Passenger (18 page)

“Loneliness,” I repeat.

“Loneliness,” whispers Nicole.

“Was your friend Vijay sad when Felipe died?”

“No.  Vijay was too pragmatic to be sad over the death of a headless bird.”

“What about you?  Were you sad?”

She thinks for a long time.  Then says, “No.”

“Nicole?”

“Hmmmm?”

“Whatever happened to the head?”

She laughs and I feel her press herself up against me.  “Vijay kept it in a tin box in his bedroom.  When he showed it to me, it was dried out and like a withered old apple core or something.  Mummified.  An apple core with eyes and a beak.”

“That’s some story.”

“Growing up, there were many stories.  And I would collect them all throughout the year until the end of summer, when my parents would send me off to spend two weeks with my grandfather in Georgia.  He’d spent his life as a state trooper, my grandfather, and in his retirement he carved out a fairly modest niche as a fiction writer.  He’d write all sorts of short stories for different magazines.  Every year during my summer visit I would tell him about all the things that had happened throughout the year.  The story of Felipe the headless chicken was just one of a thousand.  And my grandfather would listen and teach me to write the words down, and to tell the story on paper as if it were the first time I was telling it to anyone.  He was a good man, my grandfather.”

“What happened to him?”

“He got Alzheimer’s and my parents relocated him to a facility in Queens.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I made it a point to visit him whenever I could.  Most of his things were in a storage unit in the city—my parents had sold his house in Georgia and had his belongings shipped up north and stowed away—and one afternoon I went to the storage unit and found a bunch of the old magazines he’d been published in, and brought them to him.

“It was one of his good days that day—meaning he recognized me—although he didn’t recognize the magazines when I set them down in his room.  ‘What are these?’ he asked, and I told him.  ‘I don’t remember any stories,’ he said, and asked me what they were about.  ‘Read them,’ I told him.  And when I came back the next day, I found him doing just that—curled over his table, scanning the pages of the magazine.  I approached, happy to see him reading his old work—and how amazing would it be to read something you’ve written that you had no memory of writing?  But when I got closer, I could see he was crying.  He made no sound, but I could see the tears coming down his cheeks.  I asked him what’s wrong.  He slammed a fist down on the table and for a while didn’t say anything.  Then, eventually, he said, ‘These stories are terrible!’  He made me throw them all out.”  There is a lull here as she perhaps relives the incident in her mind.  Respectfully, I do not look at her.  I envy her memories—even envy her pain.  When she speaks again, her voice is choked with tears and, in a strange way, I envy that, too.  “He died a few months later.”

I tell her I’m sorry.

She says, “Is the forgetting like that?  Like reading a story you’ve written but never read before?”

“I guess it is.  In a way.”

She says, “Goddamn it, I wish I knew your name.”

There are kiosks set up along the street.  As Nicole sits on a bench, I go to a kiosk for two cups of hot chocolate.  The heat from the fryers causes me to break out in a sweat.  My body lacks energy.  As does my soul.  I feel I am slowly sinking into myself, becoming less and less real with each passing day.  A lack of history will do that.

I buy two Styrofoam cups of hot chocolate and stand at the corner of the kiosk fumbling a pair of plastic lids on the cups.  When I glance over, just a few people away through the crowd, I see the woman and the child from the art museum.  The child notices me first—is looking up at me, in fact, as I turn in his direction.  Soft-featured, towheaded, fragile.  There is a smear of chocolate on the side of his face and along his lower lip.  As I catch his eyes, which are a brilliant steely gray, he offers a proud grin.  Only children can be so proud.  Then the woman—the mother—looks at me, and there is first shock then distrust in her eyes.  Something deep, soulful, inbred.  Quickly she grabs the little boy’s mittened hand and, still staring at me, tells the child to move along through the crowd.  She has to tell him twice—the second time, her voice raises considerably—before the child moves.

“Excuse me,” I hear myself say…and I’m about to ask if I know them when I suddenly realize that I do not: that these people are strangers to me and I am a stranger to them.  I’ve just been sinking, sinking.

“Stop following us,” says the woman, “or I’ll call the police.”

They vaporize like mist through the crowd.

TWENTY-ONE

One evening, after what the Devine brothers called a “long-haired session” at The Neighborhood, Maxwell and Dougie invite me upstairs.  Each brother with a slinky blonde on one arm, I follow them up the narrow, unsteady stairwell to the second floor where a wall of warped windowpanes faces Thames Street.  Beyond, flecks of snow float like dust motes in the darkness.  The Devine brothers are talking in deep voices into the ears of the blondes as they walk several steps ahead of me.  Their footfalls hardly register on the warped floorboard.  At one point, Maxwell Devine turns his head and pushes his face through his companion’s veil of blonde air; his bright eyes and jowls materialize like the face of a ghost through the wall of a mausoleum.

A door stands open at the end of the hall.  There is a maroon shag carpet on which sits a red velvet sofa.  The walls, vibrant under the glow of neon lights, are aggravated with graffiti, the numerous phrases unintelligible hieroglyphics. Dougie Devine and his woman slip inside.  Maxwell ushers his female friend in as well…then pauses and turns toward me, a long-fingered black hand on the frame of the doorway.  I catch the twinkle of an animal glint in his eyes.

“You got plans tonight, Wurl?”

“Me?  No.”

“Good set tonight.”  He pinches a sandwich of bills from his rear pocket and, licking his pink-padded thumb, counts off five twenties.  He extends his hand and the hundred toward me.  “Go on, take it.  Won’t bite.”

“What for?”

“For kicking it real tonight.”

“Thanks.” I take the money and, instinctually and without thinking, stuff it into the inside pocket of my coat instead of my jeans.  And think,
See that?  That’s instinct kicking in.  You are who you are and there’s no way around it.

“You wanna hook up with one of these bitches?”

“No,” I say.  Behind Maxwell, I can see his brother on the red velvet sofa, kissing one blonde then the other, sharing his tongue with them.  They sit on either side of him like bombshell bookends.

“Think you could he’p us out with something tonight, Wurl?”

“Sure.”

“Go downstairs, have a drink.  We won’t be but a minute.”

I go downstairs and sit at the bar.  It’s late and most of the patrons have left.  Olivia Sorenson, the waitress, sits slumped in one booth while she watches Tate Jennings, the homosexual busboy and dishwasher, clear the tables.  She watches him with a forlorn, ancient glitter to her eyes.  Since Olivia’s suicide attempt, something had overtaken her, something like a reverse Florence Nightingale effect.  Once she returned to The Neighborhood, her wrist bandaged and her skin, like a phantom’s, without color, her demeanor toward Tate, her savior, had completely changed.  Two nights after her return to The Neighborhood, Olivia had cornered Tate in the stockroom and made a pass at him—a rather clumsy and uninspired pass at that, as she was on her way to a good drunk, where she simply reached out and cupped the crotch of his jeans while, following a deep breath, dove in to push her mouth against his.  Word is Tate only laughed nervously and pushed her away.  Then she said she loved him, that he was her hero and that she wanted to spend at least one night with him if she couldn’t have him forever.  Just one night.  When Tate pointed out that he was gay, she admitted that she knew he’d felt very strongly about being with her for a long time now.  His being gay, she explained, was all right, and anyway, their love for each other could transcend gender.  It didn’t matter.  What mattered was being together.  Extracting her hand from his crotch, he cradled her hand in both of his and brought it up to his face.  Perhaps he even considered kissing her digits but, in the end, he didn’t.  He only patted her hand and, keeping his voice low as to dictate compassion, said that he cared very much for her but he was homosexual—that he did not feel for her in that way.  There must have been some misunderstanding, he told her.  Slapping his arm in a playful fashion, she called him a crazy joker, a sick little pup, a ruined and twisting acrobat, and then they hugged.  Yes, Tate assured her, he was a crazy joker, a sick little pup, an acrobat, all that…and his face burned with each word.  Having saved her life—having witnessed her at her lowest—or, perhaps, now armed with the knowledge of her attempted suicide, the love Tate had for Olivia, the love that transcended gender, was no more.  Now, in a bitter twist of fate, it was Olivia who pined after the homosexual busboy.

“Hey, Wurl,” Tate says now, looking up.  His pleasure in seeing me temporarily relieves him from the feel of Olivia’s heavy eyes on his back as he works.  “Great set tonight, man.”

“Thanks, Tate.”

“Keep doing it,” intones Olivia, empty and vacuous from her seat across the bar.  “Keep it up.”

Timmy Donlon wipes down the bar and looks at me like he’s got a million questions and ten seconds to ask them all.  Because I feel conspicuous without a drink at the bar, I ask Timmy Donlon for a glass of water.

Those curious Irish eyes linger on me.  “You allergic to alcohol?”

“Haven’t been so far.  Why?”

“Come on.  Let me pour you a real drink.”

“I’m tired of always drinking.”

“Let me pour it.”

I shrug.  “What do people usually drink here?”

“It’s Baltimore, Wurlitzer.  They drink beer.”

“Then I’ll have a beer.”

“No.  No way.  I want to pour you a real drink.”  He pours Jose Cuervo into a shot glass, his big hand wrapped nearly all the way around the square bottle.  He pours a shot for himself, too.  “Ever see an Irishman shoot tequila?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yeah,” says Timmy Donlon, “I get it.  You don’t know much, do you, Wurlitzer?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Good old Wurlitzer.”

Together we shoot the tequila.  It tastes like molten lava.  I think of Baltimore City as a city of lava, molten lava.  Timmy Donlon grimaces, his mouth crowded with a million tiny yellow teeth.

“You like it?”

“I can’t tell.  It burns.”

“That’s a good burn.  You feel it in the lowest part of your stomach?”

“Yes.”

“Kills disease. Kills anything nasty and angry and mean you got roiling around in your guts.  That’s how I keep healthy, Wurl.  No ulcers, no viruses, no cancers.  Shots of tequila keep you healthy in Baltimore.  Highest rate of sexually transmitted disease in the whole goddamn country and this is like cauterizing a wound.  You know what the hookers on Baltimore Street carry in their bags, Wurl?”

“No.”

“Besides mace and chewing gum?”

“No.  What do they carry?”

“They carry slices of lemon.”  Timmy Donlon pours two more shots then leans closer to me over the bar.  His breath smells like steamed cabbage.  “Little slices of lemon.  They get a guy in the back of a car or down in some alley where they talk him out of his pants and then they squeeze a little lemon juice on the guy’s pecker before they go to work.  If the guy screams, if the lemon juice burns, well, he ain’t no one they want to do business with, anyway.  You dig?  Gotta be careful in Baltimore, Wurl.”

“Sure.”

“Good old Wurl.”

“Yes,” I agree.  “Good old me.”

We knock back our second shots.  Then, with a mischievous glint at the corner of one eye, Timmy Donlon holds up one finger while he slips the bottle of Cuervo back on the shelf behind him.  He does this without looking at the shelf and the bottle is replaced perfectly; he is well practiced.

“One last drink,” he says.  “A man’s drink.”

“I think I’m drunk.”

“On two shots?  You’ve been drinking water all night!”

“But still…”

“Wurlitzer,” he tells me, “I’m gonna fix you a Gorilla Fart.”

“Lovely.”

He pulls the damp, dirty-looking dishrag from off his shoulder and wipes down the bar top.  He wipes good and hard and makes sure he gets it in the drink well where the night’s spillage is ample.  Then he takes the rag and rings it out over my shot glass.  It fills up nearly all the way with a milky, greenish liquid, vaguely soapy, that bubbles at the surface.

“World famous.”

“What about you?” I say.  “Where’s yours?”

“Good old Wurl.  Drink up.”

“Bottom’s up,” I say, and shoot the drink.

Timmy Donlon laughs, those crowded, corn kernel teeth flashing again, and looks like he wants to clap me on the back.  But he doesn’t.  His copper eyebrows arch and, at one corner of his mouth, I watch the tip of his pointy pink tongue poke out like the head of a tortoise.

“That’s good, yeah?  You like it?”

“Good old Timmy,” I say, my head swimming.

“Good old Wurl.”

Timmy Donlon and I have a Guinness each before the Devine brothers sit down on either side of me.  They are like gangsters, these two.  Without an exchange of words, Timmy fills two pints of a pale lager and places the pints before the Devine brothers.  Then, still grinning at me like someone who knows a dirty secret, he slips out from behind the bar to chase away the remaining patrons.

“Where’re the girls?” I ask.

“They split,” Dougie says, sipping his beer.

“Split,” Maxwell says.

“Maxie give you that extra hundred?”

“Yeah, thanks.  I appreciate it.”

“Take a ride with us,” Dougie says.  He pushes away from the bar, his beer hardly touched, and is already making for the door.

“Let’s bounce,” Maxwell says, and tugs on the sleeve of my coat.

A minute later, I’m in the backseat of the Devine brothers’ burgundy Lincoln, the spangled lights of Fell’s Point shrinking in the rear windshield.  The white vinyl upholstery exhales an aroma of marijuana and eucalyptus incense as I shift in my seat.  My hands buried in my lap, I sit with my head slightly back against the headrest, somewhat woozy.  I expect the brothers to click on some music but they don’t.  They don’t roll down the windows, either, but they each light up a cigarette and, in seconds, fill the interior with smoke.

The Lincoln takes a few more turns and we’re now trolling a dark, rundown industrial area near the docks.  The buildings are squat and windowless, concrete structures wrapped tightly in cyclone fencing topped with coils of razor wire. Here, even the streetlamps don’t work.  Skeletons of cannibalized automobiles are stacked along the foot of the docks.  Across the water, lights glitter and the prongs of industrial smokestacks reach up into the sky.  I am shocked at how empty the streets are.

I realize it is New Year’s Eve.

We step from the Lincoln into air that reeks of sulfur.  In the distance I hear a dog barking and the Jacob Marley rattle of chains.  We have parked along an unpaved street with the fecal-smelling water on one side and a row of abandoned warehouses on the other.  Farther up the street I can make out an electric sign above a liquor store and, beyond that, what appears to be a seedy nightclub called The Gulf of Lion.

Smoking fresh cigarettes, the Devine brothers cross over to The Gulf of Lion and loiter around the entrance until their smokes burn to the filters.

“Come on,” Maxwell beckons me, and I follow them inside.

It is a small club with few lights casting a purplish hue on the tables, the countertops, the limited number of drunkards propped in corners and slouched against payphones.  Despite the chill, a ceiling fan pulls slow revolutions above my head; I surmise it is more for dispersing cigar smoke than for regulating temperature.  Somewhere, Willie Nelson plays low and like a distant memory.  A sleek, black-lacquered bar clings to one wall.  Big-haired, excessively painted, a chubby female bartender strains inside a starched white tuxedo shirt and suspenders.

One of the Devine brothers places a set of fingers between my shoulder blades and propels me forward.  We dip down a tight corridor with peeling black walls, past restrooms and an ancient cigarette machine that looks like it could be a prop in some science-fiction movie, and pause at the end of the hall.  I am standing before a closed door so heavily coated in splashes of dried, rubbery neon paint, it looks like it could bend down the middle without breaking.

“Amazing new invention,” Dougie says at my back.  “You turn the knob and open it.  Call it a door.”

What appears before me, after I open the door, is a flight of wooden stairs.  They disappear into the darkness below; I cannot make out the floor.

Suddenly, I am nervous.

Suddenly, for whatever ridiculous reason, I think they are going to kill me.

Again: those fingers at my back, urging me down the stairs.  I go, although my feet are somewhat hesitant and do not lift fully off the floor; rather, they drag, and it seems to take forever to reach the bottom of the staircase.

The three of us are in a low-ceilinged cellar, poorly lighted, with concrete walls and exposed beams and wiring above our heads.  The floor is crushed gravel, crushed nearly to a coarse white powder, and clouds of the stuff puff up around my ankles as I walk.  It looks like the type of place you’d expect to find a nest of vampires.  I hear the distant din of a cheering crowd, of hands being clapped and feet being stomped, and the occasional whistle.  A set of metal double-doors stands at the far end of the cellar, a trim of yellow light tracing its perimeter.  That is where we go: into the room.

The noise hits me first—the boisterous shouts and jeers of countless men pushed hotly together in the crowded space, thrusting fists into the air, some crouched over, hands on their knees, shouting and flicking spittle from their lips.  It is oppressively hot.  The air is saturated with body odor and the deeper, sick-sweet scent of feces.  The men are crowded together in a circle, and although I cannot see it from where I stand, it is quite evident something is happening in the middle of that circle.

“Dog fight,” Maxwell mutters as he brushes past my ear.

The men are all white, except for a small gathering of Asians at one end, and most of them are dressed in dreary shirts and ties, their sleeves cuffed to the wrist, many of them in trench coats and winter gloves.  Their fat faces are flushed from shouting, their throats hoarse and raw.  Their individual words are indecipherable but their collective chants suggest a litany of worship.

Then I hear the dogs: the deep-throated snarl and sudden bark that snaps the air and rises like a missile above the noise of the crowd.  I can almost hear the patter of frothing saliva whipping the cinderblock walls.