Cornelius Sky

by Timothy Brandoff

  He went to Bickford's, ordered a bacon-and-egg sandwich on a buttered roll to go, took the 1 to Times Square, and caught the shuttle east. He waited at the top of a staircase eating his sandwich, taking the cue of a young black kid waiting with him. They would take whichever came first—the 4, 5, or 6. The kid with his highly attuned ears skipped down the flight and Connie followed.

  He entered through the service entrance, a coffee light and sweet from the Greeks in hand.

  "Qué pasa, Hector," Connie said.

  "Very good, Mr. Con," Hector said, "how is you?"

  "You're a good man, Hector, I don't care what they say about you."

  "They no saying anything about me," Hector responded, "they saying about you."

  "I bet they are." Connie changed into his custodian's uniform. "I'm a utility player, Hector, you know that."

  "Yes, Mr. Con."

  "I don't fuck around."

  "I know you don't."

  "Service car, front car, front door, whatever I can do to help this house."

  "Me too," Hector said.

  "That's why I'm talking to you. We have the same work ethic, a little thing they call character."

  "Cartoon character," Hector said.

  "How's the front?"

  "Quiet."

  "Super around?"

  "Painting."

  "Where?"

  "Six," Hector said, "Gillespie."

  "Big job?"

  "Nah. Small job. Bathroom."

  "Thank you, my friend."

  "Okay, Mr. Con, you be good."

  Connie arranged things to his liking on the service car, got settled with his coffee and a cigarette. With a can of Brasso and a clean strip of old T-shirt, he went to work on the fixtures. "Make it shine, Mr. Con-Con," he said, rocking slightly on a leather stool's tripod of castors. He liked the smell of the chemicals, the pleasing way the brass shined.

  The car gave off one short ring from the fifteenth floor. Connie shot up there and swung the door open.

  "Game of crib, Con, a little later maybe?"

  "Down the office in twenty," Connie said.

  "Ten-four," John said.

  * * *

  Everything folded out, the chairs and table, as John went on a run of fives and fifteens in the back stairwell of the ninth floor.

  "Look at you," Connie said.

  "Look at me," John said sadly, throwing down cards. Lonely as all get-out, what he was. How can six thousand square feet feel claustrophobic?

  "How's school?"

  "Sucks." He went to an old, established school across the park where he had to wear a blazer. "Did you like school?"

  "Me?" Connie said. "I hated school. The nuns and priests, they paddled you on principle."

  "I'd like to quit," John said, "but my mother would have a shit-fit."

  "Biggest mistake of my life," Connie said, but he didn't mean it.

  After a moment John broached a subject with tentative concern: "Something happened."

  "What happened?"

  "My mother."

  "I saw her taking off for Washington."

  "This morning. Before she left."

  "Okay," Connie said.

  "All right," John said. "So I'm just . . . you know. I'm waking up. I get up, I go to take a leak. I go into the kitchen. You know, like, still half asleep."

  "I got you."

  "And so . . ." John said, looking inwardly, recalling it, reliving it, "so I go to make a bowl of cereal. Like I always do."

  "Rice Krispies?"

  "Special K."

  "Continue."

  John chuckled nervously. "So I'm making the cereal. And my mother. She comes into the kitchen. She's ready to leave for the airport. I'm at the counter, over by the sink. I put some cereal in the bowl. I get the milk out, and I'm about to, you know . . ."

  "Pour some milk over the cereal."

  "Yeah. And my mother comes over. She comes over. Says something about me needing a haircut. Something like that," John said, trying to recall the beats of the story in their proper order. "And then I think she says, I'll have Andrea"—the governess—"make you an appointment at the salon. And just then Andrea comes in. And my mother, I don't know, she comes over, and—she puts her hand on my shoulder. And then . . . and then . . . she, like, brushes the hair away from my face."

  "Okay," Connie said.

  "And then—boom!" John reenacted the sudden move and Connie jumped back a bit in his chair.

  "Whoa."

  "And I tell her, Don't fucking touch me!" John shot a quick, worried look at Connie. "I don't curse like that at my mother, Con."

  "I know that."

  "I say, Don't fucking touch me. I smack her hand away and slam the milk down on the counter, like a half gallon. I had just opened it and it explodes, and I push my mother across the room. She almost falls, but Andrea catches her! The milk's all over the place—the whole kitchen's white! In Andrea's hair. My mother had to change her clothes." John stopped a moment to consider Connie, who offered no hint of an opinion one way or another.

  "Then what?"

  "I don't know. I say, Don't fucking touch me, and I slam the milk down—and she goes stumbling back into Andrea—and I say, You have one daughter, not two!" John stopped again to gauge his listener's reaction. "And then I go, I'll get a fucking haircut when I feel like it—I'll go to a fucking barber, not your goddamn salon."

  After a moment Connie said, "And what'd your mother do?"

  "Just—she looked shocked. We were all shocked. She said Well a few times. Just, Well. And then she looks at her wrist, where I smacked it. She says we'll talk about it when she returns. She goes to change. Andrea starts to clean up, I tell her get out, and I clean up."

  After a long moment Connie said, "You didn't do anything wrong, if that's what you're worried about. Things like this, they happen, you know, in families." He picked up his pack of Camels off the table and shook one out.

  "Can I get one, Con?"

  He'd given John cigarettes before but felt bad about it. With a small frown he gave the pack a second shake and John snatched one.

  Connie lit their cigarettes. John coughed a little, almost choked, and Connie smiled, produced his pint, and took a hit. John extended his hand.

  "What?" Connie said.

  "Come on, let me wet my whistle."

  The stairwell dead quiet, their voices slapping off the walls with a sting. Connie handed him the pint and John took a hit, his face freezing from the shock of booze. He took a drag off his Camel, attempted a few smoke rings.

  "Watch," Connie said, demonstrating perfect rings, and performed a French inhale.

  "Cool."

  "All right, let's play some cribbage," Connie said, "and I apologize in advance."

  "Dream on," John said, and he produced a massive joint, picked up Connie's Zippo, striking the flint against his leg. He lit the joint, careful not to set his locks on fire.

  "That's one big son-of-a-bitching jaybird."

  John passed it to Connie, and he smoked it up, and handed it back to John. Connie took another hit off the pint and handed it to John.

  "Whew," Connie said, and John started to laugh. Connie picked up the cards and went to shuffle them and they shot out of his hands onto the floor for a fifty-two-pickup, and they laughed their asses off like you do when you're high.

  Connie on his knees started to gather the cards. John lit another joint.

  Connie climbed back into his chair, shuffled the cards slowly, no fancy stuff. He looked like he had a concussion. "Wait," he said, looking around on the ground, "are there . . . ? I better count them."

  John watched him count the cards. Connie was drooling, spit collecting at his mouth, and John passed him the joint.

  Connie toked on it and said, "Okay, now wait a minute." He stared down at the cribbage board.

  "What?" John said.

  "Forgot how to play," Connie said. John started to laugh hysterically, when Connie raised a sudden hand. "Hold up, hold up
."

  They both made a show of being quiet. Connie cocked an ear toward the service car.

  "Did—"

  "Huh?"

  Connie listened intensely, shook his head, relit the joint, passed it back to John. "Reefer's got me hearing things. All right, let's play some cribbage."

  "Remember how to play?" John said.

  They laughed and played.

  Then: "Fuck," John said.

  "What happened?"

  "Ah. Bit my tongue."

  "Okay?"

  John showed a mix of laughter and pain. "Fucking braces," he said. "Tired of them. Can't eat, can't do shit." Then, on impulse, "I want them out," and he reached into his mouth.

  "Don't," Connie said, smacking his hand away.

  "Hate them," John said, and then, above them in the stairwell, the sound of a door creaking open.

  Footsteps descended the staircase. Connie reached quick for the joint roaches, ate them, and pocketed the pint.

  Like the ghost of an old-time journeyman painter, there on the halfway landing of the stairs, dressed in painter's overalls, cigar in hand, stood Walter. They looked at each other a moment in silence.

  "Hey, Mr. Mezzola," John chuckled.

  "Hi, Walter!" Connie said, too loud.

  Walter looked down at them, eyes tight with confusion, Connie and John seated across from each other at the small table, cribbage board before them.

  John stared down at the table and started to crack up. The more he attempted not to laugh, the redder his face got, his body convulsing in fits.

  "He all right?" Walter said.

  "No, you know what it is, Walter . . . he . . . recently, just got braces," Connie said.

  "Yeah?" Walter said, as John held his face in his hands, sobbing, his whole body shaking.

  "Ahhhhh!" John cried.

  "Go ahead," Connie said, "let it out."

  "Ahhhhhh!"

  "They put the damn things in wrong," Connie said.

  "For the teeth," Walter said.

  "Yeah, yeah, so he's in pain, and so he doesn't know what to do with himself. He gets a little . . . I don't know."

  Walter stayed quiet for a moment. He had to be careful. Everybody tippy-toed around the kid's family. The kid's mother could have Walter packing by the weekend. She wasn't on the board but the board kissed her ass, recognizing the value of her tenancy. With John's mother in the house you sit back and watch the price of your apartment go up. "Do me a favor," he said to Connie. "My office."

  "Be right there, Walter."

  The super turned and went back up the staircase. They heard the door creak open and shut.

  "You in trouble?" John said.

  "Nah, nah," Connie said, "it'll be okay."

  "Because if you want . . ." John said, laughing and crying.

  "Nah, don't worry," Connie said. He looked at the battleship gray on the walls, and imagined himself sitting inside the upended, gutted carcass of an elephant.

  John produced a small vial of Visine.

  "Let me get some."

  John handed the vial to Connie. He tilted his head back and tried not to blink, but the drops missed his eyes and rolled down his face like tears.

  * * *

  "Probation as it is," Walter said, holding more fire to his cigar. "Playing games in the hall with the kid like that. How you figure such a thing's all right?"

  Connie thought he could see Walter attempting to sound like the superintendent of the house, which he was, but why do you have to try to sound like it?

  "Listen to me careful, now, what I'm going to say," Walter began. Connie watched him build a head of steam consistent with a boss who's ready to chastise a worker, when Walter's wife appeared in the room.

  "Hey, Miss Mezzola," Connie said.

  She nodded at him, a woman of few words. "Ready?"

  "Yeah," Walter said.

  "Here?" she said.

  "Why not," he said, and she popped away.

  "Still busting my chops, Saxton. By the way, forget the game-playing in the hall."

  "Does she know I'm represented by a labor union?"

  "Look, Con, you know, I know: they want you gone, you go."

  "Not why I pay dues."

  "Got to write you up again."

  "Write me up?"

  "Insisting."

  "That hurts me."

  "Hurts me too," Walter said. "What's wrong with your eyes?"

  "What?"

  "Bloodshot, here to Jersey."

  Connie lit a cigarette.

  "I don't know what to do," Walter said. His hands were spotted with tiny specks of paint, the rims of his nails pleasingly caked with plaster. "Trying to help you get on track, which case I don't have to terminate you."

  His wife appeared with two plates of baked ziti, some salad and bread on the side. From the front pockets of her housecoat she produced two bottles of Coca-Cola. She opened them with a bottle opener, dropped a fork on each plate, and disappeared.

  "Oh my God," Connie said.

  "Go ahead," Walter said.

  Connie dug in, hungry from the reefer.

  "Son of a."

  "Hot, watch."

  Connie drank some Coke. "Delicious," he said.

  "So maybe," Walter said, "if you talk to Saxton."

  "Talk to her."

  "Miss Saxton, I'm sorry I got fresh with a friend of yours, simple, like that."

  "Me, got fresh?"

  "Please forgive me, and in the meantime I'll watch my Ps and Qs, and I hope you can forgive me, Miss Saxton, some shit like that."

  "This ziti's incredible."

  "Like a second thought for my wife, that ziti, a third thought. Because otherwise they insist on something in the file come the time for me to terminate you. I mean, look, Con, you cannot skate on your buff job forever."

  "Got friends in this house. Saxton ain't shit."

  "On the board she is."

  "I got people on this board," Connie said, his mouth full, his face down close to the plate on Walter's desk, "way before Saxton ever thought about coming here."

  "And these days sometimes they don't even let you collect in the meantime."

  "Hah?"

  "Last guy I got out. Charles. Remember Charles?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Management fought him on the unemployment. To let you know I say this. 'Cause the thing is, if you back down with her just a little, Saxton, swallow your pride two seconds, because I would hate to see you go."

  "Thank you, Walter."

  "Go ahead. Eat."

  Walter picked up his fork and did some eating himself, and he said, "Let me ask."

  "Yeah."

  "The kid."

  "John."

  "He all right?"

  "What sense?"

  "You play games with him in the hall."

  "Once in a while. If I got a little time."

  "What do you talk about?" Walter asked.

  "Whatever," Connie said. "You know, he's a kid."

  "My point."

  "Thing of it is," Connie said, "he's lonely."

  "That right?"

  "I don't know . . . I'm like a father figure in a way."

  They ate a little bit, and now it was Walter's turn to laugh.

  "What?" Connie said.

  "Nah, it's just . . . it's funny is all! You, a father figure to him! I don't know why," Walter said, and you would think he had been smoking some strong reefer of his own. "I could see you showing up to the family compound they got up there, yeah, yeah, and you show up in your doorman's uniform!"

  "That's funny."

  "Yeah, yeah, and you say, I'm John's new father!" Through laughter he added, "And, and who knows, maybe you end up marrying the mother!"

  They laughed some more about Connie becoming the newest member of the famous political clan, before Walter got up, grabbed the plates off his desk, and left Connie alone.

  * * *

  He went downstairs, took a dreamless nap on his bed of cement, got up, and got bu
sy. He did a garbage run, bagged it up nice, and left it just inside the service entrance. He checked with the guys working the front to see if they needed anything. He delivered some dry cleaning and a few packages. The mail came and Connie cased it, throwing letters into slots with accuracy and speed. He rolled the cart onto the service car and delivered the mail upstairs. He prepped the bucket in the slop-sink room and mopped the back stairwell landings, a salty bead of sweat stinging one eye. He hosed off the service entranceway, swept the area of leaves and other detritus, and when he was done with that he grabbed the can of Brasso and some rags and headed toward the front of the house, where he spotted Larry outside.

  Larry as a rule had two cameras hanging on him, and attached to the straps, like beads on a necklace, a string of 35mm film canisters. He had bad skin, rough and uneven—like his personality, Connie thought. You could read the whole shitty history of Larry's life by the map of pockmarks on his face.

  "There he is, Mr. Fucko in a dirty-ass pickup," Connie said. Larry sat in the passenger seat of his Datsun, a black California license plate hammered with yellow glyphs.

  "See this one here," Larry said, displaying a camera.

  Connie held up the can of Brasso and, as if a courteous afterthought, said, "Would the supercilious parasite like a taste?"

  "This one has no film in it," Larry said. "I carry it with fuckers just like you in mind."

  "You try it."

  "Keep rattling my cage," Larry said with scary California slowness, "I just might."

  Connie turned the corner onto Fifth. He polished the standpipe off the house's front entrance. As it started its descent over the park, the sun gave a direct hit, and the brass responded with a glisten. He sauntered over to the canopy poles and saw Ramey and Slovell in the Impala across the street, an early-season ball game wafting from the vehicle.

  George appeared. An older man from Ireland, George had worked the house a very long time.

  "How are you, George?"

  George, Connie suspected, resented having to share the tenants with the rest of the staff, such was the greedy nature of the man's obsequiousness. Connie tried to befriend him any number of times but finally gave up, dismissing him as a sycophant. In more generous moments Connie considered another take: George had seen one too many coworkers come and go, and it hurt too much to bond with a man only to have him depart. This take, more forgiving, exposed the soft underbelly of George's standoffish posture, and Connie tried to choose it.