by Jeff Somers
I was, that was true. Swinging … too much swinging, what was I a fucking rag doll …
“Let me down!”
“Okay! Okay … Tom, she looks a little green, let’s get her upright.”
• • •
“I’m sorry.”
Henry, gorgeous, gorgeous Henry, smiled at me and flicked ash off his cigarette into the toilet, and then flushed it. “Don’t sweat it, Mir. Happens to the best of us, eh? Come on, let’s get you into bed.”
I shook my head miserably. “Tommy’s in it.”
He gave me his best smile. “Don’t worry, we’ll roust him.”
He started to stand up, but I pulled him down. I couldn’t help it. “You think I’m an idiot, don’t you?”
His brow creased in concern. “Hey! Hey, don’t cry, for God’s sake. Oh, jeeze, come on.”
“I heard you guys. You aren’t bad guys. You aren’t.”
I couldn’t read his look; it was weird, kind of sad and careful. Then he smiled and gave me a nudge. “Tommy is, sometimes.”
I love Henry. I love his way of getting so easily embarrassed. I love that I embarrass him. I love that he won’t cheat on Denise. I love how he’s so fiercely loyal, won’t say a bad thing about Tommy no matter how obviously terrible he is. I love how he won’t forsake me even when Denise wants him to.
“Come on. To bed with you.”
“You don’t really mean that.”
I regretted it, the joke, because he made a sad face, and I knew I was being mean, and Henry deserved better, even if his worthless girlfriend didn’t see it, even if her friends talk him down all the time. I see it.
“I’m sorry. Help me up? I promise to cooperate.”
He helped me to my feet and walked me into the room, a hand just barely touching the small of my back, ready in case I passed out.
Loathsome Tommy was snoring on the bed, mouth open. Henry shoved him and he woke up with a start.
“Done yakking, then? Bedtime for Miriam. In you go, then.”
“Come on, Tommy,” Henry said. Sounding tired. Adult. Manly. “It’s been a long night and we’ve got miles to go before we sleep and all that. Okay? So just let the girl get into bed, okay? Without molestation.”
“Hmmph. No fun.” But he got out of the bed and I crawled in, it only just barely smelled like Tommy, all cigarettes and evil purpose. I wriggled under the covers and instantly felt sleepy, too sleepy to ever wake up. I forced my eyes open.
“Thank you, Henry.” I wanted to say more. To say everything. But Tommy was there. Ruining things. My head ached and my stomach ached and I felt hot and weak.
He smiled, and pushed some hair out of my face. “Jesus, Mir, don’t cry.”
“Come on,” Tommy said, “there’s an open bar for another forty-five minutes. I haven’t yet recouped my costs here.”
They were fading away, and I rolled over anyway and wiggled my toes and thought of Scarlett O’Hara, for tomorrow is another day.
VI.
MONDAY
I’ve had a lot of Henrys in my life. I knew them well. The species.
Hell, I knew them all well. I arrived early and settled in down the block and across the street to wait. I was fuzzy and leaden. I’d managed to keep Bick at bay the night before, but my careful plans for a new sobriety had gone awry because of the new bartender at MacLean’s. I’d quit my job and was literally walking around with the cliché cardboard box of my possessions—although my box only contained things I’d stolen off of other people’s desks on my way out. I saw her through the big plate glass window of the pub. Young, brunette, skinny. Messy hair. My type. They were all my type, but her especially.
So I’d gone in and started ordering big. Johnny Walker Blue. Fat tips. I chatted her up relentlessly, every chance I got. Wallace Charm was powerful stuff.
I’d gone to bed bitter, with a dry dick and a pounding head. The morning hadn’t improved things. Three donuts and a pitcher of black coffee had helped some, but it was still too fucking cold to be sitting on an Oldsmobile a half block away from Henry’s apartment. Waiting for all of them to arrive.
I’d become an expert on Henry’s block in recent days. I watched Hector emerge from his house across from Henry’s building and juggle a travel mug of coffee, a newspaper, and a set of car keys as he walked to his car. Hector dressed like an important man, but his suits were cheap—though they fit well—and his car was fifteen years old and had a huge rust spot on the roof. He wore his money in gold on his wrists and around his neck. You saw Hector coming; you knew right away his soft spot was to belittle him, make him feel poor. The stupid fuck would start throwing cash at you just to prove you wrong, just to shut you up.
I glanced up at the second floor of Henry’s building. The old woman was at her station, frayed pink bathrobe and crazy yellowed hair. She sat at the window most of the day, watching. I was pretty sure she couldn’t see me, perched on the car. I was just out of her line of sight. There was a light cone of this block that Ida knew better than anyone, and I’d been careful to stay out of it.
It was early, because Kelly was some sort of fucking Olympian woman who never slept. Although there was a crude sort of cunning to it because there was no way a sodden mess like Henry would be awake at this ungodly hour, so it was a proper ambush. People were popping out of their homes, going to work, walking to the subway or hopping in their cars. I didn’t worry about sitting on the Olds. I was the demi-god of Griffith Street. I knew everything, and this pale green Oldsmobile had not been moved in three weeks. Or even gazed at lovingly.
And there she was, our big girl, Kelly. In tight running clothes. I perked up. Black leggings, a green windbreaker. Hair back. Face scrubbed. She was red and sweaty and as I watched she doubled over with her ass in the air, pointed in my general direction as if she could sense me. Ancient feminine instinct telling her to show me her goods, let the chief have a sniff.
With her hands on her knees, she looked like she was going to just puke onto the sidewalk. New Year’s Resolution, I thought. I will lose those three pounds! I was alarmed. I like a taut, skinny girl as much as anyone, but Kelly’s best features were her tits, and weight loss fucked around with that. I’d worked out a complex flowchart for managing a girl’s weight: You had to make her feel just fat enough to shed those unsightly inches, but you had to pull back at just the right moment and make her feel sexy before she went all fucking anorexia on you and got bony. And then when she hit that perfect middle ground where she had curves and tone coexisting you lost your best weapon in arguments, because if you made her feel fat in order to shatter her self-esteem, you paid the price in the form of thighs the size of your enormity.
I admired her ass.
Then Flo. Already dressed for work, wrapped in a thick coat. Stockings and sneakers. Ugly as hell, but then Flo had long ago determined that there were no straight, handsome men at her office she wanted anything to do with. She’d started the job a year ago and at first it had been hairdos and makeup, stilettos and blouses unbuttoned just one button too far. Now she was unimpressed with the talent and it was bags under her eyes, roots showing, and dirty running shoes.
I watched her and Kelly peck cheeks, pass a few grumpy words, and then stand around. Waiting for me. Me and Bickerman. All of us, playing our role.
I held back. I wanted Bick in my line of sight. I didn’t want to be standing with my back to him, mesmerized by a pair of tits. Bick was run by his slithery underbrain. He’d stab you in the back in a flash of animal instinct and then regret it, briefly, stepping over your bleeding shuddering body to go get some pancakes.
When he arrived, it was with due ceremony. He glided across the street like a king in his expensive blue coat, throwing out his arms as he assaulted the girls with Bick’s A-Game flirtation material, unchanged since grade school. His hair was too long and greasy. His face looked blotchy and red. I could see, even at this distance, that his socks did not match. His shirt was wrinkled albeit stain-free.
I sat for a mo
ment more, imagining the smell of his breath.
Then I was up and on my feet. My headache, which had faded back a bit, came roaring back. I’d been Bickerman-free for a few days, but I was still drinking myself into an early grave. The man left deep grooves in you. I thought I’d be free and clear of him—just yesterday, sitting on a cardboard box in my emptying apartment, I’d congratulated myself for pulling his head out of my bloodstream. But here I was, walking back toward him. It was foolish. But I had no choice. I had to supervise.
He saw me first and pointed at me. As the girls turned to face me, his face split open.
“Where the hell have you been?”
I calibrated a smile for them. Tired. Manly. Unamused by Bickerman—I sensed the wind had changed in this shrinking world and Bickerman was no longer popular. He’d never been popular, strictly speaking, but he was bottoming out and I wanted to put some distance there. Which was just instinct. It didn’t matter anymore.
“Ladies,” I said, nodding to Flo and Kelly. “Anyone else attending Intervention Day?”
“Ignore me, then, you fat fuck.”
I could smell him.
Kelly glanced at Bickerman, then back at me. No kiss on the cheek for Tommy. No hand on the shoulder, tippy toes, peck peck. No smile. I looked at Flo, but Flo was staring moodily at the sidewalk. I had a psychic premonition that none of us would ever see each other again. A length of rope, a syringe, a cold winter’s day—this was how you broke free. This was how you reinvented your whole life.
“Just us,” Kelly said. “Look, we’re here for Henry, okay? Let’s just go and talk to him. He won’t answer calls, or texts, or e-mails. Last time I saw him he looked horrible.”
She politely declined to mention the fisticuffs, or my own behavior on that day. I could still remember Bickerman’s zombiefied amazement as he watched an Indian gentleman vomit prodigiously inside the diner. Good times.
I nodded cheerfully, starting to enjoy it. It was like I’d seen the movie before. There would be no surprises. And there were Kelly’s boobs to enjoy.
“Let’s go, then,” Bickerman growled. “I’m freezing.”
We trooped up the stairs. Leave it to Henry, sad super nice Henry, to live in a fucking walkup. I’d been up and down these stairs too often of late. They were familiar to me the way hospital corridors get familiar to sick people. I wanted to come up last but Bickerman was wheezing like he’d recently donated a lung and forgotten about it, so I ended up ahead of him and behind Flo. Her ass was hidden by her coat, but I imagined it anyway. You go drinking with people often enough you memorized them, or parts of them. Flo’s wonderful ass. Kelly’s boobs. Bickerman’s wet slash of a mouth. Henry’s vague expression of confusion. Denise’s boobs. Denise’s legs, for that matter. Miriam’s little blowjob bow of a mouth. Mary’s boobs.
I missed a step and almost reached for Flo’s ass to steady myself. I started laughing.
From above me: “Jesus, Tommy.”
Then we were crowded into the hall outside Henry’s apartment. It was suddenly hot and damp instead of cold and dry. Kelly pounded on the door.
“Henry!” she shouted. “It’s Kelly!”
And her marvelous boobs, I thought.
We all stood there in confused silence. I didn’t know why they were all here. Kelly, I figured she was trolling for Henry now that Denise had dropped him like a hot rock. Saw in Noble Hank the genetic material for an army of children she could train in some forest compound. Flo, because Kelly had ordered her to. Bickerman, because there were girls involved and he was still under the impression that grief was an aphrodisiac. And that anyone believed he was grieving.
Me, because I had to supervise.
She pounded the door again. Repeated his name. Her name. Like it was a ritual.
“You just going to ignore me forever?” Bickerman growled in my ear. My suspicions were confirmed: His breath smelled like cough syrup gone bad.
“Are you kidding me?” I said. “You’re not even here. You’re hallucinating yourself.”
Whatever else happened, I could not look into the Bickerman Void, or I would become the Void.
Kelly pounded the door.
“Jesus,” I said. “Key under the mat, Kel. Spare me.”
She knelt and retrieved it. Worked the lock. We flooded into Henry’s kitchen. I didn’t know what they expected to find. Something dramatic. Henry, in the bathtub, wrists slit, final letter to Denise clutched in one pale hand. Henry, drunk and raving, aiming a firearm at us, screaming about ants nesting in his head. Henry, sad and profound, sitting calmly, ready to tell us each our future.
I knew what we would find: An empty apartment.
A surge of energy buzzed through me as we stepped inside. The kitchen was warm, but it was just the warmth of being on an upper floor, all the farts and exhalations of your neighbors floating up and collecting against your ceiling. One upper cabinet open. Boxes of cereal, all stale. One box of cereal on the scratched-up wooden table. A bowl and a spoon. Crusted cereal, long-gone milk.
Something small and dark, skittering away under the stove.
The place smelled normal. Musty, but that was from all the windows being closed up. I ran my eyes over everything, seeking clues. I didn’t see any.
“Henry!” Kelly shouted, moving off into the living room. “Hank, baby, we’re coming in!”
I realized with alarm that I was left in the kitchen with Bickerman. Before I could move he’d sailed over to the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, blocking me. I glanced at the upper cabinet where Henry used to store his liquor. Mercifully closed. Finding myself trapped in Henry’s apartment with Bick, I briefly questioned my intelligence.
I gave Bick my full attention for the first time in days. Regretted it instantly. Up close he was fat and sweaty; a few months ago he’d been sleek and skinny. Well, not skinny. But not this kind of booze-bloat horror show. He had, however, stopped floating around on a cushion of alcohol fumes. Graf Bickerman had docked with the real world again. I just stared at him, studying. He licked his lips with a liverish tongue, like he was some sort of human-shaped beetle, or intelligent fungus. I liked to stare. It made people uncomfortable. People wanted noise, protective coloring. The longer you waited to say something, the more power you had over everyone around you.
Then, without warning, he made a break for Henry’s liquor cabinet.
I watched in mixed horror and excitement. The slow, brain-damaged way he slid himself over to it. The familiar little tribe of bottles. The slight sway he had as he stood there, contemplating a stiff one at eight-thirty in the morning. I watched him swaying. I was mesmerized. Would he? What would I do?
I decided to go all Schrödinger’s cat on him, and stepped briskly out of the room. As long as I wasn’t watching him, I figured, Bick existed in both states. It was a relief to stop thinking about him.
The girls were emerging from Henry’s room. Kelly looked confused. Flo looked irritated, fussing with her phone, thumbs punching tiny letters into the universe with nuclear force.
“He’s not here. Hasn’t been for a while,” Kelly said slowly.
Confirmed: Kelly had a crush on Noble Henry. I fought back a grin that would have given everything away, leaving me in the familiar position of the recently kicked in the balls.
“Better go wrestle Bickerman away from the liquor,” I said with forced casualness. “He looks thirsty.”
She cursed under her breath and breezed past me, pulling Flo in her wake. Kelly was, I suddenly realized, the female counterpart to Henry. They’d been switched at birth. I was suddenly rooting for them as a couple, simply for the extravagant horror of their offspring.
Listening to the buzz of voices in the kitchen, I stepped into Henry’s tiny bedroom. Cluttered. Dusty. More dusty than ever. The floor less dusty than it should be, but I thought a few more days would balance that out. I stared at the window. A single double sash window that let in almost no light, leading out onto the fire escape whi
ch fed you either up to the filthy, hot flat roof or down into the dense jungle of tree-like weeds that smelled like poison.
I looked at his bedside table. A dusty paperback book. A lamp. The alarm clock, unplugged. A row of unnoticed plastic bottles, the white caps off, on the floor. A sticky glass.
Through the dirty window, you could see the rusting iron of the fire escape. I squinted, studying, slowly walking forward. Scanning downward. Until I was pressed up against the sill, my nose almost touching the thick glass. I squinted and moved my head, but I couldn’t see anything except the vague implication of thick, dark branches, a canopy of leaves. No one had tended to the backyard of Henry’s building in years. It was a patch of natural growth in the middle of the city, a postage-stamp of jungle.
When I’d first seen it, through this window a few years ago, I’d thought it must contain some amazing things. Things lost completely to the universe, swallowed by those trees and incorporated into the roots, absorbed for nutrients.
“Tom?”
I spun. Heart pounding. Infantile smile immediately on my face. Kelly wasn’t looking at me, though. She’d turned to look back over her shoulder. By the time she got back to me, I was normal again.
“He passed out on the floor? Graf Bickerman?”
She shook her head tiredly, leaning against the doorway. A pretty girl. Too tall, too broad, too much hair. But pretty, in a big way. “No. We kept him away from Henry’s liquor, no worries.” She paused, chewing a strand of honey colored hair. “Tom, I’m worried about him. Henry, I mean. Not Bick.”
Never in life would it be Bickerman, I thought, and wanted to cackle. Bickerman did not make Noble Kelly dampen her panties quite the way Noble Henry did. I thought perhaps I’d missed an opportunity to take some DNA scrapings and scent samples from Henry, find out how it was that the least interesting of all of us was, somehow, the most popular amongst the ladies. The shallow pool of ladies available to us. The shrinking, shallow pool.
I needed, I thought not for the first time, a whole new set of friends.
“He’ll turn up,” I said, trying to sound comforting. Mature. It was foreign territory, and felt faked. Method acting, I decided, and some touching. There weren’t many opportunities for me to touch Kelly in approved over-the-clothes ways, and I wasn’t going to let this one pass me by. I stepped in close, quick, before she knew what was happening and pulled her in for a hug. Mashed that wonderful chest against my belly. Pushed my dripping red nose into her hair and inhaled. Sweat and yesterday’s shampoo and cigarettes and something else indefinably her.