All the Old Haunts (16 page)

“Is that a drink?” he asks.

“Forget it. I’ll have … that bottle of wine there. The one with the purple label.”

His eyes don’t open any further, but he leans closer. “You will, huh?”

I stand there like a dummy. What is the move in this situation?

“Driver’s license,” he says.

“Crap,” I say, not to him but loud enough so that he knows the transaction is ended. But I still need something. Sheepishly, I proceed. “That box of chocolates, please.”

Now his eyes do actually open. “These? You could get three bottles of that wine for this much money, kid.”

“Just … cripes, could we just …”

He leans closer again. “Give me the money,” he says.

What do I know? I give it to him.

“You got a library card?”

I nod, and hand it over.

He examines the card as if it has meaning.

“Do I owe a fine?” I ask.

“Looks good for the security cameras,” he says, smiles, and hands me back the card. Then he bags the bottle of wine, and puts my money, or
some
money into the cash register. And some in his pocket.

I take the wine. “Don’t suppose I have change coming?”

“Have a nice day,” he says, and curls back into his state of semisleep.

As I stand, jittery but loaded for bear, at the doorbells, I hear the phone ring again across the street. Out of reflex I turn to go get it but see somebody already there. It’s a guy, probably twenty-five, standing with a friend, grinning, chattering into the payphone. My payphone.

The buzzer finally buzzes, and I jump on it.

When I locate apartment nine, on the third floor, the door is open a crack. I say hello as I push through, but nobody notices. So I walk in, and take in the scene.

I’m over my head from the get-go. There is so much smoke you practically have to drop to the floor to get through it without passing out. Smoke of several kinds. There is definitely cigarette, cigar, and illegal smoke fighting for dominance in this room. I walk, headed in no particular direction. I bump, sorry, into a guy dancing with himself then turn and bump, sorry, into a guy dancing with another guy. The lighting is a combination of sick orange-yellow cheap incandescent bulbs, and what seem to be about a hundred lava lamps, blue and purple and green, standing oozy guard all around the room. The music coming out of the speakers sounds like it’s being played on an amplified Touch-Tone phone.

There are probably twenty-five people here, or anyway, twenty-five hazy outlines.

“Gotta kick in,” a man with a big wiry beard says to me. He may be smiling under there, but I would not know. Probably not.

“What?” I ask.

“Kick in. Everybody kicks in.” He is holding out a hat, a baseball cap that does not appear to have any other kick in it.

“Oh right,” I say. “Here, I brought wine. Oh, and Chee-tos.”

“Sweet,” he says, still holding the cap out. “Gotta kick in.”

I reach in my pocket, fish out some dollars, and in I kick. Linseed oil, I figure, must be just a few bucks.

The bearded guy walks away as I am seized by the arm. I turn with a start. A woman, about six inches taller than me, with long straight hair, is there talking on a cordless phone. She nods at me, as if we were just having a conversation and she’ll be right back to me.

I kill time. I look around. It’s a decent, if cold, apartment. There is not much furniture, but the ceilings are high, the floors smooth, and the space generous. There is a swinging door that seems to lead to the kitchen, and two others that lead to wherever.

A guy and a girl come walking up to me, silent, glum, emaciated. He points to the bottle in the bag in my hand.

“No, sorry, it’s for …” I am pointing behind me, toward the woman on the phone.

“Oh sure,” she says, hanging up and coming right up to me. She puts a hand flat on my back and rubs. Warm, warm large hand. “Virgil, I am so glad you decided to come. Virgil, these are my friends. Friends, this is Virgil.”

“Hi,” I say.

The male one of her friends reaches over and takes the wine. He unscrews the cap and takes a swig.

“I love Chee-tos,” Eva says. I present them to her. She waves them away, gives me a kiss on my cheek.

“Hello,” two voices call from the front door. It’s the two guys I saw at the phone across the street.

“Boys,” Eva calls warmly.

I turn, and the couple are gone with the wine.

The bearded man returns, and hands me a smoke. “You kicked in,” he says and nods. This time I believe he is actually smiling, because half of his mustache moved up his face.

“Oh,” I say, looking at the smoke. It smells nice. Musky, thick, pungent, but nice. I have never tried this. I watch my hand shake as I stare at it in my hand. I clutch the bag of Chee-tos under my arm like a teddy bear.

“Your rental’s just about up on that, buddy,” the bearded guy says. “Hit or get off the pot, right?”

I hit. I am familiar with smoke, as I do smoke Camels. But this is new. This is deep. It feels as if my lungs have new parts that I hadn’t used before, deep, deep, and spiked down in the bottommost tips toward kidneys and the lower what-all, and I want to cough.

No way. I don’t want to cough, and I won’t. I’m having this. Having it.

I exhale, and as the man tries to take away my smoke I hit it again, hard and deep. The taste is like caramel, only caramel set alight and breathed in.

The man has gone, the music has changed, and a couple of lava lamps have burned out or been shut off. I stand frozen in the exact dead center of the main room of the big place. Exact, dead center, I am sure, as sure as if there was an X marking the spot. I think I’ll stay.

“Those Chee-tos?” somebody asks from behind me.

The music isn’t electronic anymore. It has horns in it, and I like it.

“Yes,” I say.

“Baked, or fried?” he asks.

“Baked,” I say, “to a delicate crunch.”

“May I?” he asks.

I clutch the bag more closely to me. “No thank you,” I say.

The Chee-tos are under my arm and something is under the Chee-tos. I look down. It is the package. Christ, the package. I look around. Eva is mingling. She is flitting from one place to another to another being very nice to everybody. I need to talk to her. But I don’t want to leave the X in the middle of the room in the middle of the party. I am assigned the X and no other letter will do. Especially when both the smoke and my bottle of wine come floating back to me. I take the smoke, then some more smoke, then the bottle. There is like three ounces of wine and four of strangers’ saliva in the bottom of the bottle. I’m not that thirsty. I hand it back.

“Eva,” I finally call.

She comes. Isn’t she good? Eva is good. I have not met a good woman like Eva. I have not met anyone like Eva.

Because my father wouldn’t let me.

“My father’s package,” I say to her as she comes close.

She brushes my cheek with the back of her hand.

“Your father’s package.”

“My father’s package. You said you could get my father’s package mailed for me but the post office is closed and he is very serious about this stuff.”

“Yes,” she brushes my cheek again, and I feel it, her fingertips brushing the skin of my face, but my thigh and my stomach also feel it.

She waves. Eva waves, and people come. Two people come.

“Cripes,” the one guy says, but he is laughing. He is one of the post office men. The guy with him is the other post office man. They are both laughing now. They appear to be laughing at me, but I may just be self-conscious.

“Hi,” I say, and they laugh harder.

“Listen,” Eva says, “guys, I told Virgil you could take care of his package for him, so could you do that? For me?”

One of the men reaches out immediately and snatches the parcel away from me. “Sure we can. Of course we can.”

The other reaches out and slaps me on the shoulder, kind of hard. “How ya doin’ cowboy? You doin’ okay? Havin’ a nice time?”

I am about to answer, though I don’t rightly know what the answer is. No matter, words do not come out of me. No matter, the men are walking away, laughing. Walking away, laughing, with my dad’s package.

What time is it? Jeez, what time even is it? I might have to leave. What time does the hardware store close? The cleaners?

There is time. Anyway, they should have to wait. They should be made to wait, and to see.

Hands are on my hips, I think. A bottle of wine is in front of me, a new one. I take a long drink as my hips swivel to bumpety music with the help of some hands. I watch the door open and some more guys and one girl come in as my hips are moved manually by some hands.

It is the girl. The girl who was with the guy. We are moving, in a crowd. The crowd is a crowd now as the music is better now, and the lights and the wine and the smoke are better and everybody wants to dance.

I am at a party.

And she is better, too. The girl is better. She is still very thin, awfully thin, painfully thin. But beautiful. Seriously, softly beautiful. She has spun me around now and her hands are on the front of my hips and she is smiling at me and dancing me and she is beautiful now. With her wispy green and orange and now blue and now purple hair.

I smile back at her and she takes the wine from me, and her skinny male friend is gone and I knew it could be like this.

I knew it could be like this.

Eva comes walking up, nodding approvingly, sizing me up. “Enjoying yourself, Virgil?” she asks.

I nod, and dance. Then I lurch forward and try to kiss her.

Eva backs away, and pushes me off at the same time.

“Go easy there. Are you okay? You sure you’re okay?”

I nod. I dance, I unclutch, and extend the big bag of Chee-tos to her.

“They’re baked,” I say, “to a delicate crunch.”

I don’t stop dancing until I cannot go on. The skinny girl has taken a powerful liking to me, and we are inseparable. Her hands are on me and mine are on her and I knew it could be like this. I knew it would.

We go to a chair, then we go to a couch then we go to a room and I knew it could be like this.

Black, it is black. There is music going on in the other room, but it is now very soft and quiet music and there are not bodies moving everywhere.

I open my eyes and it is not the other room, it is this room. It is the main room, quiet and lifeless and scary. I recognize nobody who was here before. Nobody. Eva is not here and the postal guys are not here, the bearded guy and the guys from the pay phone. And the skinny girl. Not here.

I am in a chair, slumped, sitting more on my back than my ass. My package is lying on my belly.

Not my package, my father’s package.

Christ. I have to go. “I have to go,” I say loudly, desperately, and nobody notices at all. The big room is bigger now, strewn with bodies that do not give a damn.

I pop to my feet, and pop promptly down onto the floor.

I sit for a minute, focusing. I have to go. I take the package firmly under my arm, open my eyes as wide as I can, and force myself up.

What time is it? I am walking down the creepy dark stairway and wondering what time it is and what time the hardware store and the dry cleaners close. I don’t have a watch on. Did I have a watch on? What time is it?

I float. No I fall, or float, my way down the main street toward the stores. It is awfully quiet. All streetlights and darkness, milky, strobe-y distorted light. Nobody doing anything except cars coming by here and there and I am floating. Like I am falling, but not hitting the pavement, then getting up again and floating on because I have to do this. This is doable.

I see the shops, and they are too dark. Too dark, they should not be this dark, but that’s just because everything is too dark right now but this will pass. I run, float, run, get nearer. Fall, don’t hit, get back up, lurch.

I reach into my pocket. The slip. Where is the slip? Where is the slip for the dry cleaning? I check pocket one while I run, while I float. Pocket two. Pocket three while I run, while I float …

I stop running. I stop checking my pockets. There is no slip. There is no money. I look at my father’s package, and it is opened, but the papers appear to be all stuffed back inside.

I am standing. Then I am walking. Then I turn and walk the other way. Toward the party. Toward the post office, home, back toward the hardware store, then back toward home.

I sit. On the curb, with my head between my knees and Dad’s package in my lap. My eyes are closed, everything black.

Car after car coming close by my head, the only sounds I know. Fine. I don’t know how long I am sitting, or how many cars pass, while I sit, but I sit, and I will sit.

Raisins have no business in meatballs, I’m thinking.

The scent of oil of wintergreen stays in the skin and muscle for days, when properly applied. It’s a deepness secret.

The heat of his old Olds right by my shoulder. He is breathing heavy, panting, as I feel him crouch in front of me.

I do not raise my head. It stays between my knees, above his package.

“I lost the slip,” I say. “To the cleaning, I lost the slip, Dad. You never let me do anything. I lost the slip, but you never let me do anything, and you never let anything happen to me.”

I’m still saying it, I can hear myself still saying it even though I don’t want to be saying it and I shouldn’t be saying it, as he lifts me right off the ground and carries me over his shoulder to the car.

He lowers me easy, into the passenger seat. I feel him, hulking bigger than ever, his muscles on muscles on muscles about to burst out of his sweat-saturated blue denim shirt.

“I’m pissin’ and moanin’,” I say.

“That’s okay,” he says.

The insane smell of him, oil of wintergreen and second-day raisin meatball sandwiches, as his cheek brushes against mine.

One of us needs a shave.

Chris Lynch (b. 1962) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the fifth of seven children. His father, Edward J. Lynch, was a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority bus and trolley driver, and his mother, Dorothy, was a stay-at-home mom. Lynch’s father passed away in 1967, when Lynch was just five years old. Along with her children, Dorothy was left with an old, black Rambler American car and no driver’s license. She eventually got her license, and raised her children as a single mother.