"Did you tell her about ... what happened to me?"
"Larry did. That was when she started hitting the tequila."
"Oh, great." Billy laughed ruefully.
"She doesn't know exactly how to feel," Lisa continued. "I'd advise you to have your shit together before you talk with her again. You are on very shaky ground."
"I understand what you're saying, but I'd kinda like to handle it differently. Think you could maybe get her on the horn?"
"I don't think that she wants to talk to you."
"Ask her."
"I don't think it's a good idea."
"Ask her anyway."
"What do you hope to accomplish?"
"I hope to get her so worked-up that she spills her guts completely. I hope to get her to scream her brains out. Maybe she'll be able to see more clearly once she gets it all out of her system."
"Thanks a lot, pal."
"Hey, I'm sorry. Put on some headphones or something. It'll all be over quickly."
"Yeah, but I'll be the one who has to console her when her eyeballs start leaking."
"You'll love it."
"That's true."
"You strumpet."
"Any chance to hold Mona is okay with me. Listen, let me ask her." Pause. "Are you sure that you want to go through with this?"
"Absolutely."
"Okay. Hang on." She set the phone down on the counter, turned toward the living room, and paused for a moment. This is going to be crazy, she informed herself. Hang on to your hat, toots. Here come de flood.
She walked back through her bedroom. This time, her thoughts were only of Mona. She didn't know how much her roommate would reveal, but she was afraid on general principles. Mona and Billy had hit the bottom. If he succeeded only in blowing everything up forever, she would not have been surprised.
What will be, will be. That seemed probable enough. If they break up, maybe she'll take up with Dave. Maybe I'll get her for a while.
And if she stays with Billy, yahoo. When they're good, they're good. They could work it out. I'd like to see 'em try.
Lisa couldn't deny the little demon that yattered in her brain, drawing pictures of a naked Mona that gently undulated with her through the night. The image was completely irrespective of Billy; it also made her irrepressibly moist and warm.
Lisa parted the curtains and stepped into the living room. Mona was just sitting there, staring off into space. She looked gorgeous, but she did not look well inside.
"Your honey-buns would like to have speaks with you," Lisa said.
"Which one?" Mona managed a bitter smile, still staring off.
"The real one. The one who watches HBO here on a regular basis."
"What if I don't want to talk with him?"
"What the hell. Do it anyway."
"What makes you think," Mona said, staring straight into Lisa's eyes, "that he's my real honey-buns? Maybe I changed my mind."
Bullshit, Lisa thought, but she didn't say anything, opting to shrug instead.
Mona stared a moment longer, then got huffily up off the universal and stomped over to the curtains, grabbing the tequila as she went,
"I'll talk to him," she said. "But I won't be held responsible for what I say." Then she disappeared, lovely ass and all, from view.
Lisa walked back over to the couch and resumed her horizontal sprawl. The Feminine Mystique was right where she'd left it, and she flipped back over to the place where she'd dropped it.
The failure to realize the full possibilities of their existence has not been studied as a pathology in women. For it is considered normal feminine adjustment, in America and in most countries in the world. But one could apply to millions of women, adjusted to the housewife's role, the insights of neurologists and psychiatrists who have studied male patients with portions of their brains shot away and schizophrenics who have for other reasons forfeited their ability to relate to the real world. Such patients are seen now to have lost the unique mark of the human being: the capacity to transcend the present and to act in the light of the possible, the mysterious capacity to shape the future.
"I'M SORRY, BILLY!" came the scream from the kitchen. "BUT I NEED A MAN, NOT A GODDAM CRIPPLE!"
"Whoa," Lisa mumbled, letting the book slide shut.
"CAN'T YOU JUST BE A MAN FOR ONCE? CAN'T YOU BE THERE FOR ME, FOR ONCE, WITHOUT COLLAPSING INTO A GODDAM HEAP?"
I guess he's getting what he wanted, Lisa mused. Poor guy…
"HEARD ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED!" Mona shrieked. "I'M SORRY ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED! BUT I CAN'T STOP THINKING THAT IF YOU'D JUST SHOWN UP AT THE GODDAM PARTY WHEN YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO, NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED!"
Yeah, right, Lisa thought, almost angrily. Like the girl would have lived if Billy hadn't been there to see it. Score one against Mona. That's stupid.
Mona's next words were too quiet to hear. They stayed that way for a while. The fans droned on. Minutes passed.
And then the crying began.
It was a matter of moments before the curtain burst open and Mona came into the room, clutching her belly. Her face was full of pain. Lisa patted the space on the couch beside her and whispered the words, "Come here." Mona came. They held each other for a timeless stretch of time.
Mostly, Mona bawled her head off: a few words, denials, and curses punctuating each other, managed to cut their way through the sorrow. Throughout it all, Lisa kissed her hair, her forehead, her ears. The crying tapered down. The kissing continued. There was a long, moaning interlude.
"If you touch my tits," Mona whispered finally, "I'll break your hands."
"Wouldn't dream of it," Lisa murmured in response. "I just want to make you feel okay."
"I'll be okay in a couple of minutes. Honest to God, I will. As soon as I—shit . . ." A fresh tear started to roll.
"I love him, Lisa," she continued throatily. "I really, really love him. He's the greatest guy in the world. I just can't understand why he hates himself so much. And the murder . . . Jesus, I still can't believe that happened. . ."
"I know." Lisa thought about the way Larry'd described it, complete with jack-o'-lantern torso. It wasn't hard to picture. She imagined being Billy, staring down. She imagined being the girl under the blade.
"But I just can't deal with it now," Mona continued. I refuse to. Is that selfish?"
"I'd say."
"But don't you think that—" An agitated, mounting defense.
"Shhh. Shhh. I didn't say it wasn't understandable. So what are you going to do? Break up with him?"
Uncomfortable pause.
"I already did."
"Wow." That knocked the air out of Lisa for a second. "Really?" Mona nodded. "Are you going to stand by that or are you doing it to scare him?"
"I don't know, I don't . . . I don't even wanna talk about it anymore. I don't wanna think about Billy, about Dave, about last night period.
"What I really want is some champagne."
They smiled at each other. "We have any left?"
"I brought a whole bottle back from Dave's. . ." A tiny pang went off behind her eyes at the name. Then she brightened again. "So we've got plenty. You want some?"
"Only if we can come back in here and snuggle while we drink it." Lisa winked.
"And then, the oral sex."
"Don't tempt me, woman. I'll lubricate."
"I'll smear it all over my body," Mona purred lasciviously, but Lisa was sadly inclined to doubt it. All teasing aside, Mona always backed down in the end.
Well, almost always, Lisa amended, a smile flickering across her lips. There would always be that one night to look back on, no matter how fallow the future might be. She would not go to her grave without the experience of having made Mona groan and whinny and writhe. If that didn't get her into Heaven, nothing would.
Mona was staring at her, almost seeming to read her thoughts. She watched the on light click off behind Mona's eyes, and resigned herself to being a friend.
"Let's just get bombed and c
elebrate, okay?" she said, leading the way to the kitchen.
TEN
QUIZ
Billy stood very still in the center of the kitchen. The phone sat unheeded in his hand. He'd tried to call back, but Mona had taken the phone of the hook. Now a measured and mechanical voice droned endlessly through the tiny speaker: If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again. If you need help, hang up and dial your operator.
(DITDITDITDIT)
Billy stared at the receiver. The receiver stared back: a pair of huge black eyes that looked like they should have belonged to him. "Yes, operator," he said to no one in particular. "Get me the police: I'd like to report one extremely dead relationship . . . no, I'm not sure whether to call it murder or suicide. It hardly matters at this point, does it?"
(DITDITDITDIT)
"Yeah, well. I guess she got it out of her system, all right," he joked, quite distinctly to himself.
Nobody laughed. Billy hung up the phone. Not counting the cockroaches, Bubba was the only other one there: peacefully snoozing on the dirty laundry, blissfully unaware of the flailing his master'd just taken. Bubba grumbled and shifted fully onto his back: belly up, legs splayed, lost somewhere in Bubba-land. He covered his face with his front paws. Billy got a pang in his heart every time Bubba did that.
"Oh, Bubba," Billy murmured. "If you only knew . . ." A strange thought came to him. "Come to think of it, what do you know? Any idea what happened to you last night? Any idea what happened to me?"
Standing now in the brightly lit clutter of the kitchen, with nearly twenty-four hours between him and the events of the night before, it would be easy to dismiss it all as the product of an overworked and overactive imagination.
Except for the note in his pocket.
And except for the late, great Jennifer Mason, he reminded himself. The girl in the white chalk line and he had shared a post-mortem introduction, courtesy of every bodega and newsstand between Stanton Street and the park. Her picture . . . and the promise of more lurid details than he possibly cared to know . . . had assaulted him all afternoon. He'd finally broken down and grabbed the final edition of the Post during his last break.
There'd been four references to the "lone witness" in the text, none of them by name. Jennifer Mason, being dead and therefore defenseless, wasn't nearly so lucky in any respect. Her name, age, address, abbreviated history, and artistic aspirations (she'd been a painter) were all there in black and white.
Billy'd cried when he read it. Then he'd tossed the paper on his way back from the park.
But he'd kept the front page, Wingo ads and all.
Lest he forget.
Not that there's much chance of that, he mused. Nonetheless, he'd hung the front page up on his wall, right over his bed, where the cold sweat of memory would never be far away.
"Now all I need is a beer," he said, addressing a room that felt suddenly, claustrophobically small. A glance at his watch placed the time at 10:45. Just enough time to grab a six from Mateo's before they closed: a little fuel to ruminate over his possible futures with.
He headed for the door—quietly, so as not to disturb Bubba's beauty sleep—then moved out into the hallway and down the stairs.
Toward the night.
And the first of his tests.
The night was still hot, and unbelievably humid. He was dripping by the time he reached Mateo's bodega. So was the guy who was about to drop the iron gate. There was a bit of a hassle, but Billy managed to load up with his beer of choice before trundling out the door.
Elizabeth Street yawned before him, quiet but for the distant hum of traffic on Houston and Bowery. Billy liked this particular stretch, with its stolid working-class air: one block from the Bowery and its unending stream of sodden debris, perhaps a year away from the relentless SoHo gentrification that would ultimately displace them all.
"And good riddance to us," he said, sucking down a third of the bottle in his hand. It came out sounding far more bitter than he actually felt. He felt good, considering all the very good reasons against it.
Score one for Billy Rowe.
Billy finished the first bottle just as he hit Houston. The street throbbed with a constant flow of crosstown Saturday-night traffic. To his left lay Broadway and the Scrub-A-Dub Car Wash, still churnin' 'em out at 11:15. To his right was the Bowery.
And the bums.
They were out in full force tonight. Each one had a filthy rag in one hand and a can of Windex in the other: weaving systematically between every car at the intersection, cheerfully smearing around the dirt on the windshields of their hapless, captive clientele. Seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year they were there: lining the corners, huddled around trash-barrel bonfires in winter, tucked in the shade of construction scaffolding during the dog days of summer, sharing bottles of Thunderbird and Olde English 800 as they laughed and chewed over the news and views of the permanently-excluded.
He was halfway across Houston when he heard the first scream.
"Oh, shit," he muttered, pausing on the median strip. The memory of the last scream he'd heard was still a flopping live wire in his head, spitting blue-white sparks of deadly intensity. Jennie Mason was still there, too: just barely alive enough to finish dying.
He would not let it happen again.
Billy ran across the rest of Houston Street, neatly skirting the traffic that roared toward him. A second scream pealed out, halfway to Bleecker on Elizabeth Street. He zeroed in on it, pushing forward. . .
. . . hoping that he wasn't too late . . .
They could have been a family, but it was difficult to tell. There was a man. There was a woman. There was a snotty-faced toddler in a beat-up stroller. There was a slate-gray Torino with a vinyl top that had been peeled like a deer in season: left front tire adorning the sidewalk, passenger door awkwardly dangling open. Arizona plates, but a New York City complexion. It would probably never see Arizona again.
The woman and child were wailing in unison; the man bellowed in counterpoint. He was tossing things from the backseat to the sidewalk as he roared: baby toys, a big box of Pampers, a battered vinyl suitcase bound shut in twine. Billy couldn't tell what the guy was saying, exactly, but it really didn't matter; his posture and pitch said it all.
The man was tall and lanky, with long greasy hair and a mean weasel-face that looked like it had been hit with a shovel. His blue-collar clothes were grime-encrusted, as if he'd just put in some time at a garage. The woman was a fading punkette: if before she was buxom—zaftig, even—now she was simply fat. Fat legs in leather pants stretched to the seams, fat arms poking out of a torn sweatshirt.
Fat face, swelling slightly in the two places where he'd struck her, large quantities of mascara tracking down her pudgy cheeks like cracks in old plaster.
The baby was a scaled-down model of her mother. Only the bruises were the same size; they took up a larger portion of the baby's face, were darker against the bright red infant skin. She howled like a banshee, kicking her stumpy legs. The man took a menacing step toward the stroller, glaring and raising the flat of his hand.
"No, Rubin!" the mother shrieked, leaping forward. Her loving man cracked her across the lips, hard enough to draw blood. It mingled with the spittle flecking from her lips as she staggered backward, squealing . . .
. . . and Billy was close now, very close, a spark going off and igniting within him, a crackling surge of power unleashed to make the air around him shudder and see the . . .
. . . as Rubin stooped and scooped a battered Cabbage Patch Doll from the sidewalk. He leaned over the stroller, leering wickedly into the baby's face.
"Baby not happy?" he growled. "Baby want to play?"
The baby bawled. Rubin ground the doll into her face. The mother howled and lunged at him again. Rubin backhanded her, turned back to the stroller.
"Baby want to play?"
"Rubin want to die?"
Rubin whirled just as Billy str
aight-armed him in the chest, staggering him back toward the car. Then Billy set down his bag of beer and faced him, hands on hips.
"Who are you?" Rubin demanded. His red and black piggy-eyes were rolling in their sockets. He was plowed in the nastiest way; from the looks of it, it was nothing new.
"I'm Daredevil," Billy said. "The Man Without Fear. Who are you?"
"GET OUTTA HERE, CREEP!" Rubin yowled, stepping forward.
"Nice name!" Billy enthused. "So appropriate, too." He stepped forward as well. "How do you spell that . . . ?"
Rubin swung. His right fist connected with Billy's palm: the solid thwacking sound of one angry man's gesture. Billy's fingers wrapped around the clenched fist's knobby knuckles.
And started to squeeze.
"Drop the dollie," he said, eyes boring into Rubin. It was a lot like the night before, with Mr. Mochaccino: Rubin's eyes were blank, and his own voice sounded distant. Static licked the air.
"Drop the dollie," he repeated, squeezing harder. There was the sound of small bones snapping. Rubin's eyes bugged, and his jaw flew open wide.
The dollie dropped.
The punkette screamed.
Then something huge and sluggish plowed into Billy from behind, knocking him forward. He let go of Rubin's fist. Rubin screeched and dropped to his knees. Billy kicked the box of jumbo Pampers and tripped over Rubin simultaneously. The box exploded, disposable diapers hurtling through the air. Rubin keeled over, still screaming and clutching his hand. Billy struggled to retain his balance. Flabby fists pounded into his back.
"Wait a minute!" he yelled. "What—"
"WHUDDAYA DO TO HIM!" the woman screamed. The words were nearly comprehensible. Billy spun around to face her, and she slugged him in the jaw: not hard enough to hurt, but the gesture itself was stunning. His hands came up by themselves. She punched him in the forearm.
"Hey!" he yelled. She came at him, fists flailing. "Cut it out!" She hit him again, and he pushed her back. She hit what was left of the box of Pampers, and went over with a squawk and a thud beside her two-fisted paramour.
The Cleanup Page 7