On the Nickel

by John Shannon

  He forced himself to breathe more slowly and deeply, and he began to notice thoughts gathering like alibis. Maeve. Gloria. I couldn’t help it. Forgive me. Oh, yes, I will certainly lie about this down the road a little.

  ‘Jack, I have to think of this as the will of God. I can’t fully know His will. I realize I didn’t pass unmarked through my first love of you. And I was clearly ambushed by my passions today. But I make no claim on you. In ten minutes, when I can speak calmly, I’m going to dress you and put you back up in your chair and then call Gloria to get you. Here, write. Do you hate me?’

  She handed him the pad and pen and then rolled away from him and wept uncontrollably.

  Jack Liffey set the pad aside and rose to his knees. His knees worked. He grinned. ‘You wouldn’t happen to have any chewing gum, would you?’ he said aloud.

  Homelessness does not constitute the entire picture of economic deprivation in L.A. The true rate of those living in dire poverty in the county now hovers at over 20 per cent of the population — well over a million and a half people. For the average family of four it is said to take at least $70,000 a year just to have a roof, a car, health care, new shoes, and to eat regularly in Los Angeles County. This is three-and-a-half times the ludicrous Federal poverty standard of $19,300 for a family of four.

  TWELVE

  Central to All Attractions

  ‘Chewing gum?’ Eleanor wrenched herself erect, startled.

  ‘Bad joke. Sorry.’ After uttering those few words, his throat already felt raspy. Whoa, he thought. If this is recovery, it truly is beyond amazing. Take it in while you can, all sensation, all wonder, and all awe. You won’t have something like this again.

  ‘Jack, talk to me.’

  Bad joke indeed. Maybe later he’d tell her about the Indian Chief in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and his first words after an interminable period of feigning being mute – thanking McMurphy for a piece of Juicy Fruit. He had no real excuse for the joke, only a kind of ecstatic leap, giving the momentary jest its sway.

  ‘Wait.’

  In a more urgent context he had to focus now on what it was that had released him to speak aloud, unlocked that precious gift. She had prayed over him, of course, but, more significantly as far as he was concerned, she had offered the shock of their all-consuming lust. Omigod, he thought. Could that have been the catalyst?

  Legs, now. One more test. He used his hands to help lift himself alongside the wheelchair, grasping its black plastic arm for support and almost toppling himself as the chair came off balance to his weight. His legs were shaky with disuse, but they had unmistakably helped lever him erect, and he sat down heavily on the floor, truly stunned. Oh, yes, he thought, I staggered, I am staggered.

  ‘I don’t know I want this to be happening right here,’ she said.

  Eleanor fell on her knees beside him, and started thanking God privately. At least she was offering up the prayer in silence, he thought with relief. He’d probably rather thank some Greek goddess of intense sensual emotion – who was that? Aphrodite? – though that explanation had its own problems. Who could doubt that intense pleasure brought about many life-transforming shocks? And there had been hints of the return for days. Whoa.

  He wondered if surprises like this – anomalies, sudden visions, seeming cures – would go on being spiritual prostheses for true believers forever. The pilgrims to Lourdes, to the Ganges, the Madonna of Guadalupe at Tepeyac. He wanted nothing to do with what Eleanor would undoubtedly insist was heavenly intervention. No thank you and move on. No secret had torn free from the realm of angels.

  God, listen now, neither you nor the psychologists did this for me. I claim that passion like a fiery sword was driven through my mind by my own ecstasy, by the beast we loosed. Anyone who denies this has forgotten that terrible jolt of a moment of emotion from just beyond the mundane either/or. And it wasn’t just sexual orgasm. It was that intense and overpowering shock wave that comes unpredictably in our daily orbit around the commonplace.

  ‘Jack, God bless, can you walk now, too?’

  ‘Of course. Can’t everyone?’

  ‘Oh, don’t deny the miracle, please.’

  ‘I’m becoming myself … once again, that’s all. My muscles are a little anemic from lack of use. Yes, you helped do it for me – by fucking me like crazy. Sorry, but God didn’t fuck me. We always knew how to burn each other to the ground. Emotion like that unlocks everything. You know that. Just hold me close … and keep God to yourself.’

  She braced herself and helped lift him to his feet to hug him, weeping in spasms against him. He sensed the relief and joy in her and something else, too. Mortification?

  Inside himself, he felt a kind of amnesty. Deep down, nobody really believed they had a right to this kind of sudden reprieve, he thought. Small changes hid away beneath daily living, working their transformation in the dark, and then suddenly made themselves manifest. A butterfly bursting the chrysalis. Whatever had happened, he accepted it gladly, but he would not let it suggest magical worlds.

  ‘God’s love …’ she started.

  ‘Don’t. Don’t make this … supernatural.’ He coughed from the rawness of speaking with his unused throat, but he knew it was urgent to talk now. ‘Assign it to your own love. I do. You gave me what I needed. I love Gloria, too – but for whatever reason, she couldn’t give it these days in the way I required. Maybe she was too needy on her own hook. Or she was too angry at me for everything. For abandoning her to silence. Maybe you were free of all human encumbrances for that half-hour, maybe that’s just what it took.’

  ‘Jack, don’t make it all pedestrian.’

  ‘I love you and I love Gloria.’

  ‘I know you do. No matter what happened, I’m not going to turn my life upside-down again, I can’t. I want you to go back to Gloria, but don’t you dare forget what happened today. Some day it may bring you to God.’

  That chopped him down to size. ‘You didn’t hear me, did you? I don’t believe in meaning – most especially religious meaning. I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me, Eleanor, how could I? But I won’t let it build a fantasy palace.’

  She said nothing more as she helped him dress where he had sat hard on the chair, then grasped him with both hands without kissing him, her head two feet above his own, and she lifted. He wrapped his arms around her waist. Then she pulled free and stood up and went to unlock the door, leaving him balancing with one hand against the chair. She held the door for a moment as if against an onrush of the hostile world, and then she went to sit at her desk, like someone exhausted.

  ‘When you can, please call Gloria,’ he requested. ‘I have enough trouble trying to come up with some neutral explanation for my great cure. Lies get complicated.’

  ‘I wish you didn’t have to lie, Jack.’

  ‘What is the truth? Should I tell Gloria that I can walk and talk again because you fucked my brains out? Oh yeah, with a little help from Mother Mary?’

  She turned her face away. ‘I understand, Jack. Please. You mustn’t make fun of idle wishes. Or religious impulses.’

  But she had only the home number on Greenwood and that didn’t answer. He realized he should know Gloria’s cell number by heart, but for too long he’d relied on the note on the fridge, or the one in his missing wallet, or the one on the all-purpose writing pad that had buggered off with his wheelchair.

  By dint of immense physical efforts that had hurt her quite a lot, Maeve had licked and spit on her right wrist for lubrication and finally wrenched her small hand out of its steel hoop, scuffing the widest points raw and leaving a long red abrasion below her thumb. But she was free now, rubbing her sore hand against her hip and dangling the cuffs as she walked cautiously in and around the collapsed cubicles to find Conor. He was lying full length, with cuffs on his ankles through a loop of heavy chain over a substantial pipe.

  ‘I got loose. Oh, owwie! How’re you doing, bluesman?’

  ‘You’re a miracle,’ Cono
r said.

  ‘That’s why I’m here,’ Maeve said, but when his sheeplike eyes fixed on her, she added, ‘Kidding, guy. There aren’t any miracles. Look at that sore on my hand. If I could work miracles, I’d snap my fingers and turn you loose, too.’

  ‘I gotta get loose. I’m gonna go crazy.’

  ‘I suppose I can stand here tugging on that chain for months, or I can abandon you for an hour and go get some help.’

  ‘Being here alone is pretty scary.’

  ‘Gotta be, mister. I’m sorry.’

  He took a deep breath. ‘Don’t stand there explaining. Get out of here.’

  She patted his shoulder once and headed for what looked like a fire exit door. As she hurried, she grabbed the embarrassing handcuff swinging from her left wrist, and tried to make it seem like no more than a counter-culture bauble.

  She pushed open a crash bar into blinding daylight. Luckily no alarm went off. She tried to orient herself immediately to this particular door in this particular building to be able to find Conor again. An abandoned-looking brick building directly across the street displayed a newish sign saying Good Lucky Toys, Jung Park, over the number 528. But what street was it? Was it east–west or north–south? The sun was overhead but for all the camping and orienteering she’d done with her father, she was too jangled to work out directions by the sun. She would have to reach a corner street sign to find out.

  And then, to her astonishment, only two blocks to her left she saw a vertical sign for the Fortnum Hotel, the neon tubes mostly broken away and dangling. Painted on the sidewall of the building were the fading words Air Cooled, with cartoon ice congealed on the drop-shadow letters, probably sixty or seventy years old, and beneath that, Central to all Attractions. Almost without conscious decision, Maeve ran toward the Fortnum.

  * * *

  Samuel Greengelb and his neighbor Morty Lipman were doing their best down in the sub-basement to inspect the piping with flashlights and see what had been done to sabotage the big boiler that provided steam heat to their radiators four floors up. The damage looked obvious – maybe twenty feet of vertical one-inch pipe had simply been removed and the lower end capped off with a shiny new iron cap.

  ‘Sammy, this is illegal. They can’t do this. Who do we talk to?’

  Greengelb led the way to the one working pay phone in the neighborhood, at the mini-market, and dialed 911.

  ‘Help, already!’

  ‘What is your emergency, sir?’ He could tell it was a colored woman responding.

  ‘They cut off our heat.’

  ‘Is someone hurt at your location?’

  ‘We’re freezing to death at night, nu. Isn’t that enough hurt?’

  ‘Where are you, sir?’

  ‘We live in the Fortnum Hotel on San Julian Street. We got proof here that the owners are cutting off heat to drive us out. Pipes are missing.’

  ‘What is your name and address?’

  ‘Samuel Greengelb, Room 322. So … I’m not ashamed or afraid, not a bit, to report a crime.’

  ‘What is the crime, sir?’

  ‘Cutting off the heat in the middle of winter so some farshtinkener owner can drive away his long-term tenants and make the rooms into fancy lofts for yuppies.’

  ‘I think I agree with you, sir, but I don’t know the crime, exactly. In fact, if you’re not in immediate danger of harm, I’m going to have to hang up to free this line. I can advise you to call another number.’ She gave him the number, but he didn’t even bother to copy it down. Why take all the trouble with some city agency that would put him on hold for an hour and then take months to send someone out? From that game, he was well acquainted. ‘Sir? Did you get the number I told you?’ He was amazed that she had enough sympathy to stay on the line a little longer. Coloreds were often such kindly people.

  ‘So, what if I said I have ice growing on my face?’ Greengelb said. ‘Cold is cold, madam. It can kill.’

  ‘Sir, it’s fifty-eight degrees outside right now. The ice on your face will melt pretty fast. God bless you and a good morning.’ The line went dead.

  Greengelb’s expression must have shown that she had hung up on him.

  ‘We could try the rebbe at Anshe Emes Shul,’ Morty said, as they left the mini-mart and headed back toward the hotel.

  ‘Feh, and we could read Torah and davnen with a bunch of Chasids for the rest of our life. There’s got to be a city department that forbids this. But you know what it’s like kvetching to a civil servant who all he’s thinking is where to eat lunch.’

  ‘I know. The under government is a bunch of Kafka rats in tunnels. But the Jewish rats are still searching for justice, always.’

  ‘I think we can fix the pipe ourselves and then put our own lock on the boiler room door,’ Greengelb said.

  ‘Now you’re talking.’ Morty almost cackled.

  ‘I know a plumber owes me a favor.’

  ‘Uh-oh. I know a carpenter owes me lots of favors. You don’t never want to breathe the air around this guy if it’s after three or you get second-hand drunk …’ Morty slapped himself on the cheek and grinned. A little joke, perhaps.

  ‘No, no, this Fishkin is sober as a judge, believe me. Stop kvetching. I even wrote down his important number – the number reserved for his Jewish mother in the event of being late for lunch.’

  Morty laughed. ‘I had one of those, too. I made sure it went to the city zoo.’

  Samuel Greengelb sighed. ‘I saved my special number for if the Messiah ever called.’ They had got back to the hotel. The desk clerk had gone missing for some reason. They went down to survey the damage to the boiler again.

  ‘Hey, guys!’

  They both glanced back up in surprise and Greengelb brought their flashlight around to see a girl at the top of the stairs. He seemed to remember her, but he wasn’t sure. Short term, he was having his troubles.

  ‘The guy at the desk told me you went down here, but he sure didn’t look like he wanted to tell me anything and then he split. Your friend Conor Lewis needs your help. Pretty quick. He’s not far away and he’s stuck in handcuffs.’ She showed off her own set of handcuffs by dangling the free one.

  ‘Bad mazel,’ Morty said.

  ‘Is this about that boy with the guitar?’

  ‘Yes,’ Maeve said. ‘Hurry, please, Conor’s really scared. And he’s all alone.’ She changed her tone. ‘Musketeers, he needs you.’

  ‘Listen, you fucker. Either you tell us where the girl has gone, or I’ll let my friend here loose to carve you into a party decoration,’ the big golden-blond one threatened. The shorter one was playing with his knife, sending it from hand to hand with intricate flips and leaps.

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. I swear. Honest to God, I swear. She won’t be coming back. Please don’t hurt me.’

  McCall pressed a large thumb against Conor’s nose. ‘Can I give you some advice, tweak? Don’t be such a pussy. Nobody likes a pussy. But nobody. So is this girl your girlfriend?’

  ‘I don’t even know her name. I don’t know why she was there when you guys grabbed us.’

  ‘Whatta you think, Rice? You think he’s being loyal to his cooze? This nose would make a nice hood ornament, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Let me play with him a little. What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil. Mr Nietzsche said that.’ Rice Thibodeaux held the switchblade vertically in front of Conor’s face with a ghastly grin.

  ‘You hear that, tweak? I think the best way we can impress your Jew pals is we start sending them some small pieces of you. Don’t worry; we’ll start with the expendable ones. What would you like to lose for starters? An earlobe? A pinkie?’

  ‘Please!’

  ‘An ear’s the thing. Very Reservoir Dogs. I know it’ll be good for me. It’ll be good for Rice here. You may be of another opinion.’

  Now Rice was using the index fingers of both hands like a juggler, flipping his open switchblade back and forth in space like a baton-
twirler’s trick.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ the big one said. ‘You got an endless line of bullshit tricks, don’t you, Rice? You oughta try out for the circus.’

  The little man suddenly tossed the knife at McCall’s feet, so it stuck in the floor, vibrating, between his black Doc Marten boots. ‘In heaven all the interesting people are missing. You got a lot of empty talk, Stevie-boy, until somebody some day puts a knife straight into your ear,’ Thibodeaux said. ‘You wanna get old in this lousy world?’

  ‘It’s a lot better than the other thing.’ McCall glanced at Conor. ‘I hope you’re getting a vibe of evil here? I sure am.’

  Conor was silently weeping.

  There was a crash nearby, and Rice quickly retrieved his knife from the floor.

  ‘Conor, you OK? I brought help!’ It was the girl’s voice, bleating from along the corridor with all kinds of false confidence.

  The big one pointed right at Conor. ‘Shut the fuck up, tweak.’ Then he shouted, ‘Your pal’s got a knife into his neck. Come on over if you want to see a lot of blood.’

  ‘Same to you, gonif! If you got a soul, run away now. We’re coming to get our boy.’ Weird – the voice of one of those Yids, he thought.

  ‘Oh, terrific, I can work with that. A coupla old kikes and a girl come to the rescue. Go on, cut his head off, dude.’

  McCall waved off his command frantically, as Thibodeaux was just stepping up to do it.

  No, no, no no, he mouthed, shaking his head hard.

  ‘Don’t touch that boy!’ Greengelb shouted. ‘The police are on their way.’

  ‘And Batman, too, right? You went and put up the big searchlight. Look, you Yids go and get lost and we’ll talk about this later!’

  But McCall could hear footsteps coming along the hallway.

  ‘Don’t do a bad thing, golem!’

  A siren approached in the street, and McCall tensed for a moment, but by careful discrimination, he could tell it was a fire engine, which went on past.

  ‘That your cops, Greengold? Bring ‘em on.’

  ‘I’ve got a gun,’ another male voice put in.