Hangman's Game

by Bill Syken

  She unloads her pastry bag, which has the coffee cups and her pastry—a large whoopie pie. “Mind if I do the honors?” she asks, holding up the champagne bottle.

  “Please.”

  She loosens the wire cage of the cork and then covers the top of the bottle with the empty pastry bag. She manipulates the cork underneath the bag until it pops loudly but harmlessly into the paper. With a turn of her wrist she pours the champagne into the cups, and there we are, bubbles rising.

  We clink paper cups, as best we can.

  “It’s nice to be here with you,” she says.

  “Yes,” I say. “It is nice.” I drink. My early review: if you ever buy a $500 bottle of champagne, don’t drink it out of a paper cup, because you will taste the paper in every sip.

  “Is this what good champagne is supposed to taste like?” she asks.

  “Not quite,” I say, setting the cup down on the ground beneath the bench.

  “Seems okay to me,” she says, and she tosses the rest of her drink back like it’s water and pours herself some more. “But then again I almost never drink champagne. On New Year’s Eve, I usually end up working.”

  “Here’s a question for you,” I say. “If you’re not much of a champagne drinker, how’d you get so good at opening the bottles?”

  She pauses, as if caught. “I served a lot of champagne at the last place I worked,” she says. She pulls her knees up to her chest and cradles them in her arms.

  “Oh, yeah? Where is that?”

  “This place in Providence. It is called—brace yourself—the Winking Oyster.”

  “The Winking Oyster?” I laugh.

  “It’s a funny name, right?”

  “Exactly what kind of establishment is the Winking Oyster?”

  “It’s a strip club,” Melody says, and a sly smile tugs up the corner of her lips.

  “So you were a … dancer?”

  “Bartender,” she says. “I’d bring bottles back to the champagne room, that’s all. Don’t tell me you’re going to get all judgmental on me now.” She says this with a trace of sternness, as if she has been judged before and it has not gone well.

  “I’m not judging,” I say. “Not much, anyway.”

  She takes another drink. “Think whatever you want. I loved it there. We were like a family, all on each other’s side, no questions asked. I felt at home there.”

  I rest my hand between Melody’s shoulders, and with my index finger I traced small circles on her neck. She barely seems to notice my touch.

  I gaze around the park, which is still empty. In the time we’ve been sitting on this bench, I have seen only a couple of people walk by. The quiet is beautiful. After a few lazy minutes she pokes me in the ribs and picks up the whoopie pie. “Want some?” she asks, holding it up to my face.

  “No thanks.”

  “Sure?” She waves it suggestively in front of my mouth. The pastry is all airy chocolate cake and shimmering cream.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Whatever,” she says, pulling it back and taking a big bite. “One taste won’t kill you.”

  “You never know,” I say.

  “C’mon, Nick,” she says, wheedling. “Just one bite.”

  “I don’t eat sweets,” I say. “In my whole life I’ve never eaten an Oreo, drank a Coke, anything like that.”

  “Never?” she says, incredulous. “Not even when you were, like, five?”

  “No processed foods when I was growing up, no candy, no sugary snacks. My dad had lots of rules.”

  “Sounds tough,” she says softly.

  I shrug. “He just wanted me to be the best. He’d always say, ‘Victory has a price.’”

  She returns my shrug. “Sometimes you can overpay.” She finishes off the rest of the whoopie pie with a big bite, stuffing it into her mouth in an intentionally theatrical display of gluttony. “Enchanting, aren’t I?” She smiles, teeth full of chocolate, and pours herself another cup of champagne. “I used to be an athlete myself, you know,” she says, after she has taken a drink and licked her teeth clean. “High school soccer. I was my team’s co-captain.”

  “Excellent,” I say. “What was your career highlight?”

  “New Hampshire Class A state semifinals, my senior year,” she says, her face lighting up. “Score tied, less than two minutes left, I nailed one into the upper left corner. Game winner. It was awesome. We all went nuts. I did the whole Brandi Chastain thing, I ripped my shirt off and ran around in my sports bra.”

  “Is there video of that by any chance?” I ask dryly. I am imagining a lot of bouncing.

  “You wish,” she says. “So do I, now that you mention it. And of course we ended up getting clobbered in the finals. But still, that moment was pretty cool.”

  “It’s great, isn’t it?” I say. “When I was in high school, we won districts my senior year. The fans stormed the field. Everyone was hugging and hollering. My teammates carried me off on their shoulders.…”

  “They carried off the punter?” she asks.

  “I was a quarterback in high school, actually.”

  “Really?” she says. “What happened to the quarterbacking?”

  “Things changed,” I say, with a sigh. I pick the wrapper from her whoopie pie off the ground and place it in the plastic bag. “So I have a question about this Winking Oyster place.”

  “Shoot.”

  “If it was so great there,” I ask, “why’d you ever leave it?”

  She shifts, pushing herself around to face forward. “Oh, you know how it is. You don’t leave the old behind, you never get anyplace new.”

  “Really?” I say. “You were just restless?”

  “Pretty much,” she says unconvincingly, and then adds, “I think I’m the kind of girl who likes to go from place to place. My dream is to live on a boat one day. Just sail from harbor to harbor. If I ever get enough money.”

  I have the money to buy her a boat today. A nice one, too, I’d bet.

  “I know how to fish,” I say.

  “I fish, too. What’s your point?”

  “If two people were on that boat and knew how to fish, they might not have to come into harbor for a long time.” I imagine myself sitting on the boat’s rear deck, rod in its holder, my shirt open, sunglasses on, eyes on the line.

  “Two people, eh?” Melody says with a chuckle. “So now we’re sailing away together?”

  She’s right to laugh. I was exhausted and beginning to lose my form.

  “I should go,” I say.

  “Already?” she says.

  “Yes,” I say, standing up. “But thanks for bringing me here. It helped.”

  “My pleasure,” she says, disappointed. “Can you give me a ride home? The bus can be a pain in the ass.”

  We walk to the street meter where I parked my Audi, our arms occasionally brushing against each other. On the drive Melody directs me up onto the Interstate, and then to a low-rent section of North Philadelphia that I have never been anywhere near before. The surroundings look more industrial than residential, and we are not talking about a thriving industry, either—more like one whose jobs migrated to the South decades ago in search of weaker unions, before realizing they could save even more money by just taking the whole operation overseas.

  Melody’s house is a narrow two-story structure, adjacent to elevated train tracks, standing alone on a block curiously absent of other homes. A poor little row house that has lost its row. It seems like a miserable place to live. I would have figured a waitress at Stark’s might have settled into one of Philadelphia’s burgeoning hipster neighborhoods.

  There is only one vehicle parked on the street, a shiny red F-150 pickup truck in front of Melody’s house. I would appraise the truck as having a greater value than the residence.

  “So you really don’t think Jai Carson is the one who shot at you guys?” Melody asks after I put the car in park. “If he didn’t do it, who do you think did?”

  “I’m sure the police will fi
gure it out,” I say without conviction. “They have their top guy on it.”

  “Really?”

  “No,” I say.

  “Who’s the top suspect, do you think?”

  “O.J.”

  “No, seriously, did they give you any idea…”

  I place a knuckle under her chin and raise her head up and kiss her on the mouth. She doesn’t seem to mind being shut up this way. Her return kiss is confident and aggressive. She places a hand on my chest and claws in. We are off to the races.

  But it is suddenly all too much. I push her gently away. It is wrong to forget so soon. “I should really go home,” I say.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, looking embarrassed.

  “I’ll call you after minicamp,” I say.

  “Promise?”

  “If I say I’m going to do something,” I assure her, “I do it.”

  She gets out of the car and, as she walks the uneven cement path to her house, the door opens for her. I see a male figure standing behind the screen door.

  Strange. Melody hadn’t mentioned a roommate. In fact, when she called me, proposing our rendezvous, she had declared that she didn’t want to be alone.

  CHAPTER 6

  BACK AT THE Jefferson, I check my messages. My mother has called again. It sounds like she is on the way to Philadelphia, though her phrasing is imprecise. She says in her message, “I’m going to come down there,” but it isn’t clear if she is stating an intent of future action, or if she is already in her car, driving. I call to seek clarification, but her phone is off, as usual. She only turns it on to talk.

  I need to sleep, but I suspect she is in fact on her way, so I resist the urge to go to bed. The champagne I drank has left me with a mild headache. I put Irma Thomas’s Straight from the Soul, which I have been listening to a bunch lately. Her lyrics can be childish, but her voice conveys heartache with a deep clarity.

  As the music kicks in I sit on the sofa and pick up an issue of Esquire. Some actress I’ve never heard of is the sexiest woman alive, apparently. I turn my body lengthwise, with my feet up and my head on a pillow and I close my eyes and lay the magazine down as Irma wails for me.

  * * *

  I am roused by the tinny chime of the Jefferson doorbell. “Coming,” I shout. My body feels dead. I stumble to the door, and there is my mother. She’s made it here. So has her boyfriend, Aaron, standing back a couple of judicious steps in the hallway. It is a jolt to see him outside my door, as he has never been down here before. Our previous encounters have been up in Elmira, where they now live.

  It has been a couple of months since I last saw my mother. She is wearing a denim shirt and jeans, a combo unfamiliar to me; she has let her hair grow longer than its normal shoulder length, and she is more tanned than I am accustomed to her being.

  Aaron has a deep tan, too. He is tall and reedy, with longish hair and an overgrown and silver-streaked goatee. He is wearing khaki shorts and an olive-green T-shirt.

  It may be my imagination, but I feel like the two of them are starting to look alike. Aaron and my mother have been together since the divorce seven years ago—if not longer than that. She would never tell me how or when their relationship began. She announced that she was divorcing my dad and taking up with Aaron just after my brother, Doug, two years younger than me, left for college, and the timing made it seem as if she had been waiting for the kids to clear out. She refused to answer our questions, declaring them “inappropriate,” so Doug and I were left to guess the circumstances. Perhaps she and Aaron met during my junior year in high school, when she suddenly started experimenting with her hairstyles, claiming that she wanted to inspire customers at the hair salon where she worked. Perhaps it had something to do with her book group, which sometimes took overnight trips related to that month’s selection. After reading World’s End by T. C. Boyle, they visited Peekskill, New York; for Ironweed, they were off to Albany. I remember asking my mother who else was in her book group, and she answered curtly, “No one you know.” When she left, I wondered if there ever was a book group—and if so, did it have just one other member?

  One side effect of this mystery of their origins was that I regarded Aaron with suspicion, a man with a secret. It had taken me a good couple of years to see him as just another guy trying to get through life.

  My mother once made an attempt to explain what she saw in Aaron. “I matter to him,” she said to me, sitting across from each other in a diner booth up in Elmira. “Your dad, he could make me feel as if he didn’t need me at all, like I was this inconsequential nuisance.” And then she added, meekly, “I have a soul, you know.”

  I felt bad for my mother, that she imagined the existence of her soul was in doubt. But I also questioned the acuity of her perception. Of course she mattered to my dad, as the aftermath of their divorce proved all too violently.

  “Oh, Nicky,” my mother says, throwing herself upon me urgently, as if she is somehow shielding me from last night’s bullets.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” I say, stepping back after a moment. “They didn’t get me.” I hold my arms out. “See, no holes.” She tries to smile, though I can see tears well in her eyes. “Hello, Aaron,” I say as he sidles forward to stand beside my mother.

  “That has to have been a horrible thing to witness,” Aaron says. He has a black roller bag at his side.

  “It was.” Even after all this time, and in these strange circumstances, I do not find it natural to make chitchat with this man. I can’t help but wonder what my dad would say if he saw us talking like family.

  “Come on in,” I say.

  “Apologies for our appearance,” Aaron says as they enter. He deposits his roller bag by the door. “We’re still in our country outfits.”

  “No worries,” I say.

  “How is Cecil doing?” my mother asks as she takes a seat in the armchair, while Aaron goes to the sofa.

  “Could be worse,” I say.

  “Is Vicki with Cecil?”

  “She’s here,” I say. “The girls, too. They flew in from Ohio this morning.”

  My mother smiles stiffly. I can see she feels guilty. Vicki was at Cecil’s side before my mother even knew what was going on.

  “How have the police been with you?” asks Aaron.

  “About what I’d expect. Just doing their job.”

  “If anything is going on that you think isn’t right, let me know,” he says. “I used to be on the force.…”

  “Yes, I know,” I say. “You used to be on the force.”

  I avoided any obvious disdain, but Aaron catches it anyway, this reference to his having quit his policeman’s job.

  “Yes, I used to be on the force,” Aaron says patiently. “And I’ve been training officers for more than a decade now, and I know men and women in just about every department in the Northeast. If you feel like something’s going on that isn’t right, just give me a call.”

  “He wants to help, Nicky,” my mother says.

  “I appreciate that,” I say. “I really do.”

  “This has to have been a great mental strain on you,” Aaron says. “Your mother and I wondered if you might want to come to our cabin for a few days. You’d have your own bedroom. There are hiking trails nearby. Couldn’t be more peaceful. We could leave now if you wanted, you could sleep in the back of the car.…”

  “I can’t go anywhere right now,” I say.

  “How come?” Aaron says, concerned. “Did the police tell you not to leave town?”

  “No, it’s not that. I have minicamp in a few days. Not a good time for me to go away.”

  “Oh,” my mother sighs, as for the thousandth time, football takes priority.

  “Surely with all that’s happened,” says Aaron, “the team will understand if you ask for some time off.…”

  “Surely they won’t,” I say flatly.

  “But…” my mother begins.

  “The beat goes on,” I say, rubbing my eyes and leaning against a wall. “And on an
d on and on. It’s been a long day, Mom.”

  “I know it has,” my mother says.

  It is then that I think of Aaron’s black roller bag by the door. “Where are you guys staying?” I ask. My apartment has one bedroom.

  My mother and Aaron look at each other. I sense they haven’t planned out their lodgings for the night.

  “You guys are welcome to crash here,” I say, but with something less than pure enthusiasm. “I’ll be fine on the sofa.”

  There is an awkward pause.

  “Let’s find a hotel,” Aaron says to my mother.

  “There’s plenty of good ones nearby,” I say.

  While Aaron steps to the kitchen and punches around on his phone to see what’s available, my mother and I talk some more, though she shifts the topic of conversation to my furnishings, and how they might be rearranged. Soon Aaron reports that he has made a reservation at a Sheraton a few blocks north, near the city’s museum row.

  “That’s perfect,” I say. “There’s a good breakfast spot around the corner. Let’s meet there tomorrow. Nine thirty.” That is later than I normally eat breakfast, but it will give some time for the business crowd to clear out.

  After I close the door behind them, I lie back down on the sofa. I wish my dad were alive. I wonder what advice he would have for me. Probably that he is sorry that I had witnessed a tragedy, but we all experience awful things if we live long enough. The only thing we can do is to keep fighting. Keep fighting—that was always his message.

  Right until he drove himself into a tree.

  CHAPTER 7

  I PLAY THE rest of the Irma Thomas record and I end up falling asleep on the sofa. At five in the morning I wake from a nightmare. The details evaporate immediately, but I know I had been talking to my dad. In the weeks after his crash he visited my dreams nightly, to the point to where I considered believing in ghosts. Now he rarely comes by. In this dream he and I were on a boat, and he was wearing a plaid bathing suit, like the kind he used to wear on our annual family vacation at Cayuga Lake. He was fishing, and he caught a big one. He always said that he would be embarrassed to come home from a fishing trip without having caught anything. Everything else I forget.