He stopped and fixed Jack with a challenging gaze. Jack stared back, holding open the passenger door. “No. What did you do?”
“I belted him. Edgar. Laid him out right on the floor of the fucking kitchen. I would have hit someone else, too, but there were four of them, counting Emma, and only one of me.” He leaned across the seat and stared up at Jack. “I told them, and I’ll tell you, Jackie—
“I do this by choice. By choice. I may be an alcoholic but I have my reasons. You understand, Jackie?”
“I don’t think it’s that we don’t understand, Jule, everyone understands—”
“You do not. You do not have the slightest fucking intimation of an idea.” Jule’s voice was calm. “Something’s happened to me, Jackie, something very strange. Maybe someday I’ll tell you about it.”
He thumped the car seat and laughed. “Maybe even today. Maybe that’s why I came here to get you! Ever think of that?”
Jack took a step backward. “Look, I’d love to go with you, Jule, but—you know, I’m thinking about this now, and I really shouldn’t leave Grandmother alone, or—”
“Don’t sweat it.” Jule grabbed Jack’s arm and yanked him into the car, then pulled the door shut after him. “Here, look at this, Jackie—”
Jule patted at his pockets, grandly pulled out a small red oblong. “See this here? This is Emma’s. One of those beeper things, they plug into some relay somewhere so they work even when the power’s down, they give ’em to all the senior doctors at Northern Westchester. I’ll leave this with Grandmother. If there’s any problem, she can call Emma.”
“And what? Emma’s going to come down here with a scalpel? She’s forty miles away, Jule! Plus you said she’s sick—”
“I don’t know that she’s sick. She just—she doesn’t look so good, that’s all. Probably it’s nothing.” Jule shook his head. “Look, leave the beeper here, okay? Emma could at least call the police or something. Don’t sweat it, Jackie, please?”
“You just told me—”
But Jule had already bolted from the car and loped onto the porch to bang at the door. It cracked open and Jack could see Mrs. Iverson’s face, the beeper disappearing into her hand. Before he could do anything, the car shuddered as Jule jumped back into the seat beside him.
“C’mon, Jackie-boy,” he begged. “How often do I ask you to do anything? I just want some company, okay? I have a client up in Goldens Bridge, an actress, she’s on Till the End of the World, I’m representing her in a breach-of-contract thing. It’s the weekend, I got to deliver something to the studio, down at the Pyramid, and—something else, something I have to do. I thought maybe you’d like to come with me. We could talk, Jackie. It was nice, seeing you this summer. It’s been a long time since we talked like that.”
His tone grew wistful. Jack looked at his friend’s unshaven face, glanced down and saw the glint of glass on the floor at his feet. “Well, yeah,” Jack said. “But couldn’t you just stay overnight here? Then we could—”
Jule shook his head. “I have this errand. I mean, one reason I agreed to it is I thought we could do this—I could pick you up, drop you off on the way back—”
His voice trailed off. He stared mournfully at the ceiling. Jack sighed.
“All right. But we have to be back by tonight.”
“No prob.” Jule turned the ignition. “Great! You’re so great, Jackie!”
“I’m a fucking pushover, is what I am. Let’s get going. I don’t want to be in the city after dark.”
“You won’t.” With a groan the Range Rover started up the drive. “Isn’t this great, Jackie?”
Jack sat in silence, trying to breathe through his mouth, so as not to smell the odor of stale liquor, and stared outside. Jule navigated the burned-out corridor of Hudson Terrace, the garish shells of mansions spray-painted with tribal designs, their verandas braided with barbed wire and broken strings of Christmas lights. Now and then they saw delivery vans, or automobiles creeping cautiously around potholes. Jack recognized the battered Jeep that belonged to his doctor, lurching away from the hospital.
They headed south on the Saw Mill. The road was corrugated with frost heaves, the median and shoulder lined with abandoned vehicles gutted of everything; even their paint had been burned or rusted away. Some wrecks had been dragged back from the road to form hivelike clusters where people moved with everyday calm: tending fires, chasing children, making windbreaks out of plywood and dead trees. As the car barreled past, dogs ran up behind them, yelping.
“Fucking leeches.” Jule swerved the Rover toward a clutch of yellow mongrels. “Someone oughta torch ’em.”
Jack said nothing. The crimson sky gave the dead cars and crumbling overpasses an archaic look. He thought of the ruined Claudian aqueduct, where he and Leonard had fucked in the dusty grass with cicadas shrilling overhead. He sighed, gazing at the monoliths of Co-op City looming up from the smoke and rubble of a fellahin encampment.
“Thinking of Leonard?” Jule asked.
“How’d you know?”
“I can just tell.” Jule eased the car around a pile of burning refuse. “You have this—noise—you make, when you’re thinking of Leonard. That son of a bitch.” He scowled at a trio of boys throwing rocks at the passing traffic.
“Oh well,” Jack said, embarrassed. “You know how it is…”
“I don’t know how it is, but I know how it should b—Jesus Christ!”
A dangerously overcrowded bus cut them off, passengers hanging from the open doors as it veered past. Jule pounded his horn, which made no sound, then turned to Jack. “You’re worth ten of him, Jackie. I mean, I could understand it when you guys were kids. But carrying a torch for someone who dumped you and lives just to torment you…”
He shook his head. They drove by the George Washington Bridge, its skeleton black against the sky. Torn banners fluttered from the girders.
US GOVT TO US: DIE NOW PRAY LATER!
NEED HELP? TRAINED PSYCHIC 250 FT
WASHINGTON 24 HRS
RAFAEL LLAMA MOMI
“I’m not carrying a fucking torch.” Jack stared up at a defaced billboard, advertising GFI’s e-service:
ONLY DISCONNECT!!!
“It’s just—I can be with him, you know?” Jack went on. “I can see him and get pissed at him and laugh at him and all the rest, it doesn’t bother me at all. But sometimes, if I think of him… sometimes it’s just hard. Even though it was so long ago. Because it was different then,” he ended awkwardly. “Leonard was different.”
“It was all different,” said Jule. He pounded his useless horn again and passed the bus, empty whiskey bottles rattling across the floor. “We’re talking about a whole new ball game, Jackie. And you oughta get a new first baseman.” He took one hand from the wheel, reached beneath the seat, and pulled out a bright pink plastic Thermos with a straw sticking out of it. “Twenty years is a long time to wait to fall in love again.”
“I mind my own fucking business about your drinking. So why don’t you—”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Jule stuck the Thermos between his legs. “Didn’t sound like you were minding your own business back at Lazyland. But listen, I didn’t mean to give you a hard time. I’m sorry, Jackie.” He shot Jack an abject look. “Really I am—”
“For Christ’s sakes, Jule, keep your eyes on the road—”
Jule grinned and stomped on the gas. They roared up an exit ramp, down a side street and onto the Harlem River Drive. “What shit is this?” bellowed Jule.
Traffic was at a standstill. Ragged children darted between cars, throwing themselves across the hoods to snap off windshield wipers and run away before an enraged driver could shoot at them. From overhead fell a thick rain of black ash. Jack coughed. His stomach knotted. Jule turned on the wipers; they swept across the glass, leaving broad grey streaks. Then, miraculously, traffic inched forward again. The ash disappeared, as though they had driven clear of a snow squall, though a poisonous chemical
reek now battled the odor of Scotch inside the car.
“Relax, Jack,” said Jule as they crept along. “You’d need a bazooka to blast in here.” He belted back another mouthful of whiskey, held the Thermos out to Jack.
“Yeah, well, I think that guy has one.” Jack ignored the Thermos and pointed at a Cadillac wrapped with so much razor wire it was difficult to imagine where or how the driver could gain entry. “Jesus.”
“These kids, they’ll smash your window with a baseball bat and kill you, just for grins. Remember back when it was just washing your windows?”
“I hated that.”
“Everyone hated it. That’s why they kill us now.”
Jack’s gut tightened.
“Goddamn it, Jule,” he gasped. Outside a girl with very black skin and filed teeth held up a broken rearview mirror. He had a glimpse of his own face, sunken cheeks and wide eyes like some demonic mask. “Let’s go back—”
“No, no, no.” Ahead of them a gap opened in traffic. Jule veered the car onto a side street, bouncing over a pile of railroad ties that had once formed part of a barricade. “See? We got through. Now if I can just figure out where the hell” we are…”
Jack stared desolately out the window. “Riverside Drive?”
“Riverside Drive is the river now, Jackie-boy. Okay, I think this’ll work—” With a shriek of brakes the car made another turn. They were in an even narrower alley, slick with filth. To either side rose deserted grey buildings, their crumbling concrete walls smeared with graffiti: stick figures, crude faces; hands and breasts and dicks. No words, except for a warning stenciled over and over in grimy white paint.
CONDEMNED
SPECIAL ORDINANCE CITY OF NEW YORK
Only the uppermost stories had windows, black squares empty of glass. There were a few sad remnants of habitation. A towel hung out to dry into a dirty yellow stalactite; a plastic poinsettia; a child’s shoe atop a pile of broken glass. Jack couldn’t imagine what catastrophe would have driven people from that awful place to the worse horrors of the street.
“It’s terrible, isn’t it?” murmured Jule. The Range Rover crawled forward, its barbed wire scraping menacingly across the broken walls. “I think this is one of those projects where the children all got that virus and died. They had to evacuate, then they ran out of money to clean it up. Nice, huh?”
Jule blinked, as though they had driven into sunlight, and went on. “It’s funny. You never know just how horrible anything can be, until you have a child die. Anyone at all in the world, doesn’t matter who—something like that happens, the only person can understand is someone else who lost their kid. The Final Club. We all join that one, sooner or later. But this club is tougher to get into, Jackie. Too goddamn fucking tough.”
Jule grabbed the plastic Thermos, sucked at it until a gurgle sounded. He swore and tossed it behind him. His eyes grew cloudy, as though filling with some opaque liquid. He muttered, nothing Jack could understand.
“Jule?” he asked.
A bottle shattered beneath the Range Rover’s wheels. A few yards ahead the alley grew dark. A dead end; but the car kept moving. Jule’s face was grey, his eyes set with the calm that precedes drunken rage.
Jack glanced around. What the fuck is going on? In the back he saw a folding snow shovel, what looked like a plastic bag full of dirt. Ghastly scenarios flashed through his mind—Jule pulling a gun on him, Emma bashed across the head with a shovel and buried somewhere in Putnam County…
“Uh, Jule? I think this is a dead end…”
Jule smiled. His foot tapped the gas pedal; the car surged forward, into the shadows. Jack sat beside him, clutching at his seat.
Oh fuck this is it—
Only instead of slamming into concrete, the Range Rover nosed into what proved to be not a wall or a building, but an immense pile of garbage, perhaps ten feet high. Plywood, broken chairs, window frames, plastic trash bags… the car plowed through them all, until with a heart-stopping lurch it shot out onto Lenox Avenue.
“Hey hey hey,” said Jule. He reached under his seat and withdrew another plastic bottle, this one emblazoned with a Barbie logo. He popped it open and took a long pull. “Used to be a good Ethiopian restaurant around here. Christ, Jack, what’s the matter? You look terrible.”
Jack ran a hand across his forehead. His fingers were icy. “Listen, Jule, I really don’t feel very good. Can’t you take me back?”
“No.”
“Okay.” Jack swallowed. His tongue felt coated with bitter dust. “How long is this going to take?”
“Not long. The studio’s down at the Pyramid. I’ll leave you in the car so we don’t have to hassle about parking. I’ll be in and—”
“I am not waiting in this fucking car.”
Jule shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
They drove in silence for a long time. There was surprisingly little traffic, considering it was the holiday season and most driving restrictions were lifted. The usual mess of taxis and buses; robust-looking vehicles—pickups, Jeeps, Range Rovers and Land Rovers—commandeered by drivers wealthy enough to afford gas and parking; astonishingly dilapidated old American cars crowded with what appeared to be three or four generations’ worth of families, all moving slowly but steadily toward midtown. Water was everywhere, sluicing in a strong current down either side of the street and forming whirlpools above sewer grates and spots where manhole covers had been removed. The sky had darkened from yellow to a tigerish orange. It made the water look molten, the silhouetted buildings like columns of smoke. Jack thought of people fleeing Pompeii beneath the lowering cone of Vesuvius.
The Range Rover breasted through an intersection swollen with rain. To one side the road had collapsed and was blockaded by sandbags and sawhorses. A man in an orange kayak hove into view, his paddle cutting smoothly through blazing water as he propelled himself toward the river.
Jack shook his head, fear chased away by the sheer strangeness and perverse beauty of it all. He cracked his window, letting in a blast of cold salt air heavily laced with exhaust. Water seeped through the floor. He drew his feet up to sit cross-legged on the damp seat and wondered if the Range Rover would be swept like the kayak to the Hudson.
“Look at that,” marveled Jule. It was the first time either of them had spoken for nearly an hour. “Over there—”
A huge tree had smashed upside down against a building. Twenty feet above the washed-out sidewalk its immense root mass hung like a black cloud.
“Wow. I didn’t know there were still trees that big here.”
“Probably it came uprooted somewhere upstate and just floated down. But look behind it—”
Jack pressed his face to the window, straining to see through the filthy glass and barbed wire. He made out something caught in the limbs, ten feet from the ground. “What the hell ?”
Above the tree trunk bobbed four skeletal faces. The water’s reflected gold touched hollows where cheeks, eyes, nose had been; sent strands of light rippling across the surface like fine hair. Antlers branched from each skull like lightning. It was a full minute before Jack realized that the ghastly faces were masks, and that the stags’ horns were not bloodied but wrapped with red ribbons.
He half gasped, half laughed as the Range Rover sloshed past the macabre vision. “Jesus! That scared me.”
Impulsively he turned to Jule.
“I had a dream like that,” he said. “That’s why it scared me. About these people—men, with horns like that.”
Jule nodded. He slowed the car to take a corner, sending a jeweled arc of water against the barricaded facade of the Empire Hotel. “Yeah. Rachel comes to talk to me.”
“They were—” Jack stopped. “Rachel?”
“It started about a year ago,” Jule continued. “When I had to go to court up in Poughkeepsie. I was just coming back, getting onto 684, and she was there”—he pointed at Jack’s seat—“sitting right there. She told me I forgot to put on my turn signal.”
�
��Oh.” Jack tried to keep his tone even. “So!—was it on? The turn signal?”
“Sure it was on. A little kid, what does she know from cars? But I just about had a heart attack, I can tell you. That’s why I drive around so much. She rides with me, Jackie. She talks to me.”
“Oh.”
“She doesn’t forgive me. I mean, she doesn’t blame me, I wasn’t driving the car that killed her. But all this shit now, my drinking, all that—she doesn’t forgive me, Jackie. She doesn’t forgive me.”
Jack glanced up. He saw Jule’s face, not slack with alcohol but hardened by it, calcified; his eyes dry and glittering as quartz. “Does—have you told Emma about this?”
“Sure.”
“What does she think?”
Jule shrugged. “She doesn’t believe me. She thinks it’s the DTs or something. Actually, what she thinks is that I haven’t processed through my grief. She thinks I’m still in denial.” He stared at Jack measuringly. “I mean, you think I’m nuts, don’t you?”
Jack took in his friend’s haggard unshaven face, the carpet of bottles and empty Thermoses covering the floor. What would be nuts right now would be to get into an argument with Jule.
“I don’t think you’re nuts. I think Emma’s probably right—you’re still grieving, or—”
A delivery van pulled in front of them. Jule beat on the silent horn. “Of course I’m still grieving. You’re still grieving for that guy Eric you were in love with, aren’t you?”
Jack stiffened. “Yes.”
“And Peter and all those other guys?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it doesn’t ever really end, does it?” Jule’s voice dropped. “It’s like you wake up one day and they chopped off your hand. Maybe sometime it stops bleeding and scars over, but you don’t grow a new one.” He added matter-of-factly, “I know Rachel’s dead. I never said she wasn’t dead, I’m not denying that she’s dead. I just said I see her sometimes. She comes…”
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