As I speak I try to put in my words a softness, some kind of apology.
“Hey Marco,” I say, “How’s it going?”
A quick breath in, Marco gets taller, his shoulders go up. His right arm lifts the toolbox, lets it back down. The fucking faux Aviators, man. He’s not Marco Tucciarone. He’s Boiler Man. And nothing’s going to touch this guy.
Frankie Junior slams the van door.
“So where’s this fucking boiler?”
I UNLOCK THE door to the basement, turn on the light. The shit smell is still strong. Frankie Junior’s right behind me. By the third step he’s cussing again.
“Somebody fucking die down here?”
On the cement floor, no sign of turds or toilet paper.
“Fuckin’ A, somebody died,” he says. “Shit themselves first, then sprayed it down with perfume water.”
The single lightbulb is hanging right above us. Shadows of us puddle on the cement floor. Frankie Junior’s standing right next to me. Marco steps out from behind him, bends down and opens the toolbox. When I look up, the dark shadows on Frankie Junior’s cheeks. His dead eyes are so dead they’ve become black holes.
It’s time to tell them what’s up with the boiler. My fucking mouth that doesn’t know how to speak to big loud macho brute Italian guys, especially when the news ain’t good is just about to speak, but the black holes in Frankie Junior’s face, man. The black holes start sucking me in.
“Fuck man, I don’t know who smells worse,” Frankie Junior says, “this fucking basement or you. What’d you do take a bath in foo foo water?”
He’s half a head shorter than me and his body is thick. Marco starts taking out tools and laying them on the cement. His faux Aviators reflect the lightbulb. You wait, you lose. That quick, Frankie Junior pulls a flashlight out of a side pocket, turns the flashlight on. Shines the light onto the boiler apparatus. The three of us all turn to look.
I hadn’t sprayed it down. I was too freaked the boiler had stopped and I ran out of there and I didn’t spray down the boiler apparatus. The black electric motor, the sparkplugs, the wires coming out of it, the oil filter, the copper tubing, the pump, the blower system – all of it. Covered in toilet paper and turds.
Frankie Junior goes ballistic. Motherfucker and motherfucker. Stomps up the stairs. Marco picks up a wrench, puts it back in the toolbox. It’s when Marco realizes he’s alone with me, he does that quick breath in again and his shoulders go up. That quick he follows Frankie Junior up the stairs. I stay in the basement, think maybe somebody should stay with the tools. The dark wet basement looks like a dungeon where people get tortured. The metal push broom I’ve left is leaning against the stairs.
In the foyer, Marco’s standing in the vestibule. I walk up behind him slow, make enough noise so he knows I’m approaching. I stand next to him, not close, and lean up against the doorjamb. I’m surprised I’m taller than him.
Outside it’s bright and hot. In the black van, out the passenger side door, Frankie Junior’s stocky orange legs stick out into the sun. The upper half of him in shadow. He’s yelling to John Gotti, Frank Senior, on the two-way.
Inside, next to Marco, I think of what I want to say, then say it: “I thought I’d got it all cleaned up.”
Marco from the side looks like Michelangelo’s David with a thin mustache and his nose busted off. He doesn’t look around at me. Just pushes his ballcap up off his forehead. When he speaks, it’s almost a whisper.
“Man,” he says, “you should have said something.”
Frankie Junior starts jumping up and down and banging the two-way against the van. He throws the phone onto the sidewalk and kicks it.
He’s screaming: “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
“Marco!” he yells. “Get the fucking toolbox. We’re getting the fuck out of here!”
Marco’s an orange flash down into the basement. I don’t want him to get away, so I’m right behind him on the stairs. I’m saying, you guys can’t just leave. You’re professionals. There’s people in this building without hot water. The whole time I’m talking, I’m trying to get Marco to look at me, but he’s too busy checking around for tools.
Marco closes up his toolbox, latches the latch.
I’m standing between him and the stairs.
“I’m sorry, Marco,” I say. “Really, I’m sorry. I called the number you gave me but the automated voice was weird so I hung up.”
“Who is this fag?”
Marco says this. Because Frankie Junior is standing behind me.
Propinquity. I could say I didn’t see it coming. But I did. Frankie Junior grabs my arms and pins them to my back. He’s strong, body builder strong. Marco’s fist hits me square in the face. Then a blow to my neck, and I’m down.
Things go away for a while. All I know is my face is on the cement floor and that floor had been covered in shit and I somehow try to pull my lips away from the wet shit cement. Frankie Junior’s talking. Faggot boots. What’s a red handkerchief supposed to mean. He takes it up the ass? Then another blow. Something right between the eyes and the light goes off.
Inside forever it is only dark. Cast out. There is no breath. In my sternum, in the middle of my chest, a lightbulb you can see the filament flickering. It’s when I hear the basement door close I wake up. Some deep fear of getting locked in. Panic in my breath and I grab my pocket and my hands are around the keys. I rip off my jacket, rip off my shirt. The metal push broom is the first solid thing my hand finds. I’m not sure of all that happens next. The dark stairway is only heaving panicked breath and then the door. The door crashes open because I don’t put my hand around the door knob and turn, Big Ben slams my body against the wood door and wood splinters and there’s light and I’m not in the darkness and I can breathe.
The black van is just pulling away. I’m running, Quasimodo breathing. Loud hip-hop from the van. Marco’s on the passenger side. The window’s open, the black hairs of his forearm. His faux Aviators.
The metal broom crashes down onto the windshield. The windshield cracks and caves in. The van swerves, hits a car on the other side. Marco yells at Frankie Junior, Don’t stop. Keep driving. I swing the broom again, let it go. The van’s side mirror goes limp, dangling down like something dead. The engine stalls. Frankie’s cussing and the van won’t start and he goes for his door. Marco grabs his shoulder. No. Keep driving. Keep driving, Marco yells. Steam’s rolling out the hood. The van starts, the back tires spinning in reverse. I’m right at the passenger window. Marco doesn’t try to close the window, he just looks over at me. I yell some kind of ancient fucked up grunt and jump, swing hard, hit him in the face harder than he hit me. Marco’s head jerks back with the blow, his faux Aviators bent to shit. A jab of pain in my hand moves up my arm. Burnt rubber smoke. The van jumps and starts, trying to take off. I’m running right alongside. The Running Boy fucking loves to run. In his white rubber sissy boots he loves to run. Marco’s still looking at me, right at me, blood streaming out his nose. Those dove gray sensitive eyes. He doesn’t try to move away, doesn’t bring his arm up. I leap again and yell, hit him in the face again. More blood. Blood smeared all over his face. The van is pulling away and I’m running and still he looks at me. Eyes like they could never look up into the sun or at God the Father or work for Frank’s First Call Boiler and Repair.
Then all of a sudden everything’s bright and loud and full and I’m in the middle of Bowery. Horns are honking and people are screaming. A yellow cab on my left is coming right at me. I jump back so fast it’s like I’m flying.
What I remember next is I’m in my apartment looking in my bathroom mirror. My eye is a deep purple and almost swollen shut. Dried blood on my face from the gash just at my hairline. In the bright white light, there’s blood on everything. Blood in my hair, blood on my white T-shirt, my Levi’s, my white rubber boots, on the floor, on the sink, on the mirror, blood. The hot water’s running into the sink. The sound of the water against the porcelain. My bloody red hand. The hot
water onto a bloody white bar rag. And it’s the damndest thing. I can’t figure out where that bar rag came from.
4.
The West Side Y
OF ALL MY STORIES, HANK LOVED THE FRANK’S FIRST Call Boiler and Repair best. The white shrimper boots just too much. That big burst from down deep in him coming up fast shaking him around made Hank spit out his ham and cheese, he was laughing so hard. We were in a burger joint on Columbus Circle sitting at our table in the window. Every Wednesday night, after we both taught at the West Side Y, Hank and I went there. It was just a diner. Nothing special. Close to the Y. The food was cheap, plenty of French fries, and an endless cup of coffee.
It was our place, like the window table was our table.
And that was our joke. Since Hank and I’d been spending so much time together, people started to talk. One day Hank actually got a phone call. From Hal Taylor, another one of Jeske’s students, who’d said: certain people were getting the wrong idea.
Hal Taylor ate, drank, and slept Jeske. I could just imagine Hal’s face when he’d said that. His tongue poking poking out his cheek like he was sucking dick.
“No surprise there,” Hank said.
And that’s all Hank ever said about it. I tried to get more out of him, about what he really thought about people, his peers – friends dissing on him. But you know Hank. The Enigma of Hank.
Then one Wednesday night at the Y. I’d just closed the classroom door. There were twelve adult students, New Yorkers after a long day at work, sitting in their desks in a shiny beige room under the bright fluorescence. They were all looking up at me, standing behind the lectern as if I was the writing expert. This moment I remember well because this moment happened every Wednesday night at that time. Right after I took role. Just before I began to speak. The moment I knew that this was the class that would finally discover what a load of bullshit I really was.
Hank knew about this moment of mine because after we got our jobs at the Y that’s all I could talk about. That moment in front of class when my heart froze, when my voice went haywire, the flickering filament in the lightbulb in my chest, when my breathing stopped, just before I started to speak.
That particular Wednesday, it was in that moment, after roll call, as I was just about to open my mouth, at that exact moment of terror, the door opened. He couldn’t have timed it better.
Everybody in the class looked over at Hank. Just his head poked in, and his right forearm, white shirtsleeve rolled up. His long fingers against the wood of the door.
“I came here to out your teacher,” Hank said. “He’s a fraud.”
The room got quiet. The whole building. All of New York City got quiet. The world hanging out there a round ball nothing holding it up. Only my breath and my pounding heart. Hank just stayed there at the door, smiling and looking in. I pulled the lectern into my belly. For a moment I thought I had said it. Fraud.
“And don’t you think,” Hank said, “he’s really sexy?”
Hank’s deep-set eyes, eyes you’d expect to be blue but weren’t, were dark, almost black, right then looked adoringly into my eyes across the crowded room. Those sweet smiling lips.
“Gruney dear?” Hank said. “Let’s meet at our regular spot for dinner, say 9:30?”
Really, Hank Christian. That fucker. Nobody made me laugh like him.
AND VICE VERSA. Like the night in our restaurant I told him about the shrimper boots and Frank’s First Call Boiler and Repair.
A big spray of ham and cheese across the table. I had to duck.
“Fucking Grunewald!” Hank said.
Hank was calling out for club soda and picking lettuce off his white shirt.
“Christ,” he said, “you’re lucky they didn’t come back and cut your nuts off.”
Hank had knocked over his Coca-Cola too and we were sopping up spilt Coke off the pink Formica tabletop with paper napkins out of the tin dispenser.
The waiter, Silvio, our waiter, tall, one front tooth missing, brought over a glass of club soda and a bar rag.
“Thanks, Silvio,” Hank said. “We’ll tend to this. Sorry about the mess.”
Hank grabbed the bar rag and started sopping up spilt Coke.
“I’ll get that,” I said. “You club soda your shirt.”
Hank looked down at his shirt.
“Fuck,” he said. “My good white teaching shirt.”
“Salt helps too,” Silvio said.
“I’ll get another bar rag,” Silvio said.
“It’s always been a mystery,” I said, “what it is to be male and what that means.”
“So you attack two guys from New Jersey with a fucking broom?” Hank said.
“You find out what it is,” I said, “by what it ain’t.”
The bar rag was soaked with Coke. I traded with Silvio, who was back with another rag. Fresh off the clean bar rag pile.
Somewhere in that moment everything stopped. In the middle of the big mess on the pink Formica tabletop, Hank’s white shirt, the club soda, the clean bar rag, the salt, Silvio – all of it. Stopped.
That silence just before. Silvio stepped away. I looked over at Hank. Hank was looking at the bar rag in my hand soaked with Coke.
“Fuck!” Hank said.
His face was scrunched up the way sudden pain makes your face. Over the years, I’d see Hank’s face do that a bunch.
The first time was that night when we’d stood in front of Auden’s house and read the poem. This was the second time. We’d known each other six months tops.
“I’m crying again,” Hank said, “and I don’t ever cry. Fuck.”
“Hank,” I said, “what’s going on?”
He was trying to get his mouth to work right. Then more time to breathe.
Silvio handed me the clean bar rag. Traded me for the soaked rag. Took himself back into the kitchen.
“It’s the bar rag,” Hank said. “You in the mirror and the blood on the bar rag and you trying to make sense of things.”
Hank’s body sunk down, folded in, more dense so he could have a part in the pain that was coming out of him too.
THAT GODDAMN BURGER joint. Can’t remember the name of it. Torn down when that new Bloomberg building went up on Columbus. All those Wednesday nights, after class, Hank and I sat in there. Cheeseburgers and all that hope. Writers. We were going to speak a truth so real it wasn’t spoken yet. We’d carve language so deep into our living hearts the reader would rip at the pages, would throw the book across the room, would fuck the book, would open their veins and run out into the street, cursing God Almighty or whoever it was responsible for this unfair unjust beloved torment.
THE BAR RAG. I laid the clean bar rag down onto the pink Formica tabletop next to Hank’s hand, kept my hand on my end of it. Hank’s long fingers drummed the Formica. Then suddenly Hank grabbed the other end. He started pulling on the rag. I grabbed onto my end of the rag and pulled too. I don’t know why but there we were. The way we were pulling on the bar rag pulled our heads down close.
“Let me tell you about my sister,” Hank said.
If I kept pulling on the bar rag, maybe I’d get more out of Hank than the Enigma.
“I’ll tell you a story, “Hank said. “It’ll give you an example of what kind of man I am,” Hank said. “You’ll see.”
Hank had his end of the rag, I had mine.
“My sis was just sixteen,” Hank said, “when she ran off to Ohio with this twenty-two-year-old cat named Darcy. On the phone, my mother was so fucking ballistic I couldn’t make any sense out of what she was saying. When I finally got her calmed down, I told her I’d take care of it.
“I took care of it all right,” Hank said.
Hank’s black eyes were closer than they’d ever been. Right then I promised myself never to fuck with Hank Christian. To never be the reason those black eyes got so scary. Promises, man. So much for promises.
“My dad left before my sis ever knew him,” Hank said. “I was her only father.”
“And my stepdad – shit!” Hank said.
Hank grabbed the bar rag so hard he nearly pulled me over the table.
“My journalism years paid off,” Hank said. “It took me no time at all to track this Darcy guy down. He was living in the burbs outside Cleveland. I packed up my car in the middle of the night and drove straight through. I was at their front door before the sun was up.”
“Darcy opened the door in his shorts,” Hank said. “Tall skinny guy. Didn’t know what hit him. Peg came running out of the bedroom screaming at me to stop hitting him, but I didn’t stop. All the while Peg was begging me, Please Hank, I love him, Hank. Please leave us alone. Stop hitting him Hank, I love him. I love him.”
“I took Peg by the hair – didn’t let her get her stuff – Christ, all she had on was her jeans and a T-shirt – she was barefoot, and I dragged her to my van and threw her in and took her back to my mom’s in Massachusetts.”
“Two years later,” Hank said, “when she was eighteen, Peg married the guy. He works in a record store and has his own DJ show on a local station. They have a son, my nephew, Johnny, a beautiful young man I’ll never meet. Peg hasn’t spoken to me since. And she never will. She won’t even be in the same house with me.”
Hank’s knuckles pushed against mine. The bar rag only an excuse. Hank couldn’t make his mouth move right. His chin started to go and it was no use.
“Gruney,” Hank said, “the thing that’s hardest to say was all the blood. The blood on Peg’s jeans and on my shirt. On my hands. Hell, there was blood all over that van.”
Big sobs, old broken things that scraped hard against Hank’s heart as they came up out of him.
“I believed all that macho dominant-male kick-ass bullshit and look where it’s got me,” Hank said. “My sister. I’ve lost her. The only family I had besides my mother.”
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