On the Ropes: A Duffy Dombrowski Mystery

by Tom Schreck

  “Has Shony been in class?”

  “I’m not supposed to say, but no she hasn’t.” She picked up her magazine. “You know how they are. They have no sense of responsibility. I’ve been here for twenty-seven years and I see it all the time.”

  “They?”

  “Oh please. Look, I don’t know who you are and I’m sure you want to believe all these wonderful things about these people but face it, there’s no mistake why they wind up like this.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to alert someone when a kid’s absent?”

  “I sent the letters.” She exhaled impatiently. “They just ignore them anyway.”

  “Who did you send them to?”

  “I don’t know. Whoever is the legal guardian.”

  “That’s her father and he’s an addict who changes addresses weekly.”

  “Not my problem. I have thirty of these animals to look after. The letter definitely went out.”

  She chewed her Snickers, leaned back in her desk chair, and picked up her magazine. Without a word she went back to reading, ignoring me like the chalkboard erasers behind her.

  “Uh … Miss Hippofucker?” I said.

  “What did you say?” She looked down her nose at me and put her magazine down.

  “Have a nice day.” There was something about being back in high school that made me do it.

  Next, I headed down to the school psychologist’s office on the chance that the shrink might have had a relationship with Shony. The office was on the first floor but at the opposite end far away from the administrative offices. The placard on the office door read, Dr. Nancy Madison-Riverchild, School Psychologist. The name scared me.

  I knocked on the door lightly and waited. I tried again and waited some more. I thought she might be in session, but there was no evidence of a sign to not disturb, so I checked the knob and let myself in. Dr. Madison-Riverchild was sitting cross-legged on a tattered Persian rug starring at a candle. The room reeked of patchouli and though her eyes were open, she made no motion to acknowledge my presence.

  She looked about fifty, she had wavy gray hair down to her ass, and she wore a hemp peasant top and baggy pants that gathered around her ankles like a TV gypsy would wear. She was painfully pale, had crooked teeth, and was very thin. She wasn’t wearing a bra and her tits hung down around her belt line. It was one of those moments that you know is real but there’s part of your mind that wants it to be a dream. I was deciding whether I should split when Dr. Riverchild spoke.

  “One moment, please,” she said without changing her position or diverting her attention.

  I folded my hands in the same sort of way that I do when I’m in line at a wake. I was trying to be reverent and I wasn’t sure what to do with my hands.

  The doctor stood up and walked over to me.

  “I’m Dr. Madison-Riverchild,” she said. She had amazingly good posture and the absolute worst halitosis I’ve ever experienced. “I’m sorry to have made you wait, I was getting centered. How may I help you?”

  “Hi, I’m Duffy Dombrowski.” For the first time in my life, I felt like I needed a hyphened name in my title to be on equal footing with someone. “I’m a counselor at Jewish Unified Services and I was hoping to discuss Shony Wright.”

  “Shony is a terribly troubled child.” She didn’t ask for a release or if I had any permission to speak to her. Apparently, if you’re centered enough, regulations are trivial. “She has been parentified from a very early age, and it has forced her into an untenable heroic identity.”

  “Uh … I’m not sure I understand.”

  “She comes from a most dysfunctional environment.” The breath was worse than anything that ever came out of Al’s ass. “She parented her parents more than they parented her.”

  “I had heard she was a pretty solid kid.”

  “Mr. Duffy,” she gave me an incredibly patronizing smile, which was fine with me as long as she didn’t breathe in my direction. “That’s what you see on the outside. Inside you have an inner child struggling against that external self-induced parent. She is the best example of a most dysfunctional teenager.”

  “Her grades were great, she sang in the choir, volunteered, and seemed to be pretty popular?” I asked.

  “Exactly,” Doctor Riverbreath said with a sigh that nearly made me lose my own center.

  “Well, Doctor, you have been a great help.”

  “You’re welcome, Mr. Duffy,” she said. “Mr. Duffy, may I ask you a personal question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Are you in therapy yourself? You seem to have your own internal conflicts.”

  “I think I’m going to need some real soon,” I said.

  “My private practice has openings,” she smiled. “We take most insurances.”

  “Good to know,” I said, and I was never happier to leave a room.

  I was heading out of the school when I heard the bells ring for lunch. Kids rushed out from behind doors at a crazy pace. After the last two hours that I had experienced in their school, I couldn’t say I blamed them. I fell in the throng of kids rushing to the doors and not a single one paid any attention to me. There’s something about being a teenager that gives you the uncanny ability to focus on the right-now and how it happens to pertain to yourself at that particular moment. A strange adult, out of place in their usual environment, meant nothing to them.

  On my way to the car, I stopped to talk to four young black girls. They were all talking at once, snapping gum, and shouting over each other’s voices. It took awhile for them to notice me.

  “Excuse me, girls?”

  They didn’t say anything, they just stopped talking and looked me up and down.

  “You guys know Shony Wright?”

  “Why you asking?” the girl in the middle asked.

  “I’m a counselor and I’m looking for her.”

  “She in trouble?” the girl closest to me asked.

  “Nah, I’m trying to find her. Anyone know where she went?”

  “She stopped coming to school last week but sometime she do that when she go with her father,” the middle girl said. She was clearly the leader and I only expected her and the one closest to me to say anything.

  “Was she doing okay? Was Shony a happy kid?”

  “She’s okay. Her family is wack and her mother a crackhead.”

  “That embarrass Shony?”

  “What you think, mister?” She scowled at me. “Shony has it goin’ on, though. She smart, she pretty, and that girl can sing.”

  The other three girls gave a series of “uh-huhs” and “Word!” at the notion that Shony could sing.

  “She seem happy to you guys?”

  “Mister, who you know who happy all the time?” Again with the scowl. “She happy as anybody else around here.”

  I thanked the kids and they went right back to talking and yelling and snapping their gum. It was the most intelligent conversation I had all morning.

  17

  The news about the beatings in the park started to get some attention in the local media. The Crawford Union Star carried a story on the front page of its local section about the assaults and suggested that the beatings were hate crimes because several of the victims were gay. Channel 13 ran it as its second lead story on the six o’clock news and MetroCrawford, the local alternative newspaper, ran it as a cover story.

  The attention would bring more of a police involvement, at least at first, which was a good thing. I found it a little disturbing that before the victims were identified as gay no one was really up in arms about the situation. Eli wasn’t gay, but he was beaten just as badly as if he were, and it didn’t seem right that when it was alcoholic street bums getting beaten there wasn’t a single reporter interested. Then again, there wasn’t a united front of street alcoholics in Crawford like there was a united organized front of gays and lesbians.

  The Crawford Gay and Lesbian Community Center was a political force to be reckoned with in Crawford. I knew a li
ttle bit about the center from Monique, but she wasn’t a big fan of the place. She respected some of the efforts the center made but found the people there cliquish and self-serving. Monique was a proud lesbian woman and secure enough that she didn’t feel the need to shout it angrily at everyone within earshot.

  With the beatings making it to the newspaper and the TV, the center decided to have a candle-lit march through the park to make a show of solidarity from Crawford’s gay and lesbian community. It was a nice idea, but I must admit I found it a tad hypocritical. Guys like Mikey and Froggy weren’t really accepted at the center because of their lifestyle. Their flamboyance and their promiscuous park activity were seen as hurtful to the overall gay and lesbian cause in Crawford. Mikey and Froggy fit too many old stereotypes that shamed the yuppified nouveau gays and lesbians, and my guess is that if they ever showed up at the center, they would not be welcomed with open arms. Sure, they would get a free AIDS test, but then they would politely be shown the door or at least made to feel that going out the door would be a good move.

  Just the same, the beatings gave the center a visible opportunity to demonstrate to Crawford the power of numbers and the strength of the gay community. Monique was going to go because, as she explained, for all her differences with the center, the cause was a good one and a chance to let people know that what was going on was not acceptable in a civilized culture.

  I went too, partly because I felt like doing something to honor Mikey and partly to see if there was anything for me to learn. The march began just after sunset and it went around the whole perimeter of the lake within the park, finishing at the bridge where there were to be some speeches and a prayer or two.

  I fell in with my candle in one of the back rows, and I’d like to say I was perfectly comfortable and that being one of the very few heterosexuals in a group of gay people didn’t make me feel funny. But it did, in the same way that I feel a little strange when I’m the only white person in a room. I think most people who are honest with themselves will admit feelings like this, although many holier-than-thou super-liberals will say otherwise. It made me start to think about what it might be like to be in the minority and how that could shape your entire view of the world. Putting yourself in a position as a minority is probably a good thing to do once in a while to give you some idea of how a fair portion of the world feels.

  The march moved slowly, and I recognized a few faces but not enough to really bond with anyone. I let my eyes wander through the crowd and I saw all types of people. There were men who looked effeminate and men who looked rough and lots in between. There were a lot of women with no makeup, sensible shoes, and short hair. There were some women with exaggeratedly tough veneers with just a little too much leather, denim, and piercings. It seemed like some were trying incredibly hard to make an impression with their appearance, and there were others who seemed to make their statements by not trying too hard to state anything.

  As I marched on, I noticed a familiar pair of jeans a couple of rows up ahead of me. I let my eyes travel up the legs to the back and head and realized it was a very familiar pair of jeans. It was Lisa and she was walking hand in hand with a short, squat woman in a leather biker jacket and so many piercings in her face that it looked like she fell down a flight of stairs while carrying a tackle box. I found myself staring even when I didn’t want to.

  While the march slowed, the squatty tackle box woman ran her fingers through Lisa’s hair. Lisa looked her in the eye and then the two of them kissed. At first it was just a quick lover’s-type peck, but in short order they were doing the whole tonsil-hockey thing. It was like a bad car wreck—I couldn’t not watch, but it gave me kind of a surreal feeling, like it was happening but it wasn’t. I’ve seen old girlfriends kiss somebody new, but it was always another guy. When that sort of thing happened in front of me I usually went off by myself and listened to Elvis sing something like “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” or “That’s When Your Heartache Begins.” Elvis didn’t have a song for this. The closest I could come was “A Fool Such as I,” but I wasn’t sure that would’ve worked.

  You know, I’ll admit that on occasion I’ve accidentally looked in porno mags, you know, if there was an interesting article or something. They almost always have some sort of lesbian pictorial. I don’t ever recall one of the models being five foot one with a Dick Butkus hairdo and a face that would overwork a scrapyard magnet. Geez, to think all these years the dirty magazine business has been misleading me.

  Eventually, Butkus got her tongue out of my ex-girlfriend’s esophagus and when their lips parted, a gobber of spit got hung up on the Butkus’s second lip piercing from the left. This car wreck was getting worse, and apparently so was my staring because Butkus turned around and saw me.

  “Hey, take a picture next time—it lasts longer,” she said in her Ernest Borgnine voice.

  It didn’t register with me because I was in a lesbo-induced trance.

  “You, buddy, you got a problem?”

  I came out of my hypnotic state and realized I was being confronted by an angry, semi-dwarfed, metalicized Dick Butkus. My mouth opened but nothing came out. In my head, Elvis was singing the first verse of “A Fool Such as I,” and I couldn’t imagine anybody ever feeling so foolish.

  “Uh me?” was all I could get out.

  “Never mind,” Butkus said. “Asshole.”

  Next to her, Lisa waved and seemed as awkward as any person who ever lived. I waved back, ignoring Butkus. The two of them turned around, and I could tell that Lisa had to explain a few things. As they walked away, Butkus put her hand on Lisa’s ass.

  I still hadn’t moved when a voice distracted me.

  “Mr. Duffy, whatever are you doing here?” It was Froggy. He was standing, thrusting his one hip out and looking at me with his big brown eyes.

  “Hey Froggy,” I said. “Here to show my respect for Mikey and the others.”

  “You go, boy. Something gots to stop these rednecks. It’s beginning to cramp my dating life,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “Cops won’t do anything as long as it’s us fags being beat. After this publicity stunt stops, it will be business as usual.”

  “I’m going to do something, Froggy.”

  “What are you, the Lone Straight Ranger?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’re not kidding.” Froggy had a rare serious moment. “There ain’t many like you, Mr. Duffy Dombrowski.”

  “I get that a lot.”

  “You all right with me. If I can ever do anything for you—you say so. And I don’t mean anything in the bushes, either.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, Froggy,” I said.

  After my conversation with Froggy, I decided to leave the park and skip the speeches. The night had gotten weird enough and I just wanted to go home and get some sleep. I was going to have to go through my record collection to find a song too.

  18

  Today was the day slated for all of us to head out to the new halfway house for a tour of the facility while it was under construction, followed by an all-day retreat with the staffs and boards of both agencies. Retreats are the goofiest waste of time ever imagined, and the only redeeming thing about them is that they afford me time to think. Usually, that meant thinking absolutely nothing about the topic at hand.

  The Michelin Woman didn’t say a word about my records, which meant she looked at them and they were acceptable. She kind of operated in an evil “no news is good news” mode, except it ought to be more like “no bad news sucks.” Trina saved a large piece of my ass with the tip and the fact that she stuck her neck out for me meant a lot. I still had ten good charts and about sixty-five shitty charts, so I was far, far away from being out of the woods.

  Hymie asked if he could ride out with me today. Even if he had to bring up the record-keeping business, I still looked forward to sharing the forty-five minute ride out to Kingsville with him. The plan was to meet at Simon’s Deli, where Hymie and a handful of
businessmen of his vintage held court every workday morning. Simon’s was west of Crawford’s industrial section, and it was almost exactly the same as it was when it opened in the 1930s. Old man Simon came up from Brooklyn after working in his grandfather’s deli, and he pretty much duplicated the business. Crawford had a good-size Jewish population made up of the men and women who migrated from the city, and they made Simon’s a little haven of their old home. Sid Simon, the grandson of the original owner, still wrote the daily specials on his grandfather’s old chalkboard, still wore the old-fashioned white apron, and still wiped down the wrought-iron ice-cream-store-style chairs and tables after each party left. As America continues to go through its drive-through-ization on its way to the kids’ soccer games, Simon’s was a throwback and a welcome alternative.

  Even though Hymie and his friends were mostly retired and had turned their businesses over to their sons, they kept the ritual that they had started forty or fifty years ago. It’s what the opportunistic yuppies of today call networking, except these old businessmen got together because they not only wanted to succeed business-wise, they also cared about each other’s camaraderie. Today’s yuppie sees every relationship as an opportunity to advance something or to get leverage on something else.

  I walked through Simon’s front door at exactly seven thirty, and there was Hymie at the corner table with his posse of Bernie, Duke, George, and Henry. I knew each of the guys from these occasional breakfast meetings that Hymie invited me to.

  “Abi gezunt, gentlemen,” I said, taking the seat next to Duke and across from Hymie.

  “This goy protégé of yours … Hymie,” Duke said. “Did you get him to convert yet? I got a rabbi who will do the circumcision.”

  “You hear that, son?” George said, making a scissoring motion with his fingers. “Do you know what that means to your schmeckel?”

  “Meshugeh, son, pay no attention to these old men,” Henry said. “Get some of Simon’s lox. They’re very good this morning, though the bagels are too chewy.”