Onion Street (3 page)

What had changed? That was the question on my mind when my head hit the pillow on my old familiar bed, and it was still the question when I opened my eyes in the morning. I just couldn’t get over how strange Mindy had been the night before. The drinking, the cigarettes, and the angry sex were the least of it. I guess I could make some sense of that. We all do some stupid shit sometimes. But the stuff about her and Bobby … it just didn’t hang together. Why would she tell me about sleeping with Bobby right after we had screwed ourselves raw? I didn’t think she was trying to hurt me. Or maybe she was, I didn’t know. And that warning about keeping away from Bobby; what was that about? All I knew was that we had had this really pleasant phone conversation just before I left to bail Bobby out of the Tombs. Then two hours later, Mindy was like a different person. What had happened in those two hours? What had changed?

As I lay there still half asleep, something else, something obvious that hadn’t quite registered in my sex-drunk brain the previous evening, occurred to me: Bobby Friedman was in some kind of trouble. What kind of trouble, I couldn’t say, but it must’ve been serious. I couldn’t get the pained look on Mindy’s face out of my head. It was identical to the look on my mom’s face when I was little and she used to warn me about polio.
Never put on another kid’s jacket or share food or drinks
. She never used the word polio, but I understood what her warnings meant. She would always try to be really calm when she talked about it. Of course the irony was that the false calmness — that pinched look of hers, her struggling not to use the word polio — was precisely the thing that scared the shit out of me.

“Moe. Get up!” It was my big brother Aaron. “You got class in an hour.”

“Eat shit and die.”

“Nice thing to say to the man who’s gonna make you rich someday.”

“Capitalist dog!”

“Woof. Woof.”

“You’re funny, Aaron. Remind me to laugh.”

“I’m serious, Moe. Someday …”

“Yeah, my brother the salesman is gonna make me rich, huh? What you gonna do, Willy Loman, rob a bank? Take out a big insurance policy, name me as beneficiary, and jump in front of a train?”

“Listen, little brother, why do you think I’m living at home? You think I wanna still be sleeping in the same room as you, smelling your farts, fighting for who gets to piss first in the morning? I wanna be outta here as much as you, but I’m saving money this way. If you don’t get some idea of where you’re going, you’re gonna be waking up in this room, in the same bed for the rest of your life. The money I’m saving now, we’re gonna need someday.”

“What’s with this
we
bullshit? The only time I’d go into business with you is if I had to choose between that and crucifixion. Even then I’d have to think about it.”

“Keep it up, Moe, and you’ll end up broke like Dad. I’m not gonna be his age with a wife and a family and begging for crumbs. It’s not gonna happen to me, and I won’t let it happen to you, shithead. Even Miriam has more of a sense of purpose than you. How does it feel to have a little sister who’s more ambitious than you? Get ready in ten minutes and I’ll drop you off at BC on my way into work. There’s coffee on the stove.”

• • •

I cut my poli sci class partially because my professor was as stimulating as chewed gum and old enough to discuss the Civil War from memory. Bobby once asked him if Lincoln had been enjoying the play. The class laughed; the professor didn’t. I guess that was the other reason I cut poli sci: it was the one class Bobby and I shared. I had no intention of keeping my promise to Mindy, not if my friend was in trouble. On the other hand, I wasn’t going to rush headlong into a situation I knew nothing about. Totally avoiding Bobby was practically an impossibility, anyway. Not only did we have a class together, we were in Burgundy House and, more importantly, he owed me the bail money I’d laid out for him. Five hundred bucks was nearly all the money I had, and I couldn’t afford to float that much money for too long.

I decided to go over to Burgundy House and clean up a little. Part of me was embarrassed by the state of the apartment. If the other guys were willing to let their girlfriends navigate a filthy minefield of beer bottles, chip bags, and soda cans just to go to the bathroom, that was their choice. Mindy deserved more than that from me. Of course she would have found my concerns utterly bourgeois. Still, my parents had raised me a certain way and I didn’t see anything wrong with respecting some basic social graces. So I pulled up the collar of my ratty pea coat and turned left off the quad and onto Bedford Avenue.

The snow, which had been falling in lazy flurries for most of the morning, was now bombarding the streets of Midwood. I couldn’t see twenty feet ahead of me, the wind whipping the snow into little whirling white cyclones. My face was so cold that the flakes felt like pinpricks on my cheeks. I quickened my pace to a steady trot until I got to East 25th. By then, the big gulps of icy air I’d been sucking in were burning my lungs. More than a few times on my way over, I thought about heading down to Ocean Avenue to catch the bus toward home. Would’ve been the smart thing to do, but even I knew that doing the smart thing wasn’t always the right thing, that smart and right were often at odds with each other.

When I came around the corner and saw Bobby’s Olds 88 parked across the street, I stopped dead in my tracks. Apparently, I wasn’t the only student skipping Myths of Post–Civil War Reconstruction. I’d cut class in part to avoid Bobby Friedman and now here he was; at least his car was. For some odd reason my heart was thumping itself out of my chest and, in spite of the cold, I could feel trickles of sweat rolling down my left side. My half-frozen feet didn’t seem to want to budge. I’d known Bobby my whole life, I thought, and what, suddenly I’m afraid to see him? How ridiculous.

I was on the opposite side of the street, no more than thirty or forty feet away, when Bobby came trudging up the driveway toward his car. His long brown hair was blowing every which way. He didn’t see me because his face was pointed down against the weather. I slipped and struggled to keep my feet. When I steadied myself and looked up again, Bobby was just passing in front of his car. Something wasn’t right. I couldn’t say what it was for sure. I just knew it. Maybe it was the rumbling of an engine coming to life beneath the howling wind, or maybe it was the flash of lights I caught out of the corner of my eye. Whatever it was, it sent me running as fast as my legs would carry me. I tossed my books aside as I went.

“Bobby!” I screamed. “Bobby, look out!”

That was exactly the wrong thing to do, because he froze in his tracks. When I was within ten feet of him, I could see the headlights emerging through the swirling sheets of snow. Maybe it was all in my head, but the car seemed to slow down ever so slightly and swerve a hair to my right. They say that in battle the world slows down. Maybe that was it, for in that brief second the world slowed down. No matter. I took one last stride and jumped, arms forward. My palms hit Bobby squarely in the chest and sent him sprawling backwards out of the path of the oncoming car. I wasn’t that lucky. The car clipped my right ankle and spun me, slamming my shoulder into the front bumper of Bobby’s Olds. I was down, face first in the snow, my right shoulder barking at me. Stunned at my brave stupidity, I lay there for several seconds. Then brakes squealed, tires skidded, and there was a loud crash. The moans of twisting metal cut through the heart of the bellowing storm.

Shaken, I forced myself up onto my hands and knees. Bobby was up too, and pulling me to my feet. We turned, looking down the street, but the snow was falling harder than ever and obscured our view. Without a word, we ran — he ran, I limped — to the corner. There, down Avenue I toward Ocean Avenue, was a silver ’67 Coupe de Ville. It had hopped up onto the sidewalk and smashed head-on into a big, old oak tree. The front end of the car was like a steel accordion, and steam gushed out of the radiator. The Caddy’s doors were flung wide open. Whoever had been in the car was gone now. They couldn’t have gotten very far, but the blinding snow made it impossible for us to tell how far. We carefully crossed to where the Cadillac had come to rest.

“Look at this. There’s blood on the steering wheel,” I said, rubbing the driver’s blood between my fingertips, “and on the seat. A lot of it. The windshield on the passenger’s side is all smashed in too.” Then, pointing at the spotty red trails in the snow, “People got hurt here and they’re bleeding pretty bad too.” I dipped my fingers into the snow to wipe the blood away.

“I hope the driver bleeds to death. What a dumb bastard, driving like that in this weather. What was he thinking? The schmuck nearly killed us.”

“Yeah, Bobby. It almost looked like he was aiming for you.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Moe. Why would anyone wanna hurt me?”

I shrugged my shoulders, wincing as I did it. “You tell me.”

He ignored that. “You all right?”

“I’ll live.”

“Come on, let’s get outta here before the cops show up asking questions. I’ve had my fill of the goddamn pigs. Anyway, we need to get some ice on that shoulder of yours.”

“Sounds good.”

“Moe, one more thing.”

“What?”

Smiling that smile of his, he said, “Thanks for saving my life.”

He just had to say it, didn’t he? I guess he did have to thank me and I guess I would’ve been pretty pissed off if he hadn’t, but it weighed on me. I couldn’t recall just where or when I first heard about the old Chinese proverb:
Save a man’s life, and his life becomes your responsibility
. Probably on
Captain Kangaroo
. Yeah, thinking back, I’m almost certain it was on
Captain Kangaroo
. I don’t suppose it would have mattered one way or the other. In a flash of headlights and metal, Bobby Friedman had gone from being my friend to being my responsibility.

Driving would’ve been treacherous enough even if Bobby hadn’t consumed a six-pack of Schaefer while I iced down my shoulder and we waited for the storm to let up. My ankle was okay, and it didn’t swell up much at all. My shoulder was a different story altogether. I didn’t need to see the spreading purple bruise to know I’d been pretty badly banged up. It hurt like a bastard, throbbing as steadily as a bass drum.

We had been listening to the Yardbirds, Bobby singing along as he straightened up the place. Who knows, maybe a close brush with death turned him into a neat freak. It certainly hadn’t improved his voice. He may have gotten past nearly getting crushed beneath the wheels of a Caddy, but I hadn’t. Never mind my aching shoulder; I kept replaying it in my head: the rumble of the engine, the pale headlights emerging from the white veil of snow, the car bearing down on us, the slight swerve. There was something else I couldn’t ignore — Mindy’s ominous warning.

I brought up her name, but if I thought the mere mention of it was going to get a rise out of Bobby, I was bound for disappointment. He barely reacted, continuing to sing. There was no reason he should have reacted. He and Mindy were old pals — more than that, apparently — but given her warning to stay away from Bobby and his nearly getting turned into roadkill, I figured to see if anything had changed on his side of the equation.

“What’s going on with you and Mindy, anyways?” he asked as Jeff Beck took a short solo.

“I don’t know. She was kinda weird last night.”

He cupped his hand around his ear. “Huh?”

“Turn the goddamned music down, Bobby. You’re the one who asked me the question.”

He twisted the volume knob on the steel-faced Marantz amplifier, its single dial glowing in the gloomy basement. “Sorry, Moe. What were you saying?”

“I said she was kinda weird last night. Before I went to bail you out — ”

“Shit! I owe you five hundred bucks,” he said, getting back to sweeping. “I totally forgot. I’ll get it to you soon, okay?”

“Fine.”

“So what were you saying?”

“I was about to say that before I went to bail your ass out of the Tombs, Mindy and I had this really sweet phone conversation. You know Mindy, she doesn’t do sweet and romantic. We were all set for a little action and then to go out to dinner, but when I showed up here, she was crazed.”

That seemed to finally get Bobby’s attention. His smiling lips went straight as a ruler. He stopped fussing with the broom and went to the fridge. “You want a beer to take the edge off the pain? I want a beer.”

“Nah,” I said, “Suffering is my duty as a Jew.”

He opened his first Schaefer and took a big swallow. “Suffering’s nobody’s duty, man. Mindy was crazed. How do you mean crazed?”

“I found her outside smoking cigarettes and drinking Four Roses. When we got inside she practically raped me.”

“And you’re complaining? Half the guys at BC would give their right nut to — ”

“No, Bobby. It wasn’t like that. Something definitely happened between the time I spoke to her on the phone and when I showed up here. I’ve seen her in bad moods. I’ve seen her sad, but I’ve never seen her like this. She was like a different person.”

Bobby got started on his second beer. He seemed unwilling to take a stab at explaining Mindy’s behavior, so I pushed a little harder.

“Then, when we were done screwing, she started crying.”

“I heard you have that effect on women, Prager.” Bobby’s smile returned as he finished off his beer. He went for another. “Mindy’s a lot of things, but she’s not a crier. She must’ve been putting you on. Or maybe Mindy thinks it’s her duty to suffer too. I mean, no offense, but she is dating you.”

Bobby was uncanny in his ability to dodge trouble, but I couldn’t let him off the hook that easily. Instead of giving him a little push, I gave him a full-on shove, much harder than the one I’d used to save his ass.

“After she stopped crying, she told me about the two of you.”

He moved the beer can far enough away from his lips to say, “What about the two of us?”

“Cut it out, Friedman. You know exactly what I’m talking about. That you were her first.”

Bobby dropped the charade and went for his fourth beer. “We were kids at camp, man. No big deal. It went the way those things always go. It hurt her and I lasted five seconds.”

“No big deal for you, maybe, but it was for her. It always is for girls. You know that. It may be 1967 and the whole world might be going crazy, Bobby, but you know it matters. You have any idea why she would want to tell me that? Why she would tell me about you guys at that moment?”

“Who can understand girls? When you find someone who does, let me know. Besides, she’s your girlfriend. Maybe you pissed her off or something.”

“Or something,” I said. “Do you have any idea what could’ve happened between the time I talked to her and she showed up here?”

“How the fuck should I know?” he barked back. It was the first time he’d ever yelled at me. Was it the beers? Maybe. He’d had four of them in record time, but I didn’t think so. His voice steadied and his smile returned. “As you may recall, dear comrade, I was a guest in the deep cold womb of the fascist state at the time. I have many talents, but knowing what Mindy Weinstock is up to while I’m behind bars isn’t one of them.”

His words were reasonable, but rang in my ears like a cracked bell. He was pushing back too hard when a simple no would have done the trick. I didn’t know much, but I did know when people were full of crap. Bobby was no different than anyone else in that he was sometimes prone to little lies and minor exaggerations, but at the moment the needle on my bullshit-o-meter was off the scale. I left it at that for the time being. He had another beer and chased it down with one more for good luck. A few minutes later we were in Bobby Friedman’s rough beast, slouching toward Brighton Beach.

• • •

I’d smoked a little grass and hash, dropped acid twice — twice was enough, believe me — and done speed a few times. That was the extent of my drug use. At heart I was a gym rat, and preferred playing ball to getting stoned, but the pain in my shoulder was getting worse. So when Bobby offered me something to help, I didn’t hesitate. And almost like magic, I was feeling no pain. Trouble was, I wasn’t feeling much of anything else either. Suddenly there was more slush inside my skull than on the ice-slickened Brooklyn streets. The world was an out-of-focus tapestry of red taillights and slow-motion people blurred around the edges, their featureless faces blending one into the next into the next as we rode past. This soft weave of colors and vague figures was set against a slate gray canvas that seemed to darken with each blink of my eyes.

All my senses were dulled but for smell. I was acutely aware of the beer on Bobby’s breath, of the sour stink of my own dry mouth, of the chemical pine scent from the green cardboard tree dangling on a string below the rearview mirror. I was conscious of Bobby’s mouth moving, of him talking to me, his voice like a muted horn set against the rhythm of the softly slapping wiper blades. It wasn’t unpleasant, exactly. I felt as if I was stuck at the edge of sleep, unable but not unwilling to take that last step into the well of dreams.

Time passed in a lazy gallop, and when I looked outside again, I thought I recognized the part of the world we were in. There was thunder overhead, the thunder of subway wheels. I was aware that the car was no longer moving, though the engine kept running and the wipers kept the beat. Now looking right at me, Bobby spoke, the rank smell of beer filling up my head. I could tell there was some urgency to what he was saying, if unable to make sense of the phrases themselves. I was vaguely aware of some words dripping out of my mouth too, words like cold maple syrup. Then Bobby disappeared, and so did I.