The Donzerly Light

by Ryne Douglas Pearson

  And Jay thinking. Thinking about Carrie. Wondering if she had ever faked. Wondering, yes, but somehow believing that she had not. Not because he was some master of the carnal arts, but because what they had shared in bed was...was different than what he had just done with the woman who lay next to him now. Deeper. More...right.

  But that was over, and she was gone, and this was the way things were now. Real. Alive. Good. Yes, it had been good. Damn good. Felt good then, and still did now. Damn good. So forget Miss Carrie Stiles. Be gone with her. Good riddance.

  “You want anything?”

  Jay turned his face toward her, the Goddess of Eleven. Was Jude going to detest him for doing this? Was Bunker going to hate him for stealing his dream? Who knew? Who cared? Jude would have to live with it. And Bunker? Well, dreams came true for some...maybe other’s dreams as well. “No, I’m fine.”

  “I have some more coke in my purse,” she told him.

  “No, that’s okay,” he told her, sniffling right then as if on command. It had been his first time with the nose candy (he and Carrie had done some grass, which was okay, and once some mushrooms, which were not), snorted from her upturned pinkie nail soon after they’d come back to his place after dinner and drinks and dancing and, shit, a night that now seemed a blur. She’d hit, too, twice as much as him, and then they’d wrestled their way to the bedroom and out of their clothes.

  “You have any wine?”

  “Some Pinot. A nice swill from out Cali way.”

  She scrunched her nose and shook her head against the pillow. “I’m in a white mood.”

  “I’ll order a case of Chardonnay tomorrow,” Jay said, and she smiled.

  “And Semillon?” she asked, pouting cutely, her glassy eyes sparkling manically.

  “Anything you want...” And he left it at that, not knowing what to tag to the end of his words to her. Carrie had always been babe, or sweetie, or when they were feeling really cutesy, schweetie. But Christine Mellinger? What tag did she merit? Bunker would say Goddess. Jude would say slut. For now, Jay thought, he would just let what was said be said, with no endearments pasted to the end.

  Her finger swirled up from his stomach and over his chest, playing through the curls of dark hair there. “I thought you’d be smooth.”

  “You want me to shave my chest?” he asked, mostly jesting. Though she was no stranger to a razor he had learned. And the razor was no stranger to her, he thought with converse appropriateness.

  “No.” She spread her fingers flat and combed through the modest amount of growth between his neck and navel. “I just remember looking at you at the club and thinking that you were...I don’t know...kind of sleek.” Her eyes gleamed as she said that, excitement and the fading coke buzz firing them. “Fast, you know. A mover.” She smiled and once more used just one finger on him, spinning a cyclone of curls midway between his nipples. “Smooth. I guess I thought you’d be smooth all over.”

  God, she was good, Jay thought. Good talker, good lover, maybe good actress. But right then it just seemed good. So damn good.

  He let her hand play with his chest hair a minute more before asking something. “When did you first notice me? I mean, notice me. Not just see me.”

  She shrugged against the bedding. “I don’t know. That first night.”

  “Which first night?” Jay asked, curious whether it had been before he’d started making a name for himself, or after. Though he had to admit that there was no way to know whether she’d be snowing him. If it could happen in bed with his head between her legs, why not in less intimate circumstances?

  “The first night I went to Buffalo Kabuki’s,” she told him.

  “You mean your first time there?” he probed, puzzled, thinking That night? The night the coins had danced. That had been her first time there, hadn’t it? None of them had seen her in there before then. Jeez, what a coincidence that would be.

  Only, were there any coincidences any more?

  “I didn’t even think you noticed me,” Jay said.

  “I’m not quite as obvious checking people out as your friends are,” she explained. “But I noticed you.”

  Why though? Why him? Why then? That night?

  And then the possibility struck him, and he had learned not to ignore the possibilities. “Tell me, why did you come to BK’s that night? You’d never been there before, right?”

  “No.”

  “So why that night?”

  “I don’t know. I was just leaving work, and walking to the subway, and you know that homeless guy down by the church? The one with the signs?”

  Jay nodded, and managed to smile only a little. “Sure. I’ve seen him.”

  “Well that day he must have been making a few bucks, because instead of the regular kind of things on his sign—you know, those weird things—well, that day he had an advertisement on there.”

  “An advertisement,” Jay repeated, knowing two things: that she was wrong (that day his sign had said Take Meat Out To The Ballgame—this he remembered because it was the day after the Donzerly Light sign, and he had looked, and had thought how funny it was that for two days in a row the bum had made plays on baseball related things), and that she was probably right, as well.

  Because It means what it means.

  “Yeah,” she said, then giggled. “It said See Nips on Nips, and I thought that was, you know, kind of funny. And it said where, and I thought, what the heck.”

  ‘Nips on Nips’, Jay thought. Cute? Maybe. But not a chance in hell that would be on any billboard or bum’s sign anywhere in the city for more than a minute before someone from the ADL would be on the scene with a court order. Free speech? Yeah, right, sell that to the Japanese banks up the Street. It had not said that at all.

  And it most certainly had. To her it had.

  And to him? Some days later it had suggested in the most mild of ways that he should choose between his dream and his girl, and then that he should outright dump his girl, but really it had never said that at all. Cash ‘N Carry was all it said. But...

  ...it meant what it meant.

  And now Carrie was gone. And Christine was here.

  And the latter’s foot was rubbing slowly up and down his left leg.

  “Do you believe in guardian angels?” Jay asked suddenly, a wisp of a grin tweaking his lips.

  “I believe in the Blue Angels,” she replied. “Dated one of them once.”

  “No,” he said, sliding right by her little joke. “Like someone watching over you? Making good things happen to you?”

  She thought for a moment. “I don’t know. Do you?”

  He looked at her, admired her up and down. “I’m thinking maybe yes.”

  She slid closer and kissed him, and the hand she had had on his chest slipped lower now, down to his stomach and south of that still, until she had him stirring in her luscious grip. “Ready for another go around, babe?”

  He drew back from her. “Don’t call me that.”

  She seemed perplexed. “Call you what? Babe?”

  “Call me something else,” he told her, no want of discussion on the matter. “Okay?”

  “Sure, sugar,” she said, acquiescing, gripping him firmer still as their bodies pressed to one another once more and their lips touched.

  And there it stopped. Right there, with passion flaring once more and the phone on Jay’s side of the bed ringing.

  “Let the machine get it,” she urged him as he pulled back. “Please.”

  “One minute,” he promised her, but empty that assurance would be. He picked up the handset and put its chill form to his face. “Hello.”

  “Jay? You awake?”

  It was Steve, he could tell. And, yes, he was awake, but why in the hell was Steve? It was two in the goddamn morning, a Wednesday morning, and his buddy sounded as wound up as he had been right after that first suck of powder. “Yeah. What’s up? It’s almost—”

  “Do you know where Jude is? I can’t get a hold of him. He’s not at
home and...oh, man, he’s got to hear this.”

  Jesus. Steve was wired over something. “Hear what?”

  “Mitchell’s dead.”

  Jay sat straight in bed, dragging his body abruptly away from Christine. “Dead?”

  She sat up behind him. “Dead? Who’s dead?”

  “Quiet,” he told her, then into the phone he said, “When?”

  “Tonight. This morning. A while ago. I don’t...oh, man, can you believe this?”

  “What happened?” Had that heart that was mostly lard by now finally given out, or had some clot in the knotted veins of his tree trunk legs broken loose and popped a vessel in his big fat head?

  “He offed himself,” Steve said, and there was three breaths of silence on Jay’s end. “Did you hear me? You there, Jay?”

  “How?”

  “He jumped off his balcony! Man, can you believe that?!”

  No, he couldn’t. And...

  The V, a wink, and a nod.

  ...and yes he could.

  But he did not want to. Did not want to because...because...

  The fat bastard can ruin us, Jude had said, standing right there. Right next to the bum. Close enough to be heard—but then that wasn’t a requirement, was it?

  ...weren’t there any coincidences anymore?

  “I mean, I wished the Old Man dead,” Steve said, sounding ashamed over the inanimate wires that carried such emotions. “I mean, suing us and all, I wished some awful things. But this? Man, I didn’t want this.”

  No, you didn’t, Jay believed. But had someone else? Some different kind of angel?

  “How did you find out, Steve?”

  There was sniffling on the other end for a few seconds. “Jake Schurr called me. Remember him? He was in the next cubicle to me at S&M. He was burning the midnight oil at work with his account broker and one of the execs, going over something that Mitchell wanted done, I don’t know exactly what. He didn’t say. All he said was the Alonzo called the office in a panic saying that the Old Man had just jumped off his balcony. Jake said he was crying and saying that he was in the kitchen and the Old Man just walked right by him with this big grin on his face and went onto his balcony and jumped. God, can you believe this?”

  After a moment Jay asked, “Grinning?”

  “Yeah, grinning,” Steve confirmed, sounding somewhat spent now. “Can you believe it?”

  “No,” Jay lied calmly. He could believe it, as much as he believed no longer in coincidences. Or certain angels.

  “Oh, man,” Steve said, and Jay could practically see his friend’s head hanging and shaking.

  “Keep trying to get hold of Jude,” Jay said, and he was already reaching for his pants where they lay on the floor next to the bed.

  “I will. I will. Man, can you believe this?”

  “Find Jude,” Jay told his somewhat shocky friend, then put the phone gently in the cradle as he stood and stepped into his pants.

  “What is it?” Christine asked, having held her tongue as so instructed.

  “Mitchell’s dead.”

  “What?” She pulled her knees to her chest and put a hand to her mouth. “Oh my God.”

  Jay grabbed his shirt from the chair, and found his socks near his shoes.

  “Jay...are you going somewhere?”

  He pulled his socks on and stepped into his shoes, tucked his shirt in and decided to hell with the belt. He looked at her. “There’s a spare key on top of the fridge. If I’m not back by the time you’ve got to go to work, lock up.”

  She watched him gather his own keys and his wallet, and take a coat from the closet. “Where are you going?”

  “Angel hunting,” he told her, and then he was gone.

  Eighteen

  The Bridge

  The taxi let Jay out in front of Trinity Church, and from where he alighted on the sidewalk he could see that the bum had left his spot. The upturned olive bucket was still there, as was his sign, leaning against the lamppost, whitewashed and ready for the next day’s message. But the Yuban can was gone. Gone into the night with—

  There! Jay saw it. Saw him. Sign Guy, walking up Broadway, almost to Pine and heading north. Strolling casually along with something under his arm. The Yuban can. His take from the day—take being such an appropriate word, Jay thought (a thought he might have smiled in concert with not long ago, but not now, not this night, not ever again). Yes, it had to be the can under his arm, but where was he taking it? Home? Did the bum have a home? Jay wondered, the question never having struck him before. He certainly could afford one, considering his aforementioned take. And if he was heading for that place now, wouldn’t it be nice to catch him there? To be one up on him and know where it was he went home to at night? To confront him there?

  Yes. Yes it would, and for that reason and in pursuit of that small triumph, Jay started off after the bum, crossing Broadway and hanging back in the shadows.

  Past Cedar and Liberty and Maiden Lane Jay followed him, Sign Guy never looking back the half a block or so that Jay kept between them. He was unaware, just as Jay wanted it, and stayed that way past Ann Street, and still in the dark as he veered right onto Park Row, traversing Beekman and Pace University, City Hall off to his left and the entrances to the Brooklyn Bridge ahead and to the right. And on he walked, eyes forward, jogging a bit as he bisected Park Row on an angle. To Jay, following as best he could in this more open space, it looked as though Sign Guy was heading for the bridge. If that were so he would be aiming for the entrance to the pedestrian bridge, the wide, catwalk like structure that ran eighteen feet above and between the bridge’s roadway, giving walkers and joggers and cyclists a safe path across the East River, one not shared by cars. Yes, that had to be where he was going, Jay decided, ducking behind a van fresh from the fish market as it slowed in traffic. He was crossing to Brooklyn, Jay saw, hurrying now so that the bum did not get too far ahead of him. He must live in Brooklyn, it logically seemed, and Jay was wondering if he had the nerve or the stomach to follow him all the way there, and thinking that maybe he would just confront him maybe halfway across on the pedestrian bridge. A perfectly reasonable plan, he thought, but...

  ...but one that was not going to work, because the bum was not taking the pedestrian bridge. No, he was doing something completely different than that. Different and insane, Jay knew as Sign Guy walked onto the bridge, taking the rightmost westbound lane as his own.

  And coming fast were a pair of hot white eyes, motoring straight at the bum, bearing down on him. Jay cringed, watching as the car drew closer, and closer, coming fast, coming very fast. So fast that the urge to cry out built within Jay, an almost unbearable want to yell, to tell Sign Guy to hurry left, fast, man, fast, and hug the rail ‘cause that car had a bead on him. A dead on bead. Yes, he wanted to scream out the warning, and he might have had not the most unexpected thing happened.

  The car slowed.

  On the fucking Brooklyn Bridge at two in the morning it slowed, and slid easily over one lane, and never signaled any annoyance at the intrusion into its lane. No horn blaring, no curses shouted through an open window, no obscene or threatening gestures made. Nothing expected happened at all. The car, a primer gray Nova leaning hard toward Jay on bad right side springs, simply moved aside and surrendered the lane in a way most civilized, its driver staring straight ahead with a big quarter moon grin smeared upon his face. A grin that Jay knew, that he had seen upon another, and upon those who came across this person—or who crossed this person, Jay now suspected, considering what had happened earlier that evening. A grin that drilled a chill into the pit of his stomach as he now watched it pass, its mark upon an unsuspecting schmuck just out for a late drive, or heading home from work, or doing whatever it was that one chose to do. Only, choice had nothing to do with this now, Jay knew, and that knowing begged its own question. Its own frightful question.

  If he can do this, can do what he did to Mitchell, what is there that he can’t do?

  And suddenly, u
pon brief reflection of that thought, all that had seemed so right about the gift given him by this bum seemed so much less that, and so much more...sinister.

  It was a foul realization, and it roiled in Jay’s gut, spawning a sick warmth that threatened to rise and send him retching to his knees.

  But he did not let it. He forced the rush of nausea down and continued on, following the bum onto the bridge, watching as more cars came. One, two, five, ten, twenty. Car after car after car, all slowing and moving almost congenially out of the way, every driver, every passenger in each radiating that hap-hap-happy face on loan from the granter of wishes himself. Even a police cruiser yielded the way, throttling back and gliding by as though no infraction were being committed, as though the two smiling patrolman in front were blissfully blind to all but what someone wanted them to see. What Sign Guy wanted them to see.

  And on he walked, on they walked, Jay staying close to the stout steel support posts and the horizontal rails meant to keep an errant car from plunging into the drink. He hugged these members, the bridge’s skeleton, stealing what shadows he could from them as the slow rush of headlights crept eerily by in some weird procession reduced to slow motion. Weird, yes it was, but weird seemed to be the rule in things related to the bum. Weird. And wondrous. And, after what had happened this night, something far from either of those, Jay thought. And that thought pushed him, made him determined to confront the granter of wishes. Made him want to know what the purpose was for this little sideshow on the bridge.

  And know he did as Sign Guy reached the halfway point of the old and classic span and stopped. Stopped and turned and looked out upon the river’s black water. Jay inched forward, slowly, masking his presence in the patches of night that swelled and receded with the headlights of each passing car, stopping fully some yards from the bum and watching as he rested the Yuban can on one of the side rails and removed its lid, tucking the round of plastic into his waistband. Watching with trepid interest as he slipped a hand into the can and pulled it back out, dirty green paper sprouting from the fist bunched around it. Eyes gaping in complete disbelief as that hand groped out past the railing and let go the wad of hundreds it held, scattering them to the breeze and committing them to the waters far below.