The Grievers (8 page)

“You understand that Billy’s dead, right? He jumped off the Henry Avenue Bridge because people like us never gave him the time of day. And now that we’re trying to do something nice for him, all you care about is trying to figure out the cheapest way to do it. He was our friend, for Christ’s sake. And you want to buy a ping-pong table? No wonder they call it the Bastard Factory. You guys are a bunch of—cheap—fucking—bastards.”

The last words escaped my lips in stuttering staccato bursts, and our waitress hurried to the table to see if everything was okay. Before I could turn to her and say that, no, everything was decidedly
not
okay, Neil apologized for my outburst and asked for the check.

“You’re upset,” Sean said. “I understand. Maybe we should continue this conversation another time. You do have my card, right?”

“Yes, Sean. I have your card.”

“Then call me sometime, okay? You’d be amazed at how a new car can change your outlook on things.”

Neil raised a discreet hand to keep me from leaping out of my seat, but it didn’t matter. Something inside me had broken, and there was nothing I could do to fix it, so I slumped forward in my chair and told Sean I’d be in touch as he dropped a few bills on the table and said that he’d had a good time.

“As have I, gentlemen,” Greg said. “But I fear I’ve kept Mother waiting long enough.”

“Your mother still waits up for you?” Dwayne asked.

“God, no,” Greg said. “She’s waiting in the car.”

Greg opened his wallet and laid a ten-dollar bill on the table. He’d only had a hamburger, he said by way of explanation. In fact, we probably owed him some change, but given the somber nature of the occasion, he was willing to let it slide.

“Two words,” Dwayne whispered as Greg followed Sean out the door. “
Forcible commitment
. We can do it tonight. Just lure him inside city limits, and we’ll lock him away.”

“Maybe some other time,” Neil said.

“Suit yourself, but you know where to find me if you change your mind.”

Dwayne laid some money on the table. He’d love to stick around, he said, but his shift was starting in a little over an hour. Promising to send Neil a check, he rattled his keys and left the two of us alone at our long, empty table.

“That was a great success,” Neil said, aping Groucho Marx as he totaled up the bill. “One more like that, and I’ll have to sell my body to science.”

“
Animal Crackers
?” I said, taking a shot in the dark.

“Close,” Neil said. “
The Cocoanuts
.”

  CHAPTER SIX  

A
ll told, we raised $470. Neil kicked in an additional thirty to make it an even five hundred, and I wrote a brief letter to accompany the check that we forwarded to the Academy. The letter said that we’d always remember Billy as the kindest of souls and that our gift was the least we could do to honor his memory. It also listed the names of everyone who had contributed to the sum, including Greg Packer, whose donation of fifty dollars came in the form of a promissory note to Neil, and Anthony Gambacorta, who sent a check signed by his mother and a pledge of points on the back end of any and all future productions of
Down in the Stalag.
Though I didn’t know what this last piece of information meant, I included it in the letter anyway because it sounded like the kind of thing that Phil Ennis would love to mention on the AlumNotes page of
The Academic.
When he called for clarification three days after I mailed the check, however, all I could tell him was that I thought points had something to do with the amount of money a movie made after all was said and done.

“I know what points are, Schwartz,” Ennis said. “I want to know how many we’re getting.”

“I’m not sure,” I said, carefully pacing the lawn in front of the bank, one arm tucked inside my giant dollar sign so I could hold the phone to my ear, the other arm held limply aloft by the bouquet of brightly colored balloons tied to my wrist. “But I can probably find out.”

“And you have this in writing? That Anthony pledges a certain number of points on the back end of this—what is it? A movie or something?”

“It’s more of a musical,” I said.

“Broadway?”

“Not exactly.”

“So we’re looking at what in terms of box office?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “Did you get the check I sent?”

“We received
one
check,” Ennis said. “From Neil.”

“Actually, that was from both of us. All of us, in fact—everyone I mentioned in the letter. We thought it would be easier just to collect the money and write a single check.”

“You mention four people in this letter,” Ennis said. “In addition to yourself and Neil.”

“Right,” I said, quickly counting my friends on the fingers of one hand. “That’s six altogether.”

“Yet the check was for five hundred dollars.”

I sensed an unspoken
only
in Ennis’s statement and reminded him that he was also getting a percentage of any profits Anthony Gambacorta might make on
Down in the Stalag
. I was about to add that the promise of points on any musical based on
Hogan’s Heroes
—even one that had yet to be staged—was like having money in the bank, but the backdraft of a passing tractor-trailer knocked me off my feet before I could say it.

“—a little disappointing,” Ennis was in the middle of explaining when, lying flat on my back, I regained my bearings and pressed the phone to my ear. “But you’ll be pleased to learn that we still have options.”

“Options?” I said.

I pulled my free arm inside the dollar sign and switched my cell phone from one hand to the other. The only problem was that the balloons were still tied to my wrist, and whenever anything larger than a bicycle whizzed by, the balloons tried to follow, tugging at my arm and yanking the phone away from my ear until I wrestled it back. As a result, I only caught about half of what Ennis said next, and even then, I could barely make sense of it.

“We can still—situation—advantage,” he explained. “Letter—finesse. Classmates. Details. The key is—working. Noblac ideals—friendship—donkey—interested parties. You—Pogue. Rank—horn—Friday?”

“Absolutely,” I said, switching hands again.

“Then let’s plan for noon,” Ennis said.

“Right,” I said. “Friday at noon.”

“Pogue, too?”

“Probably,” I said, though I didn’t know what I was agreeing to. “But I’ll have to run it by him first.”

“Good,” Ennis said. “Unless I hear otherwise, we’ll see you then.”

“We?” I said, but Ennis had already hung up.

T
HAT NIGHT
, I paced our narrow hallway while Karen stripped more of the old, yellowing wallpaper from the walls. Given my brooding personality and general uselessness around the house, it was hard to say what she ever saw in me. To this day, the best answer I can give is that my life has been marked by short, random bursts of inspiration and activity, followed by extended periods of coasting, disenchantment, boredom, lethargy, and, eventually, surrender. Unfortunately for Karen, she happened to meet me while I was on the upswing. Two years out of college, I’d ditched three jobs and decided that the next mountain I wanted to climb would be graduate school. This time, I told myself, I’d give it my all. This time, I wouldn’t cut any corners. This time, I wouldn’t stop at simply buying the books—I’d actually read them and make notes and form study groups to make sure I got the most out of my education.

As it turned out, Karen was the only person who joined my study group, and by the time we started dating, I had her convinced that I knew what I was doing. I wasn’t going to stop at the Master’s Degree, I told her. I was going to go on for my Doctorate. From there, I’d probably do some post-doc work (whatever that was), get some academic writing under my belt (it sounded plausible at the time), settle into a tenure-track position at a small liberal arts college (why not?), and spend the rest of my life discussing the significance of the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock in
The Great Gatsby.
But then came the Ph.D. program and all the books I had to read, and all the books about the books, and all the talk from all of the professors about how bad the job market was, and as my dreams started slipping further and further away, I stopped trying so hard to reach them, and soon I was marching back and forth in front of a bank and wondering whether the world might end before the next chapter of my dissertation came due.

Somewhere between the dream and waking up, Karen and I got married.

“He smells money,” I said, sucking in my gut to squeeze past her ladder on my fifth pass through the hallway. “Ennis, I mean. But for some reason, he can’t get to it without my help. Otherwise, why would he have called?”

“You’re being paranoid,” Karen said. “Pick up a scraper and make yourself useful.”

“Paranoid?” I said. “You obviously don’t know these people.”

“I know enough,” Karen said. “And I know you, and I know that you have a tendency to blow things out of proportion.”

“Is that what you think? That I’m blowing things out of proportion?”

“I think you need to take a breath,” Karen said. “Pick up a scraper. Lose yourself in the work. It’ll give you some perspective.”

I picked up a scraper from the pile of tools on the worn and faded carpet. I pressed the blade to the wallpaper and leaned into it. A three-inch gash appeared in front of me, and a wrinkled, yellow strip came away from the wall.

“See?” Karen asked. “I’ll bet you’re feeling better already.”

“Much,” I said, and put down the scraper to resume my pacing. “The problem is that I don’t know what I agreed to.”

“You didn’t agree to anything,” Karen said. “Except maybe lunch on Friday.”

“Lunch,” I said, squeezing past the stepladder once again. “That’s how they get you. It starts with lunch, and soon you’re agreeing to everything they say.”

“You make it sound like a cult,” Karen said.

“A cult,” I said, turning on my heel and shaking a finger. “That’s exactly what I’m dealing with. Propaganda. Brainwashing. Indoctrination. You just watch. On Friday, I’ll come home, and I’ll be a different person. They know which buttons to push. They know how to get me to do what they want. They know because they made me who I am.”

“Then don’t go,” Karen said.

“I have to go,” I said. “That’s part of the program.”

“Then there’s really no point in obsessing over it, is there?”

“I’m not obsessing,” I said.

To prove it I squeezed past Karen’s stepladder one last time, picked up the scraper, and went back to work on the wallpaper. This was about Billy, I reminded myself as the blade bit into the wall. I was working with the Academy because his mother said that he loved the place. I was meeting with Ennis out of deference to his good name. I was honoring his memory because I should have been a better friend while he was still alive.

I was selling my soul to save it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN