until now. Now, with that dealer laying out those pictures in my head, and with the sound of the dripping water magnified a hundred times, and with Dog’s dead face staring in my own, I could feel an anger like a flash flood sweeping through me.
Martin should have known, should have sensed it. But he was on a tear himself that morning. He started right in about his car.
“Baker,” he says. “I came out of here last night, and when I got home my battery was worn down. Had to get it jump started this morning. You know why it was worn down?”
I was so close to exploding that I didn’t even answer, I just shook my head.
“It was worn down because you or Leroy, I don’t know which, was listening to the radio on it. You know why I know that, because I had it on an easy-listening station, WBAL, and when I got back last night it was moved over to the rock and roll station, so I know you guys were playing it. That hot shot at the gas station cost me twenty dollars today, and I don’t like throwing money down the toilet. If that ever happens again, I’m going to report you to Mr. Morris, and you’ll be out of work, you understand?”
“I don’t think I heard you right, Martin,” I said.
He moved toward me. Though he was a big guy, he moved pretty well. Even draped in his camel’s hair coat.
“I said you pull that shit with my radio again and I’m going to talk to Morris. He and I are pretty good friends, in case you don’t know.”
I could see Leroy behind me, starting to move forward fast, and I told myself not to say a word or to just apologize. That was all he wanted.
But it didn’t come out that way.
“You know, Martin,” I said, “I been meaning to tell you this for a while, so this seems as good a time as any. You really are an original.”
He looked a little shocked by that and tensed up his square jaw.
“I mean, you’re the original vacuum around which the first asshole was created.”
“You piece of shit,” he said.
Then he swung at me. It might have been a pretty good punch if he hadn’t had on that heavy coat. As it was, I was able to dodge it easily and move into him. I had raised my fist when I felt Leroy grabbing me from behind and pulling me back toward the office.
“Cool it, Red. Cool it, baby.”
Martin was gasping for breath, and he looked at me with his little tense eyes. I tossed him his keys, and he was so surprised that he caught them.
“Okay, Baker,” he said. “That’s it. You’re through.”
“Get the fuck out of here before I decide to use your head for a mop,” I said.
“You … you … nothing,” he said. “You’re a nothing. Mr. Hotshot. Well, we’ll see. We’ll see all right.”
He jumped into his Mercedes and squealed out of the parking garage, laying a three-foot-long patch of rubber.
I turned to Leroy and shook my throbbing head.
“Thanks,” I said. “You probably saved me a jail sentence and a nice lawsuit.”
Leroy shook his head and smiled softly.
“Been nice working with you, Red,” he said. “Maybe we be seeing each other up the summer league. ‘Cause soon as that shit get back to Morris,
you gone.”
“How long do you figure it will be before Morris gets here?”
“I give you till lunch maybe. If he tied up with business and the lame can’t get him on the phone.”
“Yeah,” I said, suddenly filled with relief, the picture slowing down in my mind, knowing that I was sinking but almost glad of it now. Let it come down over me like some black tent, but let it happen in the sunlight and not down in this white concrete tomb.
I got down to the Paradise about five. The two hours between the time I was fired and the time I pulled into the parking lot I spent at Horton’s, drinking myself into a state of what they used to call (somewhere) “wild abandon.”
The minute I walked into the Paradise and saw Dixie Lee dancing on stage and old Henry down at the end of the bar, eating his sub, and Crystal sitting next to him, smoke coming from her nostrils, I felt another chunk of burden break away from me, fly off into the stale air.
I walked right up to Crystal, who had on her spangled, tight-cut, two-piece work outfit, and I gave her a big drunken kiss.
“Red,” she said. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Waiting to talk to my broker,” I said.
“No, really? Come on now. Tell me.”
“Really? Really, I got fired. Canned. Turned loose. I’m now an ex-parking lot attendant.”
“Oh God, you must be really down. Let me buy you a drink.”
“Sure,” I said. “But I got to tell you I feel fine. Hey, you look great.”
“Red, are you all right?”
“Yeah,” I said, motioning her over to our usual booth. She slid in next to me, and I put my arm around her and kissed her sweet-smelling ear.
“Red, you look drunk. Don’t do anything crazy. God, I’m so sorry.”
“No, no,” I said, feeling my lungs rushed with air. “You don’t understand. It’s all right. It really is … You see, while I was driving down here, I was trying to figure out why I don’t feel crazy or sad or desperate or anything, and I figured it all out, babe.”
“Oh, Red, you’re just drunk, baby. Come over and sit with me.”
“No wait,” I said, feeling the pill and the booze and my stone-cold fear make me babble on with no more idea of what I was going to say than a lunatic.
“You see, I figured it out. When shit gets to a certain point, when it’s all coming down on you, I mean, then you either go mad or bust things up, like Doggie, or you just get happy. Because you’re pushed up against the wall, Crys, and you think it’s real, but suddenly you see that it was just something you made up. You don’t have to take this shit, you don’t have to live this way, you just thought you did … and it was thinking it, thinking you had to be some kind of guy … that was what was getting you down.”
“Oh, Red, you don’t know what you’re saying,” Crystal said. “Don’t go on like this, don’t.”
“You want to go to Florida, Crys, I’m with you,” I said.” ‘Cause I tried it their way, you see, I tried it and it don’t work, and there’s nothing I can fucking do about it, you see. Want to get in a nice, big, white car and drive down there where the sun never quits. Get the hell out of this town. It’s dead here, Crys … You know what I was thinking on the way over here? Baltimore ain’t even a town at all. The whole town, it’s really a hospital. People from other planets are the doctors, staring at us with one big eye through these giant microscopes … You know what I’m saying?”
I hoped she did, because I didn’t have a clue. I was feeling all common sense drift away, gently, like a puff of smoke from my old train garden set. All my plans and brains floating away, and inside I felt either a scream or a new happiness which was impossible to explain. As though I were an inflatable doll, a Red Baker doll, all pumped up with air, and was taking off, flying over the tar-paper row-house roofs.
“Red, Red, calm down,” Crystal said. “I’m worried about you, honey.”
She held my hand, but it wasn’t attached to my body anymore. I was flying, flying, no job, no hope and crazy in love with her eyes, her lips, her breasts. I needed all of her every single second.
“We’re gonna live on the beach, Crys. We’re gonna live like gypsies. I wasn’t ever meant to be no family man anyway. You know that, you’ve always known everything about me.”
And suddenly, right then, hovering over the bar, weightless and senseless, I believed whatever came from my mouth. I knew, knew that she really did understand me in ways that Wanda and Ace never could. In ways that I never could. Crystal, Crystal, Crystal … she was always there reading my mind, waiting for me to break out of my dead skin and fly with her to the golden beach …
“Red, Red, you’re on those pills again.”
But I was kissing her then and holding on to her, and the music was blasting out “Satisfaction,” and this time I really did like old Mick Jagger, but he was wrong. There was satisfaction in everything in the world, there was a true happiness born of fear and terror, and it was flooding through me, filling me up, and I meant every word I said and forgot them as they roared out of my mouth.
“I love you, Crystal, I really do. We can make it all right. We can. I’ve missed you so much, baby.”
“I’ve missed you too, but I want you to calm down now, hon. We’ll spend the night together, and I’ll take care of you, and you’ll calm down. It’s going to be all right.”
“But that’s exactly the point. It’s already all right. I know what I want now, Crystal. I want to be with you … and maybe Dog … We get Dog to go with us … Just gimme another little shot of that Wild Turk, thank you, honey … Heading on down to Florida … Everything is fine.”
I touched her electric skin, and she looked clean through my eyes. I had to have her now …
“Red, God, I love you. I’ll take care of you, honey.”
“I know you will. Come with me now, Crystal. Okay?”
“Red, I have to dance in twenty minutes.”
“Okay, okay, just come with me, please. Outside for a minute.”
And then we were walking across the cold parking lot, and I opened the door to my Chevy, and we climbed into the backseat, and I reached for her legs, and she was crying and saying, “Red, Red, I’ll take care of you. Not like this, Red,” but I had to have her, and I was pulling her leotard down and put my mouth on her nipples, and she was crying out and grabbing my cock in my pants and then unzipping them, and I peeled off her spangles, and she put her legs over my back, and I wasn’t gentle, just put it inside her, ramming it in, and she was screaming, “Oh God, Red, Red … Red, wait, wait,” and arching her tight little hips up, and then the world began to spin around wildly, and I came inside her and she came, both of us crying out and clinging to one another, crazy as hell. And in love some too.
Then I felt my head begin to ache, and this black bile started coming up in my throat, and I was covered with sweat, and I buried my head in her breasts and held on to her for a long time.
“Red,” she said, “I’ve got to get back in there. Will you wait for me?”
“Sure,” I said. “You know it, honey. Yeah.”
We pulled back on our clothes and walked back inside, and she kissed me and ducked under the bar door just as Vinnie Toriano was starting to scream out her name.
“Hey, Baker, you keeping my girls from working?”
“No way, Vinnie,” I said. “No way, babe. Here, let me buy you a drink. My buddy. Big Vin.”
Henry looked up from his submarine sandwich and let out a piggy squeal.
“Hey, I don’t believe this, Red Baker buying Vinnie a drink?”
“Yeah,” Vinnie said, staring at me like a leper. “What’s this, cartoons?”
“No way,” I said, soaring again. “No way … Why shouldn’t I buy my old pal a drink?”
And just then, just that second I meant it, because it seemed to me that it was right here in the body of Vinnie Toriano that I had at last found the truth. The truth that the eyes behind the knotholes down in my knotty pine
basement had been trying to make me understand. That there was no law but what you made, there was no fortune but what you took, there was no love, no truth, no honor, no loyalty that could stand up to the terror of dying poor and alone.
It seemed to me then, drunk and staggering, that Vinnie was some kind of devil’s priest, because he knew these simple facts long ago in his own reptile way. He had the wisdom of the sewer, the long rat-filled tunnel that was his church. And far from hating him, it now became clear to me that he had everything to teach me.
For I had bought a whole boatload of lies, and even as I raised hell and drank and saw Dr. Raines and ran around on Wanda, I really still believed in all that Boy Scout bullshit of my youth.
Now, standing there next to fat, greasy Vinnie, it occurred to me that I had been what my daddy used to call a “pure fool,” and the thought about doubled me over with laughter.
I had believed that if you worked hard and kept yourself and your family together, it was going to pay off.
And worse, I had believed that it was not only going to pay off in this world but in the next one too. That was the greatest laugh of all.
Because standing there, looking at Vinnie, I was certain that he was God, him and all the men like him, bigger, stronger men who just went out and took what they wanted.
It was a fat, gold-chained greaseball who ran Baltimore, which was the only world I was likely to see.
I laughed wildly, and Vinnie stood there staring at me, half curious and half fearful that I was going to turn and pop him.
“Hey, Vin,” I said, “take it easy … take it easy, babe. It’s all right. It’s all right. I gotcha now, Vin. I hear you.”
“You been hanging around with Donahue too long, Baker. You’re as crazy as he is.”
“You liking Vinnie,” Henry said in his high falsetto and pounding the bar. “Well, now this is a day I’ll never forget.”
“Shut the fuck up, Henry,” Vinnie said. “You don’t know anything.”
Henry’s mouth formed a small O, and then he sucked in his lips and looked down the bar.
“That’s it,” I said, suddenly feeling a great rush of liquor and food coming up in my throat. “You’re the boss, big Vin.”
