by Ronald Malfi
“Sorry.”
They pass by me on the stairs and vanish into the pit of darkness below. Even the sounds of their footfalls vanish.
It is my face on the driver’s license. I look healthier in the picture than I do now, though my hair is still somewhat short and there are green-brown bruises circling my eyes.
The address on this license is 1400 St. Paul Street, Apartment 3B. Right here.
The name is Paul Howard.
I enter the apartment, tired and beaten like a mongrel, still staring at the driver’s license.
Place over on Lexington, I think.
Inflatable milkshake on the roof, I think.
There is blood on the floor. Not a lot, but enough to stop me dead in my tracks. Enough to cause my mouth to go dry and my tongue to swell up.
Blood.
Also—movement down the hallway. Peripherally, I witness a shadow slide across the wall.
“Who’s there?” I shout.
Because this is a trick.
Because life is a game.
The shadow reappears. It hangs on the wall like a frame, unmoving, the undeniable figure of a man. Looking around, I own nothing with which to bludgeon this intruder. Not even a goddamn umbrella in a stand by the door or a heavy vase to drop on someone’s head…
The shadow moves. It grows bigger as the figure comes toward me. My tongue is an entire roll of toilet paper. My heart does not beat, caught up in the tension.
The figure emerges. It takes my brain a moment or two to realize it is Clarence Wilcox. His face is ashen, his eyes hollow. I feel I could look into them and see straight through to the back of his skull. He is dressed in red sweat pants with white piping down the legs, and an Adidas pullover. He is bleeding profusely from a gash over his right eye.
“Clarence…”
“They gone?” There is caution to his tone.
“Who?”
“The cops. That’s who was knocking at the door, right?”
“Jesus, what happened? How’d you get in here?”
“Think this the first place I ever break into?” He takes a few more steps forward before he is overcome by dizziness. With a sigh, he strikes the wall with his back and rides it down toward the floor. Pulling his knees up and draping his arms over them, if it wasn’t for the black streaks of blood running down the side of his face and the pained expression in his eyes, he might have been sitting on a porch about to have a cigarette.
“What happened to your face?”
“Connected with a metal pipe.”
I pulled off my coat and cuffed up my sleeves. The shoulder of his pullover was freckled in blood.
“Clarence, man, I don’t have anything to clean you up with. My place is empty.”
“Ain’t even got running water. You worse off than me, bro.” With some difficulty, he reaches into his pocket and produces a ball of damp bills. “Here.” He scatters the bills, along with some change, on the floor beside him. I make out a hundred dollar bill among the bounty. “Been a good week.” Clarence winks. His eyelid is sticky with blood.
“Jesus, hold tight.” I go to the kitchen while tearing apart a length of my scarf. I moistened the swatch in the stagnant puddle of water in the sink and carry it back to Clarence, instructing him to hold it against his wound until I can run out to the drugstore.
Clarence winces as he presses the bit of wet fabric to his injury. “Hurts.”
“A goddamn pipe?” I say.
“Get me a Snickers, too, yeah?”
It takes me five minutes to locate a drugstore, buy some antiseptic, some gauze, a box of adhesive bandages, a Snickers bar, and return home. Like quelling a child, I distract Clarence with the Snickers bar while I squirt antiseptic into his wound.
“Shit, boy!” he bellows. “That stings!”
“Quit bitching.”
“Ain’t they sell any that don’t sting?”
“Here.” I toss the ball of gauze and the box of bandages into his lap. “Do it yourself. I’m not a goddamn surgeon.”
“You might be.”
“Yeah, well, I doubt it.”
As he cleans himself up, still huddled on the floor with his back against the wall (the half-eaten Snickers bar balanced impressively on one knee), I lean against the wall opposite him to examine my driver’s license.
“I was doin’ all right for a while,” Clarence says. “It wasn’t real hard at first. No wheels—it’s almost easier that way—and no name, shit, ain’t nobody come lookin’ for you when you don’t exist.”
“What are you talking about?”
“My plan. Same as your plan. Starting over. Remember?”
“I didn’t plan it.”
He goes on, “Made some good money table-hopping. You know—sit in a diner sipping coffee, waiting for people to finish their meals and pay their checks and get up and leave, so’s you can bounce over to their table when no one’s looking and take the tip.”
“Stealing, you mean.”
Blinking rapidly, holding a bit of gauze to his wound while, one-handed, he tries to peel the backing from an adhesive bandage, Clarence scowls. You would think he was mortally wounded. “Table-hopping,” he reiterates. “Ain’t stealing. And, anyway, it was fine until some goddamn Chinaman catches me and chases me out of his restaurant. Asshole was actually waving a gun. All Chinamen in Baltimore have guns, you know it?”
“I thought you said he hit you with a pipe.”
“No one hit me. He chased me out into the back alley and I ran, like, rabbit-quick through the trash and shit. Hit a fence and climbed that mother like it was my job. And wouldn’t you know it, the little Chinaman, he’s climbing the fence, too! Right behind me! That big-ass revolver in his hand, his ass gone all bobo keys, wild-ass eyes, he’s trying to climb this fence. So the hell with that, I just kept running. And when I turn the next corner—wham! I run right into this metal pipe. Part of some construction equipment on this scaffold-thing, sticking right out into the sidewalk. I run right into it. Knocks me flat on my ass. Lucky for me the Chinaman wasn’t able to get over that fence, or he’d have capped my black ass while I be laying there half-dead.”
“Could’ve taken out your eye,” I tell him. “Could’ve been killed. You’re lucky.”
Clarence grins and, now bandaged, takes another bite of his Snickers bar. “Made some cool bank, too.”
“You give yourself a fresh start and that’s what you do? You steal?”
“That why the cops were out there just now? Looking for me?”
“No.” I slide my driver’s license across the floor to him. “Apparently my name is Paul Howard.”
Clarence scoops up the license with his big fingers. Examines it. Pulls a face. “Bullshit.”
“What?”
“It’s a fake.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She’s a betty, yo. She ain’t real.”
“Are you sure? How do you know?”
“I know fifty mothers pressing these things all over the city. Two hundred bones and you can be any fool you want from anywhere in the country. Call ’em mothers ’cause they be giving birth to brand new peoples everyday. New lives, new names, new stories. Like you, Moe—like that card I give you. Same peoples.” He taps the phony license against the palm of his hand. “This city full of people starting over. You no different.”
“You think you could find out who made that license?”
“Shit,” Clarence says. “I know who made it.”
“Who?”
“Government. Goddamn international cover-up is what it is. You some James Bond mother and this your fakeness.”
NINETEEN
I am late for Sister Eleanor’s funeral. It is a solemn, reverent event, and I stumble through the front doors of the little stone church like an intruder, making too much noise and riling the birds in the rafters into a frenzy. There are only a few mourners left, at this late hour, and they are all nuns in black robes. Two older men in bejeweled white
and red robes sit toward the back of the chancel, their heads bowed. Propped up on steel struts before the pulpit, a smallish casket of unpolished wood glimmers under soft lights. The casket is open and, even from the back of the church, I can see the frail, wax-carved shape of Sister Eleanor, looking no different in death. I recall the way she winced when she spoke of her stomach cancer and I am grateful she is finally done with it.
I take a seat in the last pew and sit for a while, watching the nuns pray. Shafts of midday light slide in through the stained-glass windows. One of the nuns approaches the pulpit and sits before the organ. She begins to play “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,” which seems strangely out of place, yet strangely suitable. I wonder if Sister Eleanor had requested it.
After a while, someone rings the bell in the tower. It rings eleven times and I wonder what the significance is.
What is the significance?
I never get up to view the body.
I sit and wonder who would come to my funeral.
* * *
As promised, Nicole Quinland shows up outside The Neighborhood one evening, standing at the back of a long line of people bitching about the cover charge. I am out on the corner with a cup of black coffee to keep warm, watching the boats navigate the harbor beyond Thames Street when I see her.
“Nicole!”
I take her by the arm and lead her through a side entrance and into the bar. There are a number of people here already and the tables are crowded. I secure a bar stool and prop it against the back wall. The stool is higher than the chairs at the tables; she will have no problem seeing over the big Baltimore hair.
“This is exciting,” she says in her small voice. She has come straight from work and still wears her uniform beneath a wool coat. She clutches her purse in her lap with both hands like she is afraid it will try to escape.
“You want something to drink?”
“No, thanks.”
“I get free drinks. Anything you want.”
“Maybe just a water.”
“Have a beer.”
“Oh. Okay. What beer is good?”
At the bar, I ask Timmy Donlon for a Fordham. He growls and wants to know where the hell Olivia’s run off to. I tell him I don’t know and he thrusts the beer at me across the bar in disgust. I bring Nicole the Fordham and sit with her for a while, mostly in silence, mostly examining my cuticles while she examines hers, until it is time to play.
The first set goes off without a hitch. We roll through the standard jazz numbers and, because the Devine brothers are in a good spiritual mood, stir things up a bit with obscure religious hymns like “The Great Speckled Bird” and “The Old Rugged Cross” as well as a jazzy rendition of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” Timmy Donlon, too, is in the holiday spirit—or perhaps the set just puts him in one—and he doles out a round of peppermint schnapps on the house. The Devine brothers drink like sailors at the intermission then vanish with their female conquests per their mode of operation to their loft upstairs. I linger with Nicole and am pleased to find her more relaxed.
“You’re very good. I had no idea.”
“Are you having fun?”
“Yes. I don’t come to places like this. It’s interesting.”
And before our second set is over, it gets more interesting.
Midway through “Salt Peanuts,” a group of rowdy men, collegiate types, burst through the front door. In Santa Claus hats and wearing mistletoe belt buckles, their shouts and cheers carry over the music. Above their heads they hoist one of the giant ceramic crab statues from the Inner Harbor, the bottom busted clean off the pedestal. As they pour into the place, the bouncer at the door grabs two men by the forearms, but he cannot keep the mob at bay. A second later, one of the grabbed men chucks a fist at the bouncer’s head. The place goes to hell very quick.
“There goes The Neighborhood,” mutters Maxwell, his drumsticks clattering to the floor. He rises and steps out from behind the kit and tugs at one of my ears.
Dougie Devine leans his bass against the side of my piano just as a beer bottle goes whizzing past his face. He dodges it with skill and seems unimpressed with the whole scenario.
“Come on, Wurl,” Maxwell says, still tugging at my ear. “This place on fire, hammer.”
Both brothers file through a hidden door at the back of the stage and vanish.
I turn and hop off the stage, immediately engulfed in the crowd. Fists are thrown like party favors and it takes all my strength—strength I do not have—to push through a wall of broad chests and steel-banded forearms. Someone plants their knuckles into my temple, temporarily causing my vision to blur, and I swing wildly back, unsure whether I hit anything or not.
Toward the back of the room, I grab Nicole’s hand—“Come on!”—and pull her around the mob toward the stage. I shield her with my arms, sustaining blows along my ribs and back, and hoist her up onto the riser before I’m slammed by a wave of heavy bodies. I strike a wall and feel the pressure from the mob crushing me. Each inhalation carries with it the scent of brute sweat and cheap cologne. By the front door, women are shrieking. I catch a glimpse of chair legs parading above the heads of the crowd.
Somehow, I manage to escape. I climb atop the riser and, gripping Nicole about the wrist, drag her through the hidden door at the back of the stage.
We cross into a death-dark corridor, claustrophobic as a ribcage, and run. The corridor communicates with a small back alley which we burst into, panting and sweating, and nearly spill over a heap of trashcans.
“Jesus,” I gasp, and plant one hand against the wall while I catch my breath.
“Smooth,” says Maxwell Devine. He is perched on a dumpster having a cigarette. Beside him, glassy-eyed and terminally bored, Dougie picks his nose. “Smooth, cat. Got the holiday spirit tonight, eh?”
I hear Nicole sob. I turn and run a hand along her back. Say, “Nicole…”
But she isn’t sobbing.
She’s laughing.
“That was great,” she tells me. “Whoever you are.”
In a matter of minutes, the street is colored by red and blue lights and Timmy Donlon, armed with a baseball bat, is on the front stoop arguing with the police. The Neighborhood is cleared out and a few of the instigators are ushered into the backs of the police cruisers. Like ravens perched on high, the Devine brothers watch all this from the concealment of the darkened alleyway, both of them crouching atop a trash receptacle. As the last of the police cars slide away down the street, their lights twirling in reflection on the wet cobblestones and across the street in the black bay water. We all climb back inside, Nicole gripping tight my hand. The brothers go immediately upstairs to their room while I attempt to calm Timmy Donlon down. But Timmy won’t hear of it; he’s pacing like a tiger behind the bar. Tate watches from one darkened corner, a twist of Kleenex corkscrewing from one nostril.
“Hell happened to you?” I ask.
Tate smiles and I can see it causes him pain to do so. “Took an elbow to the face.”
“Timmy,” I say, placing both my palms down on the bar top. “Hey, Timmy. Let’s have a drink, yeah?”
“Shit, Wurl…”
“Come on, man. Let’s have a couple beers.”
Timmy Donlon pauses, rubbing at his creased forehead with his great, knobby fingers. He sets the bat down behind the bar and I can almost see steam rising in waves off his scalp.
“Hey, Wurl,” one of the Devine brothers calls down to me from the second floor landing. “Yo!”
“What?”
“Yo, Wurl, you better come up here right quick, hammer.”
I bound up the stairs. Nicole is quick at my heels. Behind her, Tate staggers up the stairwell, that twist of Kleenex still protruding from his nose.
Both Devine brothers stand just outside their loft, like sentries on either side of the open door. Maxwell raises a hand and instructs me to go through the room, straight to the back. The room, their private fuck-room, is empty and dark and smells of weed. Li
ke a mosquito attracted to bright light, I go straight to the back of the room where a small door has been opened in the wall: a tiny bathroom, bland in white-yellow candle wax light. There is a figure draped there, one arm wound in black ribbons draped over the lid of the toilet, the head cocked at an off angle, the nylon-stocking legs askew like half-open scissors. I don’t make out the face at first—only that it is a woman, some woman—and I don’t realize until the scene settles firmly into my brain that those are not black ribbons winding like the stripes of a barbershop pole up the woman’s arm. It is blood. The wrist, I see, has been slit open.
“Jesus Christ.” I breathe these words, exhale them, more than speak them. I find myself slumping against the wall, unable to look away from the mess. Nicole stops directly behind me; I feel her thump against my ass. If she says anything, it is so quiet I do not hear it.
Only Tate Jennings seems capable of movement. And only Tate, ridiculous with his tissue twisting out of his nostril, quickly recognizes the girl in the bathroom.
“Olivia!” he shouts, and slams past me into the bathroom. A moment later, he is turning her over on the bathroom floor, Olivia’s head lolling to one side in an unanchored, puppety way. Moving her, it seems there is much more blood where her head had been just a moment before.
“Tate, man,” I say, “maybe we shouldn’t move her—”
“She’s alive!” Tate shrieks. “Call an ambulance! Hurry! Go!”
I turn and bolt from the room. I take the stairs three at a time and all but jump straight off the landing to the lower level. Timmy Donlon is watching me from behind the bar like someone about to be gored by a charging bull.
“Call an ambulance!” I yell. “Call a fucking ambulance!”
But he is stupefied and cannot move. I tackle the phone off the bar top and wrestle the receiver to my ear. For one horrible second, I cannot hear a dial tone. Then there it is, there it is…
Tate rides with Olivia in the back of the ambulance. Nicole, Timmy Donlon, and I watch from the street as the ambulance speeds away. Before the lights of the ambulance fade, Timmy Donlon says, “Gah,” and sulks back inside. Where the Devine brothers have disappeared to, I do not know.