by Bill Scheft
“Are you C. B. Sussman?”
“Ah, yeah.”
“They forgot to give this to you at the front desk.”
The bright orange box was from Lobel’s, the big time Madison Avenue butcher shop. Six shrink-wrapped frozen rib-eye steaks and two Freeze-paks to keep them that way. And a note. “Mondays, 5:30 A.M., 102 FM. Would it kill you? Dan.”
He tossed the box in the back seat, next to Mort.
“What’s in the box?”
“Frozen steaks.”
“Frozen? Christ, now we’ll have to get a girl to come in.”
College Boy pulled out onto Vanderbilt Avenue and stopped short when he misjudged the brake pedal. Too high. He’d have to get used to that.
If it hadn’t been for Mort’s diligent bladder, they might have made it back to Vinnin Estates in under four hours. As it happened, they did roll in with plenty of time to spare for Jeopardy. Unfortunately, it was Celebrity Week and the questions were beneath both of them.
“I’ll take Bad Career Moves for a thousand dollars, Alex,” said College Boy to no one, co-opting a line he’d heard Letterman do a year ago, during the last Celebrity Week on Jeopardy.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
“Sounded like something.”
“I just said, ‘I’ll take Bad Career Moves for a thousand dollars, Alex.’”
“Damn funny, kid.”
Mort viewed Celebrity Week as any learned man would, the second sign of the end of civilization (The first, of course, was the photograph of Adlai Stevenson with the hole in his shoe.). Instead, he had College Boy turn off the television and put a Ray Noble album on his turntable, a $259 Lex and Forty-second bargain in 1974.
Every old record sounds the same. The hissing, the thumping, the popping. All before the melody, which seems to strain as if from under some war surplus blanket. No one under fifty should be expected to crack this scratchy, distant code to fill in the distracting din with the toothsome memory of how it must have sounded the first time. So, College Boy didn’t bother. But he knew that Ray Noble did not find its way onto Morton Martin Spell’s stereo just because he had nothing to watch on TV. That would have been a job for Goodman, Ellington, Basie. Ray Noble and His Orchestra signified something else. The ten-thousand-word magazine piece that made it in under deadline and was too good to cut, so they pushed John McPhee or Calvin Trillin back to the next issue. Ray Noble meant victory.
Don’t kid yourself. She had been in on the dump job. The redhead. Mort was sure. Well, he had been sure, but now that she’d loaned them her car to go back to Vinnin Estates, maybe she wasn’t in on it. Maybe there was nothing to be in on. And he had made it back. And since last night, he couldn’t wipe the smile off the kid’s face with a Zamboni. So even though he was incapable of taking a sure step, even though he was forever being handled by only the occasional person who looked familiar, even though this torturous life of the past nine months had now slowed to where sadness and confusion squeezed into every free seat, even though it was goddamn Celebrity Week on Jeopardy, Morton Martin Spell had made it back. It had not been a dump job. So, cue up Ray Noble.
“That’s a little loud, kid.”
No it wasn’t. College Boy turned up the volume even more.
“How’s that, Mort?”
“Just fine.”
22
I’ll stay twenty minutes, she decided. Fifteen minutes. Ten minutes, and then I am so gone.
She didn’t know anybody, and there must have been two hundred people crammed into the second floor viewing area at Campbell’s. The Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel. At least two hundred people. She didn’t even know the guy who had called her.
Ten minutes, one lap around the room, and gone. Gone, out of the heels, back into the New Balance and quick-stepping, dead ahead, straight ahead, down Madison Avenue sixteen blocks, four turns with the lights, and into 301 East Sixty-fifth, where she’d change out of the black knit dress at the Goldschmidts and back into her work clothes.
At least two hundred people, at eleven in the morning, and she didn’t know a soul. Not a soul. How could that be? How had the guy who called her Wednesday night gotten her number? She’d have to ask him, but how could she? She didn’t know what the fuck he looked like, and though Sheila had done many ballsy things in her life, she was not going to start tapping strange, teary-eyed people on the shoulder and asking where she might find Fifth Step Johnny.
And where was College Boy? He should have been here. Was it too much to expect that he might fucking show up? At least he would have known somebody. She knew nobody. Not a fucking soul. Except the guy in the nice box with better makeup.
And then Sheila softened. She sniffled and smiled and understood why College Boy wasn’t there. Why he couldn’t be there. She hadn’t told him.
“Sheila?”
“Yes?”
“Hi, I’m John Duffy.”
“Hi.”
“Fifth Step Johnny.”
“Oh, hi. How did you recognize me?”
“Picture in the apartment.”
“Oh.”
“And you were the only one standing by yourself. We all know each other.”
Sheila knew the photograph. Had to be fourteen years ago. Her on the couch at Uncle Kevin’s house in Astoria, laughing under the weight of two mixed-breed puppies, half setter, half IRA. She never let people take her picture, and people asked—a lot—but this one had slipped in under the tent flaps. Can’t believe he still had it. Still had it out. Son of a bitch.
“I should apologize,” Fifth Step Johnny went on. “I just called everyone in Jerry’s book that had his last name to let them know what happened and leave this address. It wasn’t until after I left the message on your machine that I realized, ‘Oh, that’s Sheila.’”
“He mentioned me?”
“By name? Just once.”
“Fifth step?”
Fifth Step Johnny laughed. “When else?”
Admitted to God, ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Forty-two years old, and a million years removed from the gravitational pull of Al-Anon, Sheila still knew Step Five cold.
“So, what happened? Heart?”
“Yeah.” And then Fifth Step Johnny gave Sheila the account that didn’t deserve to be heard on an answering machine.
Jerry Manning and his fiancée, Chelle, had been walking uptown after a morning meeting at the Mustard Seed. She had stopped at the deli to pick up another coffee and when she came out, he was slumped on the sidewalk, head propped up by a hydrant. Big kidder, Jerry M. Always loved to pretend he was back on the street, so proud he wasn’t anymore. Well, just for today. And just for today for a little over two years now. He was forty-three.
Twenty-seven months clean and sober. Five years slipping and sliding—ninety-two days back, eighty-four days back, thirty-nine days back, four days back—until the hand of God squeezed his shoulder as he tried to walk out of a lunch-time meeting and whispered, “You want a new life or do you want to keep trying to fix the old one?” The hand of God attached for that moment to Fifth Step Johnny. Jerry M. stayed. That had been twenty-seven months ago.
“Wow.”
“Come on, I want you to meet some people.”
Fifth Step Johnny took Sheila by the hand and introduced her to a couple dozen men and women in the second-floor viewing room. All anxious to tell her stories about her ex-husband. About how his struggle, his insanity, and the honesty that flowed from both, had helped them. All filling loss with humility at another one of their own who had died sober.
“Do you know the elevator story?” a woman asked.
“No.”
“Let me tell it!”
“No, let me tell it!”
“I do it great.”
“No, I’m telling it,” the woman said. “Jerry would tell this story about how just before one of his bottoms, he was in such bad shape, drinking so much, he had no control over his bow
els. But his denial was so great, he thought because he lived on the twentieth floor of a doorman building, he didn’t have a problem. Everything was fine. So, one morning, after he’s been out all night, he staggers onto the elevator, his pants full of shit. Full of shit for God knows how long. He presses 20. Just before the doors close, a good-looking woman, a babe, gets on and presses 15. The whole ride up, the babe keeps staring at him. And as Jerry says, ‘My denial was so great, all I could think was, ‘She digs me….’”
No one likes to be shushed, but you can understand why the good folks at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel would try not to encourage raucous laughter. Sheila wiped her eyes for the eighteenth time and was almost composed when she heard a voice nearby say, “Somebody must have told the elevator story….” That set her off again. She hugged the woman who told the story, her left hand clenched tight around various slips of paper with strange phone numbers from the other women she’d met. She hugged Fifth Step Johnny, who was clearly skilled at all things hugging.
“Going?”
“Yeah,” said Sheila. It had been almost a half hour. Wow, indeed. “Have to.”
“Feel like saying good-bye?”
Sheila looked back at the coffin. “Nah,” she said. “Old life.” Fifth Step Johnny nodded. “You can point me toward the fiancée, though. Chelle?”
“Yes, Chelle. Over there, with the short blond hair.”
Sheila borrowed his pen and ripped one of the slips of paper in half. She walked over to Chelle. How pretty. How could sadness have such radiance?
“Chelle, I’m Sheila Manning. Jerry’s ex-wife. I’m so sorry. I have to leave. But here’s my number. You call me.”
Chelle smiled. “I didn’t recognize you without the puppies.” Puppies? Right, the photo. She looked at the paper and tried not to cry. “Another gift.”
Sheila changed into her New Balance, cinched the belt on the chocolate brown suede trenchcoat, and prepared to turn her collar up against the gray April morning of the outside world. She then did something she didn’t normally do. She went over what had just happened. Getting phone numbers from strangers. Giving a stranger her phone number. Another woman, yet. Letting other people make her feel better. All in a half hour. No charge. The price was high, though. The price was showing up and asking for help. Could she afford that?
You want a new life or do you want to keep trying to fix the old one?
That’s when Sheila Manning realized she already had a new life. She’d had it for a while. And who knew that this, this new life, would be the next thing that worked? Great, she thought. All of a sudden, I’m eligible. What now?
She stopped at the light and looked both ways, to make sure there would be no witnesses. She reached into the box on the corner and grabbed a Learning Annex catalogue and stuffed it into the pocket of the chocolate brown suede trenchcoat.
She was no more than a block and a half down Madison when the sun plopped out like a ceremonial first pitch on Opening Day. Another gift.
23
“…coming up in the next hour after the news, Bob Costas will be on the phone letting us know who he’ll be cravenly sucking up to this week on ‘Later.’…Well, why else would they go on that show? Also, from Murphy Brown, Grant Shaud will be here in the studio. Is that right? Here in the studio? Grant Shaud? See, that’s who we get. Who does Costas have tonight? Michael Caine? And who do we have? Grant Shaud? That’s about right.
“Who is this guy anyway? He plays what? He plays the executive producer on the show? The young guy with the glasses? Oh, I like him. Maybe he’d like to stay and pretend like he’s producing a radio show.
“This is actually a pretty good booking. Which means somebody here at the show made a call. More impressive, it means somebody here figured out how to get an outside line.
“Grant Shaud, now he plays Larry? Miles? Right, Miles. Well, he’s the only one I like on that show. Should I wait till he’s here or should I run down the Murphy Brown cast for you? Wait? We’re running late? Okay, you got Murphy Brown her own self, Candice Bergen. Lovely woman, the daughter of Jerry Mahoney, but, as I’ve mentioned many times, walks like a man and confuses younger viewers. You got the guy doing Ted Baxter, you got the young guy, Larry, Miles, who I like, and not just because he’s in the green room waiting to come on. You got the housepainter, Earl, it’s Earl, right? Like I care. Anyway, we were supposed to have that guy here last week, but he canceled at the last minute because he went down to Atlantic City for a Floyd Patterson fight. And who else? Right, the blond. What’s her name. Corky? Seriously? Wait. Am I the first person to notice you have two completely different characters on prime-time television both named ‘Corky’? You have, of course, the one with Down Syndrome who can barely speak, let alone act. And you have the kid on Life Goes On….
(Ah-HAH!)
“And now it’s time for a brand-new feature here on The Dan Drake Show, ‘The Dirt King Goes Before the Parole Board.’”
“Thang youse for see—”
“Wait. Let me set this up, College Boy. The Dirt King is a guy named Ernest Giovia, this J.V. gangster who controlled all the dirt in Central Park and used to terrorize people there even after he was fired by the Parks Department. A few weeks ago, he was convicted on ten counts of racketeering and sentenced to six years in prison. I think I speak for all New Yorkers when I say, ‘Where do we now go for all our racketeering needs?’
“Anyway, we’ve been beating this thing to death for the last two months, but it’s the only impression College Boy can do. Well, we found out that the Dirt King was recently transferred from Rikers Island to Dannemora, so that’s where this hilarious bit of radio play comes from. What the kids today call ‘Found Comedy.’ It’s ‘The Dirt King Goes Before the Parole Board.’ So, strap in.”
“Thang youse for—”
“Was that about right, College Boy?”
“Ah, yeah.”
“And I’m the parole board?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s silly, because they’re going to know it’s me.”
“So?”
“So, nobody’s going to buy that I’m the head of the parole board.”
“You’re worried about people buying this?”
“It’s a concern.”
“Since when?”
“Well, what time is it?”
“Hah! Good one. College Boy just did a watch take. Man, would that have been funny if this show was on television. What? One minute? Hey, maybe after we come back, Grant Shaud can be the parole board.”
“Maybe Grant Shaud can get us on television.”
“Are you mad?’
“No.”
“Don’t be mad. We only see each other three days a week.”
“Two.”
“Would it kill you to stop by three times a week?”
“I, ah—”
“Seriously, would it kill you?”
“Danny…”
“Okay, let’s go.”
“What?”
“You know, ‘Thang youse…’”
“Thang youse for letting me come before youse.”
“Well, you threatened us, Mr. Giovia.”
“Fair enutt.”
“Now, your appearance before this parole board is very puzzling.”
“And why perhaps is dat?”
“Well, you’re not eligible for parole.”
“And?”
“And you’ve only been in this prison for three days.”
“Two days.”
“Would it kill you to be in for three days?”
“Heh… Hey, what kind of balls—”
“College Boy, just go right to the end.”
“What? Oh…well, if I can’t get out, you gotta let me change my prison nickname.”
“You’re not The Dirt King?”
“No. Dat’s another guy. Long story. You wouldn’t want to know.”
“That’s right. So, what’s your prison nickname?”
�
��Ah, Corky?”
“Hah! Okay, that’s enough. Here’s Larry with the news. I mean Jason.”
24
(June)
The woman behind the counter told him if he wanted to, he could fill out an application and the change would be processed in about a month. But there was no guarantee he’d get all his miles transferred to the new account. Sixty-two thousand. That’s a good chunk. Doesn’t get you a seat on the space shuttle, but it will cop you a couple first class upgrades to anywhere.
And besides, why bother? You want to risk sixty-two thousand Delta Sky Miles on a silly first name change?
“Yeah, I do. I’m changing my billing address. I might as well change the name.”
“Fine. But for today, for this flight, you’re still Harvey,” said the woman behind the counter. “Sorry, C. B.”
College Boy had to check his luggage. A first for him on the Delta Shuttle. Bagzilla, an overstuffed WLLS, Wheels-102 shoulder tote, and an FBI-tempting amply taped carton containing a clock radio, lamp, three pairs of shoes, and the six-volume collected works of Thackeray.
The new guy, Warren, had driven him to Logan for the shuttle. Nice job, too. Like all those times growing up when Uncle Mort had come to visit the house in Lynn and it had been College Boy’s job to drive him to the airport. A mostly straight shot on Route 1A. They’d get to the Eastern terminal, when it was the Eastern terminal, and Mort would jump out while the car was still rolling to a stop, turn back and say something like, “The way you negotiated that second rotary was crucial, kid.” Then Morton Martin Spell would fling a wadded-up five at his nephew and dash through the revolving doors before his nephew had the chance to say “Please, you musn’t.” Which he never did because what kid 16 to 21 years old couldn’t use five bucks and what kid 16 to 21 years old ever used the word “musn’t?”
“Thanks, Warren,” said College Boy. “Here’s my number in New York. Call my mother or me if anything happens or he gives you any trouble.”
“Relax, Mr. Sussman. Your uncle is no trouble. He’s a pissah.”
