Crazy Sorrow

by Vince Passaro

You pulled my shirt, the small one said.

  Yeah, because you’re too small and you didn’t plan to pay. So? Tickets?

  Fuck you, College, the largest of them said.

  Get the fuck out of here, George said.

  After they’d gone, the girl next door, who was doing no business at all, said, I’m sorry for your troubles.

  He looked at her. Smiled, looked back at the ride, keeping an eye, then back at her.

  Thank you, he said. Unless you’re making fun, he said. Then, no thank you.

  I’m not making fun.

  Then thank you, he said again.

  He let another half dozen kids on the ride, started it up, looked back at her.

  What are you reading? he said.

  She held up a paperback with a simple cover, Anna Karenina.

  Ah, he said. You can read Tolstoy and still be opposed to the patriarchy—

  I can walk and chew gum at the same time too, she said.

  He gives you Vronsky to hate, George said.

  And Levin to love, she said. Life is complicated. He renders it that way.

  Okay, George said. A pause then, which he didn’t want to see expand.

  So how’s business? he said.

  Medium bad, she said.

  But you’re not a bad medium.

  Ha ha.

  What do you do? Palms, crystal ball?

  It’s not like that. I look at you.

  You look at me?

  You, your aura. Your body. I hold your hands. You want to try it? It’s fifteen tickets.

  When I take a break, he said.

  Sure, she said.

  She raised her book and settled it again in front of her. I’m here, she said.

  * * *

  HER NAME, SHE told him, was Marina. Her tent had candles inside, even in that heat, hanging rugs and skeins of fabric in various prints. It had a certain look.

  Maybe she was a Gypsy.

  Only a bit, she said. I’m from Seattle. I go to Yale.

  You go to Yale?

  A semester left, she said. I’m off sequence because of traveling. I’m doing this and a part-time office job for summer money. What about you?

  I’m finished school. Sort of.

  Sort of?

  Incompletes.

  How many?

  Four.

  I’ve heard worse.

  Not at Yale, I bet.

  No. Columbia guys mostly.

  Ha, he said.

  What?

  That’s where I went.

  He sat, she held his hands across a table, looked at him. One of her lights was directly behind him. He watched her eyes circle his face; then stare into his own eyes; then probe at the rest of his face.

  Phlebas the Phoenician, she said.

  A fortnight dead, he said.

  Very good. What I mean is, not that you’re dead or dying but you have a lot of… water. Ocean. You sail?

  I did, he said.

  Like a lot?

  Yes, it was my job, sort of. Boats were my job. In fact—a marina was my job.

  It will be again, she said. She said it low and quickly. She looked back into his eyes. In a different way.

  What else?

  You’re going to be rich.

  I doubt that.

  She ignored him. Still staring.

  There’s sadness, she said.

  Well, that’s true for everyone, isn’t it.

  Larger, she said.

  Oh good, he said. Before now? Like in the past—or later?

  Both.

  Oh double good, he said. What else?

  A man is going to come into your life soon. I can’t see him quite. He’s tall. I see a lot of Bs.

  Bees, like honeybees?

  No, Bs, the letter B.

  Huh, he said, thinking.

  That’s it, she said. She dropped his hands from hers. He missed her touch instantly.

  That’s it? I’m gonna be a rich sad man at the boat show? With some B guy?

  Well, I could say nice things about you: you’re kind, you’re strong.

  That’s good, I like that.

  But mostly yeah, you’re going to be a rich sad man at the boat show, she said, and laughed. That’s what she called him after that.

  Closing up at eleven that night: Good night, rich sad man, she said.

  Good night, crackpot Gypsy, he said.

  The Gypsy in her closet she told him later was a Romany woman on her father’s side, married to her great-grandfather, a scandal in the family back in Bavaria.

  In the evening, when she was out again, not sitting in her chair but standing—she’d added eye makeup and lipstick and put her hair up on her head, going for an exotic look for the evening crowd, swaying a little in her fluid skirt.

  He’d had several full runs of the Basher; people were filing off, a new line was forming. He moved closer to her and said, Would you like to go somewhere later, get a drink or coffee?

  I want dinner, she said. I mean, I’ll pay for my own dinner, I didn’t mean I want dinner from you—just where to go. I’m going to be very hungry and you don’t want to know me long when I’m hungry and being prevented from eating.

  So when they were shut down and cashed out they crossed Sixth Avenue to the corner of W. 3rd Street. What were known as the W. 4th Street courts were there, on the corner of W. 3rd, an anomaly having to do with the subway stop right there, called W. 4th, which exited onto W. 3rd and two blocks north at Waverly (which was labeled the West 8th exit), but not at W. 4th itself. Or W. 8th. This was New York logic.

  I’ve always wondered about this, she said.

  He explained it.

  Is that clear now? he said.

  Not in the least, she said.

  The main idea, said George, is to confuse the shit out of people from out of town. Same with the highway signs. Completely inexplicable.

  It was an undersized full court, where there was always a game going on, surrounded by high cyclone fencing—was lit by two spotlights hung at second-story level on the building behind it, plus the streetlights on Sixth and W. 3rd Street. Just enough light to be playing at eleven thirty. If the ball had been dark brown like some, instead of a more vivid orange, they might have had trouble. The game—like all the games here—was fast and physical, and George and Marina stood at the fence watching. As would, it seemed to George, anyone who laid eyes on it, but contrary to this, people passed by, hardly taking it in.

  They hung their fingers on the fence, they watched for a while, the players all black, gleaming, shirtless except one older guy with a gut. He wore a gray athletic-department-type T-shirt with the arms cut off. He got the ball and Marina said, Watch, he’ll have a flawless shot from fifteen to twenty. All the old fat guys do.

  He set and shot: all net, if there had been a net.

  Told you, she said.

  Yes you did, George said.

  She lit a cigarette—Winston 100s. They were too long for her small face.

  He probably passes really sharp and fast, she said. That’s another reliable skill set for the old guys.

  A couple of plays later, he did. It was like a rifle shot and hard for his teammate to handle but he managed.

  Check, George said.

  Marina smoked with one hand still clutching the fence above her.

  Oh my god, she said.

  What?

  I’ll tell you later. Let’s eat.

  * * *

  THEY WALKED, FAST, from Sixth east to Second Avenue. At the Kiev, Marina said, I want the matzoh ball soup.

  Are you part Jewish?

  Why does it matter to you?

  I’m just probing, George said. Checking out your medicine cabinet during the party. The usual thing. See what you have going on.

  It’s a little early for that, she said. We’ve only known each other for twelve hours.

  Everything had an edge now. They knew what was happening, they were going to have a thing, maybe not tonight—probably not tonight—but
they’d be seeing each other and going to bed at some point and as if preparation for sleeping together, some head-butting ritual of their unique species, everything now was turning into a skirmish. Push, push back; pull, pull back. For some reason, unusual for him, George didn’t feel in the least alarmed by it.

  I’m trying to determine the depth of your relationship to the matzoh ball soup. How spiritual it might be.

  It’s fully fucking spiritual, Marina said. And physical. Like Jesus and his sacraments. You never tasted it?

  I’m about to, apparently, George said. He ordered that, and a hamburger with fried onions. There was on each table a bowl of ice with half-sour pickles and a ramekin of coleslaw embedded in it. Chipped Formica tables in marbleized bluish gray. Chrome-rimmed. Aluminum legs. Cheap wood chairs. They sat at the window that ran along 7th Street.

  Near midnight was a funny hour at the Kiev. Several hours before the club kids came in post-clubbing, an hour or so after they might have come in prior to. There was a lower kohl ratio at this hour, people who wanted to eat after something more mainstream like the movies. Plus the usual neighborhood bridge trolls who might roll in at any hour if they had the money.

  This place is heaven, Marina said. She took up a pickle and snapped off a piece with her side teeth.

  I die for the pickles.

  She was a short, compact girl.

  He walked her home and she kissed him there, a wet kiss, hard against his face, he could feel hunger in it but also assertion, she was a force and this expressed it. She lived on E. 5th Street across from an old Ukrainian socialist meeting hall where there was a theater company now. Walking past he saw there would be a weekend at the end of the month featuring three one-acts, one of which was by Louis Pennybaker.

  They ate together every night she worked the festival that week, and on the Sunday she brought him in.

  She had a roundness to her body, upper arms, belly, thighs, ass—all with the curvature, it was immensely sexy; her skin was olive-caramel-dark-rose, her small round belly and round breasts like some Matisse chalk study of a woman except Matisse’s version would be a pinkish color like diluted Pepto-Bismol. He had never been in a woman’s mouth like hers. A wet expressive instrument that communicated want. Actual-seeming physical hunger for his cock. Supple muscular lips. Most women George had been with—all dozen of them—had not gone in for oral sex at first, worked their way to it, an act of special intimacy. She was the first who displayed both experience and interest at the outset: another feature of the new decade. She said, after they’d been fucking, I want you to come in my mouth, and he wondered if this was a birth control thing. She might have said something in that case; but, he soon learned, this was her thing, she came this way, a hand between her legs.

  Hold my head, she said. Fuck my face. When he was getting close she felt it, she pulled away and said, Wait, wait, and she bit him a little—tap tap—to hold him back; her hand flew then between her legs, her whole arm was moving, her shoulder, her lips just touching him, keeping him on the edge, eyes closed, then open staring at his cock, then closed again, and when she was ready she went at him with that hungry mouth. She started coming and her mouth fell open with it but soon closed around him again, her tongue worked right behind the tip of his cock, flicking hard and fast, and he came as she was finishing. She wanted it all, pulled it into her. He felt as if his head would explode. She kissed him after, as somehow he knew that she would, that what her mouth was full of would be part of it, her lips shining with it. He could feel the slip-slide of his semen on them. She sent her tongue deep into his mouth. He sucked on it as she had on him.

  He lay back. He said, That was…

  Then he was quiet.

  What? she said. That was what?

  It took him a minute to collect his thoughts.

  Profoundly impressive, he said.

  Damn right, she said. Her mouth was still shining. Let’s do it again.

  I need a few minutes.

  Profoundly impressive, she said. I’m putting that in quotes on my book cover.

  You should embroider it on the duvet, he said.

  She hit him in the ribs. With a fist.

  Ow, he said.

  She said, So how long do you need? I’ll set the timer.

  Longer now that I’m injured, he said.

  Remember the night we met, I said, I’ll tell you later?

  Yeah, he said. What was that?

  Those guys playing basketball were making me insanely horny, she said. That’s what I wanted to tell you. The skin, the sweat, the movement. I stop there every time I pass it now. If I stay in this neighborhood, I’ll live to be a hundred.

  * * *

  THE BASHER SURVIVED George slightly more than two weeks. He was towing it from a church festival in the Bronx, middle of a Monday morning, when the Econoline’s clutch went. He was in permanent neutral, revving the unengaged engine, frantically shifting. There was hardly a shoulder on I-95 where he was but he managed to get as much of the car and wide load as possible into it and up onto the adjoining grassy knoll while the van rolled, powerless, to a stop. The squarish box that was the Basher jutted out crazily into the right lane. George jumped out with his money and paperwork and looked at it and then climbed the embankment and about forty seconds later a truck clipped the corner of the ride and came to a stop straddling the right and middle lanes. A nightmare traffic jam was born—the cars behind all managed to stop and begin going around the truck. George slipped through the fence onto the treed road beside the highway and started to walk. All he could think about the accident was, it could have been worse.

  At Gun Hill Road he found a working pay phone and called Dobrone. Dobrone had an answering machine and spoke onto the outgoing tape like a not very smart second grader reading from Dick and Jane: You… have… reached… Anthony Dobrone… George waited until after the beep.

  Your Basher has been bashed, he said. Busted, banged up, and hammered. It’s totaled. It’s at the seven-point-three-mile marker on the Bruckner. Basically the clutch went out on the Econoline as I told you it would—

  Beep. The answering machine was on a timer and it cut him off. He quartered the phone and dialed again. The five rings and the interminable Dobrone recording. Finally: Go ahead and leave a message!

  Yeah, to continue, your fucking Ford long past the date it could have towed anything like that fucking ride lost its transmission and died on ninety-five in the Bronx. There was no shoulder but I got it as far over as I could while it was still moving. Then fortunately I got out to take a piss and a fucking truck hit it. I knew you wouldn’t pay me for the day so I split. It’s between you and the cops now. It’s been swell. Bye.

  On his bye, the cut-off beep came in, taking away the very end; yet the basic idea, he felt, had been communicated.

  A week later George found a note on his doormat one evening, coming home late with Marina. He didn’t think he’d given this man his address; he didn’t think he’d given it to Ken either, and he had no phone so he considered the nasty implications of Dobrone’s ability to find him.

  I am going to come after you for this money you fucking punk bec it cost me $500 to get it off the highway + $125 fine a day x 3 days is $875 and the ride itself goes used for five grand. The Ford’s tranny I give benefit of the doubt maybe it wasn’t your fucking fault but if you’d driven it careful and accel in low gear like I showed you prob it would have been fine there was only 70k miles on the van I will find you—

  Wow, Marina said, when he showed her. That’s creepy.

  George never heard from Dobrone again. He found out later Ken had paid him, which was infuriating but not a problem he could solve. By the time George had enough money to pay Ken back, the old man was dead.

  * * *

  IT WAS AN easy relationship, with Marina. She was mentally acute, she kept him interested and fresh; she was physically active, they did things; she was sound and kept him from depression. Her sexual interests developed and changed,
it was like she was studying for a degree in her own pleasure. They did a little wandering from each other, in the first year or so. What was most important, she was totally independent of him and everyone else; she had no need for him, she just liked him. And after three years and a few months, how could he not have married such a woman, given the chance? It was sold to her parents that he was a journalist, though by the time they married he’d given that up and was selling coffee off a truck. He was fortunate, he later understood, that she never asked him if he loved her or, when he said he loved her, never asked him what he meant, what it was, this emotion he referred to as love. She trusted him and took his word for it and besides, she was too busy for such questions. She’d gone to graduate school for a year, in foreign affairs, and by the time they married, later, in 1985, she was a junior analyst for a risk management firm, specializing in preparing smooth paths, well-informed and protected paths, for overseas development. The kind of thing people with Yale degrees did, as opposed to people with Columbia degrees who worked in cafés and photocopy shops, until they decided to throw in the towel and go to graduate school of some kind. She had to travel, which she was good at. She had an enormous family—he had almost none. His uncle on his father’s side and his mother’s parents (his father’s both long dead) couldn’t travel anymore. He spoke to his grandparents by phone every once in a while but did not see them. They and he were happy with the arrangement. He invited his three closest friends, and Louis, whom he saw once in a while, and his business-partner-slash-boss, whom he’d known for less than a year, but no one, in 1985, the year they married, would go all the way to Seattle for a wedding. Marina’s brother Maximillian was called into service as his best man. Her parents were skeptical about him—he was classless and seemingly friendless and had no family, all of which made them uneasy—but when they all first met, that winter of 1983, he managed to hit it off with the mother. Always a good idea. Why, you’re all alone! she said, after they’d quizzed him about family. It was cold. She wanted to buy him a coat, as his own coat, torn, corduroy, was clearly inadequate.

  I have a better coat in New York, he told her. I promise to start wearing it.