Fresh Kills

by Bill Loehfelm

  “It’s getting David’s okay that’ll be a problem,” I said.

  “Fuck him,” Jimmy said. “You and I both know he was a rebound after nine-eleven, after she lost her brother. Hell, I wouldn’t want to be alone through all that, either. You remember that first year. Bad relationships spread like herpes all across New York.” He shook his head. “Use the brains God gave you, boy. Separate apartments and no ring after five years? Trust me on this, David ain’t nothing but habit at this point. Don’t use him as an excuse. I know we were young and naive in high school, but you had hope when you were with Molly. You talked about the future instead of the past. Think about that.”

  I knew I would think about it. But I wasn’t telling Jimmy that.

  “Molly’s got a tattoo, you know,” I said, looking down into my lap, “right above her—”

  Jimmy waved away the information again. Joyce mistook it for a signal and came over to us. Jimmy ordered another round. “Don’t you smoke anymore?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then let’s indulge,” he said, grabbing the drinks from Joyce and standing. “I’ll blame the smell on you, like I will the second and third drink. And Rose, good sport that she is, will pretend to believe me.” He laughed. “We oughta hang out more often.”

  I rocked a little as I stood, and took my time following Jimmy to the door.

  Outside, I gave Jimmy a smoke and lit it for him. Against my better judgment, I itched to know more of what Molly had said about us, how Rose had gotten the impression she had. Just because, I told myself, it didn’t make any sense. Her throwing away a stable, steady thing, for what? Me?

  Sure, she’d been full of romantic fantasies when we were teenagers. I had, too. But we were kids. We were supposed to think that way. Then. Surely she’d given up all that and grown up. Wasn’t a teaching career and a big apartment proof of that? Wasn’t three-piece, big-briefcase, big-income David living proof of that? But she’d been coming, more and more often, to my small apartment. She lingered longer the morning after. I saw the tattoo before David did, patted away the blood after she slid down her underwear and lifted the bandage. Took care with my hands, entered her gently, slowly, in case she was sore. What did any of that prove? That we weren’t “just fucking” anymore? I could go on calling it that if I wanted, same as I could go on calling Virginia’s restlessness and indecision an adventurous spirit. But calling something a name didn’t make it so. I’d called John Sanders, Sr., “Dad” my whole life.

  I tried not to think about Molly and I being together, out in the open, but it was hard not to. I imagined making love to Molly in her bed. I imagined meeting her parents again after so many years and the death of their son. I saw Molly and me at dinner with Jimmy and Rose. As each picture appeared, I pushed it away. But a stubborn thought kept pushing back.

  I’d always assumed we didn’t talk about David because it made her feel guilty. Or that it was a way of protecting him. But what if she was ashamed of being with him? Of not having the guts to leave when she knew the relationship was long over. They’d met at a 9-11 fundraiser, only months after that day, when her mourning for Eddie was at its deepest. David chased her for a year. I could understand her hanging on to him. Letting go of him would be like letting go of another piece of Eddie. Why hadn’t I seen this sooner? She could be here. Now. The thought made my skin hum.

  “So,” Jimmy said. “The elephant in the corner.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know, the one thing we haven’t talked about. Your father.”

  “What about him?” I asked, almost relieved he’d brought it up. Anything to get my thoughts of Molly away from the dangerous territory they’d wandered into.

  “He’s dead,” Jimmy said. “Somebody murdered him.”

  “See?” I said. “The facts are out. What’s to talk about?”

  “C’mon, John, this is me, Saint Jimmy, you’re talking to. I was there when we were younger. I know what it was like.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think you do.”

  “This the same magic you worked on Virginia?” he asked.

  “Fuck you, Saint,” I said. “That was cheap.”

  Jimmy just laughed. “That’s it, hurt my feelings to keep me distracted. You gonna smack at me till I walk away, too? Then cry about how I deserted you?” He polished off his shot, then dropped the empty glass into my jacket pocket. He pulled out the scrap of police tape. His eyes narrowed. “No, fuck you, Sanders. You can’t run this bullshit on me.” He jabbed his finger into my chest, the tape dangling from his hand. “I know you.” He held up the tape. “I don’t need this to know you’re a fucking mess.”

  “You of all people know that ain’t nothing new.”

  “You’re breaking my heart,” Jimmy said. “You really are.”

  I grabbed the tape and stuffed it back in my pocket. I had nothing to say.

  “Why are you here?” Jimmy asked. “Why are you down here at Joyce’s, all by yourself, all fucked up on a Monday night?” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Why’d you go . . . there? To the corner? Why aren’t you back on the North Shore, or at work, or rolling around with Molly?”

  “I promised Julia,” I said. My voice cracked. I didn’t want Jimmy to make me talk anymore. “I promised Julia I’d stay with her this week. Help her out.”

  “Then why are you here?” Jimmy asked again, quietly this time. “Why aren’t you home with her?”

  My head hurt so bad I thought I might go blind. Pain crackled in my chest, dancing from rib to rib. I raised my glass to my lips. It was empty. “I can’t stand it there. I can’t breathe in that house. I knew it was a bad promise when I made it, but I couldn’t tell Julia anything else. I just hoped I could pull it off. But I don’t think I can.” I pulled my cigarette pack from my jacket. It was empty. “I offered to bring her down here. Tried to get her to come to the diner, but she wouldn’t go. All she wants to do is stay home and try on her funeral dresses and look through old pictures and call old girlfriends on the phone.” The words poured out of me now. “She just wallows in it and talks about the funeral arrangements and how I have to give the eulogy.” I turned to Jimmy. “I’m just fucking drowning in it.”

  Jimmy studied the tops of his shoes while I wiped my eyes. “It’s called mourning,” he finally said. “That drowning feeling? That’s grief. It keeps bubbling up and you keep swallowing it. No wonder you’re fucking drowning.”

  “You smoking crack?” I asked. I couldn’t believe what he was telling me. “Mourning? Grief? For my father? What’d he ever give me but grief? He beat the shit out of me till I was almost nineteen years old, Jimmy. You know this. You saw it all the time. He beat up my mother for years. You ask me, he put her in her fucking grave.

  “And what’d he do with himself after she was gone? Not a fucking thing. He never went to my mother’s grave. My poor sister wrote and called him all the time, and he never fucking answered. He was a coward. He cared for nothing and no one but himself. He was a fucking animal. Now I’m supposed to mourn him? Are you insane?”

  Jimmy just raised his eyebrows. “I’m not the one staggering around the sidewalk, screaming.”

  I could’ve fucking killed him. Anyone, anyone but Jimmy’d be swallowing teeth for a crack like that. “I’ll piss on his fucking grave.”

  “He was your father,” Jimmy said.

  I lunged at him, grabbed fistfuls of his shirt, growled in his face. “Then he should’ve fucking acted like it. He wasn’t any kind of father. Why should I care that he’s dead? What did he ever give me that was worth a damn?”

  Jimmy pushed away from me. “You’re pretty hysterical for someone who doesn’t care.”

  “It’s you, it’s Julia, that makes me hysterical,” I said. “It’s Waters, it’s Purvis. It’s Fontana. It’s all these people, in my space, in my head. It’s him.” I shook my head. “He can’t have anything more from me. No grief, no mourning, nothing. It’s not fair. It�
�s not right.

  “He owes me, McGrath. He owes my sister. His whole life, he obsessed about his bills, his debts, about what he owed to complete strangers. How’d he manage to forget what he owed his kids? His wife? He owed us a decent life where we didn’t have to be afraid all the time in our own house. He was supposed to protect us from harm, not dish it out. He died a failure, all his bills paid and still deeper in debt than his old man ever was. I’m sick of me and my sister paying the price.”

  Jimmy smoothed his shirt and stood his ground. “Then stop it here. Make your peace with this.”

  “I been running from him since I could walk,” I said. “How do I make peace with that?”

  “He ain’t chasing you no more, Sanders,” Jimmy said. “Don’t pick up his body and put it on your back. Don’t run from the rest of us, especially Julia, because of it.” He stepped closer to me. “Catch your breath. You gotta make your peace with this.”

  “Please,” I said, frowning, backing away as if his words released a stench. “You don’t know what you’re asking. This ain’t Dr. fucking Phil.”

  “You bet your life it’s not. This is real life, and you better find a way to fucking deal.”

  “I’ve been facing it,” I said. “Dealing with Julia, the cops. I’m standing here talking to you. I face him every time I close my eyes. In more ways than you know.”

  “Try keeping them open,” Jimmy said.

  Fucking Jimmy. An answer for everything. For my father. For what was wrong with Virginia, for what’s right with Molly. All this wisdom, way too late. A lot of help he was. Here I am, lost in a flood, just trying to stay afloat, and he keeps pushing me under. Fuck him and his sage advice, I thought. What did he fucking know?

  I circled him, leaning toward him. “You enjoying this, Saint? Been a while since you’ve been in the pulpit, has it?”

  “I’m not enjoying it at all,” Jimmy said. “Breaks my heart, actually. Watching you flail like this. I feel like I’m at the fights, watching some bloody, punch-drunk fool who doesn’t know when to plant his ass in the corner. You say you wanna get it over with, but you won’t let it even begin to end.”

  “Sorry to let you down. You did your good deed. Ain’t nothing keeping you here.”

  “Nothing but sixteen years,” Jimmy said.

  I waited. Waited to see what those sixteen years were worth to him. Waited for him to walk away. To go home to his goddamn beautiful girl and his goddamn warm bed and get a good night’s sleep for his great fucking job. It’s what I would’ve done if I were him. But Jimmy just stood there.

  “Everything’s different now, Saint,” I said, quietly. “We’re not those kids anymore.”

  “Doesn’t mean we never were.”

  I was exasperated, exhausted. He was relentless. I threw up my hands, wanting really just to collapse on my ass on the sidewalk. I could barely breathe anymore.

  “Whadda you want from me, Jimmy? There’s not a thing I can do about any of it. Nothing I do is gonna make anything any different.”

  “Talk to Molly,” he said.

  Her name made me even more tired. “Molly? What’re you talking about? What’s Molly got to do with any of this?”

  “You gotta try to be that thick,” he said. “Molly buried her brother.” He licked his lips. “Eddie was murdered sure as your father was. Left the house one day and never came back.”

  “I know,” I said. “I can’t. We never talk about that.”

  “When was the last time you asked? Maybe it’s time. Eddie died seven years ago.”

  I rubbed my eyes with my fingertips. “Molly made that rule herself, back at the beginning.”

  “Since when do you care about rules?”

  I wondered what I’d ask her about; it wasn’t like I hadn’t been there.

  Molly had buried her brother, and she’d done it with more class than I’d ever display in all my years added together. I’d gone to the funeral. I stood in the back of the church and watched her speak strong and elegant in front of hundreds of people, most of them strangers, about her brother, a police officer who’d gone running to the Trade Center when everyone else was running away.

  Molly’s eulogy for her brother had been an act of pure magic and courage, borderline supernatural. She conjured her brother out of thin air and filled the church, filled all of us, with him, his life. With only the music of her voice, she sang to him. And yet, at the same time, as she spoke, I felt as though she and I were back at a train station and that she was speaking just to me, her cheek on my shoulder, her voice in my ear. Through it all, you’d never have known the casket held only a spare police uniform and a class ring. That morning, Molly carried her brother home from Ground Zero all by herself.

  By the end, I felt as if Eddie Francis was more alive than the rest of us. I’d never been more proud to have loved her, or to have been loved by her. I left the church without saying a word to her, missing her more than I had in years, and believing Molly Francis was the toughest person I’d ever known.

  “Molly’s not exactly accessible,” I said.

  “I bet you could find her if you wanted. Do a little work. Meet her halfway.”

  “Molly’s different,” I said. I couldn’t do anything like what Molly had done. I wasn’t that brave. “Molly loved her brother. They were best friends, they knew each other. That was grief. That was mourning. I couldn’t speak like that about my father. I refuse to.”

  “You don’t have to,” he said. “Just say something. Just stand up there and say something. Let Julia help you.”

  “I got a couple days,” I said, “a couple days before he goes in the ground. What the hell am I gonna say? How do I make peace for thirty years in a couple days?”

  “You don’t,” Jimmy said, “but you can start.”

  “And when does it end? When is it over?”

  “That, I don’t have an answer for,” Jimmy said. “Maybe it never is. But it can be different. If you can let him go.” He checked his watch. “Shit. You feeling all right? You gonna make it through the night in one piece?”

  “I will,” I said. I let go of a long, long breath. “Thanks for tonight.”

  “You’re welcome. Please call me tomorrow. You got a rough couple of days ahead of you. I hate to cut us short, but pumpkin time is coming soon. Man, only a couple of years ago, we’d just be getting warmed up.”

  “Things change.”

  “Yeah, they do,” Jimmy said. There was real regret in his voice. “It ain’t so bad, once you get used to it.”

  I didn’t want to believe him. I didn’t like the idea of getting used to anything.

  He pulled out his cell phone, rolling his eyes. “This call will not be a surprise to her.”

  I stepped to him, closed the phone in his hand. “Before you do that, let me ask you a question.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “Just how short is this leash you’re on?”

  “Depends,” Jimmy said, “on how bad I’m willing to choke myself on the end of it. Why?”

  “I need a favor. There’s something I need you to help me do.” Jimmy tapped his cell phone on his thigh, his eyes shining in the glare of the streetlight. He looked like he’d been waiting to hear me say that for a long time. He looked, for a moment, like he was seventeen again. “We’re not picking out a suit for the funeral, are we?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “It does involve my father, though. I’m going looking for an answer or two. It’s nothing crazy, but I could use a little help.”