Screwed (16 page)

The drive into Manhattan takes barely two hours but feels like it knocks about five years off my life. I’m seeing cops behind each windshield and on every rooftop. If there’s one thing the blues and the hoods have in common it’s their desire to rain down vengeance on anyone who applies a little bodily harm to members of their fraternity. Adding dildoes and YouTube videos into the mix only serves to increase agitation on both sides.

The blues will have their vengeance and you can bet it will be entirely disproportionate.

My shrink, Simon Moriarty, once told me I was obsessed with vengeance, to which I replied: Obsessed with vengeance? Who told you that? I’ll kill him.

How we laughed. Happy times. I miss those days when all my issues were in my head. Nowadays it seems my problems are external and well armed.

I give Edit a terse call to let her know I’m en route with the package, and my chatter brings Evelyn around. She walks two fingers along her scalp, wincing as they make contact with the spongy ridge of sutures.

“Man,” she says. “That was a bad one. You got anything to drink in this car, buddy? Something to help a girl straighten herself out.”

I’m starting to feel like the women in my life are actively trying to forget who I am.

“Evelyn. It’s Daniel, remember? Margaret’s boy.”

I sneak quick sideways glances at my aunt and watch her disintegrate. All that self-loathing is hard on the features. They say the eyes are the window to the soul but the face is a roadmap to the past, which would be a pretty good tattoo for those people who like whole paragraphs inked along their arms.

Evelyn’s features collapse inward as though she’s been punched. Her mouth crinkles and purses, dragging her nose down and chin up. Her forehead is momentarily smooth then deeply lined once more as she draws breath. Evelyn’s skin is dry and flaked across the nose, and sunspots dot her cheeks. She snuffles like a baby bear, then bawls aloud. I am embarrassed and not because adults shouldn’t cry. I’ve seen grown men cry on the battlefield. I did it myself a few times, hunched behind cover waiting for the ordnance with my name on it, but grown-ups don’t howl. That’s worse than letting the bowels go.

“Hey,” I say. “Hey, come on.”

Genius, right? I should be a professional comforter. Surely I have a couple more platitudes in the barrel.

“It’s okay, Evelyn. I’m here now.”

These pathetic überclichés make her cry all the more. Evelyn is bleating now, like a goat, digging her nails into her own legs. I do not know what to do. I am seriously stumped. Should I pull over and give hugs or something?

So I do nothing. I ride it out, waiting for my aunt to run out of steam. Eventually she calms down, drawing the folds of her worn shirt tight as though hiding nakedness.

“Dan,” she says, voice thin from wailing. “Daniel. Danny. I’m hurting, nephew. Could we stop at a liquor store? All I need is a hit. One belt.”

Hit, belt, slug.

All terms of violence. Why is that? Seems like something I should contemplate moodily at some maudlin moment in the future. Might be important but I’d have to be loaded to get it.

Loaded. There it is again.

“No, Evelyn. We need to get where we’re going. It’s not safe to be with me right now. You picked a bad time to make contact.”

“Sorry,” says Evelyn, scratching her forearm. “I was coming last week but something happened in Queens. I met this guy and he rolled me. Can you believe that? A guy rolled me. Once upon a time, I was doing the rolling. You know, before the goods went south.”

“You’re good. You look good. All you need is a weekend in one of those spas. Maybe a few shots of thiamine. You’ll be fine.”

It’s true, Evelyn does look good. She’s a skinny drunk without a single strand of gray in her dark hair. I can see how she would work that face to roll guys. Zeb and me have this people-watching thing, where we try and figure out if a girl is actually beautiful or simply young. I figure it’s okay for us to play this game seeing as we’re so goddamn perfect our own selves. But the point is that some faces have a beauty that lasts. Others hit thirty and get plain overnight. Evelyn’s beauty has longevity. She has fine features and the kind of clean neckline that people take photos of and show to their cosmetic surgeon. And it pains me to think of my mother’s baby sister using her features to turn occasional tricks for beer money.

Evelyn flaps her lips. “Vitamin shots? Spare me, Dan, okay. I been down that road a dozen times. All I need is a fifth. Maybe a coupla Percodan for this goddamn headache.”

I find myself losing patience faster than I normally would. Christ, I’ve been a bouncer half of my adult life. I deal with drunks on a daily basis. But this is Evelyn. Sweet, plucky Evelyn who’s the image of my mother. So I slap the steering wheel with a palm and blurt: “Pull yourself together, Aunt Evelyn. For Christ’s sake you’re my mom’s baby sister. You’re the last of her.”

Evelyn laughs. No doubt she meets meaner characters than me in the gutter.

“Okay, nephew. Wow. I’m the last of her. That’s deep or some shit. And here I was thinking I’m my own person.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Relax, Danny. You could use a drink. What say we pull over and knock a couple back. Talk about the old days. You remember that thing with the ice pick?”

She has ruined that memory for me. Polluted it with her slovenly alcoholic self. Fecking alcoholics.

Selfish.

Disease, my arse.

“Please, Evelyn, just sit there, okay?” I am pleading now, funny how quickly it comes back. Please, Dad. Just sit there. Let me make you a cup of tea.

Evelyn tugs on her belt. “I don’t have much choice, do I, Dan? You kidnapping me?”

“Hey, you came to me, remember?”

“I thought we could hang out. Party a little, like we used to.”

Evelyn gave me my first sip of alcohol. Cooking sherry, it was. Revolting stuff, but there was something glamorous about stealing it from the cupboard. The shine has worn off at this point. Nothing glamorous about a middle-aged woman with stains on her pants.

“You’ve partied enough. How did you find me?”

“Kept your postcards, Dan. Last one was from Cloisters.”

Ask a silly question. I bet my postcard pep-talks really helped Ev through withdrawal.

“So that’s it? You’re just working your way down the list?”

Evelyn finger combs her matted hair in the visor mirror. “Kid, you are the list.”

“So, you don’t need help?”

“Yeah, I need help, look at me. And I’ll get it too, maybe in a couple of years. I still have some partying to do first.”

Evelyn rubs at some dry skin under one eye, then seems to notice that we’re going somewhere. “Dan, where are you taking me?”

“Home,” I say, hanging a right onto Central Park south.

I expect Evelyn to freak out, to scream and thrash in her seat, to curse her father’s memory and swear that she’s rather be dead than set foot in that blasted apartment where her life was a cold hell on earth. But all Evelyn does is shiver like she just swallowed her first oyster, and say:

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You don’t mind going back?”

“Nah, it’s time. Edit is okay. And they have good booze up there. I heard stories, Dan. Stories about rich drunks who get their blood changed once a year. They can function, Danny. Run banks and all that stuff.”

I think maybe some of those functioning bankers were drinking meths these past few years.

“So why did you leave?”

Evelyn coughs for half a minute or so before answering. “Leave? I was stupid, I guess. Poor little rich girl, right? I thought I knew about life, well I didn’t know.”

I nod along to this. I have seen this sad story play out a dozen times: rich kid thinks she has it tough, so lives on the credit card for a few years, then ends up with grazed limbs and blackouts. If she survives the cheap hooch, she runs back to the penthouse faster than you can say delirium tremens, which is also comically known as the Irish jig.

You know a country is in bad shape when they start naming alcohol-related illnesses after its inhabitants.

“To be honest, Dan,” says Evelyn, rubbing her nose with a sleeve. “I don’t remember why I left. Not specifically. I was always angry with Dad about something. Seemed important.”

We are stuck behind a horse and carriage loaded with tourists heading into the park. It always amazes me that people can do normal stuff when life-or-death stuff is happening not ten feet away. I remember seeing kids in the Lebanon playing mortar attack with shrapnel from actual mortar grenades, in a minefield, using blood from real corpses as fake blood.

Okay. Maybe not that last bit.

“Edit will look after you,” I promise Evelyn. “It’s time you got straight.”

“Tomorrow,” says Evelyn and her eyes are flickering. “I need a couple of shots of the good stuff first. Maybe a few hours’ sleep. Tomorrow, I’ll go to the clinic.”

This is good enough for me. “Okay. Tomorrow.”

Evelyn chuckles and the decades of whiskey and smoke make her sound like an emphysemic octogenarian. “Did you know Edit is more than five years younger than me? My own stepmom. I wish she was a bitch. I really do; then, you know, I’d have someone to blame besides myself. But Edit was cool. We never did too much group hugging in our family, but she was okay. Bailed me out a couple of times.”

The ultimate good deed in the eyes of a lush: bailout from the drunk tank.

Suddenly my eyes are watery and my laser focus is diffused by sentiment. This is happening to me more and more lately; a childhood memory bobs to the surface and gets me all mushy. I remember, back in Dublin, hiding out with Evelyn on the garage roof. She was teaching me how to roll a cigarette, which is a skill every kid should have in his arsenal, and I was thinking how she looked like my mom and I always wanted to marry my mom, but maybe I could marry Evelyn instead. So I said that to her, how we should get married and she replied; Sure, Danny. We can get married, but you gotta take it easy on my boobs, okay?

Now look at the both of us: A drunk and a fugitive. Where did it all go wrong? Zeb has a saying for most occasions and I think the most apropos one for this moment is Sometimes the ugly duckling don’t turn into no swan, ’cause it’s a fucking duck. And you know what happens to ducks? They get fucked.

That’s what we are, Ev and me, a couple of ugly ducklings. And I know what happens to ducks.

I like a nice four-star hotel, something minimal and modern where the plumbing hasn’t had a chance to buckle under the onslaught. Five-star upscale joints usually bring on an attack of the unworthies. Especially ones like the Broadway Park House, an old-world Central Park South upscale joint with uniformed doormen shooting me the beadies the moment Evelyn and I are disgorged into the lobby by a revolving door. Smells like money in here: floor polish and whiskey fumes. Evelyn’s nose goes up like a bloodhound’s.

“Hey, Dan, you smell that?” she says. “Why don’t we . . .”

“No,” I say, cutting her off sharply. Whichever version of just one drink she is about to launch into, I’ve heard it before. I’ve heard them all.

Edit is pacing the lobby waiting, which is just as well because the doormen have formed a casual cordon around us and are getting set to tighten the noose. She catches sight of Evelyn and freezes like someone pulled her plug. It takes a few seconds to reboot then she’s across the shining floor and all over my aunt. Hugging her close, kissing her forehead. Evelyn grins and works her elbows like she’s dislodging a puppy.

“I don’t even really know this bitch,” she whispers to me between giggles.

If Edit hears this comment she doesn’t let on, but after a few more seconds of flurried hugs and kisses, she backs off and straightens the skirt of her wraparound pattern dress, which, I happen to know, from watching the ruthless Joan Rivers eviscerate red-carpet celebrities on Fashion Police, is a Diane Von Furstenberg.

“Last season,” I say inanely. “But an instant classic.”

“Thank you, Daniel,” says Edit and I swear she is blushing a little, not because I noticed her dress but because she has let her emotions show in public. Getting emotional is anathema to the top 1 percent. Nobody ever got rich by wearing a heart on their sleeve, unless it was someone else’s heart. And this was especially true of Paddy Costello, who tried his darndest to turn his kids into Vulcans and succeeded instead in pushing them somewhere to the left of Cheech and Chong.

Your mother is a whore, was my own father’s comment on mom’s hippie politics. I remember him telling me in a bar in front of all his drink buddies. She screwed so many guys before you popped out, I ain’t even sure you’re mine. Then he paraded the length of the bar collecting pound notes from all the soaks who bet him he couldn’t make a tough little terrier like me cry. Pop was so thrilled with himself he even gave me one of the notes. I took it too, for my ice-pick fund. Screw him.

Terriers. What a great show. What kind of moron cancels Terriers?

Edit calms herself down with some yoga breathing and literally beams at me. Her teeth are white and even like rows of Orbit spearmint except for a slightly crooked fang. I read somewhere that orthodontists are leaving in a flaw these days for a more natural look.

“Daniel,” she says, shaking her head. “I can’t believe this is happening. You are my savior.”

I am almost blushing, myself. Edit is genuinely over the moon. There’s no fakery here. I read people pretty good and my levels are all in the green with this woman. She may not be a straight shooter but she’s shooting straight vis-a-vis Evelyn and myself.

“I didn’t do anything,” I say, playing the “shucks ma’am” card. “Just gave my aunt a ride home.”

Home. The word sets Edit off again. “Yes, home. You are home, Evelyn. Please stay. Please. You are all I have. You too, Dan.”

I thought she’d never ask. “Actually, I could use a hideout for a few days. My situation is complicated right now.”

“Of course. Of course. I have plenty of room. Stay as long as you need. In fact longer than you need. Do you have any bags, Evelyn?”

Evelyn frowns. “I had a trash bag full of stuff but the guy who rolled me in Queens took it, the bastard. What the hell does he need pantyhose for?”