The Vandal

by Tom Molloy

  But I knew horror to have a magical quality when mixed with distance. Like the mirrors in a fun house, distance bent and distorted. As the events drifted closer, as the smoke came to the nostrils, as the children played their games in the ruins, as the pretty women swayed, then did the absolutes, the sure clarity of the righteous and the remote dry up and blow away. Every war had its chuckles.

  4

  Even now I could recognize a few faces from the morning before, and I remembered my father holding my hand on a Boston street corner explaining that the same people came to the same buildings every day at the same time.

  It was really like a small town, he told me. All you have to do is see the pattern, the trend, the connection. He had made me spell out those words, helping me when I got stuck. Pattern, trend, connection. If people, “folks,” he always called them, could see that, they’d stop looking at their feet as they walked, he said.

  He always had us think of the city as theater, as a comedy show with healthy doses of tragedy thrown in. Dive right in, he’d say, America’s the greatest place in the whole world, and we know that, ’cause John Wayne said so. He took me by the hand to hear the winds of Hurricane Carol shrieking through the telephone wires, a bass to my mother’s falsetto from the front porch.

  When Trigger Burke came to town to kill Specs O’Keefe for ratting on the Brinks Gang, my father sat his five-year-old son on his knee to explain Mister Burke’s arrival. He always called him Mister Burke and would read from the front page of the Boston Post all the latest conjectures, hypothesizing, and moral outrage about Mister Burke.

  And when Trigger Burke escaped from Charlestown Prison we were there in minutes, amid the sirens and searchlights.

  Next day the adults took me onto the back porch, my father always called it the piazza, to tell me my father was dead. I asked did Trigger Burke shoot him, and was secretly disappointed when they said no. But as my father liked to say, that was then and this is now.

  Hunger gave a quickness to my steps, the cold a certain perception. On the side of Boylston Street opposite the headquarters of the Boston Police Department, I stopped at the northeast corner of a building.

  I was at the edge of an alley that ran for blocks behind the backs of the expensive stores fronting on Boylston Street. Here all the doors were gray. The dumpsters, the color of the doors, lay at odd angles, like landing craft after desperate maneuvers.

  I passed several of the doors, then stopped at one adorned with the name of a fashion designer. The brass padlock on the door was worn smooth and pleasant from use. The wind, heralded by gently billowing papers came down the alley. I turned one shoulder into it as I worked, partly shielded by a dumpster.

  The message took quite a few minutes, but would remain on the lock for some time. I was gambling that the owner would not quickly part with such a familiar thing as the smooth lock in the narrow and frightening alley.

  The wind lifted dust that came into my eyes and I waited, blinking for relief, the instrument in one hand. Finally, I completed the last letter and moved on.

  At each end of the alley people were parading past in ever thicker rows and I worked faster on the next door, which opened to a franchise that sold coffee, soups, and ice cream. The message was nearly complete when a movement behind one of the dumpsters caught my eye. The bum must have been lying there the whole time I worked, but I hadn’t seen him. He cursed and lifted himself up on one elbow, the blood from a head wound coming down his forehead and splitting into an inverted V at his nose, then flowing in crimson richness down each cheek.

  He blinked, one eye open full, the other slowed by sleep or filth or both.

  “Got a buck, buddy?”

  Uncurling a dollar from the pocket of my jeans I folded it twice and dropped it onto his lap.

  “Butt?”

  “Don’t smoke.”

  “Motherfucker, gotta match?”

  I pulled out a book of matches as he squinted up at me. Then he pulled out a cigarette, surprisingly white and straight. He held the sleeve of my coat as I held the flame.

  “The fuck ya doin’?”

  “Working.”

  Even from a sitting position he swayed, looking at the cigarette as though it had just blossomed from beneath his flesh. He slumped into the cruel concave of the dumpster for support but only banged his head. The pain seemed to give him more life.

  “You ain’t fucken workin’.”

  I didn’t answer but turned to my carving, looking askance at a white police car nosing into traffic from the station on Berkeley Street. Now his voice was raised.

  “Says you ain’t doin’ no fucken workin’.”

  He brought his hands up over his head, fending off the metal of the dumpster, and then managed to push himself away from it. He crawled closer, sucking on the cigarette.

  Like a man being pummeled by an angry surf he staggered to his feet and slumped against the wall. Butt in his mouth, he waved both hands at unseen demons.

  “Stay away from me, I’m tellin’ ya, stay the fuck away.”

  Turning his head to one side he seemed to forget I was present, and he sat down in the doorway, his legs crossed beneath him.

  The last letter took shape beneath the instrument as the traffic sounds increased. I worked the shavings out of the newly formed letter and blew once on the words. The bum began to speak.

  “Think I don’t know? I know plenty. Boss says, ‘ya don’ like it get off the buildin’,’ was makin’ 22 bucks a hour, 22 a hour, more ’an you’ll ever make, so fuck ’em I says, shoulda threw ’em off the fucken buildin’, coulda gone worked onna Alaska pipeline, coulda done that, think I don’ know that? Fucken country, fucken Viet Nam think I don’t know? Fucken cunts, fucken cocksuckin’ assholes, niggers shittin’ on everybody, even got nigger cops christsake.”

  A delivery van pulled into the far end of the alley blocking the traffic, making the pedestrians squeeze between it and the white buildings.

  “Hey.”

  He pulled down his zipper and began to fondle himself.

  “Ain’t doin’ no fucken workin’.”

  His hand moved and stroked as his prick became engorged. He let his head fall back against the gray door, smiling, as his prick stood erect and gray, huge in the pale sun and the furtive footfalls of the office workers, growing even larger with his laughter, his whole arm moving as he thrust his hips outward, laughing, the white semen shooting in uneven spurts onto the dumpster, his pant leg, the hard asphalt, as his arm moved and moved then stopped, though the laughter continued.

  “Think I don’t know huh? I know plenty motherfucker, you wait, fucken country, all got their head up their assholes, they’ll get theirs. An’ I been to Paris too, an London, I know plenty.”

  He belched, then with both hands he carefully put his prick back into his pants. He used two hands to close his zipper and brushed off his fly. He stood, raising his fists as he swayed, flexing his shoulders like a boxer.

  “Let ’em come I’m fucken ready for ’em, ready for all of ’em. Think I’m ascared, I ain’t ascared a nobody, spit in their fucken eye’s what I says.”

  He turned and as though walking the slanted deck of a schooner made his way toward the passing line of pedestrians and began to shout at them. Even from this distance you could see them shrink, pretending not to hear as he shouted louder, and his stride became more certain.

  By the time he reached the edge of the alley that opened onto Arlington Street, his coat was billowing behind and he strode like Ahab after his whale, the curtain of pedestrians opening and closing around him, the traffic stopping for him as he strode cursing them all, his shadow bouncing on the pale granite walls.

  Now I could hear the muffled sound of voices and movement behind this door, so I finished my work. The letters were clear in the sunshine, the words simple:

  YOU AND YOURS

  At the mouth of the alley a beautiful woman caught my glance and smiled a smile so gentle that it only touched the cor
ners of her mouth, a smile saying, “For you, for you,” and faded back into the crowd that flowed and lapped the bottoms of the empty buildings.

  5

  The drivers’ lounge held a pleasant aroma of discarded pastry tinged with the tart fragrance of spilled beer, the presence of which was enhanced by the smoke of long-extinguished cigarettes. The room lay in chilly darkness, a fuzzy snapshot of careless masculinity.

  Above, I heard Frances open a file drawer and take a few steps to her desk. I went up the stairs deliberately so as not to startle her. She had a manila folder close to her chest, looking at it intently, as though it were a menu. She glanced up when I came in the room.

  “Two-two-five.”

  “Hi.”

  “Hi yourself.”

  I smiled and she smiled too. I went over to the couch, sat, and stretched, my legs taut, letting the weary stiffness flow from my neck down past my shoulders. It went to my legs and settled there. There is driving and there is driving, and there is driving a truck in Boston on the Friday before Christmas.

  With my eyes closed, I felt as though the room was slowly spinning. But that feeling passed, and I opened them as she poured white wine into a plastic glass almost as wide as it was high.

  Genuinely thirsty, I nodded my appreciation and took the wine, resting the soft cup bottom on the fingertips and thumb of my right hand. She smiled when I finished, and she refilled the glass. Frances gestured toward the stairs and the lounge below.

  “Ya missed the big party.”

  She was being sarcastic; I could tell she didn’t like the drivers, liked them even less when they were full of beer and themselves, chanting the names of streets and intersections like the Sunday pious in prayer.

  “Thanks for the wine.”

  She had poured herself some and raised her glass. I could tell she’d already had quite a bit and now this glass was nearly drained. Returning to her seat she leaned forward, pressing the glass between the heels of her hands, which in turn were squeezed tight by her knees. The plastic bent in silence when she spoke.

  “You in trouble?”

  “Huh?”

  “With the cops like, you runnin’ away, you in some kinda trouble?”

  “No.”

  She stared for a few moments, a slight squint touching her features.

  “You’re different, you ain’t like them other guys.”

  She finished the wine with a single long deep draught, her gaze broken by two quick blinks, then she came off the chair and to my side. Without expression she reached up and took the walkman earphones from my neck and put them on. Adroitly, she flipped the tape to high speed and ran it forward, then back, forward, then back.

  Closing her eyes she swayed at the hips, absorbing the sounds through the earphones. Sliding her arms around my neck she spoke only one word. “Dance.”

  We moved about the warm room, her head turned slightly, her face pressed to my chest, her features content. When she spoke her voice was loud, the way people’s voices get when they wear the earphones.

  “Men can’t hear the music anyway.”

  Her laugh too was made loud by the earphones, then she swayed and hummed along with the music. Minutes passed, her hands moved from my shoulders, unsnapping two buttons of my shirt. Her lips, wet, soft, reassuring, traced across the coarse hair of my chest. She pulled the earphones back and let them fall to her shoulders where they held her hair like a barrette as she spoke.

  “Tell me a secret.”

  The flavor of the wine mixed with the natural vanilla musk of her skin.

  “I can’t make love.”

  Another song came through the earphones like a whispered conversation far down a wood-panelled hall. She ran her tongue along my throat, squeezing the back of my head and breathing through her mouth said,

  “Can’t or don’t want?”

  When I did not answer right away she moved back silently, her eyes luminous. Without taking her gaze from mine, her hand moved to my crotch. She squeezed the growing bulge there and I exhaled from the near-overwhelming desire. Now her voice was girlish, playful.

  “Can’t or don’t want?”

  We danced between the couch and the metal cabinets. I led her close to the windows where their cold breeze and the heat of the radiator washed over us. She pressed herself very close until I put my hands on her shoulders and she stopped.

  Now her eyes quivered in the dim light, reflecting the unmoving objects in the room. In her eyes was the ebony outline of the man before her and the eyes widened very slightly when I spoke.

  “Take your clothes off.”

  She took a quick breath and seemed to quiver from either fear, anticipation, power, submission, or the simple chill of the wide room.

  The garments fell in silence between us, her panties on the blouse that lay on her skirt, the bra last of all, seeming too small for the breasts that arched outward, the nipples outlined in the darkness, erect, simple, beautiful.

  She began to wrap her arms around herself, but hesitated, then let them fall by her sides. Her gaze came up to me slowly, without a trace of shyness. Her lips moved very slightly, her throat constricted, but no words came forth. I spoke.

  “Lie on the couch.”

  She did as I told her, and now both her arms came around her body, trying to still the rising goose bumps and her voice was again childlike.

  “It’s awful cold.”

  “Be quiet.”

  I crossed the space between us, then knelt beside the couch. With one hand I touched her foot, squeezing it gently, then ran my finger along her calf, behind her knee, and along the widening inside of her thigh. I brushed her pubic hair with the tips of my fingers, caressed the firm contour of her side, her breasts, the soft lines of her neck.

  Still kneeling, I pressed my lips against hers, my arms around her shoulders, lifting them a few inches from the couch, feeling her mouth widen on mine as we drew breath together. I kissed her neck, her hair, and moved my lips across her nipples. Gently, firmly, I pressed the palm of my hand to her crotch, letting one finger slide into the warm moist opening. Eyes closed, her head arched back, she moaned softly as I took her hand in mine and guided it between her legs. She caught the movement of my fingers and rhythmically began to masturbate.

  I stood. Her eyes were closed tight as I walked across the room to the chair. Then she swallowed several times, her mouth coming open, her hand moving faster and faster till her palm was sounding against her skin as she arched upward, digging in her heels, thrusting her hips up, drawing in air, moaning and drawing the air in and in till she loosed a long guttural sound, and fell flat, her breathing moving her stomach, her breathing filling the room until the breaths became shallow and far apart.

  Now the room seemed warmer, smaller. Lying naked and sure she came back to it, to me, to herself. Her eyes blinked and she touched her throat as though she was very thirsty. I too was thirsty, but it was a thirst from the dizzying warm liquid horniness that filled me, that was backing into my throat, drying my mouth.

  Pouring out two fresh glasses of wine, I came beside the woman on the couch, looking askance at her body, like cream in the dim light, beautiful with its dark pubic smudge. I sat on the floor facing away from her, my back against the couch.

  “Talk to me,” was all she said.

  I took a long sip of the wine and wrapped one hand around the bottle that stood on the floor. I tilted my head back so that it rested on the warm, forgiving curve of her rib cage. I took another sip of the wine, feeling the beat of her heart close to my ear.

  Then I told her what I was doing. While I talked, the steady red and white streams of automobile lights on the Southeast Expressway thinned until there were growing gaps of darkness on the eight lanes of asphalt.

  I paced back and forth in the darkened room, occasionally glancing up to see the moist white pools of her eyes as they followed my words and footsteps.

  At one point she rose on one elbow to listen, drawing her knees closer to
her, then running one hand lightly down her thigh, caressing the back of one knee, massaging the flesh there with her thumb and one finger.

  “Marx said, ‘The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we hang them.’”

  I tasted the wine and put down the glass. “It seems to be happening. And it just comes down to selfishness with a healthy dose of cowardice. People don’t want to know anything, they want to make money and be left alone. Things start to go downhill in a neighborhood they move to another neighborhood, maybe another state, they don’t even consider making a stand. White Americans are afraid of their own cities. Of course they’re scared to death of blacks, white men more so than the white women. War goes on in Viet Nam nobody gives a damn. Eighteen years have to go by before they can bring themselves to go to a damn movie about Viet Nam. The Israelis bomb and torpedo one of our ships, machine gun the survivors in lifeboats, nobody says, “Gee that’s rude,’ nobody says anything, nobody cares. Arabs stick a gas pump up our ass because we support Israel in a war, all people care about is finding the shortest line at the gas station. Inflation goes sky high, people out of work, out on the street, guys lose their jobs, hit the bottle and use the little woman and the kids for punching bags, guys blow their brains out because the Arabs turn off the oil and they lose their jobs, and all anyone can say is, ‘Hey where’s the gas station with the shortest line?’”

  I walked to the window watching the red and green lights of an airliner arcing into the sky over Boston Harbor. I spoke looking through the glass.

  “Once in Korea I watched a man kill two innocent people. I actually got a medal for watching him kill them. That night I went to a whorehouse and screwed a little girl who was probably twelve, Christ she could have been ten for that matter. Afterwards something just clicked that maybe I wasn’t quite living up to my Ivy League education, and that maybe when I got back to the States, wearing a suit, and having a big desk in a nice office, and kissing the boss’s ass, didn’t mean diddly. I mean hell, if I’d got the medal for killing those people myself … but Christ, all I did was watch.”