by Nico Walker
Then Madison took the phone:
“And yer just mad,” she said, “cuz you can’t have it.”
I said to Emily, “You gotta hear this shit.”
I cued up the voice mail for her. She listened to it.
“Holy shit!” she said. “Such a bitch….Baby, I’m so sorry….I’m so sorry you had to be with her.”
“I told you it didn’t matter. The chick is a fucking cunt. She always was. I just didn’t know any better.”
Emily got quiet.
“What’s wrong?”
She looked away.
I said, “What’s the matter? What did I do?”
“…I hope you never say that I’m a cunt.”
“Of course I’m never gonna say you’re a cunt. I love you. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
“I love you too.”
And we were on each other.
I started working on her belt.
She said, “Wait….I’m on my period.”
I said I didn’t care.
She said, “Fuck it….No, wait.”
“What?”
“We can’t. The sofa. I don’t want to get blood on it.”
“Fuck, you’re right.”
“Here. Stand up,” she said.
She was being real serious about it. She went as far as she could, and she caught her breath.
“Do whatever you have to do to come,” she said.
I brushed her hair back and tried to be nice about it, and I came and she swallowed it.
I kissed her chin. Her chin was wet.
I said thanks.
She said, “Don’t mention it.”
* * *
—
AND THAT’S when we were in love. And I felt lucky for a while. Till it all got fucked up about a month later, when she said she’d be leaving for good at the end of the semester. She wanted to go to school in Canada. That was what she said. And I thought it was just like a girl to go and say some shit like that.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I was fucking off school pretty bad and I tried to balance that out by getting a job helping make the pizzas at Gerasene’s. It was okay so long as Old Man Gerasene wasn’t there. But when he was, watch out.
I had just started when he caught me trying to learn how to throw the dough in the air and all that. He was hardly five feet tall with a slight frame, and he had his little grey suit on so he looked like a puppet. I saw him and I thought, Oh, here comes a nice old man.
He said, “Come on. Let me see you do it.”
So I tried, but the dough didn’t get much spin on it, and it came down in roughly the same shape as it had begun. There’d been an all-encompassing sadness in its trajectory. I didn’t have the magic. The old guy went nuts on me.
“WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT, YOU COCKSUCKER? YOU’RE ALL WRONG, COCKSUCKER. DO IT AGAIN. THIS TIME, DO IT BETTER.”
I did it again. Worse.
“NO. FUCK. SHIT. NO NO NO. SHIT FUCK. DO IT AGAIN, COCKSUCKER.”
I did it again, about as bad, and the old fuck pantomimed a series of simpering motions so as to insinuate that I threw dough like a queen. Then he wheeled around and said, “THROW IT HIGH. HIGH. SO THEY CAN HEAR IT IN THE DINING ROOM.”
I didn’t understand what was happening.
He said, “WHAT THE FUCK IS THE MATTER WITH YOU? ARE YOU A MAN OR WHAT?”
Obviously the pay wasn’t good, but on the bright side nobody apart from Old Man Gerasene seemed to mind if you took a fuckload of cigarette breaks. So that was good and I spent a lot of time hanging out behind the restaurant, bullshitting.
There was a young waiter who went to the same school I did. He was a skinny white kid like I was, except he smoked Newports and I smoked Winstons. He told me he was fucking one of Gerasene’s granddaughters.
Old Man Gerasene had half a dozen daughters and granddaughters. They all drove Escalades or Denalis or whatever and they liked soap operas and The Sopranos and shit like that. They all worked at the restaurant, not doing very much. I don’t know if Old Man Gerasene had any sons or grandsons, but if he did they didn’t go to the restaurant.
Anyway. The waiter told me how he was fucking Gabriella. Gabriella was 21. She had a pretty face and she was stacked. She always wore fuck-me shoes, rain or shine. She seemed nice enough, but the waiter didn’t give a shit one way or another.
“She’s dumb as a rock,” he said.
I couldn’t see how it mattered.
“She likes getting that ass stretched out, though,” he said. “And she buys me clothes.”
There was nothing worth saying, so I just looked up at the sky. Clearly this guy had the magic.
I went back inside and there were a few tickets up, so I started in on throwing the dough again, and every time I threw the dough and it spread out in the air I couldn’t help thinking about Gabriella and her dilating asshole.
* * *
—
I’D MEANT to drop out of school, but I took a 5mg Klonopin and drank half a 40 of Olde English and blacked out at the art museum. So I fucked off the deadline for dropping classes and I ended up having to fail out.
I got a letter saying I had to go see Father Whomever so he could tell me I was finished at the university. Which he did. And he asked me if I’d ever traveled outside of the United States. I told him I’d been to Spain once. He said I was lucky. He’d been all of 60 the first time he ever got to go overseas. And here I was, so young and already been to Spain! Then he asked me what I was going to do, and I told him I was probably gonna mind my own goddamn business.
* * *
—
BY MAY I had moved out of my parents’ house and gone to live in a duplex on Murray Hill with my friend Roy and his cousin Joe and whoever else happened to be there (primarily James Lightfoot). Roy was a big Irish kid, and he wore the same fucked-up sport coat every day and drank 40s and rolled cigarettes with pipe tobacco. Joe was a pretty little wop. He couldn’t not get laid all the time. It was really something. He was adopted; that’s how he was Roy’s cousin. He was the toughest one of the three of us. He was tough as shit. We used to beat the shit out of each other to prove how tough we were, so that’s how we knew.
Joe painted houses with Roy. And they actually made okay money. But then Joe signed up with the Marines, so he’d be done painting houses for a while. He was leaving for Parris Island in a few weeks.
Roy didn’t ever join the Marines, but he did call up Gerasene’s for me and lied and told them I’d broken my arm skateboarding at Cain Park. They said that was fine. And he got me hired at a restaurant on Mayfield, a nice place with two big dining rooms, high coffered ceilings, and one toilet. The owner was a dick but not too bad and all the waitresses were gorgeous and you could make money there. They had these Turkish guys working in the kitchen who’d pull a knife on you over nothing, so you felt like you were really alive. The manager started me off busing tables, but I didn’t have enough personality for it and my shoes were all wrong, so he stuck me making salads.
* * *
—
EMILY WAS leaving in three days. She was going home to Elba. She’d be in Montreal by the end of the summer. I had put together a picnic lunch: some fruit, some cold ravioli, some caprese salad, and some bottles of cheap red wine. The plan was that Emily and I would have a picnic down by the pond in back of the art museum. Instead we had it in Roy’s attic. We drank one of the bottles of wine, and we fucked there, in the attic. She was above me, concentrating. I could tell she was concentrating because her jaw would go a little sideways when she concentrated like that. Which was absolutely the most beautiful thing in the world.
It was a clear day and the sun was going pretty well so the attic became unbearably hot and we did eventually make it down to the pond, where a good number of people of all shap
es and persuasions were out enjoying the weather. Emily and I sat by the water and talked about all the things we thought we were going to do. I said I wouldn’t go if she didn’t go.
She said, “Fuck you.”
And I guess I was wrong to try her like that. It was only that it had been such a good day, and I thought most of the days would have been as good.
* * *
—
I WENT into work at six. It was supposed to be a big night. The owner was throwing a party after we closed at twelve and the salad station was being converted into an extra bar and I’d get to serve drinks. I’d told Emily and Roy and Joe to be sure they came through so they could drink for free. They’d said they would come. And they did.
I saw Roy and Joe first. They were talking to the owner. Joe was saying how in three weeks’ time he’d be at basic training. The owner listened intently. He liked Joe because Joe looked like a TV dago; he said, “Parris Island…that’s Marines, isn’t it?”
Joe said, “Yeah.”
“But that’s a good way to go to heaven.”
I got Roy’s attention. I asked him where Emily was.
He said, “She’s around here somewhere.”
“Okay. That doesn’t really help me but thanks.”
“Gosh, look who’s on his period.”
“Man, what the fuck!”
“What?”
“Who the fuck is he?”
“How the fuck should I know?”
He was standing real close to her. And she brought him with her when she came over to the bar/salad station.
She said hi.
I looked at her.
“This is Benji,” she said. “Benji’s from Ghana. He goes to Case.”
I said what’s up to Benji. He flashed a smile at me and just as quickly turned back to Emily.
“I know this great restaurant,” he said. “It is called Mi Aldea. The food is so good there. I must take you sometime.”
She said, “Mmm. That sounds good.”
I came around from behind the bar/salad station and I put my arm around Emily and kissed her on the top of her head. But I was drunk and I accidentally dropped a lit cigarette into the hood of her sweatshirt.
Benji said, “Watch out. He has dropped his cigarette in your hoodie.”
“Get it out, man!” she said to me.
I didn’t understand at first. I got the cigarette out, but not before it had burned a hole through the material.
“Is it okay?” she asked.
“It’s fine,” I said. “Can we please talk somewhere?”
“What?”
“Let’s go over here.”
“You’re being an asshole.”
“Shh. Listen to me. Nobody thinks the food at Mi Aldea is good. The only reason he wants to take you there is cuz they don’t card and he wants to get you drunk and fuck you in the ass.”
“What the fuck is your problem, man?”
I couldn’t say anything right.
Roy came up.
I said, “What’s up, Roy?”
He said, “You want me to punch that guy in the dick?”
“Not yet.”
Emily said, “I’m fucking done with this.”
She walked out in a hurry. Roy and Joe left after her. They said it’d probably be alright. I didn’t know but I had to stay where I was. I had to look after the bar/salad station. And that’s what I did. And I felt like shit. Around one-thirty the manager told me to shut it down. Then one of the real bartenders, a guy named Chris, said I should look after one of the patrons for him, a guy named Tommy.
“Tommy just got out of prison,” he said. “Tommy’s a real stand-up guy.”
Tommy was drunk as fuck. I was supposed to help him to not throw up on anybody or goose a slut or whatever it was they thought he might do. Tommy had been in prison 20 years, which meant he’d gone away in the early ’80s, which meant he’d been locked up longer than I’d been alive. He had big plastic eyeglasses and a grey bowl cut and a shiny red bowling jacket. He said everybody was full of shit and they were all a bunch of fakes. He meant some of the guys you would see in the area who acted like they were real Cosa Nostra motherfuckers. Tommy said all these guys liked to talk the big game. “But they don’t have the balls…to put a gun to the guy’s head and BLOW HIS BRAINS OUT.”
That’s what he kept saying, the stuff about the brains. He’d start talking about this punk and that peckerhead and the other turkey, and he’d finish up by saying that they didn’t have the balls to put a gun to the guy’s head and BLOW HIS BRAINS OUT.
Then he got to asking me about what I did. I said I didn’t do much but I was going to join the Army soon.
“Don’t be a fool,” he said. “Those people don’t give a shit about you.”
I said I already knew that.
“So what the fuck are you thinking?”
“I don’t know. But I don’t have any other ideas.”
“But do you have the balls…to put a gun to the guy’s head and BLOW HIS BRAINS OUT?”
“I don’t know.”
“AGGH! You’ll be alright.”
The night was about over and I said, “Listen, Tommy, I’ve got to help close. If you need anything, let me know, alright?”
And I went around the place, pushing tables and chairs around, spraying things and wiping them off and sweeping and mopping. I was really moving because I needed to get out of there and I needed to see Emily.
I got done and I went outside, and there was Tommy standing out on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, looking like a lost child.
“Tommy,” I said, “you alright?”
“Yeah. What are you doing?”
“I’m all done. I’m about to walk home.”
“You need a ride? I’ll give yaz a ride.”
“I can walk. I’m not even five minutes that way.”
“No, come on. I’ll give yaz a ride.”
“Alright. But hold on a second cuz I’m gonna go run over to the bakery and buy a cake.”
“Whatcha buyin a cake for?”
“My girl. She’s leaving town and I want to buy her a cake.”
“Don’t waste your money.”
“It’ll just take a second.”
There was a 24-hour bakery across the street and up toward the hill a little ways. They didn’t have any cakes to sell me and I had to settle for a dozen cheesecake muffins. But they were impressive muffins and I thought it was just as well.
Tommy said, “Let’s go. You ready or what?”
He was driving the blue Chevy Astrovan that was parallel-parked next to the restaurant. We hopped in and Tommy fired up the engine. He ran into the car in front of us and backed into another car before he could get us into the lane. I glanced over and he looked like he was feeling real ill. All of a sudden he stopped the van and opened his door to retch. He retched for a minute. Violently. When he was done retching he leaned against the driver seat. He was going, “Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus Jesus Jesus.”
In the dome light I saw that he had caught himself with a fair amount of the vomit.
I said, “Bad news, Tommy. You threw up on your sleeve.”
Tommy looked down and saw what he had done to the right sleeve of his shiny red bowling jacket.
He went, “AGHH RATS!”
I said, “Don’t worry, Tommy. We can fix it.”
There was a paper grocery bag on the floor of the van. I tore it into napkinesque shapes that Tommy could use to scrape the lion’s share of the vomit off his sleeve. They didn’t work like magic or anything, but they did alright.
Tommy said, “Close enough for rock and roll.”
And we resumed our drive up the street. We only had another ten houses to go and we were there. Tommy ran over the curb for
good measure. I thanked him for the ride and asked that he be careful getting home. He said he would be okay. I gave him one of the muffins and I never saw him again.
* * *
—
EMILY WAS still awake when I got upstairs. She’d been drinking and I joined her at that. I gave her the box of muffins and said I was sorry about earlier when I was being an asshole. I said I understood that she hadn’t meant anything by bringing Benji around and that she was just a sweetheart who believed in diversity and developing countries and stuff like that and that she wanted friends. I said there was supposed to be a dozen muffins but I had given one to Tommy and Tommy was a good man and he had needed to eat something. She said that it was all very nice of me and that I was forgiven. Then I saw that she was crying. I hadn’t ever seen her cry before and I asked her what was wrong and that just made her cry more. She said she didn’t know what was wrong. It was a while before she stopped crying. I asked her if she was alright. She said she was alright.
I said, “This is fucking crazy, isn’t it?”
She said, “Yeah. It is.”
And we laughed about it.
And we fucked around.
And we went to sleep.
PART TWO
ADVENTURE
CHAPTER NINE
Staff Sergeant Kelly had the face like Death and the every other word out of his mouth was joker; he had the black sweater and the green slacks, the patent leather shoes. A fuckload of piss cups was in his desk drawer. He said the latrine was at the end of the hallway. “Go left out the door and follow it around,” he said. “You can’t miss it.”
My piss was clean, so Kelly told me how his wife was a Korean. He told me how he drove a government car and got BAH and TRICARE. He made it sound real good. I had to show him I could do 20 push-ups and 20 sit-ups; then he took me next door to the Bally Total Fitness so I could show him a mile on one of the treadmills. I was wearing Vans (Geoff Rowleys, vegan shoes) and my pants kept trying to fall down, but I did okay. We went back to the Armed Forces Career Center, and I took a practice ASVAB so Kelly could be sure I wasn’t a subnormal. He checked it over when I was done, and he said I’d scored in the 85th percentile. He said I could have any MOS I wanted if I did as well on the real thing. I could tell he was excited. This was the first week of 2005, and for a while the news mostly had been about kids going off and getting themselves killed and maimed, so Kelly and his like were having a hard time getting enough kids to sign up. But there I was, and I was too easy; I’d made his day.