Cornelius Sky

by Timothy Brandoff

  Harriman turned from Connie like rolling off a whore, and as the crew started to strike the set, Whitey brought Connie a fresh boilermaker.

  "Come on, Con."

  Connie hid his face a long while, until he heard the crew making its exit, the producer calling out an empty "Thank you!"

  This unofficially marked the run of Connie's tears. Between jags, he could go for years without shedding a solitary drop, shuffling the streets of Manhattan all dried up. He thought, Go ahead and let it all out, you big baby. He slowly took a peek forward and saw the boilermaker on the bar before him in close-up. He grinned and stood up straight.

  "Thank you, Whitey!" he said, downing the shot. Then, generally, to the bar: "Did I hang myself out to dry or what?"

  "You sure did," Shorty Cordero said.

  "Why do they call it the fourth estate, does anybody know?"

  "My God," PhD Roy said, "what on earth did they do to you?"

  "Took me to the cleaners, Roy. Railroaded me like nobody's business."

  "He called the station himself," Whitey said.

  "My heart goes out to you," Butchie Morelli said. "I hate to see a man reduced to tears like that."

  "For all the world to see," Spivey Curtis said.

  "He said they fix things when they edit. Maybe they'll cut my crybaby routine, you think?" Connie said.

  "I wouldn't count on it," PhD Roy said. "If they use any of it, they'll use your emotional outburst. I came in just when you started to break down, and the look in that reporter's eye."

  "I told you not to call."

  * * *

  Two hours later they watched the broadcast huddled together at the bar. Whitey used the notched stick to get Channel 5 on, just as a tone signal beeped and a voiceover inquired: "It's ten o'clock: do you know where your children are?"

  As it turned out, WNEW attempted to use Connie's interview to its full advantage, though karmic justice made it backfire on them just as it had on Connie, with Harriman and the producer, Megan O'Rourke, receiving public reprimands. The outcry helped Connie's ego recover from the most severe kind of humiliation: being cross-examined by a TV reporter about harming children, and, left unspoken but darkly implied: harming them sexually. Alone. On the elevator. Answer me! Did you?

  Connie's heart vexed something awful. If the accusations were so outlandish, so baseless, so devoid of truth, why then did they hit him with such force? Why did he not laughably dismiss the accusations at the outset? Why was he so suggestible as to his being such a heinous and reprehensible human being?

  "Coming up," John Roland, the Ten O'Clock News anchorman, kept saying, "an exclusive interview with a doorman employed at the residence, regarding the mugging of the president's son, which occurred earlier today." They had teased the story out before each break. Finally, at 10:54 p.m., they'd aired the interview, and the men at the bar had gathered around Connie.

  He'd watched with detached wonder, knowing what was coming yet experiencing it as if for the first time, while the men got caught up in the scene's trippy recursion: watching an interview filmed in the exact spot they stood. There, Connie up on the Motorola, and next to them, Connie in his doorman's uniform. And at the moment Connie started to break down, a few guys at the bar snickered, and Connie himself chuckled, and before long everybody roared at the sight of him collapsing into tears. The men indulged their fit of hysterics and slapped at each other. Whitey reached for a clean towel and held it to his face, and with his other hand protected his crotch, as if to prevent his balls from shooting away from his body. Connie never saw Whitey laugh so openly, so hard.

  ARTHUR AND HIS FRIENDS, REDUX

  In Arthur's eighth grade English class at IS 70 earlier that day, the kids could tell Mr. Silverstein was tired. They liked him, the man could teach, but it was a Friday of a long year and everybody in the building was ready for summer to break.

  They were studying words that contained the -ism suffix. Mr. Silverstein had asked them to find such words in their dictionaries, and to use the words in sentences in their vocab tablets.

  Arthur had written: Masochism hurts like it should.

  Now he searched the late-night stairwells for Rennie, Errol and Joey, Albert, and Michael. The second floor of 288, the fourth floor of 443, the eighth floor of 446, the fifteenth floor of 428. Nobody liked 415: an incredibly large, out-of-control, mixed-race family lived in 415, speculation running as to the exact number of kids, fourteen or sixteen, even eighteen, with people assuming some sort of foster-care scam, and all told they messed the building up. Even in the projects there was always one building that other buildings got on their high horse about and ostracized. The housing cops were always double-parking outside 415 in response to some baby almost drowned in a tub, or a kid busted up from a fall down the shaft.

  Arthur checked the ninth floor of 427 and there they were, smoking and spitting. He banged opened the stairwell door and said, "Housing," mimicking the baritones of NYCHA workers.

  "Been praying for your ass to show up."

  Arthur got settled, started to smoke and spit.

  "Fuck's your father going on TV for, that drunk bastard?"

  "He looked like a maniac, for real."

  "Least my father don't walk around with a pocketbook like your faggoty-ass father."

  "Seriously," Joey added, "I never got the sense he was so ignorant of a man." Joey's delivery was good.

  "I'll never look at your father the same again," Rennie said. "Before going on TV he was just one more drunken-ass bum. Now I have a special pity in my heart for you and Stevie, Artie, and your sexy-ass mother, who I still want to fuck, by the way."

  "Me too."

  "Speaking of mothers," Arthur said.

  "It's ten o'clock: do you know where your drunken crybaby father is?"

  "It's ten o'clock—"

  "He's in Grant's Bar giving a drunk-ass interview before he breaks down into his beer."

  "Before he starts bawling like a drunken bitch baby."

  "Imagine your mother winding up on TV," Arthur said to Rennie. "Or your little bald-headed Jew father?" he said to Joey and Errol. "Or your little spic father?" he said to Albert. "Think about it, Albert," Arthur said, "your father fixes flats on Tenth Avenue. That's like half a step above a panhandler."

  "Closer to a tie."

  "So?" Albert said, caught off guard. "So?"

  "And you know what else I get a kick out of?" Arthur said, experiencing the freedom of those to whom a worst-case scenario has actually transpired. His father went on television and made an idiot of himself, topping it off with one of his breakdowns. It left Arthur with nothing left to hide. "Albert, you show up like your father's off limits. Don't act all sensitive when I mention your little tire-changing bitch father, you faggot."

  Some good laughs shot up the stairwell.

  "Fixes flats, yeah, but he don't call the Ten O'Clock News to come and make a big ass of himself."

  "'Cause your father still don't speak English."

  "Albert's father would have to call the Spanish channel," Errol said.

  "Telemundo," Joey said, and the word got a laugh.

  "Your father makes a bad alcoholic look good, that's how bad your father is. Your father should head straight back to Bellevue and stay there where he belongs," Albert said.

  "Oh shit, that's right, I forgot the Bellevue part!"

  "They could still let him wear his doorman uniform in the halls up there, like a cop for the crazy people."

  "Did you see your father on TV, Artie?" Rennie said conversationally.

  "Yes I did, Rennie, thank you for asking," Arthur responded, which got a laugh for delivery.

  "Okay, okay, so now what kind of idiot squeals on himself like that?" The kids made noises of concurrence. "There's somebody in the building who's crazy, your father says. And then he goes, It's me."

  "Who is that stupid?"

  "Not the stupidest criminal on Perry Mason would pull that shit, and here comes Mr. Sky on the Ten O'C
lock News."

  "Setting himself up with no help from nobody."

  "One thing to be a drunk, one thing to be crazy, but even crazy drunk people ain't that stupid."

  "Dopey-ass motherfucker."

  "I see him walking around, one of the top like two or three most terrible alcoholics in the whole projects. I see him curled in a ball on the floor, sleeping it off down in Penn Station. I see him pissing in phone booths in the middle of the day."

  "I saw him drunk right off his ass on the train. I said, Please, God, don't let him see me, and he's not even my father, so I can imagine, Artie, how you and Stevie must feel."

  "People stepping over his ass, fucking rush hour."

  "I hate to see Mr. Sky drunk in Penn Station. Something about it breaks my heart," Joey said wistfully. "Went to a Knicks game and there he was, sprawled on the floor like it was his bedroom, and he had clearly urinated upon himself."

  "Seriously, Artie: your father is a real fucking bum. What are we going to do about this?"

  "The crazy employee in the building is me, he says. Yes, he says, that's correct, I have been locked up in Bellevue."

  "And, ho shit, Artie, I didn't know your grandfather committed suicide."

  "That's a whole other story."

  "Let's discuss that, shall we?"

  "That shit is contagious, they say."

  "When do you plan on killing yourself, Artie?"

  "I could see you killing yourself, Artie, one of these days, that makes sense."

  "But only after Mr. Sky kills himself."

  "Then it's your turn, Artie."

  "Then what I'll do, marry your mother and become Stevie's stepfather."

  "Artie's grandfather put his head in the oven."

  "Do you ever see your father acting funny around the stove, Artie?"

  "Don't leave your father alone in the kitchen, Artie. If he's hungry, get his ass some takeout, but whatever you do, don't let him congregate anywhere near that fucking stove."

  "Daddy, why is your head in the oven?"

  "Daddy, why are you on your knees in front of the oven with the door open?"

  "I'm fixing something, son."

  "Yeah, right, Dad. Since when do you fix things around here? All you do is drink your ass off."

  "Artie, would you thank your father for me? That's the best shit I saw on TV in a long time."

  "Poor Mrs. Sky. When you think about it."

  "All she wanted was a decent life."

  "She thought she was marrying a man, not a drunk-ass baby in a doorman's uniform."

  "Your grandfather killed himself. Mr. Sky is doing his best to kill himself. Artie, what about you?"

  "I'll be missing you, Artie."

  "Imagine if Artie was dead?"

  "Artie, will you leave me your hockey shit so I can sell it to one of the white boys?"

  "Artie, please don't kill yourself, not yet. We still got some good years to goof hard on your ass."

  "Plus," Joey said, "I have plans to get next to your mother, and I'm going to need your help."

  "That bitch is still so fine to me."

  "It's common knowledge I want to fuck your mother, Arthur."

  "Me too."

  "Could we pull a train on your mother, Artie, you think?"

  "How those dungarees hug her ass just right."

  "Just right, so very tight."

  Arthur was laughing, letting the spit fall out of his mouth, as the kids looked at him with love and affection.

  "Would you happen to know, Arthur, if Mrs. Sky enjoys oral sex?"

  "Say it plain: does your mother like to suck dick, Artie?"

  "I can answer that," Errol said.

  Out of the blue, Albert, who had grown quiet, said, "My father fixes flat tires, so what?" He looked about to cry.

  "This guy!" Joey said. "So sensitive all of a sudden!" and they all laughed.

  "It's ten o'clock: do you know where your dead grandfather is, the one who died by suicide?"

  "Ten o'clock: do you know where your little flat-fixing father is?"

  "Least he didn't put his fucking head in the oven."

  "It's ten o'clock: don't nobody light a match!" Michael said, and a silence fell upon the stairwell.

  "Every time you open your mouth, shit comes to a standstill, you purple-face bitch," Rennie said. Michael had a birthmark on the side of his face and neck, a dark crimson blotch, vaguely shaped like the United States of America.

  "It's ten o'clock: do you know where the man who walks and talks like a faggot, and carries a purse, and has a faggot son with purple on his face is?"

  "It's a satchel," Michael said.

  "Fuck you," Joey said, "it has a strap."

  "A clasp," Errol screamed.

  "Which makes your father, ipso facto, a queer."

  Chapter five

  Now that he was officially kicked out, and had a room of his own, it worried him in a strange new way to come to in Penn Station. Something called him to this passageway, low-ceilinged, lit by creepy fluorescents, herding with sorrowful purpose thousands of LIRR commuters to and from their trains, a hard-tiled corridor in desperate need of stripping by someone just like Connie, and the spot's apparent draw alarmed him.

  People loomed, hurried by. He got a few double takes because of the uniform, he thought, but it was the pathos stitched into the features of his face. He in turn watched the commuters, tried to consider how they did it. So much gumption in their collective gait, the alacrity of their comings and goings signifying such import. Are you serious? Are you for real? A terrible chasm of mental disease, a horrid free-floating aura of meaninglessness took him over, and for a long frightening moment scrambled all visual reference code into gibberish. To everything his eyes landed on—a folded beach chair tucked beneath a freckled arm; the tiny putty-colored wheels of a baby stroller; the baton of a cheerleader in frantic search of a team to root for—to all of it his mind fearfully pleaded, Why? Why?

  He braced for movement, using the wall against his back to rise up, then again using it to rise down to retrieve his cap, before making his way out of the station.

  He saw Shane tossing sawdust from a red bucket out onto the Blarney Stone floor, his gestures familiar to any sidewalk pigeon feeder, the tossing of the sawdust a benediction onto the space. He tapped on the glass of the door with a nickel. Shane came and opened up on Connie's behalf, not for the first time, Shane good that way, locking up behind him. He brought a water glass filled with whiskey and a pitcher of beer to Connie, sequestered in a back booth.

  Connie grabbed his own wrist to guide and steady the hand that held the glass to his mouth. He didn't care for the word shakes, finding it melodramatic: a half case of the jitters described it well enough.

  Shane appeared from the kitchen, went and slid a stainless steel tray into a smoky hole at the steam table, before coming over to Connie with a cup of coffee of his own, and took a seat.

  "You all right then?"

  Connie closed one eye with doubt.

  "We saw you on the television last night," Shane said.

  "My attempt to set the record straight."

  "My wife was concerned when I told her I knew you," Shane said, adding, "your well-being, Con, that's all."

  "Yeah, I made an ass out of myself."

  "Making an ass of yourself is one thing. Be sure you take care now."

  "Thank you, Shane."

  "Some breakfast then?"

  The smell of the bacon from the kitchen made him nauseous. Saying it as a throwaway line, Shane once told him a true Irishman never enjoyed his drink more than his food, but Connie was not Irish, he was American, born in French Hospital on 30th Street, December 4, 1942, the same hospital where Babe Ruth was treated before he died. Six-year-old Connie tugged at his father's sleeve, trying to learn what floor the Babe was on in French—they heard it on the Philco—and what floor he and his siblings were born on, wondering if he and the Babe had shared the same room. His father had no answers, only a look
of strange astonishment, Sammy thrown by Connie's inquiries. Was Patty, was Eddie, was Danny, was Ruthie born in French, Dadda? What floor, Dadda? The Babe was on what floor, Dadda? Connie called his father Dadda every chance he got.

  "Dadda."

  "Pardon, Con?"

  He tried to give Shane money, but Shane refused, claiming it was the house whiskey, not to bother, "I won't take it, Con, please now."

  The kindness resonated funny. Shane would generally balk at the offer, then finally relent. This time Shane would not waver, and as Connie made his way out of the Blarney Stone into the Saturday-morning sunshine, his mind sparked with sly deduction: He saw me on television last night, and he won't take money from a guy without a job.

  * * *

  The game in progress that of a no-big-deal local league, kids from the Chelsea projects and Fulton projects and 49th Street. White and black and Puerto Rican kids, mostly, their team jerseys purchased by neighborhood bar owners.

  The Chelsea Rangers vs. Jack Flash.

  Desi Burns was real good, Booboo Gibbons was strong, but Arthur stood out. Freddie Patterson was decent. Freddie had brazenly stolen Stan Mikita's helmet from the cargo belly of the Blackhawks' bus, and the helmet's high quality in these rinky-dink games looked ridiculous on Freddie's head.

  The only player better than Arthur was Billy Higgins. Billy, from 49th, would make it to the NHL—not bad for a kid from the West Side of 1970s Manhattan. Interesting thematic detail: Billy's father drove the Zamboni that shaved the ice at the Garden. Everybody else, including Arthur, would get sidetracked by alcohol and drugs, the abundance of so much raw talent forcibly benched, bound and gagged by addiction.

  Connie leaned against the fence behind home plate and watched his son stickhandle the puck. Arthur looked like he was killing a penalty, but there was no penalty, and as he skated past the bench of the Chelsea Rangers he had words with their coach, Dennis Tobin. Tobin possessed a potbelly and a hangover, and wore dark-tinted glasses round the clock.

  A few kids tried to take the puck from Arthur, but it wasn't going to happen. Arthur looked bored, skating in circles, making tiny Kabuki adjustments to the blade of his stick as it touched the roll of electrical tape they called the puck.