by Dan Newman
Because of me, Trots is out of pocket $6,000, plus his daily, which is mounting fast. I’m sure that if all goes to plan, I’ll finally be in a position to start making good on the money I owe him, but in the strategy I had laid out I need his anger for me to be sharp. That’s why I’d sent the rather abrupt message through Bosco, and why I’d made sure not to run into Trots since. When he does see me he’ll need to be mad, and he’ll need to see me in a place where he can do something about it.
After my shift at Dory’s, and after a few choice words from Rhona on the questionable quality of my work of late, I take a streetcar back to my apartment and go through the paper draft of my plan one more time. I feel exhilarated at the prospect of its birth—like a kid when he finally gets that balsa-wood airplane finished and hustles his way to the park to let it fly. Part excitement, part dread: according to the instructions, the thing should fly. But there’s always the chance that it’ll roll over and nosedive straight to hell.
At six o’clock I head for the train station wearing a pair of old jeans, a worn-out T-shirt and a gaudy Giants sweatshirt I never wear, sent by my aunt as a present. My clothing choice is deliberate: all of it expendable. My exhilaration is turning to something else, something less light and buoyant—something heavy that seems to be growing in my gut and pulling the lining of my stomach downward. I’ve never put myself in the way of violence before, and as I look toward Union Station from the relative safety of the traffic lights, I realize that this part of my plan, if it goes wrong, could potentially change or even end my life. I’m scared…and there’s no other way to put it.
The light changes and I cross the street with a throng of others: businesspeople, tourists, shoppers and more, all crossing Main Street and making their way toward the station. It’s a Thursday night and both pedestrian and automobile traffic is fairly heavy. For this very reason it’s an easy night to find Trots; he’ll be taking action from his regulars tonight, and making a few specialty sales on the side as well. Up ahead I see his cornrowed hair a full head above the crowd, bent forward, talking with a customer. Beside him is Bosco, clad as always in his black Adidas tracksuit, a smoldering butt hanging from his mouth.
I veer away from them, careful not to be seen seeing them. I angle myself so as to approach obliquely, setting up my path so that at the last minute Bosco, but not Trots, should see me. I walk toward them with my head held high, trying to appear as nonchalant as possible. A few feet from the two, I see Bosco look directly at me for a moment—I see this in my peripheral vision—and then I am past. The urge to look back over my shoulder is powerful, but I walk on, and carry out my route as I had planned it.
I stride through the front doors of the station, through the great hall with its high ceilings and marble walls, past the ticketing booths and convenience stores, and on toward the men’s room. As I turn the corner into the washrooms, the urge to flick a quick look back is so overwhelming I almost falter. A man emerges from the wide entranceway and jockeys with me to get past, and the distraction proves enough to get me in without glancing back.
The men’s room at Union Station is a massive affair, designed to cope with the bladders and bowels of thousands of commuters every day. It’s essentially a wide room divided by a freestanding wall down the center lined with steel basins and mirrors. To the left of the wall are the urinals, lining the entire length of the room, while to the right is a series of stalls. For the size of the place, it is remarkably clean and at the moment, only two other men are there: one is washing his hands and the other combing his hair in the mirror.
I walk to the urinals and strike the familiar pose, then move to the sinks once the two men have departed. I wash my hands thoroughly, killing time, waiting for Trots. An eternity seems to pass, and I begin to wonder if Bosco’s limited intellect has failed him. If it has, I’ll need to regroup, get out of the station and pass the two a second time—this time letting Trots see me himself.
It’s incredible how quickly your legs can betray you.
On the floor of the washroom I am aware only of blood dripping from my nose. I know it’s blood because I watch it spatter on the white tile of the floor. It’s an odd sensation, because blood seems to have the ability to hang onto itself, and I can see my nose getting longer as the drips gather and fall, each time stretching the length of the red ribbon below me. I think for an instant of Pinocchio, and my red streak of nose grows longer.
I am confused. There’s a force on my shoulder, and then I’m rolling onto my side. It’s not a violent feeling, just a determined force pressing into me, pushing me sideways and over. As I come to rest I can see it’s a large boot, a boot attached to an even larger black man. It’s Trots, and he’s smiling.
I look around, still bewildered, but starting to vaguely remember the fact that I’m the architect of this situation. There’s no one else in the washroom, save the figure by the doorway with his back to us. I can tell by the outfit that it’s Bosco.
“Joey, man,” Trots says in his deep West Indian-accented voice. “Where you be, man? Me look fah you plenty time, but me nah fine you.” He stoops down to my level and peers at my forehead. “You arright, man? Dat some cut you got dere, man.” He laughs and stands up. I hear Bosco saying something to someone by the door, most likely turning people away.
My senses return now, and with them a sharp pain in my hairline. I reach up and touch it, which hurts, and my fingers come away bloody. I look up at Trots and remember that my plan called for me to look scared at this point. It strikes me as ridiculous now, because I’m no longer playing a role here, and my fear is anything but an act. I cower away from him, and I see immediately that he’s pleased.
“Wha’ wrong, man? You scare I gon bos you face some?”
I raise my arms just in time to meet his boot, this time sent at me with a quick jab. I take it down the forearm and feel the skin beneath the sleeve gather and pull away. “Wait…please, Trots.”
My fear, all of it real, is something he’s enjoying. It’s a factor I’m counting on.
“Where my damn money?” he says, the word money coming out like the French painter. He drops his foot onto me again, driving the wind from my chest.
I scuttle backward as best I can, struggling to take a breath. With no air in my lungs I can’t speak, can’t tell him what I need to tell him. Panic washes through me like a cold current, and I realize my plan and I could both die here. I fight to breathe, heaving, wheezing, making small grunts and squeaks. Trots follows me, but holds off the beating. I reason that he needs me alive to collect his money. He puts his hands in one of the pockets of his green military-style pants, and pulls out a straight razor, which he slowly opens in front of me.
“Man, I gon cut yah trowt clean troo. ’Less you can forward I some dollars.” His eyes are almost sympathetic, and I struggle harder to find my voice. I nod frantically, eyes fixed on the straight razor in his hand, dreading the damage he could do with a simple flick of his wrist. Finally I have sufficient air to form a word. “Yes,” I say. “Cash.”
His West Indian drawl is slow and melodic. “You have my cyash, man?”
“No, not right now.”
The razor arcs upward.
“No!” I say as loud as I can. “I have something better, plus your money, I swear!” I sound convincing—desperation will do that—terrified as I am of the disfigurement the razor can so swiftly deliver. “I know where you can put your hands on an easy twenty grand. Real simple, I swear.” I gasp for breath, one hand raised hesitantly against the razor’s imminent flash. “And I’ll get you every penny I owe you. I swear Trots. I’ve missed a few payments, yeah, but you know I’d never screw with you, right?”
The number stops him cold and the razor glides slowly back down to his side. I watch it intensely; it has become the central facet of my life, and when blood momentarily runs into my eye I flail at myself, wiping frantically. I cannot lose sight of the blade for even an instant, because I know that’s when he’ll use it.
“What you talk ’bout, man?” he says quietly. He is right where I want him, and now, with blood in my eyes and death only a single slash away, I must make my play.
I am scared of what Trots can do to me right now. He holds the blade casually by his side, swinging it in his hand as he talks, as he moves. He holds it as casually as I might hold a pen, and that frightens me still more. It is like watching a child with a loaded revolver.
I rub my eyes with jerky, panicked movements. For that instant I’m blinded and my fear squeezes at me with renewed vigor, tensing my muscles to tearing point, crushing my bladder. I see Trots’s face through a red filter, which clears gradually in a flurry of blinks, fingers, knuckles, and thumbs.
“What you talk ’bout, man?” Trots says again, flicking the blade momentarily toward me. “What twenty-towsand?”
“There’s a girl,” I begin, praying he will believe me. “There’s a student at the university. She’s selling and making a ton of cash. She’s a rich kid, and she’s hooked into all the rich dopeheads on campus.”
Trots’s face is wrinkled in question. I can’t afford an error here, so I press on before he can form the question on his face. “She’s a bored rich kid. Works a regular routine, including a cash run every three weeks. I swear it’s true, Trots. I swear.”
“How you know dis?” he asks, pointing the razor at me. “How you know all ’bout dis cyash run?”
“I’ve been watching her, for months now. I was gonna take it myself, so I could pay you back, and…” I swallow hard—my voice is squeaking and threatening to quit. “And keep the rest for myself.” I glance about the bathroom rapidly and take in the scene: sinks above me, shards of a shattered mirror around me. I realize suddenly that it’s my face that shattered the mirror.
The big West Indian stoops close to me and for the first time I can smell him: cheap cologne, tobacco, and sweat. “Tell me ’bout dis woman,” he says.
And I do.
• • •
As I wake the pain wakes with me, clawing at my sides and lancing me with every move I make. In the mirror I check the damage from the night before: The skin on my forehead has a weight all of its own, seeming to tug downward with every step, blurring my vision with the brightness of the pain. The bleeding has stopped overnight, and the T-shirt I had pressed to my forehead fights me as I try to remove it. It’s hard and angular with dried blood, and when it finally peels away fresh pearls of pinky-red blood well up through the scabbing.
My right side is the color of rainclouds, shades of blue and black, and where it has yet to scab over, the mangled skin on my right forearm weeps tiny bubbles of clear plasma. Still, these physical injuries will pass; what really scares me is this new sense of doubt. Somewhere in the night, between refusing a stranger’s help and stumbling gracelessly home, somewhere on the darkened, cooling streets of the city, faith in my plan evaporated. I have accomplished what I set out to do at the train station, and I have come away with the result I wanted in hand. So why am I so shaken? Why do I suddenly feel a sense of hopelessness? It’s the girl, I think. Chloe.
I have now drawn her into the plan completely. Up until last night, until my face shattered the mirror on the men’s room wall, the plan was just so much shadowboxing. It was a series of mute maneuvers, a cocky solo diatribe in a closed room. But all that has changed. The plan has become real, and will unfold with its own momentum. Innocent people are now part of it, and that reality is cold and without comfort of any kind. Dr. Coyle said it out loud—that word that I never let settle: Unreasonable. I think that whatever you’re planning has some measure of risk to innocent bystanders that you know is unreasonable.
I think about last night, and wonder how I found myself at Union Station, wonder how I convinced myself that all this nonsense was something I could really play out. I think about it enough to scare myself, on two fronts: first, I see now that Trots could have killed me. Second, I am scared because my own counsel has been so off-the-charts awful. I stare at the bare wall, at the dripping faucet over the kitchen sink, at the hotplate.
Carpe EVERYTHING, Roly.
Professor Bowman’s face flashes before me for a second, and I wonder if he ever hit a tough spot in life. Did he know what it was like to wake up one morning and realize that you had completely betrayed yourself? That your sense of direction, your sense of fair-mindedness, your belief in yourself as a shaper of your own future had just gotten up and walked away?
“What am I doing?” I whisper. I can feel my eyes flicking about the room now, looking for I don’t know what, but stoking some fiery panic with each glance. I have thrown the switch in this lunatic plan, like throttling up in a plane I have never learned to fly. I hold my head in my hands and feel the panic rising. It comes from my chest, I think, expanding outward and engulfing me like a dust storm, filling every part of me, owning me.
Down, down I go.
• • •
Hours later, I wake. I am curled on my futon, hands wrapped around my knees, and it’s some time before I move. There’s light coming in through the window, and the clock by my head says it’s nearly noon. I have a shift at Dory’s today—or at least I did, at eight thirty this morning.
I move to the bathroom and shower, cupping my hand around the cut in my forehead, wincing as the water and soap conspire against me. I dress, put an old baseball cap on, and make my way into the street, walking slowly and keeping my gaze on the sidewalk in front of me. On the streetcar I can feel stares but I’m too bruised to care. I get off a block from Dory’s and walk the rest of the way, and wonder if I should go in at all.
Inside, I see Rhona at the counter. She looks up as I come in through the doors, and dismisses me with a heavily drawn breath. Only when I am closer does she acknowledge me, all cold and prickly until she sees the bruises and the hitch in my gait.
“Roland? What the Christ?” She abandons the line of customers and comes over to me with open arms and unlimited compassion. She walks me into her office, sits me down, and puts a hot cup of coffee in my hands. “Let me just get rid of these, wait here…”
I watch her dispatch the customers, glancing back at me occasionally and locking the door behind the last one. She hurries back into the office and squats before me, cupping my face in her soft hands. “What in God’s name happened?”
I stare back at her, unable to tell her all that I am thinking, all that I am feeling.
“Did you get attacked?” Her hands flutter to my forehead and quickly shed the cap and bandage. “Oh, Roland. How on earth…”
“I got mugged is all,” I say, my voice hitching of its own accord.
She disappears for a moment and returns with a first aid kit and dabs at my forehead. “Have you told the police?”
I shake my head, thinking that the police are the last people I could turn to.
“What about a doctor? This is a serious cut, Roly. Where else are you hurt?”
I point, and she looks, biting her lower lip and gently touching me. She looks at me, into my eyes. I look back, and I know she knows there’s more here than a ten-dollar mugging, but she won’t ask. She draws me to her and hugs me, the first time ever, and it is an embrace I completely accept. It’s only a moment before I cry.
8
It’s been two full days since Rhona dressed my wounds and cradled me, and I’ve not left my apartment once. I needed time to retreat, to regroup. I told Rhona I needed some time, and she said she understood, and even offered to pay me out for a couple of eight-hour shifts. I’ve stayed in my room with the curtains drawn, the door locked, and mostly with the lights off. I know it seems dramatic, but I need the protection, the respite the darkness offers. But I’m moving now. Breaths that are slow and steady—or at least steadier.
I dial the numbers on the phone and hear the familiar, gruff voice on the other end. “Bowman,” he says, tired and slightly bored.
I take a breath and speak, reaching for casual and finding a bad facsimile. “Professor
Bowman, it’s me, Roly.”
There’s a pause, a millisecond of silence, but one into which I read volumes: he has forgotten all about me. Worse still, he’s embarrassed by my call, trapped and unable to dodge me.
“Surely not the great Roland Keene?” His voice is warm and welcoming; I can hear the smile on his face.
I’m relieved in proportions that make no sense, and catch myself flat-footed. “Yeah, it’s, uh, it’s me.”
“How the hell are you, Roly? Where are you?”
“I’m doing okay—living right downtown.” I scan the single room, the futon on the floor, the telephone. The hotplate.
“Are you working? Got a job?” Professor Bowman’s questions carry hope. I can tell he’s not prying; he’s hoping, willing me on. His enthusiasm for my life is like nectar, and I feel myself growing calmer as he talks, and it doesn’t matter much what he says.
We chat for a few minutes, popping and answering questions for each other, until the line goes quiet. Somehow he knows I have something to say, even if I’m not sure what it is. His tone is different as he speaks now. Calmer. Perhaps even fatherly. “So, what’s up, Roly? What’s going on?”
My response is automatic. “I just wanted to let you know that I did call Dr. Coyle.”
“That’s good, Roly. That’s really good.”
“Yeah. I’ve been meeting with her every week or so.”
“She’s great, isn’t she?”
I think back to that word: unreasonable. “Yeah. She’s great. Really.”
“That’s good, Roly.”
“So, thank you. I just wanted to say that. Thanks. Really.”
He pauses, and I can almost see him bobbing his old graying mane up and down. “You’ll be okay, Roly. You’ll be fine.”
And with that we both run dry. Mercifully, I hear a knock on his door in the background, a “Who is it?,” and a “Sorry, Roly, but I gotta go.”