Visitation Street (32 page)

Inside, the night has wound down to its hollow core. No one is tending bar. A few drinkers are huddled at a table near the window, one slumped, his head wedged between a stand of empties, while two others talk at each other over his rounded back. Jonathan is too gone to determine who they are.

“What’s a girl have to do to get a drink?” Dawn says.

“The question is not what but who,” Jonathan says. Then he sidesteps before Dawn can pinch his ass.

Of course Dirty Dan is there. His hangdog, puppet face is distorted with a sloppy smile, which widens when he sees Dawn, who has taken off her fur bolero, revealing a tiny T-shirt that ends a few inches above her navel. “I didn’t know chicks with dicks were your style, Maestro.” Dirty Dan lets out his cackle.

Even though Dirty’s trying to cling to youth by wearing skater clothes, Jonathan can tell what he will look like when he’s old—a spindly, withered drunk with a booze-distended belly.

Fucked up as he is, Jonathan knows the best thing to do is let Dirty ramble until he runs out of fuel. The reason Dirty doesn’t get thrown out as often as Jonathan is that he’s the only drug dealer who sticks around until late, using more than he sells, then giving it away for free.

Jonathan taps Lil on the shoulder. “Is it open bar tonight?”

Her face has a late-night gloss of sweat and booze. Her eyes are narrowed.

“Nothing wrong with experimenting, Maestro,” Lil says. “It’s good for you to play with someone strong enough to carry you home.” She gives Dawn a half-mast stare. “He was mine first you know.”

“I just want a drink,” Jonathan says.

“Help yourself,” Lil says.

Jonathan slides behind the bar.

“Real chic scene out here,” Dawn says. “How come you never invited me over before?”

“I didn’t think you’d like my friends,” Jonathan says.

“These are your friends?” Dawn arches a penciled eyebrow. Then she pounds her drink like a sailor. “Well, that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.” She kisses the top of Jonathan’s head. “I’m going to powder my nose.”

Jonathan watches her walk to the back of the bar. There seems to be a little more hip and dip to her walk as she transforms the Dockyard into her personal runway. Dirty Dan catcalls as Dawn passes. She stops walking and turns to face him.

“Oh yeah?” she says.

“Yeah,” Dirty says. But there’s a glitch in his gab. Dirty Dan is tall, but in her heels, Dawn towers over him.

Dawn takes Dirty by the shoulders as if she is about to kiss him. Then she pushes him away. “Not with these lips, honey.”

Jonathan’s high has lowered his guard. He doesn’t notice that Paulie Marino is standing in front of him. Paulie has to bang the table to get Jonathan’s attention.

“You little fucking pervert,” Paulie says.

Jonathan’s eyes widen as he tries to get his vision to stop shaking.

“You little perv.”

Jonathan struggles to his feet, but slips and slides back to the bench. The muscles on either side of Paulie’s neck are twitching. The group in the back of the bar turns from their game and stares at Jonathan.

“I couldn’t find my kid all day, then I learn from your druggie girlfriend that my little girl carried you home last night.”

Jonathan’s head is spinning so fast he can’t figure out how to glower at Lil.

“You don’t get it,” Jonathan says. He glances over at Lil and her crowd. But no one steps forward.

“What the fuck did you do to my little girl?” Paulie’s voice rises above Lil’s wheedling country music. “Tell me.” He takes a step closer.

The things that get forgiven in the Dockyard—the late-night slipups, the guys Lil’s hooked up with after their girlfriends went home, the couples who’ve been discovered naked in the storage room, the two-day benders that have wrecked marriages, the people who’ve vomited, who’ve wet themselves, who’ve propositioned police officers, the people who’ve stolen and destroyed—all of them excused when the sun rises. Jonathan’s mistake is not one of these.

Lil’s crew watches with detached fascination—immobile and riveted, eager to see what unfolds so they will have a story to tell the next night.

“Lil?” Jonathan says, hoping she’ll step in, deflect the inevitable, and preserve the night’s debauchery. Lil doesn’t move.

Jonathan doesn’t resist when the first punch lands on his right eye. The second summons a warm gush of blood from his nose. The third splits his lip. His eye is already swelling shut. He struggles to keep the other one open, which is how he sees Dawn stride over and clock Paulie in the jaw.

Paulie staggers back.

“You wouldn’t hit a girl, now would you?” Dawn says. She squats down at Jonathan’s side. Her wig is in place. Her makeup is refreshed—her lips relined, her cheeks matte. She wipes blood from his nose. “Oh, baby,” she says, “what have you done?”

Jonathan tries to speak, but his bruised and bloody mouth won’t let him.

Dawn helps him to his feet. “Excuse us,” she says, pushing past Paulie. She turns and waves her glossy red nails at Lil and Dirty Dan. “Now, you all know how to show a girl a real good time.”

Jonathan’s face throbs. His swollen eye has its own pulse. When he talks, his busted lip feels as if it’s going to explode. Dawn stays with him for two days. She borrows his clothes. Except for her carefully shaped eyebrows, in Jonathan’s black jeans and T-shirts, she is simply Don from New Jersey—a trim, well-muscled man with glowing skin. Don knows how to take care of the wounded with icepacks, hot compresses, tea, and steamed vegetables from the bulletproof Chinese. But these attentions only ease Jonathan’s physical discomfort.

Eventually Dawn has to return to the city. She has a meeting with her cruise ship talent scout. She does a pretty good job of hiding her disappointment that Jonathan won’t accompany her.

“You’ll knock ’em dead on your own,” Jonathan says. “How many times have I told you that you don’t need me?”

After Dawn leaves, he turns the radio on for company. A jingle he wrote a year ago for a used car dealership plays on a constant loop. Its artificial joy is a rebuke. He wishes he could drink less and sleep more, but he does the opposite.

By Tuesday morning, the area around his eye looks like the inside of a plum—concentric circles of purples, pinks, and yellows. His lip is still busted and cracked. He takes a long shower and shaves carefully. He finds his cleanest clothes. Despite his battered appearance, he’s determined to go into work.

Fadi notices Jonathan’s bruises but doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t charge him for his coffee. When Jonathan exits the bodega, Valerie is standing at the bus stop. He raises his hand to cover his swollen eye. She’s wearing pink knee socks with her loafers—a direct violation of St. Bernardette’s dress code. An open textbook is in her hands. Twice she glances up from the page and into Jonathan’s apartment. He resists the urge to call out to her. Valerie looks down the street for the bus. Then she closes her textbook, slides it into her book bag, and begins to walk to school. As much as he’d like to catch up to Val, he can’t risk being seen with her in Red Hook.

While Jonathan was watching Val, a black teenager has come down Visitation and stopped in front of the mural of the cruise ship someone painted on one of Fadi’s roll gates. He paces in front of the painting. Eventually he catches Jonathan’s eye. It takes Jonathan a moment to place him. It’s the boy Val jumped into the bay with the day of June’s vigil.

“S’up?”

Jonathan nods. If this is the first person Valerie kissed, then Jonathan is the second. Even he has to admit that this is not a step in the right direction.

“You cool?” the boy says.

He remembers how this boy had stood on the pier, watching as Jonathan dressed Val. He feels like an adulterer, a thief. Next to this kid he feels deformed.

The boy shrugs and rubs his bald head. “Okay, man. Enjoy your day.”

The 61 rumbles into the stop. Jonathan dashes toward the open door.

Every time the bus hits a bump or pothole, Jonathan’s eye throbs. He anchors his chin with his hand, softening the impact. As the bus crosses from Red Hook into Carroll Gardens, Jonathan catches sight of Val. She swings her arms as she walks. Her chin is tilted upward, her eyes trained on something in the sky. It was enough to rescue her that first time. The second time he found her in the water, he should have let her be. She didn’t need him. It was the other way around.

He waits for the steps to clear of students before entering St. Bernardette’s. He will take the back stairs up to his classroom and hide behind his piano. He will keep the lights off and show the girls another film of an opera. The second bell rings. He can hear the lobby quieting down, the last footfalls of students rushing to class.

He is alone in the lobby when the school secretary pokes her head out from behind the door that leads to the chapel and administrative offices. “Sister Margaret needs to see you, Mr. Sprouse.”

Perhaps Valerie was looking into his window this morning to warn him, as if she could spare him his fate. Jonathan enters the administration wing. The swinging door closes behind him, shutting him off from the rest of the school.

Sister Margaret sits behind her desk, watched over by a stained-glass window of the Blessed Virgin. She and Jonathan have had little to do with each other since he was hired two years ago. A manila folder is open on her desk. She does not look up when he enters.

“Take a seat, Mr. Sprouse.”

Her wimple throws her face into shadow.

“I’m going to ask you a question plain and simple, and I’m going to expect a plain and simple answer.”

Jonathan glances around the office. He inhales its scent of musty paperwork, old wood, and pencil shavings. This is the last school where he will work.

“Mr. Sprouse, did you tell two of your students to
shut up
?”

“What?”

“Did you use inappropriate language when addressing your class?”

Jonathan laughs. “I believe, Sister Margaret, what I actually said was
shut the hell up
.”

Sister Margaret looks up from her file, noticing Jonathan’s face for the first time. “You may teach music, Mr. Sprouse. You may think of yourself as a bohemian, but that doesn’t give you the right to speak like a heathen. Even a music teacher must abide by our rules.”

“I’m not a music teacher,” Jonathan says. “If I am, I’m a terrible one. My students don’t pay attention to what I say and I don’t care. Appreciate music? My ass. Since the start of the year only one student has contributed to my class in any way you might consider constructive. And do you know what she said? She said the music was
cool
. That’s real insight for you.”

Sister Margaret closes the folder and clears her throat.

“I pretend my students need to learn, and I pretend I need to teach. It’s a farce. I’m wasting their time, and they are wasting mine. I’m even wasting this school’s time. This whole thing has been an experiment in complete and utter fucking time wastage.” The nun recoils from his profanity as if he’s spit on her. “Do you know why I teach music? Because I don’t have the energy to play it or write it.”

“Are you done?”

“Am I done? I am most certainly done. Permanently done. Have my students sit in silence this afternoon. They’ll get more out of it.”

Jonathan stands up. Sister Margaret brushes the front of her dress with both hands. She is making small movements with her mouth, trying to find the right words or restrain the wrong ones.

“Don’t bother,” Jonathan says, waving her back into her seat. “I quit.”

The lobby is empty. He hurries toward the door. Anna DeSimone is getting out of a Lincoln town car. A black lace bra is poking out of her blouse.

“Whoa, Mr. Sprouse,” she says. “Looks like you had an exciting weekend.” She comes up the steps until she is standing a few inches from Jonathan. “Lovers’ quarrel or barroom brawl?”

“Anna,” Jonathan says. “You’re seventeen. Act like it.”

That evening Jonathan lies on his couch trying to listen to Eden’s recording of
Mame
. The doorbell rings during the overture. At the start of the second number a pebble hits his window. He has no interest in finding out who wants to see him.

Jonathan switches off the stereo and turns off the lights. He lies in the dark, his ears growing used to the neighborhood noise while his eyes adjust to the yellow cast of the streetlamp on his floor.

The screen of his phone is lighting up with Dawn’s name.

He answers it but says nothing.

“I know you’re there, sweetness,” Dawn says. “Aren’t you going to say hello?”

“Hi,” Jonathan says.

“Congratulate me.” Dawn is clearly getting an early start on a late night.

“Congratulations.”

“We’re going to the Bahamas. We’re going to Jamaica.”

Jonathan has no energy for Dawn’s exuberant hysterics. “Did you win a sweepstakes?”

“
Jo-na-than
.” Dawn draws out each syllable as if she is speaking to a small child. “The cruise, sweetness. We booked it. This is my Carmen Miranda moment.”

Jonathan’s heart falls like a counterweight against Dawn’s excitement. “That’s great, Dawn.” Even the fucking drag queen is moving on to something better.

“You don’t sound thrilled,” Dawn says.

“You’ll be a real rum swizzle.”

“And you?”

A groan of rusted iron followed by a crash comes from his fire escape. A shadow slides across the table.

“I have to go.” Jonathan hangs up the phone.

He gets to his knees and crawls across the floor toward the door, figuring he can hide in his building’s stairwell. Before he opens the door, he looks over at the window and sees a hand pressing against the glass. He leaps to his feet and rushes to the window.

“Val! What are you doing?”

“I tried the doorbell.”

The gush of fresh air that follows Val into the apartment makes Jonathan cough. He shuts the window. He can sense Val shivering and resists his urge to touch her.

“Did anyone see you?”

“I knew you were home. How come you’re sitting in the dark?” She reaches for the lamp next to the table, but Jonathan swats her hand away. “Jesus,” Val says.