by Jeff Somers
I tried to jump to my feet on the bar as a scrum formed below me, with an idea about shouting something dramatic as I leaped down and made a run for freedom, but the world skittered out from beneath me, sending me crashing down behind the bar right on top of all the broken glass I’d just generated. I waited a few seconds for pain, that weird burning-numb sensation when you’d been cut to ribbons and your body was just shooting platelets and endorphins and adrenaline everywhere all at once to give you a chance to escape whatever horrible thing has damaged you. The Wallace men have an incredible evolutionary instinct that kicks in, and we go all Alpha Male when existence is threatened, and take no prisoners. And my genes knew I hadn’t yet spawned, so were in red alert mode.
Hell, if I stayed childless forever, I’d probably never age.
I was uninjured, however. A miracle, which I chalked up to the universe having an as-yet undiscovered purpose for me, like a Messiah. I leaped up and made a dash for the other end of the bar, pushing myself rudely into the crowd and clawing for the door. Everything in the place was dirty, it was all greasy hair and huge, gaping pores, blackheads everywhere. I didn’t dare breathe. Red-faced and desperate, I burst out into the cold night air and doubled over, half-laughing and half gasping, taking in big lungfuls of air. I was ecstatic. I was the happiest bastard in the universe.
“What are you laughing about?”
The voice of Bickerman. He was like some sort of ancient folk tale, a demon who ate babies and haunted innocent men who were just trying to get laid without an albatross around their necks.
He was leaning against the facade of the bar, lighting a cigarette.
“How’d you get out here?” I demanded, outraged. I wanted to shake my fist at the sky in anger, but was suddenly afraid; the way things had been going for me, a lightning bolt would probably strike me in response.
He smirked at me like I was a moron, which was a favorite and familiar expression from Graf Bickerman. “All they did was get the bouncer to eighty-six me,” he said. “I saw him lurking behind us anyway.”
I nodded. Bickerman hadn’t yet found a confrontation he couldn’t run away from, but he often found these elegant ways of having fun and avoiding physical injury. The door to the bar jangled open at that moment, and Bick’s explosion of fervent, terrified motion, all elbows and knees, amused me enough to bring some blood back to my brain.
“Fuck,” he panted, “let’s go.”
I spun in place as he walked past me, throwing my arms out again. I was damp and it was cold and this was not the way the cosmos wanted me to be used, a lackey for a syphilitic half-wit. He was a two hundred pound cyst, and I yearned to do some home surgery. But he was filled with caustic pus, and I had to figure out how to remove him without him bursting.
“Where are we going now?”
“I just got a call from Mikey. I think we can catch Henry.”
I sighed, deflating, defeated, and fell in step behind him. I saw myself, an old man, thinned and dried out, shuffling after Graf Bickerman as he climbed down into tar pits somewhere, because someone told him that the corpse of Henry was down there, preserved for eternity.
For the first time in fucking years, I thought: Fuck, I wish Mary were here.
• • •
“Well, this is fucking excellent.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
I considered hitting Bickerman for the first time in seven years, but eschewed the idea as dangerous considering his unpredictable state of mind. A few months before, it would have been a safe bet, as Bickerman’s usual reaction to violence was to curl up into a fetal position and play dead. Recently, though, the boy had been under strain and had become reckless. While possessing a glass jaw and being unfamiliar with bravery of any sort, Graf Bickerman had swollen to heroic proportions, and he might defeat me just by using gravity and his own dead mass. I would suffocate in the folds of his belly fat, lost to history.
We were at Ice Station Zebra, otherwise known as Henry’s apartment building. The Stupid Fuck’s information about Henry had proven useless, of course—by the time we’d arrived at yet another fucking bar where the drunken inhabitants were wearing Santa hats and singing carols, there was nothing but the faint smell of puke and doom—a dotted-line outline of Henry in the bathroom, almost, like in those old cartoons—to mark that Hank had ever been there. Bickerman was a man of purpose, and had instructed me to lead him, sodden and squinty, to Henry’s horrible little home. Where we now stood, freezing our balls off. I stared at the dirty, crusted snow that clogged the streets and contemplated my life, which had shriveled, recently, into something cold and dull.
Bick handed something to me. I looked down and stared. It was a flask, dull metal glinting in the streetlight.
“What’s in it?” I asked. I’d been burned by Bick’s beverage choices before.
“Whiskey. Not bad. Where is this idiot?”
I took a slug and liked it—not the greatest whiskey ever, but not moonshine either. I didn’t hand it back. “He’s out living his life, enjoying himself, stepping out on Neesie. Which is what we ought to be doing. Stepping out. Or living our lives. Or Neesie. One of those. Not standing here freezing our balls off at Ice Station Zebra.”
“Waaa, waaa, waaa,” Bickerman intoned, all nasal annoyance.
“I’m not your fucking wife, so don’t make quacking noises at me, you fucking simp.”
The icy stare of Bickerman, guaranteed to turn your balls into ice pellets. He reached out for the flask and I gave it back to him. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be offered any more, as I had offended The Bick. No, that isn’t exactly possible—you cannot offend a mindless creature of pure energy, which is what Bick was.
I kept my mouth shut and stared at the street, a pleasant smile in place. I could keep a smile on my face forever if I wanted, one of many skills I possessed that you couldn’t put on a resume. I was an untapped national resource. I started imagining myself in a better place—home, or a beach somewhere during Spring Break, lots of wasted chicks in bikinis staggering around, half of them already dosed with roofies and the other half in town to get laid in the first place. I wanted desperately to be anywhere else, because Henry was never coming home. He’d changed his name, gotten some plastic surgery, and was now living in Mexico under the name Carlos Elchacal, plotting against Bickerman. It would take decades and millions of dollars, but Henry was going to launch a devastating attack on Bickerman, destroying him entirely.
I slid my eyes to Bick. The bloated ass believed it, that was for sure. For weeks now, paranoid. Where’s Henry? might have been his mantra.
Suddenly, Graf Bickerman threw out both arms, moving faster than I’d imagined he was capable.
“Henry!” he bellowed. “Thank God you’re alive!”
I peered back across the street and there he was: Sodden, shivering, gray-skinned Henry. Gone was the bright-eyed, thick-haired kid we’d all voted Most Likely to Succeed Despite His Lousy Taste in Friends. This was Henry’s Ghost. I told him so.
“How far did you walk like that?” Bickerman demanded.
He looked around like he was contemplating making a run for it—which would have worked perfectly, as I didn’t think Graf Bickerman could get airborne in anything under an hour, and I had absolutely no intention of chasing Henry through the streets. Then Henry seemed to realize he’d been infected with Bickerman and there was no escape, so he walked tiredly across the street and climbed up the steps to stand in front of us. He was a pussy. Defeated. I had no idea why Bick was so worried about him—Henry would stand up for us, not because he was a stand-up guy, but because he was weak.
“How long have you guys been here?”
Ah, Henry, all outrage and disappointment. Henry had been disappointed by me for years, and I’d always borne it with good cheer—it wasn’t his fault he thought I was a Normal and thus expected certain things from me, like respect and fair play—but after chasing him all night I was irritated. Why couldn’t the shithead just stay
put, be normal, make things easy on us all?
“Awhile. We heard you were all by yourself somewhere drinking like an old juicehead.” I decided a little softening was prudent. “We were a little worried. We tried a few of your usual haunts but didn’t find you, so we came here to wait.” I noted Bickerman was just smiling vacantly at Hank, so I took the opportunity to grab the flask back. I offered it to Henry.
Henry glanced at me with his mouth slightly open. He knew better. I could see it in his sad, honest face—Henry was the worst liar in the universe. He knew we’d been tracking him all night. He looked doomed.
“Let’s get inside,” Graf Bickerman boomed, grabbing Henry roughly in what I was sure Bick thought was an affectionate, reassuring gesture, and which Henry probably saw as an assault. I realized suddenly that I was a lot drunker than I’d suspected. When Henry got the outer door open and we started making our way up the dark, narrow stairs, I had a vision of the rest of my life spent like this: With people I didn’t like doing things I didn’t want to. I had a quick urge to just reach out, overbalance, and take all three of us down, breaking necks and solving problems.
• • •
I’d finally docked Graf Bickerman in a subway car, and he sat silently, brooding. I could tell he was brooding because he looked constipated—as far as I knew, I was the only person in the world who looked good while brooding, managing a heroic, slightly tragic countenance that women under twenty-five found endearing. Over twenty-five and she’d likely seen it before, and hated it. We were both sobering up and not enjoying it, and I wisely stayed quiet, letting the subterranean rock slip past us.
After a few moments of blankness, I slid my eyes to Bickerman.
This was intolerable. This was a movable hell, and I began thinking of ways out of it. Nothing could be done right away, it would take some time. But I’d left plenty of people behind in my life. You just did it: You found your way and you just kept walking and never looked back. Then when you got to a new place you burned your clothes and shaved your fingerprints off, and didn’t answer the phone for six or seven months, and everyone you used to know just became someone you used to know, nameless. Worked every time.
Thinking of Tom’s World Without Bickerman, I leaned back and closed my eyes.
IX.
SAINT PATRICK’S DAY
It was all going well, for a change. Neesie was pissed off at something vague, one of those things I certainly should know without being told what it was. Lord knows I liked a good mystery as much as the next guy. Who needs precise information like this is why I am pissed off at you anyway? Just makes life boring.
Aside from Neesie, which was no big deal because I knew in some ways I deserved a little attitude, and she wasn’t really turning the screws, anyway—I knew what that felt like, believe me, and this was nothing. Aside from her, things were swell. Bickerman and Mary were tolerable, being very cute and very drunk, but at least she wasn’t in Monster Mode. I still had mental scars from New Year’s. Mike was being his typically inoffensive self, and Kelly and Flo were actually being nice to me, for a change. Well, Kelly was. Flo was on the prowl, that much was obvious. When chicks showed up for a friendly beer-guzzling gathering wearing a shimmery blouse with a low neckline and super-tight jeans, and their hair done up, you knew they were playing the odds that every single man in the area was going to be there to ogle them.
Then there was Miriam, who was troublesome as always, but at least she was misbehaving elsewhere. I was vaguely worried about how drunk she was, because she was underage, but then I assumed the presence of her older sister made it not my problem, and thank goodness.
I had to take a piss like nobody’s business; Kelly could drink like a pro, I’d discovered, and my cheerful attempts to get her drunk while being ignored by my girlfriend had backfired.
“Anyone seen Mir?” Mary asked, looking around. She was pretty blotto herself, and hadn’t thought much about her adventurous sister all night.
The men wisely pretended we’d never heard the name and had no idea who she was talking about.
“Just saw her by the bathrooms, actually,” Flo offered. “Thought she was coming back this way.”
I watched Bickerman stand up with dread. I knew what he was going to say and heard it echoed and translated in my head.
He said, “I’ll take a look around, make sure she’s okay.”
I knew that meant, I’ll go hit on her if she’s drunk enough, just for fun. Bickerman always considered flirtation to be a harmless activity, no matter the circumstances.
I watched him go and wished for Tommy. Tom could have been trusted to be a witness of Bick’s bullshit; he had no conscience, but he was practical. He would watch in amusement as Bick fucked everything up, but he’d have sense to stop it at the right point. Without Tom, it was down to me, and I had no stomach for it.
Once more into the breach, though. “And I have to go to the bathroom like nobody’s business, so Mike, I leave you with four damned attractive ladies. Hope you’re up to it, buddy.”
The women, except for Denise, gave me a warm smile for the compliment. Mike just grinned his usual I have no idea what you’re talking about grin. I waded out into the pond of swampy guys, trying to find Bick’s slope-shouldered profile amongst them. Just to see him being innocent before I bopped on over to the bathroom, just to put my fears to rest so I could go get drunk in peace and not have to worry over him being shitty somewhere, in some way that would eventually gleefully boil over into my space.
Still, in a room filled with soft white men getting drunk, everyone looked just like Bick. Like me too, I guessed. I decided to not think about that so much and concentrated on just getting to the bathrooms before my situation became an urgent one. And then, suddenly, my situation was an urgent one, because there, bathed in fake light by the cigarette machine and swarmed past by all the people in line for the bathrooms, was Bickerman the Great, and he was being attended to by his newest courtier, Miriam, squint-eyed from booze and all over him like a blanket.
I looked up at the smoky, darkened ceiling and asked, silently, for my burden to be lifted from me.
When I looked back, he was kissing her neck.
Throwing a silent curse at the cosmos for not removing my burden, I made my way through the noise and the smoke and the people and tapped Bickerman on the shoulder.
He froze and looked over his shoulder at me.
“Fuck, man,” he said, collapsing into Miriam. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“Uh-huh.” I jabbed my thumb over my shoulder. “Beat it, asshole, before the womenfolk catch you.”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Hey!” I slapped him lightly on the forehead. “I’m doing you a favor, you dumb fuck.”
Bick gave me his smoldering stare, which was meant to convey a razor-thin space between Peaceful Bick and Kicking My Ass Bick. I was too pissed off to be amused by this from Bickerman, a man who had not broken a sweat in five years. If he took a swing at me, I knew I’d have to end the evening resuscitating him, breathing his digested booze fumes and tasting his dinner. Then he grinned and grabbed me up in a sudden, inexplicable bear hug, like tendrils of alcohol reaching out to envelope me warmly, a dear lost friend, newly found again.
“Henry!” he said into my ear. “You’re the best of us, you know that?”
“Jesus Christ,” I answered, catching Miriam’s eye as I struggled to hug him back properly. “How sad.”
Miriam burst into laughter as Bick and I separated. Bick patted my cheek with oddball affection and turned away from us. “Gonna take a leak, have a smoke,” he muttered.
I watched him stagger off, then turned to look at Miriam. Miriam had been sixteen when we’d first met her, and my entire association with her had been one of trying not to stare. It wasn’t that Mir was so amazing a beauty. She was pretty, but not in any Grace Kelly, immortal kind of way. She was just suburban pretty, with a good body that showed no signs of eternal greatness. What it was about
Mir was that she was a teenager, and she was hot, and she was frequently drunk around a bunch of middle-aging guys who’d never had enough hard-bodied teenage girls when we’d been that age. It was twenty years of frustrated lust, standing in front of us in a constant parade of baby-doll T-shirts and cutoff shorts.
Feeling as witty and urbane as I had all night, I stood there and struggled to keep my mouth from falling open.
“Henry,” she said with a giggle. “I think it’s cute how you and Dave and Tommy get along with each other.”
“Oh yeah?” Witty and urbane to the end, I put a cigarette into my mouth to protect myself and felt myself up for a light. “So you haven’t realized that we’re all part of a secret homosexual conspiracy to marry hetero women and not breed?”
She pulled a Zippo from her jeans pocket and smiled at me. “Gosh, Henry, you’re strange.”
I leaned forward and put a hand on the cigarette machine to balance myself as I lit up. Putting a wall of smoke between us, I felt safe, and kept my hand where it was.
“You should leave Bickerman alone. He’s getting married, you know.”
She made a wide-eyed show of shock. “No!” Then she smiled up at me. “You’re not getting married, Henry.”
I smiled ruefully. “The way I piss off Denise, no, not any time soon.”
“You guys fighting?”
I shrugged. “Not really. I just seem to be able to annoy her, and she can’t seem to believe it’s unintentional.”
“I don’t think she likes me.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. No, but none of the women here do didn’t seem like a nice thing to say at all. I just shook my head. Miriam seemed to be looking at something just over my shoulder.