by Norman Green
“All right.”
She turned and climbed the two steps again. “Thanks again. I’ll see you around.”
“Yeah,” he said, suddenly feeling better. “Yeah, okay.” She went the rest of the way up the stairs, winked at him from the doorway. He watched her go through, watched the door swing shut behind her. He noticed some strange feeling, he didn’t know what it was, some small spark, some uncertain flutter in his chest where his heart was supposed to be. God, she’s beautiful, he thought. What would she want with a lunatic like me? It was something, though, just the thought, just the possibility . . . sweet Lord. Life was never what you thought it was going to be, he thought. Just when you think you got the shit figured out, the next pitch hits you in the head. He walked back up the street, suddenly a bit unsteady.
BRONSON WAS NOT what Silvano had expected. The man looked like he was already dead. It was the skin on his face that you noticed first. It looked like onionskin paper stuck to a plate of scrambled egg whites, it seemed you could look through it to things underneath that you shouldn’t be able to see. It had no texture of its own, either, no wrinkles or pores. It just lay there, pasted on.
His hands shook badly. There was an ashtray on the counter in front of him on the front desk of the St. Felix Hotel. It was surrounded by near-misses. He raised the cigarette to his lips and sucked on it until the ash was a bit more than an inch long, and then he held it in his quivering hand over the ashtray, his index finger poised over it in unsteady readiness. He seemed to gather himself, calling on all of his remaining shreds of concentration and focus. He waggled the index finger twice. False starts, Silvano thought, but then the guy did it, brought the shivering finger down on the cigarette, but not sharply enough. Instead of detaching cleanly and falling straight down, the ash split off in slow motion, spinning off to one side from the english imparted by the shaking hand and it landed among the other strays on the scarred wood of the countertop.
An aviator crouched over a bombsight could not have tried harder.
“Damn,” he said. His voice gurgled deep in the mucus of his throat and lungs. “Of course I remember Nunzio. He was the nicest guy in the whole hotel. He’d stand right there, right where you are, talk to me all night sometimes.”
I’m never gonna smoke another cigarette, Silvano thought, never, as long as I live. I think I’d rather get hit with a truck. “You ever hear anything about what happened to him?”
“No.” Bronson pursed his lips and shook his head. “I wonder how hard anybody looked. There was that one guy your sister hired, and of course, the cops, initially, but that was it. Never heard another word.”
“You know of anybody who hated him, had words with him, anything like that?”
Bronson shook his head. “No, no, no. Everybody liked Noonie. Everybody.” He fell silent, looking off into the distance. “Kinda makes you wonder,” he said, finally. “I mean, here’s a guy, he coulda been anything. Coulda been governor, coulda been the world’s best salesman, coulda been the greatest con artist in history, he had that kinda personality, but there was that one thing missing, whatever it was, that one piece left out. I mean, he was smart enough, in his own way, but that one thing was gone, and there he was. You know what I mean?”
Silvano didn’t reply.
“I’m telling you, it bothered me.” He took one last deep drag on the cigarette and deposited it firmly into the ashtray, leaving it there to smolder. “I even went to church once because of him. I ain’t much for it, but I did go that one time. I just wanted to ask, you know. But the only question I could think of was, like, what the fuck?”
Silvano looked away. “Yeah,” he said. “That about covers it.”
“Yeah, really.” Bronson had his hands held out to his sides, palms up in a posture of quivering supplication, a new cigarette, unlit, between two dancing fingers. “What the fuck?”
“I’ll tell you a story,” Silvano said. “We were kids, people had heard that there was something wrong with one of us. I remember this guy, friend of my old man, he comes to the house, I must of been twelve, he’s down on his knees, he’s looking at me like I’m a monkey in the zoo. Finally he stands up. ‘Don’t worry, Giovanni,’ he says to my old man. ‘I think he’s gonna be all right.’ Noonie’s standing there, laughing his ass off.”
“Hah.” Bronson stuck the new cigarette between his lips and flicked an old Zippo alive. The flame was big enough to set off anything within six inches of Bronson’s hand. Silvano looked at the man’s sparse gray hair, but it was combed straight back, out of harm’s reach. Bronson inhaled, started to cough, but he recovered and looked straight at Silvano. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “your brother had a good enough life, while he was here. We kept him warm, we kept him out of the rain, he had a few laughs. He had friends. Could have been a lot worse.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
Out on the sidewalk, Silvano stood on the corner of Henry and Clark Streets, sucking in the clean air, relishing the feel of the breeze coming up Clark Street off the bay. He gave the half-full pack of Kools in his shirt pocket to a guy panhandling on the corner. Did I tell him, he wondered, did I tell him I was Noonie’s brother, or did he already know? How in the world could he have known? The two of us never looked anything alike. He went back over the conversation again in his mind, but he couldn’t quite remember.
SILVANO TRUDGED DOWN Henry Street, heading for the Hotel Montague. What a day, he thought. He’d done more walking than he was used to, his feet hurt and his quads ached. He was also battling an emotional hangover. He usually got one after a fight, and his encounter in the stairwell of the parking garage had been enough to bring one on. Compounding it was Bronson’s recollections of his brother. God, he thought, why didn’t you just leave the women in charge? Everything would have been so much simpler. Just make man to be an ambulatory life support for balls and a dick, no brain attached. Wouldn’t that have been better? Think how many more people would grow old and die in their sleep, how many more children would survive into adulthood. Why not just equip man for work and for sex and leave it at that? Be happier all around.
The stairs to the fifth floor seemed much steeper than normal. He paused when he got to the landing for his floor, leaned his head against the metal door. She was there, he could hear her.
“Clark? Let me in, Clark.”
He sighed. God, he thought, I don’t understand. Us on the fringe, are we all just broken pieces, are we just the by-products of your better efforts? There must have been another way. He pushed the door open, went through.
“Claark?” There was a note of panic in her voice. She watched him coming down the hallway, and he could see her fear and her need doing battle. She flinched when he got close, as if to run away, but she did not, instead she curled herself into a quaking ball at his doorstep.
He shook his head as he reached over her with the key and unlocked the door. He pushed it ajar and stepped back. “Go on,” he said. “See if he’s in there.”
She’d been holding her breath. She looked up in surprise and inhaled convulsively, but she didn’t move, didn’t come out of her defensive ball. She don’t wanna look, he thought, she don’t wanna go in and find out he’s not there, she already knows he’s not there, but she’d rather sit out here and pretend. “Go on,” he said in a louder voice. “He’s either in there or he isn’t. Go on and find out.”
She unrolled herself and stood up. He was surprised to see how tall she was, she was taller than him, she might have actually been good-looking if she’d take a shower and lose the flower child clothes. There was a spark of feral intelligence in her blue eyes, though it was hard to see through the hair that hung down over her face. She glowered at him.
He leaned against the wall opposite the open door to his room. “You gonna look, or what?”
Her face twisted into an ugly mask of resentment. “He said he was coming back,” she said, her voice hard and flat.
“And you believed him.” This was a mi
stake, he thought. I shoulda left her alone. Her back was to the door, and with one unsteady hand she reached behind her and shoved the door open wide. He didn’t think she’d go in, and she didn’t, she didn’t even turn around, she just glanced quickly over her shoulder.
“Claark?”
“Clark’s a dog, he ain’t coming back.”
Her face crumpled but she didn’t cry. She bent over and hooked her shopping bag, straightened back up, looked at him accusingly, her blond hair flowing down over her shoulders. Silvano shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
She looked at the floor, turned away, and without looking back she shuffled down the corridor.
THE TELEPHONE RANG in the middle of the night, startling Domenic awake. He rolled over, sat on the edge of the bed, and looked at the clock on the nightstand. Half past one in the morning. He had to get up in four more hours. This had better be important.
He walked across the floor of the darkened room to get to the phone, bare feet on oriental carpets, then on hard wood over next to the bookcase where the phone hung on the wall. He put his hand on the receiver and watched the light on the top of the black box wired into the phone line. It was supposed to light up to alert him if the line was tapped. He didn’t know if it worked or not, the light had never gone on. It didn’t matter too much, he was too paranoid to do much business on his home phone anyhow.
He picked it up, the light stayed off.
“Yeah,” he said.
“I know you’re a busy man,” the voice on the line said. “I’m sorry to bother you this late at night.”
It was Ivan. Ivan wouldn’t use his name, and he wouldn’t use Ivan’s. Gangster phone etiquette. “What’s the matter,” he said. “You need bail money?”
“Not just now. I got a phone call a couple of hours ago. You probably want to hear about it.”
“Go on.”
“It was from a mutt that works in that hotel your cousin used to live at.”
Domenic came fully awake. His heart rate accelerated and he became conscious of a ringing noise in his ears, but outwardly he betrayed no sign of his heightened state of awareness. “Keep talking.”
“Guy came around today asking about Noonie. From the description, it sounds like it might be him.”
Silvano, Domenic thought. That fucking snake. “That’s what you said the last time. Do you know where this guy is?”
“No, not yet.” Ivan cleared his throat. “There’s one other thing.”
Domenic could feel his stomach burning. “What.”
“Antonio told me I should handle this myself. He said he don’t want you bothered with it. I’m taking a big chance, telling you, but I know how you feel about this.”
No, you don’t, Domenic thought, you don’t have a fucking clue. “Antonio’s just worried about his money. I want you to listen to me. I want you to find out if it’s him, you hear me? And if it is, you grab him and you put him on ice, and then you call me.”
“Listen, Antonio said . . .”
“Fuck Antonio!” He screamed it into the phone and his voice boomed and echoed in the empty room. He shook with rage, but he recovered quickly. He gathered himself and went on in a more normal tone. “Fuck Antonio,” he said. “I want you to do what I said. Don’t worry about Antonio, I’ll protect you on this. Antonio ain’t gonna live forever.”
There was silence on the line as Ivan considered his options. “All right,” he said, after a long count. “We’ll do it your way.”
“I won’t forget it. This bastard ruined my fucking life, he ruined my sister, you hear me?”
“Don’t get started up again on this.”
“I never stopped,” Domenic snarled into the phone, his voice low and guttural. “From the day it happened until right now, I never forgot this fuck for one minute. As soon as you have him, you call me.”
“Gotcha.”
Domenic hung up the phone. Fucking Antonio, he thought, you want to deny me this? When I’m done with Silvano, I’m gonna come for you. I’ll make you pay for this, you old bastard.
He wasn’t thinking clearly, the anger was making him reckless. Calm down, he told himself. You need to be careful, don’t screw this up. You been waiting a long time. He walked over to the kitchen and took a glass and a bottle of Johnny Dark out of a cabinet. He poured the glass three-quarters full and went to sit down on the edge of the bed with it.
Even just the name was enough to do it to him, to send him into a rage like nothing else could. I had dreams, he thought, I had dreams, maybe they were small but they were mine, and I was on my way. He’d been accepted to Princeton and McGill, his head had been full of art and architecture. He could have been something real, a builder, an engineer. An artist! He’d been so close. Silvano had been a punk, a dropout, a boxer with emotional problems. You couldn’t keep your hands off her, could you? Your own cousin, she loved you like a brother, and you couldn’t leave her alone. And what did you do to my father? You were nothing next to Angelo, Angelo the Hammer. And he loved you, you fuck! He took care of you, he watched out for you better than your own father, you son of a bitch. Domenic would never tell me what you did, he’d never tell me how my father died, but I’m gonna make you talk, Silvano. I am gonna fucking make you talk . . .
One minute I’m on my way to school, the next minute my father is dead, my sister’s locked in a cell in a fucking convent, and the old man yanks the rug out from under me. Fucking laughed at me. Next thing I know, I’m hijacking trucks in fucking Bayonne. Bootlegging cigarettes. “Higher education,” he scoffed. “You want higher education? I’ll teach you . . .”
The dream still tormented him, its power undiminished by the passing years. He still carried the images in his mind, buildings, houses, bridges, temples like the world had never seen. And instead, he was wasting his life. Fourteen hours a day, grubbing in the filth for money like a sow after a truffle.
Silvano, when I get my hands on you, I’ll kill you for this.
I swear it.
THREE
IT WAS THE DREAM that woke him in the predawn darkness, the same one it seemed he’d had a hundred times, and he jerked awake, covered with sweat, grasping for the M-16 that was suddenly not there. He gasped for breath and his heart thundered in his chest while his mind changed gears frantically, no, this was just a room, just a room in a hotel, and he was back in Brooklyn, U.S.A.
He rolled over on his back and stared at the ceiling and slowly the shaking went away. He wiped the sweat from his face with the bedsheet. I’m never gonna get away, he thought. The shit just keeps following me.
He remembered then, his ongoing life. Black and White, he thought. Carpenters. He looked down, noticed how badly his hand still shook. He wasn’t looking forward to it, in fact he was getting nervous thinking about it, which didn’t make any sense at all. It wasn’t like he cared about the job, the only reason he was bothering with it at all was there was a chance he might pick up some information about Noonie. But still, he was asking himself to function, to coexist in a normal environment with regular men, without long explanations of who he was and where he’d been. Why he was like this.
Get up, he told himself, get up, if it wasn’t for Noonie you’d go find a hole, crawl inside, and pull it in after yourself. Get up and get going. He rolled out of bed and headed for the bathroom.
She was out there in the hallway. She only had one cup of coffee, though. He opened the door and stepped around her, closed and locked it behind him. He looked down at her. “Again?” he said. “Didn’t we cover this last night?”
“I know, I know,” she said, not looking up.
“So?”
She sighed. “Makes me feel better.”
Shower might make you feel better, too, he thought. “That right?”
“Yes,” she said. “I know he’s gone. I know he’s . . . I know. But if I sit here for a while, part of me feels better, part of me thinks he’ll come back and then everything will be all right.” She glanced up quickly, then lo
oked away. “I know it sounds crazy.”
“You said it, not me.”
“See, this way, it’s all on him, you get it? It’s the lazy way out. As long as I’m waiting for Clark, it’s all his fault. I don’t have to do anything.”
I don’t know who’s crazier, Silvano thought, her, or me for listening to her. “It’s your life,” he said. “You wanna spend it in a hallway, it’s up to you.”
“I know,” she said. “Maybe this is just for now. Maybe I’ll get tired of it after a while.” She looked up at him and snickered. “Maybe I’ll get better.”
THE GATE AT Black and White was open. Silvano walked through it at quarter to seven and passed the row of armored trucks and headed for the construction site. Lee, the big carpenter foreman, saw him coming.
“You surprise me,” he said, looking at his watch. “I didn’t really think you’d show up.”
“Ye of little faith,” Silvano said.
“Faith without work is dead. You ever hang drywall before?”
“Yeah.”
Lee raised his eyebrows. “No kidding. Can you tape?”
“I can get it screwed to the wall okay,” Silvano said, “but you don’t want me taping it.”
“Fair enough.”
LEE PUT HIM with a guy who liked to talk while he worked. The guy had long blond hair tied into a ponytail, played guitar in a band on weekends, and he told Silvano all about guitars, chord progressions, the roots of rock and roll, and why it was such a crime that no one listened to the blues anymore. He’d only worked at Black and White for a few months, though, and he couldn’t have known Noonie, so Silvano listened with one ear and lost himself in the work, watching the sheets of drywall transform an open studded space into enclosed rooms with smooth paper walls and ceilings.
Lee showed up after a couple of hours and inspected their progress. “Not bad,” he said. He looked at Silvano. “You got a driver’s license?”
“State of Oregon.”
“Is it good?”
“Yeah.”
“All right. That little shit next door needs someone to help bring back a truck they got at a garage up in the Bronx. It was up there getting the air-conditioning fixed. You mind going for a ride, driving it back for them?”