The Astonishing Life of August March

by Aaron Jackson

  He was considering nicking a couple of wallets for himself, Sycamore be damned, when his chest hitched and he stopped dead.

  Without realizing it, August had wandered onto West Forty-Third Street and was standing directly in front of the Scarsenguard. Or more accurately, he was standing directly in front of where the Scarsenguard used to be. What stood there now was a colossal hotel with the tackiest giant gold letters emblazoned across the front entrance spelling out the most accursed of names: The Barreth.

  Once August recovered from his initial shock, he was furious. First with himself. He always took such special care to avoid this block. In fact, he hadn’t been back in so long, he’d missed the entire hotel being built.

  But mostly his fury was directed at Barreth. How dare that feckless man build such a horrid thing atop his childhood. Damn him! Damn that bastard. That cuckold. That brainless, bottom-dwelling, trough-mongrel.

  This could not stand. Did Barreth just get to win without contest? Something had to be done.

  Inspiration struck. From across the street, August bided his time until the doorman, laden with luggage, ushered a couple inside. The entrance now unguarded, August dashed across the street, ascended the entry steps, undid his button fly, and let loose a torrent of hot piss that flowed steadily down the stairs. His stream was still gushing when the doorman returned.

  “Hey! What the hell are you doing?”

  August turned, his spray unceasing.

  “Tell that craven half-wit Barreth that the Scarsenguard remembers his folly!”

  The doorman, too busy avoiding urine to snatch August, was understandably confused. Rather than explain it to him, August spit on the ground, tucked himself away, and then slipped into the bustling anonymity of Times Square.

  A minor revolt, but August did feel better for it.

  * * *

  August had taken to throwing dinner parties in his apartment. The guest list varied. There was usually a famous actor or actress in attendance, of course, but August had entertained notorious radicals, artists, even royalty. The evenings were raucous affairs full of lively discussion, but sadly they often ended in scandal, even murder.

  Tonight he was hosting a rail-thin debutante (a lead pipe), her stocky admirer (a brick), and a well-respected duke (a terra-cotta pot holding a dead fern).

  “We’re honored you traveled so far to join our little dinner party, Your Grace,” August said to the duke, though he knew the duke harbored a secret desire for the eligible young lead pipe. The brick was obviously seething that the duke was receiving special treatment, but what could August do? Social niceties must be observed. Besides, if August’s suspicions were correct, then Duke Terra-Cotta and Miss Lead Pipe were already secretly engaged!

  “And how is your father, dear? Healthy, I hope?”

  Conversation positively wallowed in the first course, but after August got the ball rolling, communication began to flow freely. However, tragedy struck at dessert. While August was cutting an apple into slices, Terra-Cotta fell off his perch and shattered on the ground. August rushed to the pot and cradled it in his arms, distraught. The poor duke! How could this happen?

  The faux sorrow August was pretending to feel abruptly became authentic, but before he started crying, it switched just as quickly to rage. August stood up and hurled the shard of terra-cotta against the wall, where it shattered.

  “Damn it!” he screamed to no one. “Goddammit!”

  What kind of life is this? he thought, snatching his coat off the ground and storming outside. Why was he eating alone with trash as his company? August started walking to clear his head, furious at his circumstances. It just wasn’t fair. It was outrageous.

  The walk cooled his anger but didn’t leave him feeling any better. He found himself standing outside the gates of Gramercy Park, a private space forbidden to anyone who didn’t have a key. How strange to lock a park, he thought, holding the bars and looking inside. What was so special about this little patch of green that it had to be sectioned off and guarded? August could climb the fence easily and find out, of course, but he didn’t feel like it. He didn’t feel like doing much of anything.

  August walked southeast, heading home, with nothing but an evening of sweeping up terra-cotta to look forward to. He was in a daze for several blocks, not really seeing anything, until a particular brownstone on Eighteenth Street caught his eye. The windows were lit up, and through them he could see a family sitting down to dinner: a mother, a father, and a young girl about August’s age, with dark curly hair. Something about her stopped August, and he paused to take in the tableau. The father was giving a long-winded speech while the mother nodded, and the girl was trying not to look bored. August stared through the window and ached.

  This, inside the brownstone—this was a family. Families had dinner. They talked too much. They were boring. But they were there. August had thought he’d had a family, but he’d been wrong.

  Percyfoot wasn’t coming. August just suddenly knew, deep and fully. The Scarsenguard had fallen ages ago, and a hotel stood on its grave. You didn’t leave a child alone for that long if you intended to save him or adopt him or whatever August had hoped Percyfoot would do. It wasn’t that Percyfoot hadn’t read about the Scarsenguard or was too busy. He knew August was lost; he just wasn’t coming. In fact, he was probably glad to be rid of the child.

  So August was no longer the boy in the theater. Every part of that life was gone. But now what? Was he really just a thief who lived alone in a squalid tenement on the Lower East Side? How sordid. How had this happened?

  August was still staring into the window when the girl turned and noticed him. Strangely, however, she didn’t look away. August continued staring, confused. So did she. Then she waved. August waved back. With a sly look, she checked that her father was still babbling on. Then she snuck away from the table, opened a window, and leaned out.

  “Hello!” she called.

  More than a little dumbfounded, August yelled back, “Hello!”

  Her uprising, harmless though it was, had finally been discovered, and the garrulous father rushed to the window, pulling her inside.

  “I say,” the older man shouted, leaning out the window, “who the hell are you?”

  August considered telling him everything. Why not? But instead he ended up shouting “I’m no one,” before running all the way back home.

  * * *

  The years passed, thirteenthish to fourteenthish, until somewhere around his fifteenthish year, August’s formerly fecund association with Sycamore went fallow. Of the many contributing factors to their eventual parting, both could agree that the worst offender was the relentlessness of time. August, smooth cherub of boyhood, had finally entered the first harrowing stages of puberty. His features were currently arranged in that awkward mask of in-between all adolescents are forced to don.

  August’s inevitable predicament seriously hampered most of their cons. A young lad weeping for his mother is heart-wrenching, a sobbing teenager unsightly. Winsome precocity in a beardless youth is viewed as unearned bitterness in an adolescent. Then there was the fact that boys of a certain age simply inspire suspicion. August could no longer enter a department store without being marked as a potential shoplifter. Matronly women who would have once pinched his cheeks now flared their nostrils at him in disgust. Policemen constantly asked him where he was headed, and members of the oldest profession teased him mercilessly, cackling when he scurried away, hunched and scarlet.

  As a result, Sycamore and August met more sporadically. August had taken to picking pockets to supplement his income; it had been well over a week since their last joint con. However, they were scheduled to meet at the Plaza Hotel around noon.

  “It’s over,” Sycamore said, chomping street nuts.

  “What is?” August asked, his newly changed voice still unfamiliar to his own ears.

  “You and me. We’re through. You’re slowing me down.”

  Ingesting this announcement, A
ugust examined his feelings and couldn’t say he was particularly surprised; they’d been drifting apart for some time. Nor could he admit to any heavyheartedness. Truthfully, his tolerance for Sycamore’s singular brand of humor had worn thin. How many veiled references to fellatio, no matter how original, could one person stand?

  Still, August was human, and at the end of any era there is a certain feeling of melancholy. Crass and crude though he was, Sycamore had taken August under his wing and given him the chance he’d so desperately needed. Sycamore could never be viewed as a father figure, no matter how dim the light, but perhaps it wouldn’t be too far a stretch to think of him as an irascible older brother, one who came through when it really counted.

  August’s reminiscences were cut short by a trumpeting fart from Sycamore, who then added, “Christ, will you look at the set on that broad?”

  Just two months prior, August would’ve rolled his eyes at Sycamore’s lecherous comment, but as has been previously mentioned, the incessant beat of testosterone had started thrumming through his veins, and the boy was ashamed to agree, albeit inwardly, that the broad was quite well stacked.

  “Thank you for the opportunity,” August said, offering Sycamore an outstretched hand.

  “Jesus, kid, who are you, J. P. Morgan?”

  August sighed without malice and turned to walk away. A few steps later, Sycamore called after him. “You’re all right, August. But if I ever hear you ratted on me, just remember, I know where you live.”

  An apt farewell, August thought, strolling downtown.

  * * *

  August’s early teenage years passed in a recalcitrant streak of petty crime. To put it candidly, he became a punk. His chronic quoting of Shakespeare abated, the mellifluous language of the bard replaced by strings of obscenities so profane that even Sycamore might’ve blanched. This was done partly to blend in with the loose collective of similarly aged boys he ran with, but mostly as a rejection of his former life. The moment he finally understood that Percyfoot had abandoned him, August turned away from all things theatrical with a relish that was nearly feral.

  Sex was a watershed event of the era. Some of his older, more experienced companions practically dragged August into a whorehouse with savage delight. He was terrified, but the woman he was paired with took pity on him, probably because when naked, August resembled a skinny fledgling stork that had fallen from its nest. The woman told August to put his clothes back on, sat him down, and explained the mechanics of intercourse more clearly than the soldiers at the Backstage Bistro ever had.

  “Come back when you’re ready,” she’d said.

  As it turned out, August was ready the very next night.

  “Guess you’re a quick study,” the woman said, laughing, when August came in.

  It was a short-lived, pants-around-the-ankles experience (as were most of the encounters that followed), but it was also incredible. August, in a moment of erudite relapse, found himself contemplating Helen of Troy, a tale he’d hitherto found ridiculous. Now he understood. Why did Romeo drink the poison? Why did Lancelot betray Arthur? Why did Edward abdicate the throne? Because sex was a legitimately compelling pastime.

  It was around this time of carnal awakening that August noticed that the police force as a whole held a particular fondness for him. True, all his set received skeptical glances or pointed threats when passing an officer, but it seemed to August that the gazes of the NYPD lingered a little longer on him than on the others. For months he brushed this off as unfounded paranoia, but even his comrades eventually took notice.

  “Got yourself a boyfriend, March?” they’d tease when an officer gave August a double take.

  Years spent in the company of Sergeant Sycamore can teach even the dullest student the art of the crass rejoinder, and August was no half-wit.

  “Must’ve seen how the girls walk when I get through with them.” Afterward, he’d grab his crotch, for emphasis. Good god, what a scoundrel he’d become. Sometimes he shocked himself.

  Uproarious laughter would follow these comments. August would laugh right along with them, and quiet his nagging worry with a burning pull off a bottle of cheap liquor, but sometimes he would lie awake, staring at the multitude of cracks in his ceiling. Why was he being watched?

  Any doubt he still harbored about the police interest in him was brought to a halt when one afternoon, enjoying the spoils of a wallet he’d stolen, August was addressed by an officer.

  “August March?” the lawman ventured, his voice colored with uncertainty.

  Hearing his name escape the lips of a bona fide keeper of the peace sent a profound jolt of terror straight to August’s jaw. He took off at a mad sprint, making full use of every shortcut he knew.

  When he was certain he’d escaped the cop’s clutches, August pressed his back against a building, breathing heavily. So the police were watching him. Not only watching, but actively seeking him out. They knew his name! But that wasn’t particularly unusual, was it? The NYPD were well aware of August’s gang and knew the names of more than one of its members. But those were the idiots, the ones always getting caught. August had never spent one night behind bars. Yet he’d just been singled out by name. By name!

  Had his reputation as New York’s most notorious pickpocket become legend among the city’s police force? August doubted it. True, he was a successful thief, but not a notably greedy one. He took enough to make his rent and see a movie every now and then. It’s not like he was Al Capone. What did they want from him?

  Once the adrenaline of his one-sided chase had fully abated and his mental facilities were restored, August determined that this was simply routine. He’d become a well-known face, an entry in the criminal lexicon. He vowed to keep his eyes open and to stay vigilant, but he walked home with more than a bit of swagger in his step. August March was a wanted man.

  * * *

  In a rare fit of normalcy, August went to dinner with a girl his age and brought her over to his apartment afterward.

  When they’d finished, August didn’t fall asleep. Instead he watched the girl doze. Her shoulders were exposed, goose pimples trickling down her arm, his ratty blanket not big enough to fully cover her. The hard look she wore while she was awake was gone, replaced by the vulnerable mask of sleep.

  Her clothes lay piled beside his too-thin mattress. August picked up her bra and examined it, this delicate piece of armor foreign to his sex. Toying with the underwear, lacing it through his fingers, he realized he would never fully understand what it was like to be a woman. He would never fully understand this person.

  A line from his past suddenly surfaced:

  Who is it that can tell me who I am?

  He hadn’t thought of that in years. What was it? Shakespeare? Not Molière, surely.

  Don’t think about that.

  Sleep was pointless. Naked, August stood up, went to the window, and stared out. He was a night owl who hated the night. The nights were too long, too empty, made it too easy to remember.

  Who was this girl? Why was she here? And why had he begged her to stay? Practically cried when she put on her stockings?

  “Please,” August had said, trying to control the waver in his voice. “We can steal some sweet cakes in the morning. I know a stand.”

  “I’m leaving,” she stated, putting on a shoe. “I mean, Jesus, I’m not your girlfriend.”

  “I know you’re not.” August was nearly shouting, and he hated that he was nearly shouting, so he grabbed her arm, harder than he’d meant to. “Just stay. Stay.”

  He started kissing her collarbone, worked his way up her neck, found her lips.

  “Stay,” August whispered, inside her mouth.

  And she had.

  But who was she?

  August needed to pace. He needed to move. He dressed too quickly and went out.

  As was often the case, his midnight wanderings led him to East Eighteenth Street, to the brownstone with the family inside. After that first encounter, August t
ook better care not to be spotted, but on occasion, the girl with the dark curly hair would still notice him and tease him through the window. But as the years went by, she appeared less and less, sometimes vanishing for months at a time.

  August wanted her to be there tonight. He didn’t have many constants in his life, but this willful girl with the boring family was a tether.

  He stood on Eighteenth Street for hours, but the lights never came on.

  * * *

  August, somewhere around sixteen, sat on a rooftop and smoked a hand-rolled cigarette, weighing his options. Should he meet up with the boys and get drunk? Or share the companionship of an elegant young woman?

  He slipped down the fire escapes, an urban ape, still deciding. The purse he’d nicked at a concert in Central Park contained a hefty amount of cash and an unimpressive necklace that nevertheless would still pull in some money at one of the shadier pawnshops August frequented. So rent was made. Booze, then? Or a girl? Both?

  But what about the police, his consistent constabulary shadow? Underage drinking and prostitution weren’t exactly the hallmarks of an upstanding citizen.

  August’s feet hit the ground of Eighty-Fifth Street, and he started the trek downtown, banishing thoughts of the NYPD to the far recesses of his mind. What’s the worst that could happen?

  * * *

  “Fuck you, you goddamned pig!” August screamed, throwing himself against the bars of the holding cell in which his person currently resided.

  What a whirlwind of an evening he’d had. Honestly, a madcap succession of hours.

  After he’d left the Upper West Side, August decided a brothel would be a perfect end to a perfect day. However, experience had taught him that a whorehouse could be a rather depressing place. August didn’t judge the women employed there, nor did he have any shame about the act of sex itself; it was generally the men haunting these erotic institutions that were so embarrassing. Husbands would dart furtive eyes this way and that, terrified of being spotted by a friend or coworker. And then there was always the giggling, sweating type, cartoon parodies of naughty indulgence. All in all, it was best to be drunk at a brothel, even some of the nicer ones, so August made a pit stop or six on his route to carnal bliss.