The Grievers

  “That’s different. You’re his best friend.”

  “Yeah, but for how long?” I asked.

  And how far can I push him before he’ll give up on me?

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Karen said. “You’re nothing like Greg Packer.”

  “I hope not,” I said.

  “Trust me,” Karen said. “You’re not.”

  All I wanted was to believe her, so I dipped a scrub brush into the warm, gray water of her bucket and went to work on the fourth wall of our dining room.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Despite my best intentions, Monday morning found me lying flat on my back again, balloons tied to my wrist, water dripping into my unwieldy costume as the sprinklers came to life on the lawn in front of the bank. Little by little, I was getting used to the idea that Neil was leaving. Maryland wasn’t too far away, I told myself—certainly not far enough to keep Greg Packer from showing up on Neil’s doorstep if, perchance, he stumbled upon a woman in the DC area who was willing to meet him for drinks. But it was enough distance to ensure that Neil wouldn’t be around to get the rest of us out of whatever jams we managed to get ourselves into.

  He wouldn’t be around to broker deals between Greg and his mother when their squabbles drove Greg out of the house and onto the sofa of some poor, unfortunate friend. He wouldn’t be around to coordinate lunches and dinners with Sean Sullivan, Dwayne Coleman, Anthony Gambacorta, and anyone else who bothered to keep in touch with us after we graduated from the Academy. And he definitely wasn’t going to be around to get me back on my feet whenever I slipped in the mud—literally or otherwise.

  What all of this meant in practical terms was that our little gang of misfits was going to need a new leader, and as I lay on my back in the stuffy, damp darkness of my giant dollar sign, I could think of no better candidate than myself.

  In Neil’s absence, I would be the new Neil.

  My first course of action in this regard was to call Phil Ennis and clear up any bad blood that might have resulted from the letter I’d forwarded to him over the weekend. It was all my doing, I’d tell him, and Neil had nothing to do with it. It was embarrassing and terrible and something I’d always regret. If I could take it back, I’d do it in a heartbeat. The letter, I imagined myself insisting as I found Ennis’s number on the speed dial of my cell phone, did not reflect my true feelings for the Academy, which were nothing but positive. From here on out, I’d be a team player. Whatever Ennis needed, I’d provide without a second’s hesitation.

  “Do you know what your problem is, Schwartz?” Ennis said before I could hurl myself onto my sword.

  “No,” I said, forcing a chipper tone. “But I’m willing to learn.”

  “That,” Ennis said. “That right there is your problem.”

  “That I’m willing to learn?” I said.

  “No, Schwartz,” Ennis said. “Your attitude. You think your hands are clean just because you’re a cynic. Well, let me tell you something—the rest of us have to live in the real world. The rest of us have bills to pay. The rest of us need to get our hands dirty so we can get shit done, so fuck you, Schwartz, if you can’t deal with it. Fuck you, fuck your idealism, and fuck your naive grasp of how the fucking world works. Do you know how much money it costs to run this place? Do you know how many kids are here on bullshit grants and scholarships? Do you know how many parents never pay their tuition on time? Do you think I like wearing a shit-eating grin every time I meet an asshole with deep pockets? Do you think I like hitting alums up for cash every goddamn day? I don’t, Schwartz, but it’s my job, and if you don’t like it, you can go to hell.”

  “Look, I’m calling to apologize, okay?”

  Ennis said nothing, but I could imagine him sitting at his desk and trying to regain his composure. At the end of the day, I represented money—maybe only a small amount, but money nonetheless. And if he could still use my name to squeeze a few more dollars out of my graduating class, then so much the better.

  “Okay, Schwartz,” he eventually said in a strangled tone that suggested he was doing his utmost to rein in his palpable rage. “Let me tell you how this is going to work. When I get off the phone with you, I’m reaching out to your graduating class, I’m reaching out to some key alums, I’m reaching out to the community, and I’m reaching out to the media. From this point on, it’s a full-court press. Do you understand?”

  “I understand,” I said. “But why the media?”

  “You’re obviously not a newspaper man,” Ennis said with undisguised contempt. “We’ve been taking hits in the Inquirer ever since we put in the new parking lot. They say we destroyed the neighborhood when all we ever did was tear down a few abandoned houses. But if we invite a few local kids into the school and talk about how we’re taking donations in Billy’s name to help fund our new initiative to get Philly boys in the door, it might help win a few hearts and minds, if you’ll pardon the expression.”

  “So, what? This is all a big PR campaign for the Raging Donkeys?”

  “Enough with the moralizing, Schwartz. Are you in or out?”

  “I’m in,” I said, reminding myself that I was trying to be the new Neil. “I’m in. Definitely.”

  “Good,” Ennis said. “We’ve been presented with an opportunity to take something positive away from what, by all counts, is a tragic situation. Your job in all of this is to answer any and all questions about Billy with the simple facts that he was a kindhearted soul and that he loved the Academy. And at the end of all this, when we all sit down to remember Billy, you’ll get up and say a few pleasant words, and we’ll all feel good for having known him. Can you handle that?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “No problem.”

  “And from now on, you report to Frank Dearborn.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That might be a problem.”

  “I don’t want to hear it, Schwartz. Whatever you have against Frank, get over it. Otherwise—”

  “No,” I said. “You’re right. I’ll get over it. We’ll have dinner together. Catch up on old times. It’ll be a riot.”

  “Watch the sarcasm, Schwartz,” Ennis said. “You’re hanging by a thread as it is.”

  I took a breath to apologize, but Ennis had already hung up on me. Though my first instinct was to call the bastard back and tell him that we must have been cut off, I let out my breath and reminded myself that if I wanted to be the new Neil, I had to do the kind of things Neil did—which, above all, meant avoiding the kind of things I usually did, like flying off the handle every time someone pissed me off.

  TRUE TO his word, Ennis didn’t waste any time sending an email about the memorial service to everyone he knew. I know this because I’d barely gotten off the line with him when my cell phone started to ring—and ring, and ring, and ring. Which meant that I spent the next hour-and-ahalf listening to a gospel choir tell me that I was moving on up to a deluxe apartment on the East Side, while fielding phone calls from people I hadn’t spoken to in years. They all wanted to know what happened to Billy, and when I told them that his death had been a suicide, there was always an awkward pause. As Greg Packer’s unbending model of the universe insisted, the information just didn’t compute, so I filled the silence with only the details that cushioned the blow.

  He was in a bad place, I said, echoing the words Neil had used when I first broke the news to him. He always loved the Academy, I said, repeating only some of the information that Billy’s mother had given me. I left out any mention of the Henry Avenue Bridge. I left out the fact that he had jumped to his death. I left out the line of stitches I’d seen running up his arm on New Year’s Eve. Instead, I talked about the memorial service and how I hoped to see everyone there. To honor Billy’s memory, I added. And his love for the Academy.

  After fielding a dozen or so calls, I was about to turn off my phone when Greg Packer called to give me the rundown on his expedition to the windy city.

  “The mission was a failure,” he said before I could say hello.
“Evangeline used the F-word.”

  “The F-word?” I said.

  In the distance, I could hear footsteps squishing across the lawn.

  “Friend,” Greg said. “Can you believe that? She wants to be friends. I tried to persuade her otherwise, but she wouldn’t have it.”

  “I’d love to chat, Greg,” I said as the footsteps drew closer. “But now isn’t the time.”

  Was this it, I wondered? My performance review?

  “Nonsense,” Greg said. “No time like the present.”

  Craning my neck, I pressed an eye to one of the vents in the shoulder of my costume, but all I could see was a pair of black leather boots.

  “Sorry, Greg,” I said. “But I have to go.”

  Greg tried to protest, but I turned off my phone just in time to hear someone speak my name. It was a voice I knew, but one I hadn’t heard in a while. A man’s voice—and more important, unless she’d started smoking much more heavily than usual, not Sue’s.

  “Is that you, Schwartz?”

  “Anthony?” I said, shouting at his feet from inside my dollar sign. “Gambacorta?”

  “Neil said I could find you here.”

  “Remind me to thank him,” I said. “How was the Dukes of Hazzard marathon?”

  If Anthony had any inkling that I was taking a shot at him for missing dinner with me and Neil the first time we tried to raise money in Billy’s name, he didn’t let on. Instead, he told me that he’d recorded the marathon in question and was editing together a compilation of Daisy Duke’s best scenes. He’d sell me a copy if I wanted one, he added, but that wasn’t the main reason he wanted to talk to me.

  “I had an idea, Schwartz. About the Billy Chin Festival.”

  “It’s not exactly a festival,” I said. “It’s more of a memorial service.”

  “Exactly,” Anthony said. “And what better way to remember Billy than with the magic of theater?”

  “What do you have in mind?” I said. “A revival of Fellatio!”

  “Better,” Anthony said. “The world premiere of Down in the Stalag.”

  “The Hogan’s Heroes musical?” I said, reminding myself once again to be diplomatic if only because that was how Neil would handle the situation. “I’m not sure Billy’s memorial service is the right venue for that. Besides, it’s only three weeks away, and that doesn’t give you much time to put everything together.”

  “Not a problem. I threw Hung Jury together in half that time.”

  “Hung Jury?” I said, regretting the words as soon as I’d spoken them.

  “A nude version of Twelve Angry Men. You didn’t hear about it?”

  “I guess I missed it.”

  “Anyway, I was thinking we could do it in the Academy’s new theater and dedicate the show to Billy. You’re still in touch with Greg Packer, right?”

  “Unfortunately,” I said. “What does he have to do with anything?”

  “Are you kidding? He’d make the perfect Sergeant Schlitz.”

  “I thought it was Schultz,” I said.

  “On TV, yeah. But I had to make a few adjustments for legal purposes. Hogan is Logan—I’ll be playing him, of course. Klink is Klein. Schultz is Schlitz. Do you want to see the script? You’d make a great Newhouse.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “You’re saying no?”

  “I’m saying I don’t want anything to do with it.”

  “You don’t understand,” Anthony said, going down on one knee and speaking directly into the narrow slot that afforded my main view of the outside world. “This could be big. If the right people see it, I can really go places.”

  “What people?” I said.

  “The media,” Anthony said. “Didn’t you get the email? Ennis sent it to everybody. All I’m asking is that you read the script. You at least owe me that much.”

  More than likely, Anthony was correct about what I owed him, but only due to a technicality. Towards the end of our senior year at the Academy, Anthony and I had agreed to be roommates when we both found out that we’d be attending the same college come autumn. As things turned out, this was a bad idea—a fact I should have recognized when, independent of each other, Neil, Dwayne, and Sean all asked if I’d lost my mind after I told them that Anthony and I would be rooming together. It wasn’t so much that Anthony was a terrible person, they all agreed, as the fact that living with him would pose certain logistical problems involving the maintenance and storage of his wardrobe and vast collection of hair-care products, not to mention pornography. At the same time, my lack of respect for other people’s property wasn’t going to help matters a whole lot either, so no one was the least surprised when the whole relationship went up in flames the night I invited the men’s rugby team into our room to try on all of Anthony’s clothes and rummage through his porn. So, yes, maybe I did have a moral obligation to read Down in the Stalag, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it—even if I was trying to be the new Neil.

  “I don’t think it’ll make much of a difference,” I said. “But if you really want to do this, the guy you want to talk to is Ennis.”

  “I didn’t know he was into theater,” Anthony said.

  “He’s not,” I said. “He’s into money. How much are you willing to part with?”

  “So, what?” Anthony said. “This is all about cash?”

  “That’s about the long and short of it.”

  “Can I mention your name? Tell Ennis you’re on board?”

  “Do whatever you want,” I said.

  “Sweet,” Anthony said, already squishing his way back to the parking lot. “I won’t forget this, Charley. I promise. When Down in the Stalag hits Broadway, you’re getting an Executive Producer credit.”

  He was halfway across the lawn when I switched on my phone and remembered why, despite my shenanigans with the rugby team, I didn’t owe him a thing.

  “Wait!” I screamed as the gospel choir resumed its maddening serenade. “Anthony! You need to fix my cell phone!”

  “No time!” Anthony shouted back. “I have a musical to produce!”

  “Bastard,” I muttered as I scrolled through my messages.

  In the time it took Anthony to pitch Down in the Stalag, my cell phone had logged seventeen missed calls and taken four messages—three from Greg Packer and one from Frank Dearborn.

  Apparently we’d been cut off, Greg said, his low, guttural voice slurping in my ear as he delivered the very line I’d been tempted to foist upon Ennis when he hung up on me earlier that morning. Perhaps, he added, I should think about selecting a new provider for my wireless service. One that wouldn’t drop so many calls. One that respected the meaning of friendship. One that recognized the duty of every Raging Donkey to comfort his fellow man, particularly in times of heartbreak and pain. Needless to say, he concluded, such wireless providers were increasingly difficult to come by lately, and though he had no expectation of finding one for himself anytime in the near future, he hoped that I might have better luck than he would.

  In case I missed it, Greg explained in his next message, he wasn’t really talking about cell phone providers at all. He was talking about friends, and he couldn’t believe I’d hung up on him. In his time of need, no less. In his darkest hour. What kind of friend was I, he demanded? Was this how I treated everyone?

  I thought about Billy as Greg’s second message bled into his third. How many calls had I failed to return? How many emails? How many times had my mind drifted when he was talking about—

  God, I couldn’t even remember anything we’d ever talked about.

  In his own self-absorbed way, Greg was right.

  What kind of friend was I?

  The tail end of Greg’s third message more or less told me to go to hell, and then Frank Dearborn was on the line asking if Karen and I were available for dinner on Friday. We could certainly do with some catching up, he said. And while we were at it, maybe we could work out some more of the details surrounding the Billy Chin F
estival.

  Festival, I thought? Why did that word keep popping up?

  Whatever the reason, I could almost hear Ennis breathing down Frank’s neck, pulling his strings, and forcing him to call me—or at least to call my bluff. If I were really serious about being a team player, I’d swallow my pride and sit down to dinner with the guy. Not that I had to like it, of course. Frank was still a pompous asshole and a racist to boot, not to mention the fact that his trust fund probably spouted more money in a week than I could make walking to the moon and back dressed as a giant dollar sign.

  But I could do it, I told myself.

  If only to prove that I was the better man.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The week dragged on, and the messages piled up—disembodied voices on my answering machine and cell phone, names and numbers scribbled on uneven scraps of paper. By Thursday, Karen had stopped bothering to answer the phone altogether. We were scrubbing the upstairs hallway by then, and Karen wanted to put a layer of paint on the walls before final exams forced her to take a break from what had evolved into an apparently endless undertaking.

  “I forgot to tell you,” I said as the telephone rang and Karen continued to scrub away at the plaster outside of our bedroom, “I told Frank Dearborn that we’d have dinner with him and his wife on Friday.”

  “That’s tomorrow.” Karen said. “How long have you known about this?”

  “Not long,” I said. “A day or so. But you have to understand—I’ve been busy with the Billy Chin Festival.”

  “Festival?” Karen asked

  “Memorial service,” I said, silently cursing the slip of my tongue. “Billy’s memorial service is what I meant.”

  Since Monday, I’d heard the phrase Billy Chin Festival repeated so often that it was starting to take root in my mind—as if Billy were a sainted figure from years gone by, the martyred founder of some long-forgotten movement, the only reminder of which was the amorphous festival that still bore his name. Technically speaking, I was only supposed to be answering questions about Billy’s death with the pleasantries that Ennis had prescribed, but when the calls turned to other matters—queries from businesses large and small about setting up tables and kiosks and handing out fliers to promote their goods and services, for example—I responded with the enthusiasm of the newly converted and agreed to every proposal that came my way. Because I was a go-getter now. Because I was a team player. Because I was the new Neil.