MARINA WAS BACK in DC, prior to their wedding. Burke invited George to a party at the edge of Carroll Gardens/Red Hook—a mixed group, that new thing, the art/ghetto party, urban pioneer black jeans people raised in the suburbs, hanging with street kids, feeling cool. They drove around Carroll Gardens looking for a place to park; George, who hadn’t seen the neighborhood before, expressed amazement that there were cars parked in the bus stops, in front of the hydrants, everywhere. Madonnas and saints on the twelve-by-ten-foot front yards.
What’s with the parking? he said.
They don’t bother giving tickets here, Burke said. It’s all mob. Nobody gets a ticket. Waste of time and plus you might get your arms broken. Or your head.
So we can park anywhere, George said.
Oh no, not us, Burke said. They’ll know this piece of shit is from out of town. Or anywhere north of Atlantic Avenue or south of Ninth Street. Which is out of town as far as they’re concerned.
* * *
THE EAST VILLAGE had a red cast to the light—all the brownstones and red brick—whereas the Upper West Side was always gray, with a hint of lavender that became a purplish sky at night; where George now lived, lower down past City Hall, there was almost no light at all, just slivers of the stuff in the cracks among the two centuries of poverty and soot. Sunsets involved a seeping loss of light. Nights were black.
Burke, it turned out, had a child, a daughter, seven. Burke was thirty-one and George was twenty-seven.
She’s seven? George said. Where have you been keeping her?
She lives with her mother in Brooklyn, Burke said. Midwood. Near the college.
So that’s why you park the truck out there?
Yeah, said Burke.
When do you see her? You’ve been working every day.
Burke said, They were in Maine a lot of the summer. Which is nice for the kid. My ex has an aunt and uncle with a place up there. Before they left I was going out to Brooklyn nights, taking her out for supper. Few nights a week.
That’s hard, George said. See her as much as you can.
I want to see her as much as I can, for Christ’s fucking sake, Burke said.
No, I mean take some time off. I can handle the truck.
Really? Go solo?
Sure. I used to handle the fucking Basher, remember? I told you the story.
Oh yeah, that fiasco. Where’d you leave it, on the New England Thruway?
On the Bruckner, George said.
Same fucking thing.
On the way to, you might say. Anyway, I wouldn’t do that with the truck. I like the truck. Take Wednesdays and Sundays. You can go get her on Saturday nights once you have a place.
* * *
GETTING A PLACE had become a little tricky. People lined up in Sheridan Square at the newsstand there to get first copies of the classifieds in the Village Voice, which was delivered about midnight on Tuesdays. Burke, though, didn’t mess with lines. He sat at eleven a.m. in the Red Bar on 7th Street with the three daily papers laid out like menus before him.
He said: These old Poles and Ukrainians survived three armies and every kind of wartime famine and plague and made it over here to work in some leather factory and feed their nine cats—they’re dying like old people die, in large numbers. The apartments will only be on the market for a few days. You have to move move move. Wait—here’s one. Irina Mikhaelevna Malagovina. Beloved grandmother and great-aunt to Ronald, Evelyn, blah blah. A fixture on her East 5th Street block.
He looked up, checked the pay phone was empty. You got a quarter? he said.
You don’t need a quarter for information, George said.
Oh right. And up he went, ankle-boot long-legged strides to the pay phone. Frantically waved then, for paper and pen…
Just remember it, George called. For chrissake.
He returned to the table. Three nineteen East 10th, he said. So much for her East 5th Street blah blah dee blah blah. That was meant to throw people off. These people are fucking animals.
That’s east of here, George said.
No shit, Sherlock. It’s across from the park.
That’s good, you won’t be killed for a few weeks at least.
It’s all cool, I’m cool with everyone around here, said Burke.
I love your narcissism. It’s the most charming thing about you.
From early on, George and Burke behaved as equals, giving each other shit, but George found himself having that thing that had come up in New York now, as rents rose: real estate envy. Equals except one was the owner and one was the employee. One had more money. Marina would be looking for a larger place for them, probably uptown, but George actually liked living over far east, on Henry Street, he liked his apartment, it had a full bathroom unlike a lot of the places over in the East Village with the tub in the kitchen and the shared toilet in the hall. Still, this was where it was all happening now, where he spent most of his time, and it was a long walk from beyond the courthouses especially in weather. Not to mention the taxis home at night.
They walked three blocks up Avenue A, cut to the right at Tenth Street. The building was halfway down the block between A and B.
There was a bell marked Super which they rang. Repeatedly. Finally a woman came and let them in the front door. She was built like a squat rectangle and wore a housedress.
What? she said.
We wondered if you have an apartment? A lady Irina who lived here has died.
How do you know this? She didn’t seem concerned, just curious.
I’m friends with her cousin, Burke said.
Only a few days, she said.
I’m Burke.
Hello Mr. Burke.
What’s your name? he said.
I’m Magya.
Are you the super?
I manage building. Two others.
So this apartment?
Yes. Landlord will rent it, said Magya.
Who’s the landlord?
Don’t worry, said Magya.
What do you mean?
Don’t worry. You talk to me. What you do for money?
What’s my job?
Yes. Job.
I sell coffee off a coffee truck. Good money.
You not a lawyer? No rent to lawyer.
Not a lawyer, no. What’s the rent?
Three hundred seventy-five. Five hundred for lease. No paint. You paint.
No way. That’s impossible.
Two bedrooms! You think someone else don’t pay? You stupid boy. Go away.
Magya! Five years ago the landlords paid us to move in. Free rent for two months.
Magya turned toward him. This time is over now! Poof! She waved her sledgehammer arms. New times, she said. Now you pay. Or someone else. Next year five hundred then seven hundred, eight hundred then a thousand. You’ll see.
She turned again toward her apartment door.
No, wait, fine. I’ll get it.
Back she turned. When you get?
Burke looked at his watch. Two o’clock.
Make sure not too late, Magya said. Two o’clock. Otherwise you don’t know.
Maybe two thirty, Burke said. The bank could be crowded.
Magya waved at this as in, two, two thirty, whatever.
Can we see it? Burke said.
Not now. Family not finished. I talk to them. Tomorrow you see.
What floor? Burke said.
Third floor. Easy for you, you strong boy.
Then Burke did the Burke thing. He bent over and hugged her—she looked shocked and then uncomfortable but she stood it.
He said, Magya, I’m so grateful. He took her hands, both. Shook them up and down once. Grateful to you. Thank you. Thank you.
He appeared to choke up.
Is okay, Magya said. She took her hands back and looked glad to have them.
Burke straightened and took a deep breath, as if he was collecting himself—Thank you. I trust you. You are my friend.
Good boy. You are good boy. Her face
said: That was interesting but don’t do it again. You come back tomorrow you see. Another wave of the hammer arm.
They walked down the dirty hallway, out the two slamming doors. Into the light. Into the non-cat-piss air.
Down on the sidewalk and turned back toward Avenue A.
That was fucking brilliant, George said.
Burke looked at him, shook his head, started walking. It just came to me, he said. I needed some way to lock her down, to commit her.
Three seventy-five is high, George said.
I’ll get it down, Burke said. Once I have the lease. Go to housing court. Probably the legal rent is like one fifty. Maybe less. I’ll get it for two and a quarter.
In fact, when he went, he showed Magya the papers and said he’d drop his claim for one hundred and eighty-five dollars. They settled at two thirty-five. No hard feelings. Turned out Grace Jones lived in the building; a very polite woman though never cheery. Burke asked her, when he was in the midst of this operation, what her rent was. She was paying a hundred and five a month.
I’ve been here for eight years, sweetie. See the lock on that front door? There was no lock. There was no door.
Even when she laughed Grace Jones wasn’t cheery.
Burke said later, You can afford to be Grace Jones if you’re only paying a hundred and five a month.
From the new building they stopped in Bar A on 7th, a long U-shaped bar, afternoon hours just a few kids in the place, some neighborhood guy sleeping in one of the booths set as far back into the darkness as possible.
The old guy: Well, once I saw a fellow who’d read most every book in his city library and he knew just about all there is to know that you can know in English. Scads about scads. Horse breeding and black holes and the birth of metaphor.
That’s only the Bs, George said.
Burke had been talking to the bartender, hitting on her basically, but now they stopped to listen.
What? the old man said.
He knew all there was in the library, but that’s just the Bs. Breeding, black holes, birth—
Yeah, you’re right, the old man said. That’s just the Bs. He also knew the Cs—for all the little cocksuckers and cunts. Like you. And the fucking Ds, for dickwad and douchebag.
The bartender and Burke laughed. George raised his glass to the old guy. Regarded him enjoying his moment of barside celebrity. The missing teeth of an old drunk’s mean grin.
Now you buy me a fucking drink, he said. You buy me a fucking drink.
Every sentence he liked, he was going to say twice. Another stage in the brain rot of a drunk.
George nodded at the bartender, pushed a five out of the soggy bills she’d left on the bar. One for him, one for me, George said. She gave him two back from the five, he tossed one as tip into the trough where the coasters were stacked. She palmed it.
This was happiness and would forever be: half-empty bars in the late afternoon. He loved his whiskey. He loved its brown-gold color. To him it was the color of sex. A little water and you got the swirl, the movement. One ice cube, or two if small, to cool the alcohol. His mother. Red lipstick on the glass, cigarettes. Jesus fucking Christ.
He ordered a draft Rolling Rock. Boilermaker time. His father’s people drank that way: shot of whiskey in a jigger and a pilsner glass of beer. The draft was seventy-five cents and he had three seventy-five left. Two whiskeys and another beer. He searched his pockets for an extra single, for the tip.
Soon enough it was six and Burke’s flame went off duty, a new bartender came in; Burke’s was tall and blond, the new one shorter and dark. The tall ones loved Burke, he was six two and physical, skinny like a rock star but substantial across the shoulders and chest. The two of them retired to one of the dark booths to continue their deep negotiations. Last George saw they were making out with Burke’s hand up her shirt. George weaved home. It was a long stagger to Henry Street. George lived down at the bottom of Chinatown behind the courts and City Hall; he always said, on Henry near Catherine. He liked saying that. Henry near Catherine. He wished he were near some Catherine at this moment, whee. Catherine not far from St. James. Made him think of the infirmary. Cab Calloway. He should take a cab. He made jokes about it but they began to take on characteristics in his mind, these fictional people, Henry, Catherine, and St. James…
Burke’s daughter’s name was Clarissa. Her mother, Allison, loved the Richardson novel. George pointed out that in the book Clarissa was, essentially, raped; he was not the first to have so indicated, Burke made clear, and, he further made clear, it pissed him off every time.
I actually like the name, George said. It’s a lovely name.
Burke patted him on the shoulder. He was given to these patronizing gestures of superiority whenever he felt vulnerable.
One day, with the smell of the future around his face, the scent of their future success, George told Burke: It’s almost impossible to have a conscience in this country and still function. The money makes it impossible. It’s the center of everything and everything it touches, it corrupts.
Burke said, Bullshit.
20
So they were in coffee.
Chock Full o’ Nuts was the first coffee chain, Burke said. Of course it wasn’t—but for him and his friends it was.
And it was all about the women, Burke said. In Europe the cafés are for men, or men and women both, but here they’re for the women. The men are an afterthought. Schrafft’s. White gloves. A respectable piece of pie. Sandwiches with the crusts cut off. And you know why the Chocks mugs were so thick of course. Not to keep the coffee warm, no, no. A big ample mug: not a lot of coffee inside it. That’s a win for both sides, baby.
One day that fall Burke sat down, filled out two years of tax forms, federal and state, making up the expense numbers, the gas and cups and coffee and sugar et cetera, et cetera, expensing the cups at full price, the additional lids he’d never acquired, paid all the taxes and fines, and then took all the cash he had left after two years—amounting to more than thirty thousand dollars—to the local Manufacturers Hanover bank and told them it was all theirs if they’d open him a business account under the name Brown & Co. and provide revolving credit sufficient for him to open and keep operating a café. He’d filed papers of incorporation with the state of New York under that name (later this corporation would be dissolved in favor of one created in Delaware because that’s how corporations roll, baby) with a board comprising himself, his second wife with whom he did not live, George, and his mother, who lived upstate in Monticello so that it required a day trip to get her signatures on the various papers.
Can’t you just send them up there? George said. Have her send them back?
Oh my god no. They would disappear into a Collyer brothers nightmare morass, from which they would never emerge. I’m not even taking them into her house—that’s how powerful I consider her magic, her juju of disappearance and chaos and destruction. I respect that shit, having learned my lessons years ago. I told her she has to meet me at Denny’s.
A New York City café born at an upstate Denny’s, George said. I can already see the piece in the Living section.
Damn right, Burke said. She was like, oh, I love Denny’s! That I’m starting a new business and that she’s nominally on the board she doesn’t give a shit about. In many ways she remains the dumbass simple shiksa teenager my father married all those decades ago.
Your father was Jewish? George said. He’d never inquired into issues of Burke’s background. As far as Burke ever was heard to tell, life began in New York in 1972 at Max’s Kansas City.
Bernstein, said Burke. I changed it at twenty-two. People in New York were always asking me if I was related to Leonard. Which would have been okay if they didn’t look so plainly fucking disappointed that I wasn’t. You want to know big? That fucking guy was big.
Muhammad Ali was bigger, George said.
Yeah, but nobody asked if I was related to him. Anyway I changed it to Burke.
After
Mike Burke of the Yankees? After Edmund Burke, the father of rational conservatism?
Mike Burke, what, with the sideburns? No. No, no, it was after this character Gene Barry played on TV. Named Burke.
Burke’s Law, George said.
He drove a ’62 Rolls Silver Cloud, Burke said. Or didn’t drive. Was driven in. That car is still out there. I’m going to own it. I mean the actual one from the show. Before the decade is out. Are you listening? Are you setting this down? It’s like John Kennedy with the moon, I will get that car.
It’s good to have important projects in life, George said.
Thank you.
What about freedom and justice and such?
Those are in there too, Burke said. A little behind the Rolls but they’re there.
You see what you did though, right? George said. You see that they asked you about Bernstein because not only the name—you look a little like him. A lot taller but similar cut of face, the wavy hair. The mouth. Right? So you change your name to Burke after Gene Barry and his fucking car but guess what, it circles back around because you picked an actor who looked basically like Leonard Bernstein.
Fuck, Burke said.
The modern human mind, George said. Who can explain it? Who can escape it?
Fuck, Burke said. That’s fucking me up.
He looked directly at George, pointed his finger.
I never should have told you my secret, he said. You fucked it up.
* * *
THE LOAN, THE finding a location, the renovation: the café opened in August 1986, on Avenue A between 7th and 8th Streets. One of those places, it turned out, that popped up in your neighborhood while you were away. It was scary dead for the first three weeks and then it picked up quickly. Burke let various musicians and bands play when they wanted to, built a riser as a stage in back for them to play on. He could fit three tables on it in the mornings and any other hours no one was playing there. On the bare brick walls (they would miss the insulation come winter), which were in such bad shape they evoked Italian ruins, he hung the local art. There was a little Greco-Roman revival movement on that year, he had some clumsy-looking big oils of classical statuary with broken arms and wild eyes. What George called Crayola-Neoclassical, later shortened to Neo-Crayola: gaudy Apollos and Aphrodites on vivid red or green or blue backgrounds. Wide brushstrokes and notable genitalia. A few good pieces. Burke favored large furious pieces of art, purchased locally or on loan from neighborhood galleries and artists: Salvadoran guerrillas in red jungles, screaming children, that sort of thing.
Crazy Sorrow Page 21