by J. G Hayes
I started waitin’ for them after that. I wouldn’t walk down that part of the street anymore because I didn’t want to know who they were, didn’t want to see them by day. The next night I was out with Denise and the night after that I was so tired from work I fell asleep on the couch watching the Sox game and woke up in my work clothes and it was time to go to work again, which I hate when that happens, it feels like you’re pulling a double when that happens, no? That ever happen to you? But then the next night I’m like thinkin’ about it all day at work, Hey Lughead. wake up! I hear about twenty times that day and I guess they could tell I was kinda far away at work that day, you know? So then that night I get home from work and take a shower, take a nap, and by nine it’s just getting dark and I go out on my fire escape and there’s this light in the sky, the sky is all on fire over there and I figure, huh, that must be the West, I’ve lived here three years and never knew that was the West over there, and I watch the sunset and think how I’ve never watched a sunset in my life, and then a few stars come out by and by and I’m looking at the stars, like really lookin’ at the stars for the first time in my life really and then I think how this guy on TV one time, this professor or something was talking about stars, I was like too lazy to look for the remote cuz that’s usually not my cup of tea and he was saying how like the nearest star was like thirty-seven light-years away, and the farthest ones are like millions of light-years away. Alpha Centauri it’s called, that star, the closest star Alpha Centauri, I remembered the name because I used to go out with this girl—we just had a few dates—this girl from the North Shore and her father had a Alfa Romeo and she said one night the next time we went out she was gonna borrow the Alfa Romeo and we’d go out in it, but when she showed up she had some other car instead, like her car, this Toyota or something and if I remember right that was our last date, but I was sitting on the fire escape, this beautiful night, and looking at the stars and I got to thinking how, if these stars are like shitloads of light-years away, then it took shitloads of light-years for the light from them to get to me so I could see them, and how like they might not even be there anymore, some of them might have exploded or burned out like ten thousand years ago and they’re not even there now, but we won’t see that happening until the light from them gets to us. So the sky is like this big time tunnel—remember that time tunnel show on TV at all?—and I can’t explain how I felt after that but it was like everything changed after that and somehow I felt like all … connected to shit in the world. You know? Like maybe I belonged here? You know what I mean? Like what a miracle life is? Like if the world could manage something as crazy and intense as that, then I was meant to be here.
No, they never showed up that next night, that guy and the girl there. But it was like it almost didn’t matter, soon as I’d step out on the fire escape now I’d get all turned on, instant wood. Crazy, huh? I fell asleep out there, woke up about four, went back to bed for one more hour—we get up early, start at six, finish by three, which is the way I like it. And the next night neither. But then the night after that was Friday night, and me and Denise went out to the movies and when we came back, first thing we come into my place and I see that the light is on down the way in the window, and boom, instant wood and Denise laughs at me, points, wow, she says, is that a banana in your pants or are you glad to see me. It was almost embarrassing like getting a boner on the bus, not that Denise hadn’t seen it before of course but it was like the boner wasn’t really over her, you know what I mean? And then right away she took her clothes off and I took my clothes off and we did it, and I turned out the light but I put us on the other end of the bed so that every now and then I could look out the window raised up on my elbows and see that light on in the window, and I didn’t even see anyone in the window but just the light itself being on was enough to make me crazy, and I closed my eyes and saw everything I’d seen a few nights earlier and when I came it was like crazy again, and when I opened my eyes Denise was staring at me like I was a stranger and the sweat was like dripping off my chin and falling down onto her body and she asked me if I had taken Viagra if you can fuckin’ believe it.
I couldn’t sleep too good that night cuz I kept thinking I was missing the show down the way, and my head was like kooky like with all these new thoughts, as soon as I’d think that I’d get hard again and Denise was like trying to fall asleep and she’s like what is your problem tonight? And so I kept getting up like I had to pee and I’d go into the bathroom and leave the door open but the light off and try to arrange the bathroom medicine chest’s mirror at such an angle that it looked out my window and down the way at the other house, and when I did that and seen the light on in the window I got so turned on that like five or six quick strokes and this big load came flying outta me again and all over the bathroom floor, which I had to wipe up so Denise wouldn’t step in it if she got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, which she did sometimes. So I shut the bathroom door real quiet and put the bathroom light on and then remembered the floor-cleaning shit was out in the kitchen, so I like snuck out into the kitchen and got the Ajax or whatever and then snuck back into the bathroom and shut the door and turned on the light again and then started cleaning the floor on my hands and knees with Ajax and a wet facecloth and then all of a sudden the door slides open—I guess I didn’t click it tight—and the light from the bathroom goes right into Denise’s face and she wakes up, squints, sits up, opens her eyes and there I am bare ass on my hands and knees scrubbing the bathroom floor and her mouth falls open and she gets all freaked, thinks I’ve gone nuts or something and two hours later we’re still sitting on the edge of the bed, talking, you know how they like to talk shit out. But every time I think about the light being on I get hard again if you can believe it.
So that’s like when things started getting a little rough with us, and then like I say the fall came and I hurt my back, and I’d still look out my window, yeah I’d still play my sax out on the fire escape once in a while but not as much cuz it was getting colder now, and sometimes I’d see them and sometimes I’d see just him and sometimes I’d see just her but it didn’t really matter. And then things eventually got back to normal with me and Denise, but when Christmas came and I didn’t get a diamond for like an engagement ring she got upset, she didn’t say nothing, like I said, but she got pretty distant for a while, and then I started playing in the hack hockey league.
So anyways, after that night there when we played that Lenny’s team with the dark Irish guy on it, that night and after that I kept thinking—-Jesus, how do I know him? I’d lie in bed and stare at the funny ceiling and sometimes sleep at the other end of the bed and watch the faces on the train roll by, and sometimes I’d think I saw his face on the train, though I knew it was like just my imagination. So now like I had three things to think about, it was like I kept this treasure chest with me all the time now and I could feel it with me safe all day at work or coming home on the subway with my lunch bucket and I would think how tonight, tonight when I get home, I will open my treasure chest and take out these thoughts and run my fingers among them, like. You know what I mean? What were they? Oh, I guess I didn’t say what the three thoughts were: the stars and all that stuff—I can’t really explain how that made me feel—and the light in the window down the street, and then this dark Irish guy from floor hockey and how did I know him from.
And then, like two weeks later in the hack league—that was my name for it, the hack league—oh but wait, one thing I forgot to say about my treasure chest of thoughts—it was like, somehow, being connected to the stars—it was like the stars were the first, and then them two people, the guy and the girl down the street, and then the guy in the hockey league—it was like, by feeling connected to them, I started feeling more like connected to other stuff—crazy stuff, little stuff. Sitting on the subway going into work and the way the sunrise would like stab into the cars, lighting up the day and the people of the day, and before that I’d always just slump and ha
lf-sleep or worry about how long the day was going to be or read the Herald or whatever. A cloud, sailing over the Hancock Building one time at lunch, I just like watched this cloud just like sail, like this big white ship, and then I started thinking about how the world looked from that cloud, and how it seemed to me the cloud was like slowing down, to get a good long bye-bye look at the land below before it headed out onto the ocean, where it wouldn’t see land again for four hundred miles or whatever it is to Europe. And that made me think of my grandmother—she came from Ireland. She’d sailed over from Ireland and now this cloud this particular day at work was like sailing back to Ireland, and I wondered if there were other clouds that were staying here that would miss this cloud. Weird I know, but this is how I started thinking, feeling connected and all, only way I can describe it. But my grandmother now, the story was, she came in from the fields one evening after haying all day, changed her shoes, and then walked five miles and got on the boat to America. With five bucks and the shoes she was wearing. And she never felt like inadequate or nothing for being poor, she always said she was rich on the inside and nothing, she said, nothing, could get to her or change her. But listen, if I had a nice apartment, and a truck, and a refrigerator and a couch and a couple of books and food in my refrigerator and stuff like that, which I did, why did I still feel poor sometimes? I’ll tell you why, fuckin’ idiot box. TV. It hit me then too, right at this same time, I turned on the tube one night when I came in from work like I always did automatically whenever I came home, you know, just to have the noise I guess—and then I was like ten minutes later, what the fuck am I watching this for when there’s clouds to look at? And people to think about? And subways to ride? And I went outside and you know what, spring had happened while I was inside. I came outside half an hour after I had just come in and spring had happened, it was everywhere and I just wandered, wandered all the way into Boston Common and even the bus exhaust looked pink, even the skyscrapers seemed like just these big-ass birdhouses lull up with chirpin’ life. You know? And it hit me then quick how like TV is just work, more work an extension of work, you work your forty hours a week and then you work your second shift, which is watching TV so you can find out how poor you are and how you’re supposed to live and what things you’re supposed to go out and get, and then you work your third job on the weekends and nights, which is going out and getting all this shit that you were instructed to get on TV and when you try to explain to your partner when they talk about maybe saving up for a bigger place and you tell ’em it’s too much work, more work, they just stare at you. Because Denise started starin’ at me when I tried to explain why I didn’t want to go shoppin’ this one Sunday.
So anyways, the last game of the season in the hack league. All the games were on Tuesday nights, and there were like ten teams in the league and you played different times different weeks, like one week you might have the early game six-thirty and the next week the late game at ten and shit like that, and so the last game of the season we had the late game, and halfway through the game, I forget now who we were playing but we were kicking their ass and I just happened to turn around, it was like something you couldn’t hear called me and I turned around right in the middle of the game and there was the dark Irish guy from that Lenny’s team there, just sitting in the stands. Staring at me. He was in his uniform and it was kinda rumply, sweaty like, so I knew he’d already played his game and he was writing shit down so I think like he was scouting the teams, cuz the playoffs started the next week and I think they were a little scared of us cuz we’d given them such a good fight. You know? So I stared back and this time I know he nodded to me, just like this quick up nod of his head like. So I nodded back, I made sure this time I nodded back, and like I was where the fuck do I know you from because I did, I knew him, fuckin’ realized it then, could’a probably started tellin’ you shit about him, like, he tells wicked funny jokes, or maybe, oh yeah he has a scar on the inside of his left knee or his mother died when he was in seventh grade and he didn’t talk for a month after that, I dunno, any kind of stuff. But at the same time I knew we’d never met really, you know? I know it’s weird, but that’s how it was. And then like all of a sudden BOOM, I get checked and go flying on my ass cuz I didn’t see it comin’ since I was starin’ at Dark Irish, and right down I go and Sully yells c’mon Lughead wake the fuck up and I looked up again at Dark Irish and he had stood up, he was like … almost like a little nervous I got hurt almost, but then when I got right back up and started playing again I looked over again and he was laughing, not like at me but like with me kinda cuz it was funny that by staring at him and zoning out I’d gotten knocked on my ass and his fault kinda. But at the same time it was all too … I don’t know, spooky almost. My mouth was wicked dry cuz this whole thing was a little spooky.
I couldn’t wait like for the game to end, it seemed I’d look up at the clock at the end of the rink and it said there was ten minutes to play and then I’d look again five minutes later and it said there were twelve minutes to play. You know? Like school when you’re a kid? ADD, they told me I had ADD, maybe that had something to do with it. So anyways, I was doing that because I knew at the end of the game we would talk. Me and Dark Irish. I knew we would. I knew he’d wait for me and we would talk and maybe he’d be able to gimme a clue as to like where the fuck I knew him from. Even though I hadn’t really met him yet. Maybe, maybe I thought, he was at like a cousin’s wedding when I was a kid and both of us both bored had hung out for a bit and talked about how boring weddings were? I dunno.
So like the game got over and then everybody started like congregating in the middle and talking and whatnot, and I felt I had to do this too for a bit anyway and everyone’s like let’s get a beer and people start talking about where they want to go blah blah blah and like slowly I turn, don’t look up but like start walking over toward the stands, which you have to walk by anyway on the way to the locker room, and I’m like running my hands through my hair flinging the sweat out like and then I look up and the guy is like three feet away and he nods his head again at me like it’s the most important thing he’s ever done in his life and he’s leaned forward, still in his uniform from his earlier game, leaned forward, his hands clasped in front of him, big white hockey hands. His notebook closed now beside him and he says ah, pretty good game there, and I say thanks and I stop right in front of him, because I didn’t know what else to do.