Half-Resurrection Blues (8 page)

L
ate at night, after all the wildness of the street had finally simmered to a scattered call-and-response, and the hustlers, families, gossiphounds, stoopgoons, hopscotchers, beatboxers, and little old people had wandered off to their respective houses or hovels, all that was left was the city and the swelling tide of life returning to my broken body. You could hear Brooklyn breathing through Mama Esther’s windows in that quiet four-a.m. ecstasy. The rush of an occasional passing car, a gust of wind, the leaves outside brushing against one another, a delivery truck backing up a few blocks away. Somewhere, even farther, an ocean liner’s mournful call would sound as it pulled into the harbor. Construction on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. An ambulance howl in the night, and then another, their calls sounding out across the city.

I took it all in. Let it sink into my pores as I lay there feeling each cell of my body blink back awake, one by one, night after night.

*   *   *

There is no such peacefulness to be found at the Burgundy Bar tonight. The soulcatchers have congregated
here to seek shelter from the relentless memories. All that heavy spirit crap has scared off the regular customers, so it’s just my half-dead ass, Quiñones—he doesn’t seem to be fazed by anything—and a bunch of shook-up ghosts. When we arrived, I bought some rounds and left them at the empty tables around the bar for the soulcatchers to devour at will.

“I’ve never seen anything like that in my life,” Dro says. He’s more together than I was expecting, given how shook he’d gotten over the first ngk run-in, but he’s also talking too much. “You ever known the COD to retreat like that, Riley?”

Riley grunts a no and slurps down a shot. I follow suit.

“I mean, what happens now? We’re not just gonna let that freak get away with taking one of our own.”

“We regroup. There’s a squad watching the house, but ’long as the ngk is in there, we can only go in for a few minutes at a time. We lick our wounds and bury our dead, so to speak, and figure out what to do next.”

“Oh.” You can see Dro’s not so satisfied with that answer. He wants a grisly revenge to level out the playing field, overwhelming force and a brutal showdown and all that. Fortunately, he’s smart enough not to go on about it just now.

“I think he’s . . . like me,” I say.

Both Riley and Dro look at me. I suppose they’re startled because I don’t usually talk about what I am, and it obviously bugs me that something so hideous could share a title with me. But fuck it. It’s going to be said; I might as well say it. Plus I’m five shots deep and well past giving a damn what anyone thinks. Put it on the table. “Put it on the table!” I say, slamming a hand on the bar. Quiñones takes it for a sign that I want another round, and I decide not to disabuse him of the notion.

“What do you make of it?” Riley asks. He’s humbled, our glorious leader. He’s asking me as an equal. The tragedy seems to have leveled us all out some.

I shake my head and then stop. A few seconds later the room stops too. “I don’t . . . know. I hate it. Two months ago I met the first person who was like me and I killed him. Now perhaps I’ve met another, and he’s a sick fuck who murdered a soulcatcher and a nice Jewish man in front of my eyes.” And that’s not even to mention the one I can’t stop thinking about. “I’m not very happy right now.”

“Understandable,” Riley says. I clink my glass against theirs and drink.

“Hey,” a voice behind me says. It’s a soulcatcher, unbelievably smashed and wobbling a few inches from the back of my head.

“Can I help you?”

“One’a yer fuckin’ people took out one’a our fucking people tonight. You know that, right?”

“Excuse me?”

“I said . . .”

“Angus,” Riley says, stepping between us. “You’re out of line. Back up.”

Angus considers for a moment. Riley is definitely his superior and able to make his life irretrievably miserable. On the other hand, we’re all drunk, and Angus saw his buddy get murked and wants to take out his anger somewhere.

Apparently, the big stupid half of his brain wins, because then he slurs: “I oughta fuck you up on general printhipal. We all oughta.” The line is obviously designed to elicit some kind of rowdy response from the other guys, but only a few people nod and go “yeah.” Most of them know me pretty well and aren’t anxious to vex Riley on an already tense night.

“Tough talk from a guy who’s one letter away from being an asshole,” I say.

Angus has to pause and think about this for a second, and this is the second in which I would cut off his idiocy with a quick uppercut and then level him with a jab to the face. Instead I stand there, waiting for him to subtract the
g
from his own name while everyone around us chuckles.

I’m in no mood to fight, not after what I’ve seen. And I don’t need any more side-eyes coming my way. Finally, he either gets it or pretends to and growls at me. “You’re gonna get some of your own medicine, halfie!”

I don’t even think he knows what he means by that, but it doesn’t matter; he starts swirling his arms around like he’s about to try to jujitsu me. Then Riley’s there, between us again. His thick hands catch Angus by each wrist and pull, hard. Angus buckles forward, gasping. “What’d I do?” he moans, suddenly the victim.

“I said back off,” Riley growls. “Which means you back the fuck off.” He pulls Angus forward to get him off balance and then shoves him hard, and the soulcatcher flies backward into the crowd and disappears.

“You all right, bro?”

I laugh. “I’m not the one you just tossed, Riley. I’m cool.” We drink another round in silence. Around us, ghosts seek solace from trauma in the sudden camaraderie of the damned.

I
know I shouldn’t be doing this, but I am.

My feet propel me forward, ignoring all my mind’s mumbling protests. I sweep through the rainy streets, leaning hard on my now-bladeless cane. Brooklyn becomes a blur of bodegas and dark houses. I’m navigating through my drunken haze and the steady drizzle, a crazed geographer, mad with memories—this intersection where I cut down a lovelorn haint who wouldn’t let his ex alone, and that corner where I tracked down a nest of infant spirits who’d died in a building collapse decades ago. The memories of ghosts become ghosts in their own right. They follow me along through the misty twilight, crowd in on my drunkenness in a rowdy throng.

I know I shouldn’t be doing this. Because if I make it to the Red Edge and Sasha’s there, I’m gonna tell her everything. I’m not going to hold back, because it’s all right here, pulsing through my veins with a languid thump, tickling the edge of my tongue like a fireball I need to spit. I have truths to tell, and this alcohol-soaked frenzy provides a perfect excuse to shun reason and hurl it all out into the night.

I wonder where I should start. How do you begin to
tell such a ghastly tale? I hang a left off Flatbush Avenue and wander into the Slope. It’s late, and only a few night cabs and barhopping stragglers flit back and forth through the streets like exiled angels. After a couple wrong turns, I stumble into the Red Edge.

She’s not here.

Fuck.

It’s probably good though. I station myself at her table and order a beer. I’ve arrived, after all. Might as well celebrate. When I close my eyes, the blobs of light spin circles around me. It’s time to go. The hipsters glance at me like I stepped out of one of their nightmares. Maybe I did. Or maybe we dreamed each other up, and the Red Edge is just where everyone’s nightmares come to drink together. Surely, once Sasha figures out who I really am, I will be the stuff of sleepless nights and sudden wake-ups for her too.

It’s definitely time to go.

I close my eyes to ready my body for motion again, and when I open them there’s a white girl sitting in front of me. It takes me a second to break through my delirium and realize she is in fact really there. Then I realize it’s one of the Amandas. I open my mouth to say something and then close it again. I have no reason to know her name. As far as she is concerned, I have never seen her before in my life. Then why is she sitting there staring intently at me?

“Hello,” she finally says, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“Hey.”

“I’ve never seen you in here before.”

“I’ve never seen you in here before either.”

She laughs and does a pretty good job of making it sound real too. “Well, I come here all the time.” This conversation is going nowhere. “You, sir, are the stranger.”

I’m not even sure what I say back, something mostly unintelligible that makes her laugh again, and that’s when it finally kicks in: Amanda wants to bone. Or at least get my phone number. I squint at her and allow the tiniest sliver of her thoughts to materialize in the air. Yes, she definitely wants penis. The hunger lurks around her in unmistakable torrents. And me? I’m a new face. A dapper, tall fellow in a room full of mostly scrawny unkempt dudes.

It’s just never happened to me before. I don’t really go out besides to the Burgundy. I have no idea how any of this works.

“What’s your name?”

“Carlos.”

She smiles. For a grim moment, I can see it all play out—the frenzied taxi ride home, the scurry of clothing being peeled off, the magnificent entrance and then the untold wonders of a night of passion—and I want it. I can even taste the chance of total mediocrity and still: I want it. If nothing else, because it would cap off a terrifying day with a dash of ruckus pleasure. But even through my drunkenness, I know better.

“What do you do, Carlos?”

“I’m a contracts analyst.”

“Ooh, sexy!” She says it mockingly, but it rings true anyhow. Half of me is about to leap across the table and take her right here and now. She’s not bad looking, a little odd perhaps, but the sheer sex radiating from her body is working its magic on me. All those crude fantasies heavy up the air between us.

“Why don’t we get out of here?” I say, even though I’m pretty sure that’s not such a good idea.

She looks down at the table, then raises her eyes to meet mine. It’s a little forced, but still cute. Or maybe I’m just drunk. There’s a sadness around her that I can’t put
my finger on. Once I notice it, it becomes even more intense, and I wonder how I could’ve missed it. She’s devastated. “Yes,” Amanda says with a crooked smile. “Let me just tell my friends.”

I wait for her to get up, but instead she just pulls a little calculator-looking thing out of her purse and starts clacking away at it. A few seconds later, a bunch of girls at the bar all pull out their calculators and start giggling. “Okay,” she says with a smile. “Let’s go.”

*   *   *

We get a taxi, and she’s all over me, trying to burrow away from her sorrows. Desperation. Our lips never meet, but she drapes herself across my lap like a wilted flower; her fingers toy idly with my lapels. I remember to ask her where she lives before just blurting it out to the driver, and then she turns to look up at me. “Carlos?”

“Hmm?”

“Hi.”

“Hey.”

She rolls back over and slides her fingers down my chin, along my neck. “Oh,” she says, her carefully trimmed eyebrows creasing with concern. “You’re so cold! My good- ness.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“We might have to do something about that.” Her hand moves from my neck down to the relative comfort of my shirt and stays there for the rest of the ride.

*   *   *

There’s something different about this place. It’s emptier; certain things are missing from the wall, and a heaviness hangs in the air. You can feel it the second you walk in. Then I realize it’s all David’s stuff: gone. Amanda takes
my hand and leads me down the hallway past David’s door. It’s ajar and his room is empty, stark-naked empty, not even a bed. “C’mon,” Amanda says, beckoning with one finger. “This is my room.”

It’s a mess: papers and textbooks all over the floor, clothes piled in the corner, half-full coffee cups on the bedside table. A paperback copy of
The Alchemist
lies open on the bed next to a rolled-up sock and a small pile of receipts. She displaces all that to the floor with a single, drunken swipe and plops down, leaning back on her elbows. “Hey.”

I’m standing over her, looking down as she squirms herself around, trying to be seductive.

This is all wrong. Terribly wrong.

I open my mouth, about to make some ridiculous excuse for leaving, when she sniffles and then breaks down completely.

“Um.” I step back and then forward again, caught between two no-good protocols. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she sobs, wiping tears away and snorfling. “I’m sorry. I’m totally fine.” Ask a stupid question. “I just . . .” She sighs and horks a booger into a tissue. “It’s just been hard, is all.”

“What?”

“My roommate,” she says, her voice quivering. Then she bursts into tears again. I sit on the bed beside her and pat her back. “He . . . he died last week. Just . . . died.”

“That’s terrible. How?” Probably not the right question, but I need to know.

“Just . . . he was s-sick. He was, I don’t know, no . . . He was fine, well, no.” She takes a deep, shivery breath and collects herself. “He’d been acting weird since New Year’s.”

“Weird how?”

“Just . . . off, you know. Like sometimes he was cool, but sometimes he just wasn’t himself. He’d fall into this darkness, like there was a rain cloud around him that he couldn’t shake. And then suddenly he was sick. Ugh . . .” She blows her nose again and rallies some of her composure back. “And we thought it was just the flu or whatever. Finally convinced him to go to the ER. Called nine-one-one for him and everything, but the stupid paramedics were assholes, talking about ‘Oh, why’d we call nine-one-one if all he has is a fever,’ or whatever. Assholes.”

“Jeez.”

“And then they sent him home with just some antibiotics, but he didn’t get better.” And she starts bawling again, this time dropping her head against my shoulder, her tears and snot soaking into my suit jacket. “He just kept getting worse. It was like he was gone, like he wasn’t even there, you know? Just gone. And he kept having bloody noses, all the time. Just filled up trash can after trash can with those bright red–stained tissues.” She lets out a gaspy sob. “And then the next morning he didn’t get out of bed, and we went to check on him, me and Amanda . . .” A long pause. I wonder if maybe she fell asleep. Then she says: “And he was deeeeeeaaddddd,” and breaks down sobbing again.

“Wow.”

“They didn’t even take him, those fucking ambulance pricks. There was blood all around his body and he was pale as a sheet of fucking paper, and they didn’t take him because they said there was no point; he was too far gone.”

“Had he been stabbed?”

“No!” Amanda yells, suddenly furious. Then she rolls her eyes and exhales a heavy breath of vodka and something artificially fruity. “Sorry . . . no. It just came out of
him somehow. I don’t know. I don’t understand. No one would tell us anything.”

“How . . . horrible.” Words are such pitiful stupid things sometimes. Like when I speak them. To people who really need to be comforted. The fuck good does a word like “horrible” do anybody? I resolve to shut up, but then I just feel cold. And then, without warning, it doesn’t matter anymore, because Amanda has managed to pass the fuck out on my shoulder. I gently lay her onto the bed and quiet-walk out into the hallway.

David’s room isn’t only empty of absolutely everything; it’s been scrubbed down. I close my eyes, imagining his last moments: blood gushing out of who knows what orifice, a whole mess of coughing, vomiting, fighting for air, and then finally that slow descent into nothing. I can see the sudden burst of motion as the cops and paramedics show up, take a long, unnerved glance at his empty body and call it a done deal; I can see the screaming Amandas, the quietness of the crime scene until it’s ruled a medical death, the final deep cleansing and scrubbing of the room, and now this: total silence. A shiny hardwood floor. A fairly decent view of the backyard grotto.

I shake my head, realize I’m still drunk, and swagger out into the night.

*   *   *

I don’t even fuck with Herodotus or the Nuyoricans. Nights like this . . . well, there’s never been a night like this. But on those wretchedest of nights, when the fury of the day still pounds through my head with no sign of letting up, I seek refuge in the
Barrow’s Guide to North American Birds
, 1978 edition. Got it for eight bucks from one of those old guys with a foldout table on Eastern Parkway.
Wrens. Blackbirds. Starlings. They’re so alive in these nice full-color pictures. A little foggy maybe, or maybe that’s me. Their little names are so simple. Wren. What could be more straightforward than something called a wren? Build a nest. Feed your young. Find another wren and fuck it. Start over.

Sleep is a friendly way of telling my head to shut up.