Another Broken Wizard

by Dodds, Colin

  “Hey, really, what’s going on?”

  “You should have called.”

  “I thought I did.”

  “No, you should have called before that. I was going to call to tell you. But I figured you’d probably take a few days to call me back if I did.”

  “Okay. Well, I didn’t say I was going to call and you didn’t ask me to,” I said, sensing where this was headed and hating myself for adding to the momentum.

  “Never mind. I didn’t think you’d understand.”

  “Well, I’ve had a lot on my mind. Believe me. I am trying to keep so many balls in the air right now that I can hardly think. I have a best friend who is going to get himself killed in a blood feud, a resume that’s not getting read, a mom I keep meaning visit, a girlfriend who’s forgetting my name day by day, a bank account that’s eroding with every fucking pretzel and hospital parking ticket. Basically everything is swirling down a big toilet bowl. It’s all spinning away and so if you want, fine, I am fucking sorry if I didn’t fucking call.”

  In the midst of my outburst, I had shoved my soft pretzel across the table and onto the floor. Olive leaned over and picked it up. She put it back on my tray and made a gesture as if to dust it off. She looked at me. She bit her lip, and her eyes looked like they were getting dewy.

  “So what is it? Is it your dad? Did he get worse?” I asked, softly.

  She shook her head. Emboldened by my rage and her vulnerability, I did what I had learned many times before not to do.

  “Is it your period?” I asked.

  She nodded and laughed a little, a tear shooting across the mascara barricade and down her face.

  “I was going to tell you to go fuck yourself,” she said, laughing a little through the tears.

  “I’ll bet you were.”

  We got up and embraced. It was a hospital, and emotion wasn’t out of place—just Catharsis Day in Cafeteria B. She watched me eat my chicken nuggets and the dusted-off soft pretzel. We made plans for her to come over later and then left. We kissed good-bye before parting for our respective dads’ wards.

  Robert and Dad were talking when I got there. Dad was wearing his brave face. I remembered it from an office Christmas party when I was nineteen, a big event held at a hall in the Boston Ballet. As we entered the already-full party, Dad turned to me and said “Watch me work the room.” He had that face on. It was happy and ready for everything, except maybe honesty. I pulled up one of the chairs and gave Dad his Diet Coke.

  Dad and Robert talked on about old co-workers—who was where, who lost a spouse and who gained one, who went back to school and who went back overseas. By the time Robert left, I was as tired as Dad. I could tell by how he squeezed the handle in his hand that Dad was doing his late day run on the pain medication, calling down the curtain on the day.

  43.

  I drove back down Route 9 like an idle child scribbling the same line over and over again in hopes of tearing the paper or destroying his crayon.

  At the Fountainhead, I showered, shaved and dozed in front of the TV. The buzzer gave me enough time to rinse my sleepy mouth out with Diet Coke before Olive came up. She was dressed sexier than she’d been at the hospital. We gave an honorable amount of lip service to the notion of going out for dinner and drinks before we made love on Dad’s bed. We ordered Chinese food and did it quickly on the floor of the living room before the delivery guy showed. Each screw shut out the day before and the day to come a little more.

  We ate spareribs and made fun of the unfortunate coeds being slaughtered on the pay-per-view horror movie.

  “You’d think a boob job that retarded would at least protect her from a lawn dart,” Olive commented on the film.

  “Well, thank God they outlawed lawn darts. Now you can only find them at the most diabolic of yard sales.”

  “Really? We always had lawn darts,” she said, stripping a string of meat off the rib. Her face shone in the flickering blue light of the darkened living room.

  “They must be old. When I was a kid, someone chucked one over a fence and killed their neighbor’s child. So there was a campaign and they outlawed them.”

  “People are such pussies. It’s like when I get in my mom’s car, the fucking thing starts beeping like crazy just because I didn’t put my seatbelt on. It’s like all the whiny pussies won some war.”

  “Keep talking and I’m liable to fall in love.”

  “I didn’t think they told you about love in your little cubby hole in New York City. I thought it was all fuck-and-run and onto the next hip thing.”

  “I guess. But I did hear about romance during one long, cold winter I called my childhood. And I almost killed someone with a lawn dart when I was a kid. So I’m not going to fight the Trilateral Commission of Pussies on that one.”

  “Really?” she said, putting an egg roll into her mouth in a way that excited me.

  “I was at a birthday party, in the third grade. This kid, Tony something, was up in a tree and he called me an asshole. I looked down at my hand and it had a lawn dart in it, so I threw it at him. It missed his face by an inch or two.”

  “You’re a dangerous man, with your grammar school attempted murder and your yuppie brawls.”

  “Oh am I?”

  I paused the movie and we were at it again, this time over the inflatable bed. Then more Chinese food and more gore, a little slice of pig heaven.

  “So what is this?” Olive asked at last.

  “I don’t know.”

  “We fuck, trade snarky comments, and commiserate over our damaged fathers. That’s all?”

  “Sounds like three out of three to me.”

  “But what about your girlfriend? And by the way, nice job sneaking that into your little tirade this afternoon. And what about you not calling?”

  “I mean, we met in the ICU. So when that’s over, will just we decide we don’t need each other? I don’t know, and it’s not because I haven’t thought about it. I really don’t know how anything in my life is going to work out at this point.”

  Olive didn’t say anything. She just looked down for a minute, and pushed herself closer to me on the couch. We ate more Chinese food in the flickering blue TV light that means safety and relaxation to most of the industrialized world. And sometime between the heroine’s last stand against the undead madman and the movie’s credits, I surprised myself, if not Olive, with a fourth time on the rug. I remember thrusting inside her and stopping, as far inside of her as my honest Irish penis would go.

  “Come on,” she said.

  “I just want to be inside you, to stay there a minute.”

  “That’s not what this is,” she said, bucking her legs and arching her body against me.

  44.

  Friday, January 9—Sunday, January 12

  I woke with fried rice in my navel to the sounds of Olive rooting around the apartment. I wondered whether to act awake or not. It sounded like she was having trouble finding one sock in particular. She leaned down to give me a kiss good-bye. I heard the heavy wooden front door of the apartment swing shut with a squeak and a slam, and then heard no more. When I really woke, two hours later, it was because I couldn’t breathe. My nose was clogged and my throat was tight. A long hot shower left me not much better. I moved through the apartment as if it was full of water, and was winded by the time I cleaned up the Chinese food. I had a wicked cold, as they say.

  Sniffling sick, the next three days passed without vivid sensations. The sounds grated, the conversations dragged. I saw Dad at the hospital, saw Mom at her apartment and fended off her attempts to cure the incurable common cold. I drove like an old man, too subdued for all the machinery rushing around me. I watched football and football highlights until I hated football. I piled blankets over myself and watched the people on TV do their asinine thing for a grateful nation. In an exhausted and sleepless twilight, my eyes unfocused themselves for hours on end, lost in the eyeball noise of the TV. Each sniffle and cough affirmed my withdrawal from e-
mail, from the gym, from the phone.

  I called Olive to say I was sick and that’s why I might not answer her calls. She asked if she should come over. Then I gave Serena the same call. She said to get some Echinacea and drink a lot of fluids. I withdrew again to my bubble of fever and flickering. It seemed like something more than a cold, more than a mild flu, was at work. A huge wave of exhaustion had crashed on me. It was an excuse to not be altogether there in the hospital, or with Mom, or with the TV.

  After a few days drifted by like a dream of nonexistence and sweatpants, I wished the sickness would continue. Sunday, the Patriots won their way to the AFC Championship. I watched it in the hospital with Dad and Gerry. I was sweating and so feverish that I actually thought their victory might benefit me in some way.

  Sunday night, after a nap, I woke more normal than I’d prefer. I watched highlights from the Patriots game on a half dozen channels and couldn’t figure out why I had thought myself so blessed a few hours earlier. Stinking with sedentary sweat, I pulled up the blankets and tried to unfocus my eyes, but the TV was telling me very definite things—things that reminded me I shouldn’t watch so much TV. It meant I was getting better. I stayed under the blankets until it was uncomfortable. Then I picked up my book on Worcester and read for a few hours.

  They don’t write too many histories of middling cities. A lifetime Worcester local wrote the book, trying to loosen the grip that cold, plain irrelevance had on the city. I flipped forward to the slim section on post-war Worcester. The city’s population fell by thirty thousand people between 1950 and the end of the century. The histories of middling cities tell the story of how fortune can take you halfway and leave you there.

  Take Route 9, take Worcester—the hand of God touched neither, nor does either place have much you can’t find elsewhere. It’s not the home of the lost tribe, nor the site of Olympian grandeur. So why care? They are defeating questions to ask about any place or about any person. I couldn’t answer it, and that was my answer—I too was irrelevant. Maybe that was the reason for the rage of the New Englander.

  With such thoughts gathering, my phone rang.

  45.

  Monday, January 12

  I didn’t recognize the number, but saw it was from the 508 area code. And 508 is where it all started. This thing that encompasses everything I know, everything I can imagine. This thing that I’m told is common enough to pass without remark. This thing called my life began in the 508 area code.

  “Jim, where are you?” Joe asked immediately.

  I could hear a car engine and muzak behind him.

  “The fucking Vatican. Where do you think? It’s like three in the morning.”

  “It’s four. Can I come over?”

  “To the house, my dad’s place? In Westborough?”

  “Yeah. I’ll explain later. I’m in trouble and I need to figure out what to do. Can I come there for the night?”

  I gave him the apartment number and hung up. I looked out the window. Route 9 was empty and the sky clear, with a half moon hanging over it all. I thought of the distance to Worcester. The problem was distance, always distance. The distance was too much to make its stone-strewn farmland worth the trouble, then too far off to bring troops in time to chase out the Indians, too far to bother fighting the British over. My phone rang again. I didn’t recognize the number.

  “Is he with you? Don’t lie to me,” Ira Volpe said over the phone. I could hear a smattering of voices behind him.

  “What are you talking about? I’m fucking sleeping. I have the flu.”

  “Joe Rousseau. We waited and waited for your boy to come home and he never did. We finally executed the warrant. Did you warn him off?”

  “No. I’ve been comatose with the flu the last two days. I haven’t spoken to anyone but my dad and his friends at the hospital,” I said hauspital like it was a magic spell. The phlegm lodged in the back of my throat had forced the proper Massachusetts pronunciation on me.

  “You better not be jerking me around, or our deal is off and I will make sure your boy goes into the darkest, deepest hole in all of MCI. If he calls, tell him to turn himself in. Then call me.”

  “I will. What did you find in his apartment?” I asked him.

  Ira paused for a moment, taking a breath as if to speak, then hung up on me. My hiatus was over and I was back. Joe showed up wild-eyed with a plastic bag full of beers. His hair was out of its ponytail and hung almost to his shoulders. I was still in Dad’s sweatshirt and sweatpants, unshaven and pale. I guess I looked like even more hell than that.

  “Jesus, you having a nervous breakdown?” Joe said as he edged into the apartment.

  “Just the flu. What’s going on? I’m not an accessory after the fact, am I?”

  “Only if I tell you what I did.”

  “Cute.”

  “What’s the matter, man? Is this a bad time? I can go somewhere else. Actually no, I can’t,” Joe said, cackling.

  “Sorry man, I’m just sick. I’m glad you came out.”

  We sat down on the couch and Joe opened a beer. The can was big and had a picture of a cartoon alligator on it. He offered me one and I passed. He asked me what I thought of our president elect. He was a man that a quarter of adults liked, a quarter didn’t, and half couldn’t be bothered to vote for or against. There was more to it than that, enough to debate, and we did. It was normal talk, a tea ceremony in a besieged town. Joe finished his alligator beer, took a deep breath and looked at me plainly.

  “So, the story is that I may be going to jail. The cops busted into my apartment with a warrant and found my stash. It’s not a lot, because I sold most of it over the weekend. But it’s enough for distribution charges, probably. Marissa called when I was at Escalita’s and told me. I’m trying to figure out what to do.”

  “Jesus. Well, what are your options?”

  “I was thinking them over on my way here. I have about six hundred dollars on me. Is it okay if I wait to pay you back?”

  “Sure. That’s fine. So what are you thinking of doing?”

  “That’s the question. Running doesn’t make much sense. My money will run out and they’ll find me if I try to get another job.”

  “You could stay at my place in New York, figure things out there. But I don’t know if the picture will be much different. You should call a lawyer, see what you’re up against, and then figure things out from there.”

  Joe opened another can and looked around the apartment. He leaned back on the couch and nodded his head.

  “This place is nice. It seems well built, well maintained. You can smell the paint and the carpet glue in the hallway.”

  “Is that what that is? I just thought it smelled like warm plastic.”

  “Man, why can’t you just like things?” Joe asked me.

  I opened my mouth to answer, but had no answer for my mouth to make.

  “My bad attitude toward Dad’s apartment is not the most pressing issue right now,” I protested, and we returned to the age-old question of fight or flight. Neither prospect looked good.

  “It’s all connected now. With the internet and just the kind of checks they do when you apply for a job, open a bank account, rent an apartment or even buy a stereo, they would find you.”

  “There’s got to be another option. I’m just not thinking this through,” Joe said, rubbing his face.

  “It’s almost six, let’s get some sleep. You can stay here for a day or two. I don’t know how hard they’re looking for you.”

  Getting up, my head spun. The flu still had a hand in me, and I steadied myself on the arm of the couch. I went to the room I occupied and dragged my inflatable bed out into the living room. Joe was already spread out on the couch when I got back. I turned off the lights. It was a sleepover, like when we were kids.

  “I hope I don’t get put in a cell with Matt O’Brien,” Joe said.

  “You won’t.”

  “Remember that girl Barbara?”

  “Maybe. When wer
e you with her?”

  “When I was a bouncer at the Lucky Dog. The Dominican girl with an ass like a shelf, and super nice. Remember we e-mailed about her? You told me to tell her about the genital warts.”

  “Oh yeah. You really liked her,” I said.

  A car pulled out of the Fountainhead parking lot below, and a rectangle of light collapsed as it crossed the ceiling of our shared darkness.

  “When she went back to D.R., she wanted me to go with her. I wish I had. None of this would have happened. I am a fucking moron.”

  “Well, you probably had your reasons for not going.”

  “Yeah, I guess. She was getting jealous and generally not letting me have any fun by that point. I think she went back as part of an ultimatum. But maybe she saw this coming in her own weird way. She was a smart girl. She would know what I was thinking before I did sometimes.”

  “It’s not that hard to figure out what you’re thinking most of the time.”

  “True, true. Still, I wonder what might have happened if I’d gone with her.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up. You probably would’ve found a way to get yourself into trouble down there.”

  “Thanks, buddy. You’re a ray of sunshine over there.”

  “I’m just saying. Being some other place doesn’t change who you are, or the type of things you do.”

  “True. True. Character is destiny, as the Greek said. But do they have an extradition treaty?”

  “The Greeks?”

  “No, the Dominican Republic.”

  “You can look it up tomorrow,” I said, with sleep beginning to slur my words.

  46.

  Joe snored like a hippopotamus sauntering through a wood chipper. But I still managed to sleep until noon. Through his guttural rumbling, I shaved and showered the last of the sickness off of me. Well if not strong, wary if not anxious, I drove off into the cold, bright Monday. Volpe called, sounding tired and beaten as I drove past the Cineplex wedged into the joint of Routes 9 and 135.