Cornelius Sky

by Timothy Brandoff

  He left by the service entrance without saying goodbye. The nods received from pedestrians on the street suggested he enjoy his break, while Connie in his cap and uniform held close the dirty secret of his suspension.

  He wondered what had transpired in Walter's office, what got said about him in their little powwow. Four so-called officers of the law. Did they stand over Walter, saying, Here's what you're going to do? Walter's power of superintendence snatched from his hands.

  Walter had stars in his eyes for the Secret Service, to Connie's mind. Ramey and Slovell had the most to lose and would want Connie out of the picture. Connie had their incompetent number. The two NYPDs seemed harmless enough, lost in the blue slumber of city jobs.

  He walked his way downtown, deciding to not go gently toward termination. He was a dues-paying member of the doorman's union, 32B, and as such entitled to representation at arbitration. There's a thing called labor law, a union contract. You don't kick me into the street without a fair hearing, that's not how it works, my friend. South and west he meandered, taking in the architecture of carriage houses with invidious comparison.

  He took the last swallow of his pint and gently left the bottle on a garbage heap rising like Mount Fuji over the rim of a can on the corner, Connie tippy-toeing away so as not to incite its collapse. He glanced around to see if anyone had benefited from his pantomime, and felt doubly embarrassed for: 1) hoping to have been seen; and 2) the fact that nobody had seen him.

  Now he walked past a wall painted a shade of beige, which triggered a memory from last winter: moving down the stairwell of 466, leaving his apartment when nobody was around, as if his family had up and left him, heading out for a walk in the early evening, buttoning his overcoat, when an overwhelming feeling of alienation rode up on him and spooked him bad. He became unmoored and gripped the banister with both hands in fear of God knows what. And this shade of beige also called forth another time he came to consciousness after a fairly average run, awakening to the bedroom's morbid shadows from the streetlamps on Tenth Avenue. He had not wet the bed, as based on the dryness of his mouth and throat he was dehydrated from the booze and nicotine, his knuckles stained a toxic amber from the incessant smoking of cigarettes. When he came to he did not know if it was dusk or dawn, four a.m. or four p.m.—he never knew, not a clue after such runs assisted by cocaine or black beauties, capsules of speed fostering the ability to keep on drinking for up to a week's time. And this shade of beige cueing as well the bone-chilling loneliness that would follow such binges. Fearing not only the phone ringing but the chance the phone would ring. And there's always a chance it'll ring, so where does that leave you? The physical punishment the least of it, really, compared to the existential abandonment and terror that would rattle his limbic system in the wake of such runs. Like those moments in movies when the sound drains away. Captured by his own mind and no possibility of escape. He finally got up when his back couldn't take the bed any longer, drenched in sweat the dead of winter, the heat banging up through the pipes of the projects. Yes, it was four p.m., but of the second day: he'd slept the clock round after a five-day run. Hell, he felt certain, was painted a shade of beige.

  He found himself moving through Times Square now, rife with deviance, past the downtrodden masses of the Deuce, trying to exact Buddhist detachment, nodding with equanimity to a woman in a bikini taking a smoke break outside a topless joint, before an apprehensive yearning in him harkened for shelter from the storm of humanity.

  He used Port Authority as a transverse. It smelled of bus fumes and processed food. He did this with certain public spaces, performing a nonconsumer, noncommuter walk-through of Macy's, Gimbels, Penn Station, watching and mingling with people. He considered a quick cold one in Port Authority's bowling alley but decided to keep moving toward Grant's. He had a hankering for the familiar. I should take the kids bowling, he thought. It's something families do together. The one piece of advice he'd received as a kid came from his mother's brother, Uncle Paul: Make your spares, the strikes will come. Not bad, Uncle Paulie.

  The fruit stands, the homeless, the century-old tenements, the human poetry of Ninth Avenue—all of it spoke to him in mournful tones as the sun got ready to clock out for the day.

  He picked up a pint and crossed into Bums Park, and the thought of giving a look for his old discarded house key embedded in the street never entered his mind.

  Connie went straight for Tommy Dunn on the bench with an old-style diddy-bop to his walk, like back when they were kids.

  "Tommy-Tom-Tom!"

  "Who's that?"

  "It's Connie, Tom!"

  "Hey, Con!"

  Connie shook Tommy's hand and sat down close, letting their legs bang together a bit. Tommy's family was from up the block too and they had all moved into the projects at the same time.

  "How you doing?" Tommy cried.

  "What are you doing, Tom?"

  "I'm good," Tommy said, "doing good."

  "Tom, now let me ask you something, I've been thinking about something. I'm curious now: exactly how the fuck does a guy lose a project apartment? I mean, you really have to go out of your way to fuck up in such a consistent and persistent manner for the city to kick you out of the projects—it's staggering to me you were able to succeed in doing such a thing. How did you manage it?"

  Tommy looked at Connie, unsure, until he blinked, leaned back, stared up into the acorn-shedding trees of Bums Park, and let out a great roar.

  "Ah, Con," Tommy said, "that's funny."

  "You should know. Who was funnier than you? Listen, Tom," Connie said, producing his pint, "would it offend you very much if I had just a small taste?"

  "Offend me?"

  Connie cracked its seal, took a hit, and passed it to Tommy, who took a good swallow and handed it back.

  "Thank you, Con."

  Connie took another hit to let Tommy know he didn't think he was contagious. "Tom, listen, I got to keep moving, but I've been thinking about you, and I'm keeping a good thought for you, and I wanted to stop, that's all."

  "Glad you did, Con, for real."

  Connie took another hit and slapped the balance of the pint into Tommy's hand, then reached into his pocket, peeled off a couple of bucks, and dropped them in Tommy's lap.

  "Ah, Con, you sure?" Tommy said.

  "Wish it was more," Connie said, walking away.

  He cut a diagonal path through the projects toward Grant's, flashing on Tommy as a kid playing first base in Chelsea Park, circa 1962. His legendary stretch for the ball, a full split, scooping it up to just beat the runner. Tommy had developed a technique he saved for the most crucial moments of the most crucial games, wherein he could make it sound like the ball arrived before it did, and the first-base umpire, like Pavlov's dog, would respond to the bogus smack of leather Tommy produced with a fist-pumping call of Oooouuuut! The runner and first-base coach would go berserk as a poker-faced Tommy whipped the ball around the infield.

  Connie moved through the yard of 466 when he spotted Maureen and knew the marriage was over. The trees of the yard in bloom and he knew. The green benches greener, juxtaposed against the gray of the concrete checker tables in the late-afternoon hour. Children played, grandmothers chatted in Spanish. Maureen stood at the entrance steps to 443, talking to a friend. The end of the marriage written on the small of her back. He could not see her face and he knew. The message of their dead marriage laid bare in her shoulders. He knew from her tone, echoing off the building back into the yard. Her body transmitted she was gone for good. He thought to stop and go to her but kept moving. She had gotten her hair cut and had those jeans on. The friend did a little thing with her lips and head, to which Maureen turned and saw Connie. They looked at each other a moment. Connie smiled sad, held up a simple hand. Maureen watched him, not angry, not fed up, just looked at him, before she turned back to her friend. Connie registered the desolate moment as a turning point of some kind when something made of glass containing a yellow liquid exploded
at his feet. A mayonnaise jar filled with urine? Pickle brine? A cry of shock ricocheted across the yard. This, not a great habit certain project people possessed, mistaking their windows for trash receptacles. Connie kept moving as time spent looking up left you vulnerable and exposed. Several additional items bombed down around him, half a dozen eggs, followed by a muted thud. Connie spotted a head of iceberg lettuce rolling toward some bushes, abandoning a few outer leaves as it went.

  Grant's Bar contained its typical cast of longshoremen and civil service workers, as well as those who worked the warehouses west of Tenth, from 14th to 34th. Whitey himself a one-man boilermaker factory behind the bar. They all stood and drank like men, except when they stood and cried like babies.

  Whitey set Connie up. Connie banged back a shot and took a look around. Is this ghetto of lost souls what I've given my life up for? She had looked right through him, like a piece of glass, as if a stranger. And maybe, he thought, I am.

  * * *

  In Grant's he drank bats and balls for an hour. Dinnertime came and men headed home to their families. Connie ignored them.

  He tried to shake the cynical thought that the world had revealed itself as false, this attitude seeming adolescent even to himself.

  The ticker-tape theme noise of ABC's Eyewitness News at 6 broadcast floated over the barroom, and there they were, stalwart coanchors Roger Grimsby and Bill Beutel on the thirty-two-inch Motorola, the dumbfounded box hovering on its jerry-rigged ledge.

  Bill Beutel, a straight-ahead guy, seemingly devoid, unlike Grimsby, of shadow. Connie saw him on the street a few times up by Lincoln Center, a natty dresser, always a big hello.

  "Mr. Beutel!" Connie once called out.

  "Good to see you!" Beutel had waved back with his cigarette hand, so suave.

  Connie never saw Grimsby on the street. Talk about attitude. Roger Grimsby. He got away with it because you knew he had furious love in his heart: the guy cared so damn much he had to hide it behind a wall of sardonicism.

  The place had thinned out. Only Connie and Mr. Riordan, an older wet-brain, remained. Whitey wiped down the bar in front of Connie and said, "Mind if I watch the news a minute?"

  Connie knew the routine. Whitey went and grabbed the notched stick he used to manipulate the controls, turning up the volume.

  Images appeared on the screen: a shot of the canopy, Benjamin retreating into the house, away from the camera, unwilling, apparently, to talk.

  Beutel: "Occurred late this afternoon in Central Park."

  "Turn it up—that's . . . turn it up!" Connie said.

  Whitey worked the stick, and the volume shot up.

  "Lower that damn thing!" Mr. Riordan said.

  Connie held up a hand and said, "Shhh, shhh, Whitey, not too low, Whitey."

  Roger Grimsby seemed disappointed with Homo sapiens. The whole human-race thing had grown tired, and the only way to protect himself against the moronic tales he peeled off the teleprompter required a deeply entrenched irony. The subtext of every story Grimsby reported, carried through his tone of quiet outrage, yielded a question: Do you believe this nonsense?

  Connie knew Roger Grimsby was, as a baby, abandoned into an orphanage, which on Connie's darker days he found enviable. Familial tabula rasa sounded like paradise on earth, compared to the psychic truckload of atavistic bullshit Connie lugged around.

  Beutel referred to actual copy before him, hot off the press: "Son of the late president has just a short time ago been accosted in Central Park. The thirteen-year-old, on his way to a tennis lesson, was mugged this afternoon. There are no reported injuries at this time, but his bicycle and tennis racket were believed stolen."

  "Brand-new bike!" Connie cried.

  Beutel: "John remains under the protection of the Secret Service, and as such there have been ongoing reports of disagreements between the agency and family."

  Grimsby (ad-libbing): "This isn't the first incident."

  Beutel: "That's right, Roger."

  Grimsby: "The children, on occasion, have been something less than cooperative."

  Connie: "Son of a bitch!"

  Beutel: "According to the Secret Service, an itinerary for the boy is supposed to be submitted on a daily basis."

  Connie: "Don't believe this!"

  Beutel: "According to the report, the agents were unaware that John had purchased a bicycle. As a rule, he takes a taxi to the tennis courts in the park, or receives a ride from one of the agents."

  Connie: "Oh, that's bullshit!"

  Grimsby: "The children's mother has made previous statements to the effect that she would like to see the children grow up in as normal an environment as possible, and the attempt to do so has made the role of the Secret Service, let's say, a more strenuous one."

  Connie: "Son-of-a-bitch bastard!"

  Mr. Riordan: "Shut the hell up!"

  Beutel: "I'm sure we'll have more about this story on Eyewitness News at 11."

  "Don't believe this," Connie said.

  "What's the matter?"

  "Like it's the kid's fault for getting robbed. Whitey, I work there, that's my building, I know the kid, a good kid!"

  "All right, take it easy."

  "Should see these guys—I deal with them day in, day out—and here you got two more jerk-offs bending over backward on their behalf."

  "Calm down, Con."

  "Ten-speed Bianchi, just got the damn thing. Do I have to spell out who the kid is?"

  "To me?" Whitey said. "No, I know who—"

  "This time the bike, next time what? Zero regard they have. Like the assignment's above them, and so now they go and shoot an angle in the press: how difficult the children make it. They're kids, for Christ's sake! And they got the balls to float a story about how the kid's noncompliant, throw it back on the kid, when in fact those fucks don't want to do their job! No way. Not on my watch. Here, Whitey, break this for me." Connie pushed a dollar forward. "Think about it, what kind of outfit blames a kid to cover their own ass? And I'll tell you what: if they think for one second . . . You know what, now that I—fuck Eyewitness News. Give me some good old Ten O'Clock News. It's ten o'clock, Whitey, do you know where your children are?"

  "CYO until seven thirty, then their mother picks them up," Whitey said, slapping down some change in front of Connie.

  "Don't brag, Whitey." Connie downed his shot, picked up the change and his glass of beer. "So then I should do what, stand around, let this deception pass, and me, what, look the other way at the, what, expense of the kid?"

  He stepped toward the phone booth and with peripheral vision caught the fleeting image of Arthur bouncing down Tenth Avenue out the window of Grant's, hopping off the ground, and the sight of his son stopped Connie midstep. He stared up into a corner of the barroom, where the tin ceiling met a water-stained wall, the glimpse of Arthur stunting his reverie of injustice. Seeing Arthur made him wonder what he was doing. He took a sip of beer and looked at the phone booth. Who am I about to call? And just as he remembered, an internal voice said, Don't do it. The voice, an agent of calm and reason, told him to say goodbye, go to the rooming house. You're exhausted, it said, you haven't slept in fifteen years. But Connie could not heed the voice, never could heed it. He went and unfolded the door of the booth and plopped down onto its shell-shaped seat. He picked up the phone, dialed 0.

  "Operator Collins, how may I help you?"

  "Yes, operator, good evening," and what a pleasure it was to receive help on the phone from a lady. "I'd like the number to WNEW, Channel 5, the television station, if I could. The Ten O'Clock News. Yes, operator, that's correct. Thank you."

  Whitey wiped down a section of the bar across from the booth while Connie held on, playing with the door, searching for the exact spot on its track which ignited the booth's light and fan.

  "Yes," Connie said into the phone, giving Whitey an outlandish wink. "The Ten O'Clock News program, specifically, operator. Pardon me? Well, let's see, all right. Fine, let's give the news desk a tr
y. That would be just great, thank you. Yes, yes, I do indeed."

  Whitey screwed up his face as Connie placed a dime in a slot and the phone accepted it with a pleasant jingle.

  Connie closed his eyes and saw the operator sitting before her patchwork board of cloth-wrapped wires. She was short, a little plump, wore glasses and clear nail polish, and for some reason had never married. She had managed to forego carnality and live the contented life of a telephone operator.

  He lit a cigarette, took a swallow of beer, leaned back in the booth, ready to don the necessary persona to get what he wanted.

  "Yeah," he said, sitting up, "this the news desk? All right, good. Well, chances are I got a story for you. Pardon me? Go ahead. Yeah, well, first of all, who am I speaking to? Okay. Fine, fine. But listen, do me a favor: speak directly into the mouthpiece, 'cause it sounds like you dropped the phone into a bag of potato chips. Well, okay, okay, the nutshell's what happened this afternoon in Central Park to the kid. Yeah, I saw it, but they got it wrong, entirely wrong. Correct. All right, I'll tell you how I know, but do me just one favor and don't bullshit me and don't waste my time. I work in the house. Correct. Correct. No, I, look, bottom line's I got proof, proof, follow me, the kid's not being protected, that's the story, story behind the story, not what Channel 7's throwing up there, which, believe me, got spoon-fed, if you follow my gist. Exactly. The blow-by-blow. Are you kidding me? Let me count the ways. Right now? 25th and Tenth. Huh? Grant's Bar it's called. Southeast corner. Well, yes, but you have to tell me."