The Boys from Eighth and Carpenter

by Tom Mendicino

  He wishes he had one of the boy’s cigarettes now. The bright sun is burning off the last lingering traces of the slight morning chill. The brilliant yellow forsythia are in full flower and the magnolias are just beginning to blossom. He crosses the street, against the light; a truck driver, forced to swerve into the opposite lane to avoid hitting him, leans out his window and calls him a stupid fucker.

  “What you doin’ home, Mr. G?” Jocelyn asks in her West Indian lilt when he walks through the front door.

  “The trains aren’t running, Jocelyn. I’ll have to drive into town. I need the keys to the Pathfinder.”

  The adrenaline rush from the accident is fading quickly. His briefcase feels like it’s packed with bricks. He’s exhausted, his legs too heavy to lift. The staircase is as forbidding as the Matterhorn. He wants to collapse on the nearest sofa but someone is vacuuming in the front room. There’s a mop and bucket in the foyer. The cleaning lady smiles shyly, acknowledging his presence without speaking. She doesn’t know his name, can’t call him anything but señor. They’re at equal disadvantage. She could be Consuela or Carmen or Maria, from Guatemala or Nicaragua or Peru. He doesn’t know if she’s the same woman who scrubbed the kitchen floor on Tuesday or the one who will wash his socks and fold his towels next week.

  Somehow he finds the energy to climb the stairs to the bedroom. He needs to call the priest to let him know he’s running late and to expect him in an hour. But first he needs a few minutes, five or ten, to rest. He locks the bedroom door, kicks off his shoes, but doesn’t bother to undress. He’s too tired to pull back the sheets. (Kit is incapable of leaving an unmade bed, even when it’s scheduled to be stripped before noon.) The reel keeps playing after he closes his eyes. One second, she was a manic dervish, alive, charged by surges of fear and anxiety, surrounded by a nimbus of crackling energy that propelled her onto the tracks and into the face of a moving train. Then, at a speed faster than can be measured by time, she was nothing but a butchered carcass, perfectly still, lifeless. He finally collapses into something more profound than sleep, a black hole, no, a tunnel, and he’s running from the train that’s bearing down on him.

  Connie is already setting up for the first client when Frankie arrives shortly before nine.

  “When did you get back? How was the show? God, I’d love to see Jersey Boys. Have I ever told you Frankie Valli is my mother’s second cousin twice removed?”

  Only once a week for nine years, he wants to say.

  He feels liberated, not having Jack or his brother watching his every move. He and the priest had argued this morning. Of course he was going directly to the shop. Why would he wait for Michael? He has a business to run, he’d insisted. He’d snapped at Jack when the priest insisted on walking him home.

  “Did anyone complain when you called to cancel?”

  “One or two. Just the usual impossible-to-please bitches. I told them you didn’t pick the day for the funeral. Of course, I didn’t mention you were also taking a mental health day in New York. Not that you don’t deserve it.”

  “Thank God,” he says, looking at the schedule. “All wash-and-sets this morning.”

  “Oh, there was one strange thing yesterday,” Connie remembers as Frankie chooses the rollers he’ll need. “I’d finished going through the appointment book and was about to make the last call when that woman started banging on the front door.”

  “Who?” he asks, feeling his heartbeat accelerate.

  “I saw you talking with her the other morning. The woman with the kid. She was acting like she was high on something. Her hair was dirty and she wasn’t wearing makeup. Blond. Not a natural. Not a professional job, either. Strictly Lady Clairol. She kept trying the door, but I told her we were closed for a funeral. She got really pissed off when I wouldn’t unlock it.”

  His heart is racing now.

  “What did she want?”

  “How do you know this skank, Frankie? She wanted to know if I’d seen Mariano.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her he left. She wanted to come in. Said the little boy needed to use the bathroom.”

  “Did you let them in?”

  “Are you crazy? I knew I’d never get them out of here.”

  “Did she ask where he’d gone?”

  “I didn’t like the tone of her voice. I said I’d driven him to the bus station myself, but he wouldn’t say where he was going.”

  Connie’s proud of her resourcefulness. She asks Frankie if he’s okay because he looks like he’s been shot by a stun gun.

  “Fine. I’m fine,” he says, trying to look cheerful as he unlocks the door to let Monica Delfina into the shop.

  “Mr. G, Mr. G. Missus wants you to call her.”

  He’s awakened by the nanny’s insistent rapping on the bedroom door. He opens his eyes and stares at the ceiling. He hasn’t moved since falling on the mattress. He’s sweating and his clothes are damp and sticky. He rolls on his side and stares at the face of the alarm clock.

  One forty-three.

  “I’m up!” he shouts, swallowing the sludge that gathered in his throat as he slept.

  He rolls off the bed and reaches for the phone in the pocket of his pants. Eighteen voice messages and thirty-two texts have been received since he turned off his phone at the train station. Kit answers on the first ring. Her voice sounds concerned.

  “Michael, what’s going on? My calls went straight to voice mail. What’s the matter? Jocelyn says you’ve been asleep all day. Are you still hungover?” she asks.

  “No. I’m not hungover.”

  “Your office tracked me down in New York. They said you called out and they haven’t been able to reach you since early this morning.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You sound strange. Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” she asks, growing more distressed.

  “I saw a woman get hit by the train this morning.”

  “Oh my God,” she gasps. “Is she okay?”

  “What do you think?” he asks, regretting his brittle, sarcastic tone. He hears the clacking keyboard on her end of the call. She’s accessing the Action News Web site, seeking the facts.

  “Good Lord,” she utters, obviously having found a link to the breaking headlines. “It says the dog survived.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I don’t know. How would I know? They took it, I suppose.”

  “Poor little thing must be traumatized.”

  “It seemed all right.”

  “And what about you? How are you?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “I can be on the next train home.”

  “Don’t. Please. I mean, I’m okay. I really am,” he swears.

  His sense of time is distorted. He tries shaking off the fog of confusion.

  “What day is this?” he asks.

  “It’s Thursday, Michael. I think I should come back.”

  “No. No. I’m fine. I just need a moment.”

  “Are you sure? The negotiations aren’t going as well as I’d hoped. I’m going to be late. Tell Danny I wish I could be at his game tonight. You’re going to have to cheer loud enough for both of us,” she says before hanging up.

  He skips through his messages, searching for one from Walter Rudenstein. The first is an unfamiliar voice, heavily accented. The caller identifies himself as an attending physician at Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh and asks Mr. Gagliano to return his call. Jack Centafore has made several phone calls; Frankie insisted on going home and refused to cancel his daily schedule. His heartbeat accelerates at the thought of Frankie being unsupervised and on his own. Calm down, breathe, he tells himself. Jack Centafore said he’d walked him back to the shop and the shampoo girl can keep an eye on him until Michael arrives. He’ll call her as soon as he gets through his messages, deleting any from his wife or his office until he reaches the one he’s been awaiting.

  Michael, it’s Walter Rudenstein. I understand
you need to talk to me. It’s ten fifteen. Ask my assistant, Susan, to put you through when you call back.

  It’s nearly two now. His carefully-thought-out plan for the day has been shot to hell. He’d wanted to allow Frankie several hours to absorb the enormity of the profound changes about to occur in his life before calling Walter Rudenstein. By now they should be sitting in the lawyer’s office while Walter speaks to the Dowager Empress (Walter Rudenstein, of course, has direct access to the District Attorney herself) making arrangements for Frankie to surrender himself and securing her agreement to instruct her adjutants to not oppose his request for a nominal bail at his preliminary arraignment on charges of manslaughter. He realizes how jumpy he is when he’s startled by the ring tone of the phone he’s holding in his hand. Frankie’s number flashes on the screen.

  “Michael?”

  The voice is vaguely familiar, but he can’t associate it with a name or a face.

  “Michael, it’s Connie. Frankie’s assistant.”

  He tenses, sensing something’s amiss if the shampoo girl is calling on his brother’s phone.

  “Michael, just let him know his phone is here when you pick him up. He’s going to panic if he thinks he lost it.”

  “He isn’t there?” he asks, sounding as nonchalant as possible under the circumstances.

  “No, he left. He said his car is out there and you were taking him to pick it up.”

  Michael had forgotten the impounded car. Monday night feels like a lifetime ago.

  “He was rushing to meet you and must have forgotten his phone,” Connie says. “I told him to call the station first to ask if the trains were running on schedule after that accident this morning. It’s all that Jackie Fontana could talk about when she was in the chair. She saw it on the local news. They said the woman was chasing a dog. I think it happened out near you. Michael? Are you there?”

  “Yes,” he says, unable to process this unexpected news and needing to force himself to speak. “Tell me again. What did he say he was going to do?”

  “He said he was taking a train to meet you and you were going to take him to pick up his car.”

  He has a vivid flashback to the grisly aftermath of the tragedy he’d witnessed on the station platform. But the dead flesh he sees scattered along the tracks aren’t pieces of a woman, a stranger. The butchered body is his brother’s.

  “When did he leave?”

  “I don’t know. Fifteen minutes ago maybe.”

  “Which station was he leaving from?”

  “He didn’t say. Thirtieth Street, I guess. He borrowed twenty dollars for cab fare and a train ticket.”

  He shouts for Jocelyn as he jams his feet into a pair of Nikes beside the bed. He strips off the damp dress shirt he’s slept in and shoves his wallet and badge into his wrinkled suit pants. He doesn’t waste precious minutes changing his T-shirt.

  “Jocelyn!” he screams with a pitched urgency in his voice. The nanny looks hesitant, even a bit frightened, as she appears in the doorway.

  “Where are the keys to the Pathfinder?”

  “On the counter,” she says, following him down the staircase, arguing she needs the car to pick up Danny at school. He slams the door, cutting her off, and peels out of the driveway. He tears through the meandering back roads to the entrance of the expressway, praying there are no bottlenecks created by roadwork or an accident. The steering wheel is slick with sweat and his cotton undershirt is sticking to his skin. Angry drivers blast their horns as he weaves between lanes, cutting them off. There’s a metallic screech as he sideswipes the concrete median and he nearly loses control of the vehicle, coming close to capsizing to avoid rear-ending a cement truck. He ignores the traffic light at the top of the exit ramp and jumps the sidewalk, parking at the station door. Startled commuters scatter, probably fearing a terrorist attack. A pair of transit cops pursue him on foot and he spins on his heel and flashes his badge without breaking stride. He races through the majestic marble waiting room and bounds up the stairs that lead to the commuter platform at the far end of the station.

  A lone woman is arguing with someone on her cell phone. Michael paces the entire length of the platform, though it’s obvious Frankie has already boarded a train that has left the station. If, in fact, he’s on a train at all. No matter. He’s gone. Michael’s let him slip through his fingers. A pair of Philadelphia cops, one of whom remembers Michael from his days with the city DA, are conferring with the Amtrak police at the station entrance. They’re all members of the fraternity of law enforcement and ask if there is any way they can be of assistance. He thanks them for the generous offer and drives away.

  Frankie finds the last unoccupied seat on the airport express train in a car overrun with boisterous high school girls headed to a soccer tournament in North Carolina. The conductor has raised the white flag, abandoning any effort to collect tickets and impose some modicum of order. The ride is one long Chinese fire drill with everyone competing to prove she can shout the loudest. A roll of Mentos is making its way through the car and Frankie politely declines the offer of a mint. Headphones are passed from girl to girl, prompting squeals and outbursts.

  He’d had to abandon the original plan to drive to the freight yard near the cargo terminals since his car is still in the possession of the suburban police. He’s improvising, traveling on the same form of transportation he’ll use to end his life. He’ll ride to the airport, the end of the line, then walk the length of the platform where he’ll wait for the next incoming train to approach. A sudden stop sends one of the soccer players tumbling into his lap. She giggles, prompting an outburst of laughter from her teammates.

  “Sorry,” she halfheartedly apologizes as she struggles to stand, but the car is rolling again and the rocking makes it difficult for her to steady herself.

  One of the taller girls grabs her wrist and pulls her to her feet, calling her a doofus.

  “Are you all right, sir?” the Samaritan asks. “She didn’t hurt you, did she?”

  “Thanks. I’m fine. No damage.”

  The tall girl’s gaze makes him uncomfortable, as if she can read his mind and knows his intentions.

  “Are you sure?” she asks again, seeming genuinely concerned.

  “Yes. I’m fine.”

  She asks where he’s from and where he’s traveling to.

  “Florida,” he says, naming the first place that comes to mind.

  “My uncle lives in Florida. Fort Lauderdale. He and his boyfriend have a condo on the beach. They’re old guys, too,” she says matter-of-factly.

  Cheerful mayhem erupts as the train arrives at the airport station. The girls good-naturedly jostle one another, racing to be the first to grab her travel duffel from the overhead luggage rack. Frankie sits patiently until he’s alone in the car. The platform is deserted as he exits the door. The earbuds of his iPod are a snug fit and he cranks up the volume of Stevie’s greatest hits. He places his wallet with his ID where it will be easily found and faces the rail tracks, transported by “Landslide” as he waits.

  The evening rush begins in mid-afternoon and the expressway will be log-jammed by now. Michael decides to drive home through the city. The ramshackle row houses and crumbling bodegas begin to give way to tidy neighborhoods of well-kept bungalows with manicured lawns and finally to wide residential streets canopied by ancient trees that camouflage the large and stately stone houses set back far from the road.

  He’s deflated, resigned to accepting he’s powerless to change the course of fate. All he can do is sit in his comfortable home and wait. He pours a glass of bourbon and collapses on the nearest sofa. In hindsight, he realizes he’d missed all the obvious signs.

  Monday night, driving Frankie back to Philadelphia.

  Just take me to the nearest train station, Mikey. It’s late and I can get back home on my own.

  Yesterday, on the New Jersey Turnpike, the call from the priest.

  He got very agitated and wanted me to drop him at the Trenton
train station. He said he was transferring at Thirtieth Street and you were picking him up in Wayne.

  This morning, being awakened by his most terrifying nightmare. Papa believed dreams were prophecies not to be ignored.

  His phone is ringing. Walter Rudenstein is calling again and, getting no answer, leaves another message.

  “Michael, I’ll be leaving my office shortly. Reach me on my cell phone if you still need to speak to me.”

  The walls of the house are closing in on him. The bourbon doesn’t relax him. He’s pacing between rooms, trying to assure himself his fears are foolish. He’d jumped to conclusions and is making assumptions with no basis in fact. He’s overreacting. Imagining catastrophes. Thinking like his father. Papa was a superstitious old peasant. You can’t read the future in dreams. It will be a long haul until this journey is over and he can’t allow himself to go crazy at every little bump in the road. It’s post-traumatic stress, this obsession with trains and death. It’s poisoning his judgment, scrambling his logic, affecting his ability to think clearly. The shampoo girl said Frankie was leaving for Wayne. He’s coming to retrieve his car. He may be at the station now and Michael isn’t there to greet him.

  He snatches the cut flowers Kit has delivered twice weekly to fill the enormous Ballard family heirloom vase to contribute to the tributes that strangers will have left on the platform to commemorate this morning’s tragedy. He’d been cynical as a younger man, mocking the impromptu memorials for accident and crime victims until he’d found himself quietly crying as he stood before the stuffed animals and bouquets, the poems and balloons, left in remembrance of Carmine Torino.