Cornelius Sky

by Timothy Brandoff

  "Let me see." John handed it Connie; it looked to be a standard spring-hinged rack to be mounted over the rear wheel. "This is nothing. I'll help you."

  "Got tools?"

  "Got the keys to Octavio's shop." Considering the rack through its plastic, Connie said, "Looks like all we need is an adjustable, or maybe an Allen wrench. Come on."

  John wheeled the bike onto the car with practiced caution, as the elevator's beautiful woodwork inspired a mindfulness. The strap of a tennis racket case cut across John's chest. Connie let the door collapse shut and dipped the lever.

  "Son of a b.i. bitch. Ten-speed Bianchi, cobalt blue, you got to be kidding me. Mutt and Jeff know about this?" he said, referencing the Secret Service.

  "What, can't I ride a bicycle?"

  "Of course you can."

  "Even my mother says it. I heard her talking to them. She said, He's thirteen, he doesn't have an itinerary."

  "I hear you."

  "I go to that stupid school, I play tennis, I get high, I ride my bike—that's my itinerary."

  "You do more than that."

  "Like what?"

  "Play cribbage with your pal Connie."

  John laughed. "Game of crib, Con, a little later?"

  "Sounds good. Let's see what's what."

  When they hit the basement Walter stood there.

  "Hey Walter," Connie said.

  "Hello," Walter said.

  "Hi, Mr. Mezzola."

  "Hello there," Walter said to John. To Connie: "What's up?"

  "Putting a rack on the bike."

  "Sounds good."

  "Octavio's shop."

  "Octavio's shop?"

  "I mean—"

  "First of all," Walter said, "if it's anybody's shop, it's management's shop. That shop, it belongs to the people who live here. Besides which, the tools in that shop—90 percent—my tools."

  "I hear you."

  "90, 95 percent. That shop, it's not Octavio's shop."

  "He's a little territorial about it, it's true," Connie said.

  "That shop is nobody's shop."

  "I'll tell you," Connie said, "he knows I have a key but he doesn't like it a bit."

  "If it's anybody shop, it's his shop," Walter said, pointing at John, who smiled, a little embarrassed. "That shop belongs to the tenants in this house. If it's anybody's shop, far as staff goes? Tell you the truth, that shop is my shop."

  "I was going to say."

  "Octavio's shop? I'm sorry."

  "He does go around saying my shop a lot."

  "He does!" John confirmed, chuckling.

  "My shop this, my shop that."

  "Remind me to talk to Octavio," Walter said, making a small move.

  "Need me to take you up?" Connie asked.

  "Nah. Go ahead. Help him. I'll ring Stanley on the back. Got the key, you said?"

  "Yeah."

  "All right, good." Then: "Funny you have a key."

  "I know. It is funny. But you know what?" Connie said. "Fuck Octavio."

  Walter glanced at the rack in its plastic. "And do you know what you're doing?"

  "Looks pretty easy. We'll figure it out."

  "If you need help, say so."

  "Thank you, Walter."

  "Thank you, Mr. Mezzola."

  "You're welcome."

  Connie and John entered the shop and together put the rack on the bike without a problem. Connie grabbed a bungee cord among many hanging on a board, and John used it to fasten his tennis racket to the rack.

  They walked out of the basement through the service entrance.

  "Later, Con." John pushed off, swinging a leg over the frame. He reached back to double-check the racket was secure before powering up the ramp.

  Connie watched the street from his below-grade vantage for signs of a flash, but none came.

  * * *

  Benjamin was on the front door at the doorman station. Connie stood just outside the idle west elevator down the length of the lobby. Benjamin was describing the plight of his drug-addicted daughter when a patrol car pulled up in front of the house. Benjamin read Connie's face and turned to the street, saying, "What's this now?"

  John hopped out of the backseat of the patrol car and moved toward the entrance, just as Connie witnessed Larry come into view, his camera flashing once, twice—flash-flash. John grimaced and kept moving. Benjamin opened the door, telling Larry, "Enough with that," while the two NYPDs slowly got out, adjusting their gun belts.

  John moved down the lobby. "Can you take me up, Con?" he said, heading into the elevator.

  Connie saw the cops and Benjamin beneath the canopy, while the Secret Service agents, Ramey and Slovell, appeared as well.

  "Con?" John said.

  Connie turned and followed John onto the elevator.

  "Somebody take the bike?"

  "Yeah."

  When the door swung open onto the vestibule, John said, "Come on, my room."

  Connie secured the inner gate open with the hook and followed John down a maze of corridors, past a variety of interiors, the sight of which reminded him of the Met's French period rooms. A phone rang somewhere inside the vast apartment and a woman with a Spanish accent could be heard saying hello.

  John's room had a schizophrenic design, the furnishings caught uncomfortably between two worlds—that of a thirteen-year-old boy's and that of the boy's mother, her touch evident in yet another chandelier, and valance curtains, and the room's stuffed chair and rococo moldings. The boy's contribution included an abundance of sporting goods scattered about. The space smelled like male adolescence—like somebody had been jerking off habitually. On the wall, a prominent poster of Muhammad Ali.

  John plopped onto his bed and Connie took a seat in the stuffed chair.

  "What happened?"

  John folded his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. "Motherfucker took my bike, that's what happened!"

  "Tell me."

  "I head into the park. Up the East Drive. I was going to go around. I was early for my lesson. Plus, I wanted to break the bike in a little, the brakes were squeaking. I'm peddling hard up the hill, and I reach down to change gears, and this guy comes stumbling at me."

  "Stumbling?"

  "Like maybe he's drunk or something. I had to brake hard, he's standing over me, and now with this smile I see he was faking. Holding my handlebars. Smiling at me."

  "How old was he?"

  "Nineteen. What he told me."

  "You talked to him?"

  "Yeah. He's asking about the bike, where I got it, how much it cost. Then he asks for a ride. I say no, I can't, I'm late. He keeps asking, I keep saying no, and finally he starts shaking the handlebars, he's banging the bike up and down, up and down, and he says, Let's go! Let's go! Like he's about to do something."

  "Okay, all right."

  "So I get off the bike. He gets on. I go to take the tennis racket at least, he says leave it there, leave it there. He's complaining the frame's too small for him. He's just about ready to ride away, but then, like he forgot something, he pulls me toward him and he checks my pockets."

  "Did he take anything?"

  "No, I had nothing on me. He's says, Where's your bus pass? I say, I don't take the bus!"

  "All right."

  "Motherfucker! Stupid fuck! I hope a truck runs him over."

  "Sure you're angry. Who likes to be robbed? Important thing is you weren't hurt."

  "Fucking cocksucker."

  "Listen to me now," Connie said. "You think you're the only one who ever got mugged? I can't tell you how many times I've been robbed. Yeah. On the train. Walking down the street. On the beach. Yeah, one time, in Coney Island, I passed out in the sand, these two guys woke me up to rob me! I said, Why did you have to wake me up? Why didn't you just take the shit?"

  John smiled a little.

  "Yeah! They laughed too! This other time," Connie said, "these two kids with a knife stole a can of baked beans from me!"

  "Baked beans?
" John laughed.

  "Right on 23rd Street. One can of beans. At knifepoint. Unbelievable. What I'm saying, you're not the only one. Honest to God, if they mugged me once they mugged me twenty times. Congratulations. You lost your cherry."

  "You're funny, Con."

  Connie considered the poster of Ali and said, "He started boxing right around your age."

  "I love Ali."

  "Do you know why he started to box?"

  "Why?"

  "Somebody stole his bicycle."

  "For real?"

  "Kid you not."

  The governess—her name was Andrea—appeared in the doorway, her expression betraying a small shock at Connie's presence. She was South American. She was family.

  "John, two detectives will be here in twenty minutes to talk to you."

  "What for?" John said, annoyed. "I already told the cops everything."

  "They're coming, and you have to speak to them," she said, appealing to the young adult in him.

  Connie was on the fence about Andrea. She wore her Catholicism on her sleeve, used it like a shield. He feared she judged him from some secret place in her mind. Not so much as a hello on the elevator. Even John's mother said good morning and thank you. Generally he kept his distance, the vibe a strained neutrality.

  To John, Andrea said, "Would you like a sandwich?"

  John turned to Connie. "Want a sandwich, Con?"

  "Not him, you!" Andrea said.

  With a surprising outburst of emotion, John said, "He's my friend, Andrea!"

  "He works here, John."

  "So what? You work here too!"

  Connie stood up. "Got to get going any case, thank you."

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

  "Definitely."

  Andrea made a small show of stepping clear out of the doorway to let Connie pass.

  * * *

  By the time he descended back into the lobby, Connie's body was clicking with fierce resentment. One energized thought was really all it took. He headed for the sidewalk, where Ramey and Slovell, the two NYPDs, and Benjamin still convened beneath the canopy.

  Connie yanked open the door. "Want to know the main problem?" he said to the cops. "The main problem." They looked at him, startled by his intrusiveness. "These two fucking humps right here," he said, pointing at Ramey and Slovell, who fell silent from the sudden force of his words. "Could give a shit about the kid. Say I'm lying."

  "Hey," said the cop whose name tag read O'Donahue.

  "Go ahead, say I'm lying."

  "Con," Benjamin said.

  "Let me break it down for you," Connie said. "That's not just any kid, all right, and these two are supposedly the quote-unquote Secret Service." Slovell glanced back at the Impala. "What, missing part of your ball game?" Connie said.

  Slovell said, "Nothing but a drunk."

  "Jig is up for the two of you, wait and see."

  "All right, you're upset," O'Donahue said.

  "He needs to be protected," Connie said. "Do I have to break it down for you? Do I?"

  "No, you do not," O'Donahue said.

  "Meantime, the kid gets robbed for his bike in the park, like who the fuck knows why he didn't get stabbed, follow me? And go ahead, tell me it doesn't happen, no—but you know what, you know what, good in a way this happened, 'cause both of your asses," pointing at Ramey and Slovell, "getting shipped out to some cubicle, you and you, supercilious sons of bitches, think I'm playing? Watch and see, watch and—" Connie stopped. He looked at the four of them, and he saw that all of them were grinning, watching him as if he were an animal in a cage. "What?"

  "Go ahead," O'Donahue smiled, "you're doing good."

  Connie sized them up. "Oh. Okay. All right. I get it, I get it."

  "What do you get?" Larsen, the other NYPD, said.

  "Who's who and what's what vis-à-vis cahoots."

  "What are you talking about?" Larsen said.

  "A small taste," Ramey suggested to the cops, "of what we put up with on a daily basis."

  "Con," Benjamin said, "think I heard somebody ring."

  "Cover for me," Connie said.

  "Con—"

  "Go ahead, Bennie, I got the front!" Connie said, and Benjamin reluctantly headed into the lobby. The elevator had not buzzed: it was Benjamin's attempt to distract Connie.

  "Him I can trust," Connie said. "My union brother. But you four right here? Now that I have your number? Far as I can throw you. The four of you." Then, to the cops only, Connie shook his head, saying, "Surprised at you guys. Two fucking accountants, look at them, and you got their back?"

  Connie heard something, turned, and doubled over with blinding surprise following the pop of a flash. Bent over and sightless, Connie heard overlapping comments,

  "Hey now, none of that now," from the cops and the agents.

  "Anybody see a lens cap looks just like this?" Larry said, holding up a facsimile. This was Larry's technique, to shift attention away to something innocuous, a lost lens cap, say, and human nature being what it is, his disgruntled subjects would stop midobjection to help him look for a cap that was never lost to begin with.

  Connie took his hands away from his face, his eyes recovering from the flash, and eyeballed Larry.

  "See a lens cap just like this?"

  "What did I say? I told you."

  "Problem is," Larry said, "somehow you got the impression I take orders from you. I never listened to my mother, why would I listen to you?"

  Connie stared at him. "No, I'll tell you—you're right," he said. "Absolutely right. Let me go and see what's what," and he turned to enter the lobby, going so far as to reach for the front door's handle, when he spun and sly-rapped Larry across the face. He boxed Larry's ear, grabbed and twisted it for a moment as well, and henceforth Larry would live with a minor case of cauliflower ear.

  Larry, for his part, managed to push Connie away and unleash a camera from around his neck, the one without film, a 35mm German-made Exacta, gripping it like a baseball and bursting it down onto the side of Connie's head with harmful intention. All of this, Connie's sly-rap-cum-ear-twist, Larry's push-away and camera assault, took under two seconds, before the NYPDs managed to take a vague, lazy step toward them.

  "Hell are you doing?" O'Donahue said.

  "What's this now?" Walter said, approaching from the north.

  "You the super?" Larsen said.

  "Superintendent, yeah," Walter said.

  "Can we talk somewhere?" O'Donahue said.

  Larry turned and walked away.

  "My office," Walter said. He looked at Connie, shook his head with disappointment.

  Connie held the door open for the cops and the agents, who followed Walter into the lobby.

  * * *

  Trying to love somebody, that's your first mistake. You don't have the chops for love. They do studies on people like you, Con: if you didn't get it young you don't got it to give. It would take a special stroke of fortune for a life like yours not to be shot through to hell, nothing personal.

  Connie felt a warm spot at the side of his head where Larry had clocked him, but his hand came away bloodless.

  He stared down onto the elevator's floor, at a circular brass plate that read, Otis. He unfolded the Daily News from its spot and perused yesterday's stale headlines. All of it felt familiar: yesterday like today, today yesterday. Connie yearned for fresh sorrows.

  The cops and Secret Service agents had come out from the back and walked past Connie like he no longer existed. Meanwhile, Walter had taken two detectives up to John's apartment.

  Now the door to the back hall banged open. Stanley came toward him. Connie's face scrunched with mild confusion.

  "Not even close to six."

  Stanley relieved Connie for his break at six on Fridays as a rule, but the weird thing was, Stanley had on a doorman's uniform. He usually minded the car in his custodian's garb while Connie took his forty-five minutes.

  "Doing what he told me," Stanley said.


  "Walter?"

  "Wants to see you."

  "Okay. Okay." Connie moved toward the back with hesitancy. "So this right here's not my break?"

  "I don't know, Con," Stanley said, "he just told me to put the uniform on and come up. He's in the office."

  "All right, all right."

  Connie pulled open the door to the back hall, then stopped in the doorway of the office.

  "Yeah, come in," Walter said. "Sit down."

  "What's up?"

  "What's going to happen—Stanley come up?"

  "Yeah."

  "Sending you home, a one-day suspension."

  "Suspension?"

  "And this without pay."

  "I don't understand."

  "When's the next shift you're supposed to work?"

  "What grounds?"

  "Grounds?" Walter said. "How about the fact I saw you put your hands on the photographer? How's that for starters? Do you think you can work this house, throw punches, all at the same time, that what you think?"

  "Walter, you didn't—"

  "I saw enough to see what I needed to see!" Walter cried. "You punched him first, and regardless if what he's up to's right or not, beside the point."

  "I mean," Connie said, "the issue at hand—"

  "Can only look away so long, which I have done for a good while now is the truth, you drinking on the job and don't tell me you don't, what, am I stupid? Okay, but still, I thought, Long as it doesn't get in the way, he's a good guy, got a family."

  "Walter, the Secret Service, Ramey and Slovell, they're deflecting, don't you see? The kid got robbed in the park on their watch, that's the story, and so now it's my head gets served on a platter, is that the deal?"

  "You don't stand in front of this house cursing out the Secret Service, you stupid or what? Get the fuck out of here. I'm going to write you up and suspend you. You make work for me, make work for everybody you pull this shit. Now, what you should do, go home and think if you still want to work this house, and you should thank me for not firing you on the spot. 'Cause believe me, Con, you can't see it, what I'm trying to do, save your job. Now go."

  * * *

  A one-day suspension was new on him. He'd been fired before in a variety of ways, dramatically and matter-of-factly, but a one-day suspension? Connie feared it sent a subtle message of shame he couldn't yet decode.

  He stared into his locker, empty save for a black tie hanging on a rusty metal dowel. He never bothered to settle into a workplace like some of his coworkers who put up pictures of loved ones, calendars, or small mirrors, guys who actually used locks on their lockers. Making a comfortable space of any kind had never come easy for Connie. The times Maureen suggested sprucing up the apartment were received with numbing befuddlement, and he was bothered by it, thought it indicative of a self-annihilation he had battled his whole life. As a doorman he'd been inside many beautiful homes, but it wasn't just a class thing. In the projects people nested up their pads the best they could, and he even saw homeless people trying to trick out subway gratings with cozy touches.