"Mommy!" He threw himself at the door, frantically pulling at the doorknob. "I'll be good, oh, Mommy, Mommy, I'll be good, I'll eat! I'll eat! I'm sorry, oh MommyMommyMommy Mommy!" The door wouldn't open. On the other side of the door, Marie, drenched with sweat, held onto the knob with bloodless hands. Nausea rose from her belly, but she held it down. She was dizzy. The heat rose in waves from the fur coat. She fought off fainting as she listened to Albert pleading and begging. Then she heard a door opening down the hall and quickly let herself back in. Albert was still screaming, but something was wrong. He didn't look at her. He stared at the door, still clutching the rice box. She threw off her coat and clasped a hand over his mouth. His eyes were wide and wet. When she took her hand away he screamed again. The doorbell rang, startling her. She covered Albert's mouth again and dragged him to the bathroom, locking him in. The doorbell rang again. Marie ran to the door. Mrs. Katz, the old cunt across the hall, stood in the doorway holding Marie's tan suitcase.
"Voss iss screaming?" Mrs. Katz cringed. Marie grabbed the suitcase from her and slammed the door in her face. She ran back to the bathroom. Albert was still screaming.
Marie unlocked the door and hugged Albert to her. "Ssh, baby, baby, Mommy's here, Mommy's here." But Albert wouldn't stop. He retched, gasped for breath, but he wouldn't stop screaming.
Ten minutes later Marie, white-faced and trembling, locked him in the bathroom again and while his shrieks shattered the air she picked up the pink receiver. "Oh my God, operator, give me Jacobi Hospital. Oh my God, oh my God."
***
Stony, Butler and Chili Mac sprawled on oversized throw pillows in Chili Mac's new living room. Along one wall stood three washing-machine-sized cardboard boxes stuffed with the Mac's clothes, books, kitchen stuff and miscellany. The walls were fresh white, the floor, newly polished parquet. Chili Mac had immediately set up his stereo, the speakers in opposite corners on either side of an enormous window. Nice place. The three of them sat there, sweating, drinking Coke from cans. Chili Mac had a plastic Baggie half filled with grass on his lap. He was busy rolling and licking joints. The Mac's real name was Matthew Mackell. Some people said he was called Chili Mac because he was a freak for Mexican food, but most agreed he got his name because he was just so goddamn cool.
"Chili, put on some J.B." Butler wiped his neck.
"Put it on yourself, man, I got my hands tied up." He popped a whole joint in his mouth, extracted it slowly and placed it on the floor.
Butler crawled over to a three-foot-high stack of albums, pulled out "James Brown—Live at the Apollo."
"Mac, what you payin' for this?" Stony looked around the room.
"A yard and a half." Now there were two joints.
"So now, ladies and gennelmen, it is star time. Are you ready for star time? Thank you and thank you kindly. It is indeed a great pleasure at this particular time to introduce the nationally and internationally known as the haardest-workin' man in show business..." The record had been played so many times, it had more crackles than a two-way radio system.
Mac lit up a third joint, took three staccato tokes and passed it on to Stony. Stony took a long drag and passed it to Butler.
"Mac, what they payin' you at the club?" Stony's voice sounded strained as he struggled to retain the smoke in his lungs.
"A yard for the weekend, but I got other income." He held up the Baggie, raising his eyebrows.
Stony felt jealous. "Shit." He exhaled.
Chili Mac wore a rayon leopard-skin tank top. On anybody else it would have looked ridiculous, but with the Mac's physique he looked like Black Power's answer to Tarzan.
"Hey, Butler," Stony sniffed, "when you gettin' your own crib?"
"Six months." Butler coughed, filling the air with smoke.
"Hey, man, you keep coughin' like that, I don't need to smoke. I'll just get a contact high off your bad lungs." Chili Mac laughed.
"Ladies an' gennelmen, the 'mazin, Mr. Please Please hisself, the star of the show, James Brown, and the Famous Flames!!"
"Six months, shit, I might be in Louisiana in six months," Stony bitched.
"You goin' in the army?" Chili Mac took the burning jay from Butler.
"Army! Shit. I might be goin' a college down there."
"Whyncha go to City?" Chili took a few more short drags. "It's open admissions."
"Yeah, I know." Stony rubbed his face. "That's the problem, they'll take anybody."
"Too many spades?" Mac held the joint delicately between thumb and index finger.
"It's not just that, there's also too many spies." Stony took the joint.
Butler snorted, then stifled himself. "Sorry."
"Butler, what you laughin' at?" Stony passed him the joint without taking any. "You so dumb you couldn't pass a blood test."
"Least I ain't dumb enough to go to Little Abner State."
Chili Mac snickered. "Stones, what's the school?" He took the joint from Butler.
Stony shrugged. "Purdy Free Normal or somethin'."
Chili Mac exploded in laughter. He fell off the pillow and rolled over on the floor holding his stomach. Butler and Stony glanced at each other. He sat up, supporting himself on one arm, tried to speak and fell flat on his back, kicking his legs. "You ... you ... oh, man ... you remind me a this cat I read about. This cat was freakin' out cause he was livin' in New York an' he was worried about an A-bomb attack, so he packed up his whole family an' moved to some DaKcota or other. A month later they build a nuclear missile plant right in his backyard."
"What the fuck's that got to do with me?" Stony was getting nervous.
"Man, you goin' down to Louisiana cause a the bad el-e-ment up here, right? But you all goin' to Chocolate City!" Mac started laughing again.
"What?"
"Ain't you hip to Purdy, man? That school so black it makes Howard look like University of Vermont!"
Stony was speechless. Butler took a swig of soda, then started laughing so hard Coke spurted from both nostrils.
"Man, how you ever apply there?"
"My counselor was tryin' to think of a place I could get in." Stony looked like he just poured his Coke down the front of his pants.
"Hey lissen, man, I know Purdy, mah cousin went there. Hey, ain't ... ain't you ever heard a ... a Grambling or a Tuskeegee?"
"Yeah, but..."
"Then you heard a Purdy!" Chili Mac hooted with glee. "Ah hopes you get into a good fraternity, bawh!"
"Hey, Stony!" Stony turned mechanically to Butler. "I think we just got the results a your blood test."
As the day wore on and Stony got increasingly fucked up on the Mac's stash, his mood shifted from shock and embarrassment to near hysterical laughter. Fuck college anyway. When Stony left the crib he was too wasted to drive so he jumped a cab home.
***
"Where to, Rocco?" The cabdriver had a shaved head and a thick drooping mustache.
"Co-op City."
"Mind if I do it for myself?"
"Two bucks?" Stony bargained.
The cabdriver nodded in agreement. Stony noticed the driver's big shoulders and meaty face. With the mustache and the shaved head he looked like a heavy in a James Bond movie. After two minutes of kamikaze driving they stopped dead in heavy traffic. "Shit!" He flipped the car into neutral and leaned his back against the door, drumming his fingers on the top of the front seat. "Look a' this fuckin' traffic. This is no good." He shook his head disgustedly, picking at his mustache. "No fuckin' good for you an' no fuckin' good for me." In the rearview mirror he noticed a small green Triumph inching its way between lanes. "Look a' this cocksucker!" He put the cab in drive and moved it out of his lane, blocking the Triumph.
"Where you think you goin', shithead?" he bellowed, leaning out his window. The driver of the Triumph stopped and tried to appear nonchalant, casually looking out his window and tugging on the knot of his tie.
"Hey"—the cabby turned to Stony—"dig this clown." Stony twisted around to check the guy through the rear
window. The driver's cheeks puckered and his lips pursed in what looked like a pantomime of whistling. Stony laughed. Traffic started moving. The cabby pulled back into his lane. The Triumph stayed put until the cars behind it started honking. The cabby cackled. "I could go two fuckin' miles an hour from here to Maine, that guy wouldn't dare pass me. Fuckin' college assholes. They all got the ol' man in Westchester throws 'em a TR-IV for their birthdays, right? You go to college?" He faced Stony.
"Me? Nah." Stony sat up straight. "I just got outta high school."
"Fuck college." He shifted lanes. "The only college worth two shits is the college of life. Am I right?"
"Yeah." Stony leaned back, extracted a cigarette from his shirt pocket.
"So whatta you doin' now, spongin' off yer old man?" The cabby winked in the mirror.
"My father's dead," Stony muttered.
The cabby sucked air through his teeth like he'd just slammed his finger with a hammer. "Hey lissen, I was only fuckin' aroun'. Look, don't mind me, I'm an asshole."
Stony chuckled.
"Where'd you go to school?"
"The Mount."
"Oh yeah, over on the border, right? I went to Evander. You know Evander?"
"Sure."
"I was on the football team there in sixty-two. I was a split end. Although as you can probably tell, I ain't got no split ends no more," he said, caressing his gleaming scalp. "The last fuckin' game a the season, we're playin' Clinton for the city-wides, we're down seventeen-thirteen. Tommy Algiers calls for a stop an' go long bomb, right? Ten seconds to go an' then it's all over. I pull a fuckin' fake on this Polack safety they had, I think the fuckin' guy is still lookin' for me. I'm out all alone on the two-yard line, nobody for miles. Algiers lets loose with this pass, God himself couldn't a thrown a more perfect spiral, I'm standin' there, 'Come to Poppa,' right? The fuckin' ball had radar. So what happens? The fuckin' ball slipped right outta my hands and we lost the championship. Meenga!" He put the fingertips of his right hand together and suddenly released them. "The guys on the fuckin' team were so fuckin' pissed they got me in the locker and shaved my fuckin' head, an' I wore it shaved ever since." He nodded sadly. "Now my friends call me Cleanhead."
"Jesus Christ!" Stony felt the pain.
"Hey, kid?" Cleanhead smiled mischievously in the mirror. "You believe that story?"
Stony frowned at the question, then remembered Evander didn't have a football team in the sixties because a girl had been knifed in a fight after a game with Clinton in fifty-eight. Cleanhead watched Stony's expression change from confusion to the old you-got-two-tens-for-a-five?
Cleanhead cackled again, pleased with himself. Stony debated telling him that they were even, that his old man wasn't dead, but he thought better of it.
"You know what I do? Every other time someone comes into the cab, I try to make up a story on the spot about how come I got a shaved head. Some a those fuckin' stories are fuckin' gems too, an' I never use the same story twice." He burst out laughing. "Yesterday I tell this fuckin' guy my wife useta like me rubbin' my head in her pussy, then she got the clap and all my hair fell out, right? I turn aroun' to see if the guy's laughin' an' I see he's wearin' a priest's collar." Cleanhead hit the steering wheel with the flat of his palm. "Can you beat that? But dig this! You know, I say, 'Hey Jeez, Father, no offense.' I didn't know, but the fuckin' guy is laughin' so hard he didn't even hear me. For a second I thought I was on "Candid Camera.' "
"We had some guys like that at the Mount," Stony said.
"Really? Boy, when I went to school the fuckin' priests, man, you look at them cross-eyed, you got clocked on the head. An' the goddamn nuns were worse. I got a sister that went to Catholic school in Brooklyn. She comes in one day with pierced earrings, some fuckin' nun pulls her outta line an' rips the fuckin' things right outta her ears, can you believe that?"
"So what else is new?" Stony had sixteen million horror stories of his own from those days.
"Them fuckin' fascist penguins is somethin' else, hah? So, anyways, kid, whatta you doin' now? You workin' anywhere?"
"Not yet. I got some bread stashed from when I was doin' summer jobs. I dunno what I'm gonna do yet."
"You got all the fuckin' time in the world, kid. You got some dough? If I was you I'd go to Europe for a couple a months. About ten years ago I had some money. I split for Europe, wound up in Amsterdam. The most incredible fuckin' city in the world. They got this red-light district they call The Wall. Two million hookers but young, nice, blondes like you never seen. Each one sits in a ground-level window with a red light over the door. They got beds right in the window. You.go in, say how do you do, they pull the curtain an' you get laid right in the fuckin' street. The people in the city are nice too. Everybody speaks English."
As Cleanhead talked on, Stony studied the Bronx terrain. He never thought of traveling. The cab pulled into Co-op City.
"Where you goin', babe?"
"You know where the shoppin' center is? Drop me off there."
Stony threw him two-fifty and hopped out of the cab. "Hey, kid." Cleanhead motioned Stony back to the cab. "Here." He handed him a printed calling card and watched Stony's face as he read it:
They know me uptown, downtown, in the Bronx and in Queens.
When folks ride with me, I split their seams.
Behind this wheel, in all my glory
A day doesn't pass without a good story.
I keep alert and on the beam,
Because my head is shiny clean.
So if you can't use a bus and want a cab instead,
Here's my card—just dial cleanhead.
He laughed, slapped Stony on the arm and roared off into the sunset.
***
"For the life of me I can't figure out what happened," Tommy fumed. He sat between Chubby and Stony in the back of the cab they'd hailed at Jacobi.
"I never liked that fuckin' hospital," Chubby said. "How long's he in for?"
"Stony, what'd that doctor say?" Tommy asked.
Stony didn't answer, he just stared straight ahead.
"I just cannot fuckin' understand it. Marie said she woke up when she heard him screamin', ran into his room and he was just like that," Tommy said.
"Maybe he had a nightmare." Chubby lit a cigarette. "Whatta you think, Stones?"
Stony acted as if he didn't hear him.
"What's with him?" Chubby nodded at Stony.
"Poor fuckin' Marie, she's a nervous wreck."
"It's tough for a mother," Chubby said.
"He'll be O.K.," Tommy mused. "That doctor what's-his-name, he looked like he knew his stuff."
"When a' they gonna take that tube out his arm? Those things always give me the creeps."
"I dunno, I didn't ask. When he wakes up I guess. Hey, the union covers for this kinda stuff, right?" Tommy asked.
"I don't see why not. Whyncha call Joe Ginsberg when we get upstairs?"
"It's a tough fuckin' life, Chub."
"Yah kid's in the hospital?" the cabdriver piped. "What's he got?"
Tommy and Chubby exchanged looks. "Tonsils," Tommy answered.
"No sweat." The cabdriver shrugged. "He'll be back in two days."
When the cab stopped in front of their building Stony strode ahead of his father and uncle into the lobby. He shouldered a kid who crossed his path. When Chubby and Tommy entered, Stony was already in the elevator. The door began to slide shut. Tommy stuck his arm in in time. Stony stood rigid in the corner of the car.
"Thanks for holdin' the goddamn door." Chubby was puffing from the short sprint.
"Leave him alone, Chub," Tommy said.
When the elevator opened Stony pushed open the apartment door and marched into the dinette. Marie sat at the dinette table in the approaching evening darkness. She was still wearing the raspberry bathrobe. Her eyes were circled in black and her hair was unkempt. Phyllis sat next to her, one arm protectively around her shoulders. Cups of coffee sat in front of them, but no steam rose from the
cups. Stony stared at his mother.
"What'd you do to him?" His voice was flat.
Marie raised her eyes.
"What'd you do to him?" Stony repeated louder.
Marie sat up as if stung.
"What'd you do to him, ya fuckin' bitch!" Stony lunged over the table, snagged the collar of his mother's bathrobe with one hand and smashed her in the face. She fell backward, cracking her head on the rear wall, a whiplash of blood from her nose splattering the table.
Phyllis screamed as Stony leaped on top of his mother. He pummeled her blindly through his tears until Tommy and Chubby burst in and dragged him away. "What'd you do to my fucking brother, you fucking cunt bitch!" he screamed as they hauled him into the living room. Chubby sat on his chest, crushing his back into the burnt orange carpet, and his father pinned his flailing arms. The last thing he remembered before blacking out was his father's chalk white, horror-stricken face.
8
STONY LAY IN BED that night, hands behind his head, trying to make out the titles of books in the dark. Some he knew from their shape on the bookshelf, others were too uniform to identify. The row of books reminded him of the New York skyline. He could still feel Chubby's knees digging into his shoulders. The fat fuck. He got out of his bed and crawled into Albert's. The sheets smelled like his brother. After a few minutes he sat up, took his cigarettes from his shirt hanging over a chair and lit up. By the light of the match he identified some of the books he couldn't make out earlier. Hamlet, Robinson Crusoe, Brave New World, David Copperfield, 1984, Animal Farm, Silas Marner—all paperbacks, all required high school reading. All bullshit boring.
Stony ditched the cigarette and got dressed. He took down his suitcase barricaded on the top of the closet by the old games he or Albert hadn't touched in years—Video Village, Parcheesi, Stratego, a Gilbert microscope, two shoeboxes of baseball cards, Careers, a Nok-Hockey board and a big crumpled bag filled with the pieces of half a dozen never attempted jigsaw puzzles.
He threw in underwear, socks, a few pairs of dungarees and a couple of shirts. He slipped quietly into the bathroom, collected his toothbrush, his hot comb and his razor, dumped this stuff in and snapped the suitcase shut. Amsterdam. You pick them out of the windows, Cleanhead had said. Ten bucks a throw. Nice blondes. They'd go for him too. A guinea stud with New York soul. Cleanhead said everybody spoke English there, but even if they didn't all you had to do was throw in some ooks and icks every few words and you could make out O.K.
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