“You are forgetting one little detail, gentlemen,” Jude informed them. “We have a ready client list to get us going. We need a place to service these enlightened people who will bring us their money.” He emptied his glass with a long, slow sip that seemed a hyphen in the conversation, not a period, and held his empty high in the air to call the waitress over. “And I, gentlemen, believe I know just the place.”
Curious, glassy looks bounced around among them, but it was Jay who finally asked the question. “Where?”
Suzy got to their table before Jude could answer, though he seemed in no hurry to do so in any case. He seemed, in fact, the almost giddy keeper of some great surprise, some fantastic irony, and it was with a Cheshire Cat grin that he looked to pretty little Suzy and said, “One bottle of Jack to go.”
She smiled back, apologizing with a fence of bright white teeth. “We can’t do that. Sorry.”
Jude said nothing at first. He simply nodded, as though accepting the reality of liquor laws without argument. But he was not accepting of said realities, not in the least, and this became apparent when he his hand disappeared into his pocket and quickly reappeared with a C-note, which he laid carefully on Suzy’s tray. “That, baby, is for the bottle. Its twin is in my pocket just waiting to be reunited with his brother. I think from that you can figure your tip.”
Suzy eyed the money, then Jude, then the three fellows with him, then the money again for a very brief moment before taking the first twin and folding it as she stuffed it down the front of her skimpy red panties. “Get his brother packed,” she told Jude. “I’ll be back with your bottle in a flash.”
“Take your time,” Jude said. “You look good going as well as coming.”
She flashed Jude that super sincere smile, the same beam of glee she’d aimed at Jay that night he’d learned and forgotten her name., though this time he was not quite as drunk—not yet, at least—and in that expression of hers that had looked so sweet through a whiskey haze, he could see the bitterness that booze had conveniently twisted in service of its master. She was not as she had seemed, Jay realized, and so now scrutinized what else about her that had enticed, glimpsing her pretty little face as she turned and moved away, and what he saw was truth. Pretty little Suzy was not so pretty, and the wiggle that had stirred in him the things that would stir in young men now seemed to trail her like some bad imitation of a streetwalker’s mating call. It was made to order, suggestive, inviting. Vulgar, he thought now, and finally looked away and to his drink, which he stared at for a moment before downing what remained of it fast enough to bring an instant flush to his cheeks. What was the bumper sticker he’d spied on a weathered young woman’s red sports job once? Drink ‘til he’s cute... Damn if that wasn’t a plan, he wholeheartedly concurred. Liquor yourself up enough and anything could be made to look pretty damn good. Anything at all.
“Jude,” Bunker said, leaning (or maybe ‘tilting’ now, as things were) toward his friend. “That’s two hundred fucking bucks you promised her!”
“Bunk, we’ll be wiping our asses with hundreds in a few weeks,” Jude told him, with such pure confidence that Bunker backed away after a few seconds, smiling and nodding. Jude then looked right at the magic man himself and asked, “Isn’t that right, Grady?”
“Fuck yeah,” Jay said, knowing Jude was right. Knowing this all was right. Right as rain, and wasn’t that strange? he found himself thinking as Suzy snuck the bottle back to them in a bag and got the rest of the biggest fucking tip she’d probably had in her life. Strange not because of how it was happening. Or why. No, strange simply because beneath all the queer events, beneath all the knowing, somewhere deep, deep down in the bowels of the infinite universe where things were set to spinning, where things began, the undeniable understanding had suddenly risen in Jay that all this was supposed to be. That this, this wonderland of wonderlands, was the field upon which his destiny would be realized.
It was fate. His fate. And a pretty damn acceptable one at that, Jay thought, smiling big and wide as they all rose and moved as an unsteady unit to the door.
* * *
The space was huge, and raw, and empty. The floor was bare and hard, and the walls were scabbed with pieces of some covering that had not been so completely removed. Dead lights hung from the ceiling, as did the occasional tile, exposing the netherworks of ducts and wiring above. It was a wreck. And it was perfect.
“What do you think?” Jude asked them, his arms outstretched toward all corners of the space, the bottle of Jack strangled by the neck in one hand.
Steve turned slowly around, taking the whole place in. “This is really big.”
Jude passed him the bottle, and he took a swig. “This is fucking huge, Steverino.”
“How’d you find out about this?” Bunker asked, taking the bottle from Steve and downing a swallow as well.
“Let me guess,” Jay said before Jude could answer. “Sources?”
Jude snatched the bottle of Jack from Bunker and handed it to Jay. “Could be.”
Jay drank, and scanned the space, the only light that which was filtering in through the massive bank of windows spanning one full side of the area. Plenty of space, he thought. More than plenty. Room to grow, even. And all a place they could call their own, make their own.
“Oh,” Jude said excitedly, heading for one corner of the space and beckoning his buds to follow. “Over here. Over here.”
They went to where he stood. He took the bottle back from Jay and drew long on it. When it came away from his face there was a smile as big as the crescent moon upon it.
“What?” Jay asked his madly grinning friend, thinking he had two of those now...if this expression never left Jude’s face, for some reason.
“The spot, boys.”
They looked at each other, then Steve asked, “What spot?”
Jude jumped up and down on the solid concrete floor. “Does anyone know what is right below this spot? Right down there?”
“What?” Bunker bit.
“The fat man’s office,” Jude told them, then exploded into laughter.
“Fucking A,” Steve commented, shaking his head and grinning wide himself now.
“We’d be right above the fat fuck’s head!” Jude said with glee, then roared some more, almost doubling over.
“You are incredible, Duffault,” Jay said. He took the bottle of Jack and drank from it. “Incredible.”
Jude fought the mirth down. “It’s my way, buddy boy. You got your talent, I got mine.”
“Speaking of talent,” Bunker began, “just how did you get the guard to let us in the building?”
“Money, money, money,” Jude answered. “Plus he hates Mitchell’s ample guts. I guess the Old Man treated him like some thirties-era doorman once too often. ‘Hurry, boy.’ ‘Get that door, boy, God dammit!’“
Steve was nodding. “I heard him say shit like that, just like some Vuhginia plantation master talking to a slave.”
“Son of a bitch,” Jay said in admiration of his best bud once more. “You sure you need me, Duffault? You got plenty of your own moves.”
Jude reached out and took the bottle with one hand, and put the other on Jay’s shoulder as he faced him. “I need you,” he said with mock, almost weepy seriousness. “Will you marry me?”
They broke into laughter which rolled on, settling to chuckles and smiles as they wandered back to the center of the space. There Jude took the Jack and put the bottle on the pitted floor. “Right here is where it goes.”
“What goes?” Jay asked.
“The desk. Our desk. A big X.” He nodded to them, to himself, signaling that this was all for real. Really damn real. “X marks our spot.”
They all agreed without having to say a word. The Judester had done it again. An X for a desk. Cool it was, man. Mucho cool.
“So we can get this place?” Jay asked.
“With people like Teddy Malone on our client list we can,” Jude told him. “And fuck those hovels
we’re in now. Find yourselves Realtors, boys, ‘cause we movin’ on up!”
They stood there, and they came together in a brotherly hug, an embrace maybe closer than that shared by blood relations. Because this coming together had been made. Made of their wants, their wishes, their dreams. Dreams that they all could just feel were coming true.
The Green machine had found its home. In this place, and in each other.
But there was one thing more to do. One thing before leaving. One more statement to make. An exclamation point to be put on their collective resignation. And since it was Jude who’d conceived it, and suggested it while they stood together, arms draped over one another’s shoulders, it was he who led the way, picking up their friend Jack as they left. “To the elevators, gentlemen.”
They passed the bottle around quickly on the short ride down, and when the elevator doors opened on fourteen and the Green Machine stepped onto the empty floor the bottle which Jude was holding by the neck was empty but for a skim of the brown liquid that had filled it. Empty, yes, but for a higher purpose.
“Shall we?” Jude asked, and slung his arm with the empty around Jay’s neck.
Jay nodded, a sophomoric grin cut upon his face. Cut upon all their faces as they trotted over to Stanley & Mitchell’s stately double front door and, after undoing their flies, whipped out the Johnson brigade and laid four steamy streams of piss on the entrance to the fat man’s lair.
Twelve
Some Dreams Deferred
Almost three weeks later the streak was still on.
It came in the change from meals, from purchases at the market, from change given to break a five, or a one, or two or three ones. It came in change accidentally dropped. From change laid on a counter to pay for coffee or a pack of gum.
And it always came. At least once a day without fail. And with the coins that would all show heads, there came the knowing.
And people came, too. Hungry for what Green Machine Partners could give them. For what a secret knowing they would scoff at could give them. They came, yes, and with them came their money.
And from their money came more money. And with said money came the possibilities that grew of things so green.
Things such as Apartment 1704 in the Riley House on Central Park West.
“It’s actually been reduced a little,” the Realtor told Jay and Carrie as they stood in the living room of the empty twelve room condo whose three thousand square feet and two balconies overlooked the green expanse of Central Park. “Down to one million six from one million eight,” she said, adding hopefully, “It’s available for immediate lease pending purchase.”
Carrie’s eyes flared involuntarily at the recitation of the price, and she turned away from the pleasant older woman in the burgundy blazer and whispered to Jay, “We can’t afford that.”
“Of course we can afford it,” he assured her in a normal tone that embarrassed Carrie and drew a tight, uncomfortable smile from the Realtor.
Jay walked toward one of the balconies, a seventy footer that connected the living and dining and music rooms on the outside. Carrie crossed her arms tight and caught up with him.
“Jay, we could buy ten houses in Floral Park for that amount of money.”
He stopped and looked at her. “This isn’t Floral Park,” he said coolly, then continued on to the glass doors that let onto the balcony. He opened them and walked out.
The Realtor hung wisely back, giving the young couple their space.
Carrie glanced back at the still smiling woman, then followed Jay onto the balcony, that part of her that was supportive and loving and nurturing saying, as always, Love him, love him, love him. And the him that she was telling herself to love, and support, was standing at the chest-high wall that penned the outdoor space, looking out over the park.
She, though, could only look sadly at the concrete and tile that was everywhere beneath her feet. “There’ll never be grass here.”
“There’s a sea of grass across the street, Carrie,” Jay told her without looking back.
“But it won’t be our grass.”
Jay turned to her, and looked at her, at the pitiful loss that seemed to be welling on her face, and then he walked past her and into the living room where the Realtor was waiting patiently. “We’ll take it.”
Carrie stayed on the balcony for a moment, wondering why he had said ‘we’ at all.
Third Interrogation
August 15...1:30a.m.
“We moved in two days later,” Jay told Mr. Wright. Then he paused. Thinking. Recalling the time. The feelings. Elation for him. Something else for her. “I picked a decorator who picked out the furniture, the paint, the art.” Something else indeed. “Carrie stood on the balcony a lot and stared at the park. I think now that maybe she wasn’t looking at the trees. I think she was looking at something farther off. Something lost.”
Mr. Wright seemed unimpressed with his prisoner’s newfound grasp of things past. “How insightful of you.”
Jay nodded at his captor. “I deserved that. I know.”
“What else do you know, Grady?”
“I know that I got busy, and she got left out. Fame came knocking and I answered.”
Thirteen
Going, Going...
“Come in, come in,” Jay said with all the grace and warmth of a man not yet tired of camera crews from national magazines invading his home. “Come right in.”
These photographers and their minions were from Time magazine, no reporter in sight since the wordly part of the story had been done at the office some days earlier. People, and the Times, and Newsweek had all been by to hear his tale and snap his picture already, and all had positively gushed at the place Wall Street’s golden boy now called home. The shutterbugs from Time were no different.
“Man, this is nice,” the one who seemed to be in charge commented, his pony tail flopping about as he sauntered into the living room and stood amongst the sleek new furniture all around, his attention drawn mostly to a lamp table at the end of the lavender leather couch. “This black lacquered table is going to positively glooow in the shot. Beautiful!”
“Terrific,” Jay said. The guy from Newsweek had thought the Darabene print above the mantle was dreamy, and the gal from People had drooled over the sculpted Italian marble hound’s head by the windows that let onto the balcony. The fellow from the Times had seemed most impressed with the big screen TV in the den, but in the end used a shot of Jay outside the building where Green Machine Partners was born. Everybody just loved the place and what he’d done with it.
Everyone but Carrie.
She stood now, as she had the other recent times their (his his his) new home was taken over to have lighting cables laid and flash umbrellas placed, back from the action, sometimes looking out at the park, sometimes gazing wonderingly at Jay, at her man, the hurt upon her face so clear that you might think she was ill. And in a way she was sick. Sick of this place, and these people, and sick of...sick of...
“I’m going out for a while,” she told him, grabbing her purse and stomping past on her way out, angry at so many things, pained by so much of what had happened, but most of all right then her heart was broken when he said not a thing to her and simply let her walk out the door.
“Okay, boys, I took the day off work,” Jay told them, beaming, glad she was gone. Things were better these days when she was not around. Less of a reminder of a mediocre old life, one he could hardly believe was once his anymore. One that Miss Carrie still clung to in hope and dream, for some reason, and what a waste of a dream that was, he thought. “So let’s make the shoot worth that. Okay?”
He settled into a chair nearby and let them do their thing, knuckles wrapping on his knee as he watched and waited, and not once did he look to the front door through which Carrie had left. Not once did he even want to.
* * *
The shoot was through at six, the photogs gone by half past that hour. Jay poured himself a glass of Jack and stretche
d out on the soft cool cushions of his three thousand dollar couch, closed his eyes, and listened to the sounds of the city as they spilled through the open balcony doors.
At seven, the front door opened, and then closed, and Jay heard a purse drop on the Travertine floor nearby. He opened his eyes and saw what he expected. Carrie was home. Her eyes were red and puffy.
“You’re back,” he said, and sat up so as not to be rude. Best not to be rude to the one you loved. Well, best just not to be rude.
She nodded and sniffled, and stood near the chair opposite the couch, her hand resting on its impeccably upholstered back. She had been crying, it was obvious, but at that moment she smiled. A small and futile smile. “I was sitting in the park, and I was thinking. Do you remember the Ferris wheel? At the fair when we were just out of ninth grade? We watched the fireworks, and it seemed like every time we got to the top the biggest rockets would go off. It was like we were supposed to be right there, right then. Together. You had your arm around me. My hand was on your knee.” Tears glistened her smiling eyes. “It was perfect.”
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