by Hank Moody
“So,” says K., returning from a buzz-maintenance session in the bathroom. “Looks like you and Stella are hitting it off.”
“A little too well. We’ve moved right through the passion and the hot sex into the long, awkward silences.”
“You said you worked fast.”
“Touché,” I say, lifting a glass to toast her.
“Speaking of work … you don’t happen to be holding, do you?”
“Oh, I see,” I reply, my insult half-feigned. “I’m like your drug Sherpa.”
“It’s not like that. I just need something to take the edge off the blow. I can’t stand cocaine.”
“That hasn’t stopped you from Hoovering the stuff,” I say. My goal is to approximate one of Ray’s playful insults. What comes out, judging by K.’s reaction, is more like a slap in the face.
I backpedal as fast as my feet will take me. “Hell, no, lady. I’m just trying to alienate as many people as I can tonight with my piss-poor conversational skills. Congratulations. You’re my thousandth customer.”
Her smile returns. “You’re way too cute to be a drug dealer.”
“I really wish you’d stop calling me that.”
“Drug dealer?”
“Cute. ‘Cute’ is the kiss of death.”
Her eyes are suddenly full of what I hope I’m reading correctly as mischief. “My kisses haven’t killed anybody yet,” she says, sipping her mojito through a straw.
Are we flirting? My heart seems to think so, working double time to keep the blood flowing to my brain. “I guess I’ll have to take your word for it. Though to be honest, I’d like a little bit more to go on.”
Ray sweeps back into the scene, K.’s other friend still in tow. “Tenth yawn,” he says. “I’ve got to get this lady home before I turn into a pumpkin.”
The two women exchange air kisses and K. slides the rest of the blow into the pocket of her friend’s jeans. Ray pulls me close with a smooth combination of handshake and man-hug. “Yeah, boy!” he whispers—loud enough, I’m sure, for K. to hear. But she doesn’t show it.
“So,” she says when they’re gone. “Where were we?”
“I might have been misreading the tea leaves,” I reply, “but it seemed to me like we were negotiating.”
“Negotiating? What were we negotiating?”
“What else? Our first kiss.”
And then it happens—resting one hand against my cheek, she touches her lips to mine. Softly, gently swiping her tongue over mine. ‘See?” she says. “You’re still alive.”
“Could be a fluke. We’re going to have to try that again.” This time I pull her toward me. Our lips lock, then part, tentative tongue-swipes giving way to more enthusiastic exploration. I feel a deep stirring in my loins—the Motorola.
“I think you’re vibrating,” she says.
I pull the pager out of my pocket and put it on the table. Tana’s phone number glows from the alphanumeric display.
“Work?” asks K.
“Not tonight.” I move back in for another kiss.
The table rumbles as the pager vibrates again, startling K. Then she smiles.
“Girlfriend,” she says.
“Not that, either,” I insist, staring at the “911” Tana’s added to the display this time around. “Family. This will only take a minute.”
I sprint toward the bathrooms and find an available pay phone. I hadn’t bothered to equip myself with enough loose change to dial the Island, so I call collect.
“I hope somebody just died,” I say after Tana’s accepted the charges. “Because otherwise this is a cock block of epic proportions.”
“I’m not sure,” Tana says. “Your parents’ house almost burned down. Is that important enough for you?”
“What?!”
“Don’t worry. They’re okay.”
“Well, like I said, if they aren’t dead. What happened? Did Dad pass out with a lit cigarette? One of his whores knock over a lantern?”
“The police think it’s arson.”
“Arson?” I ask, my voice somewhere between anger and disbelief. “My parents tried to burn their own house down?”
“Not your parents. Daphne. That crazy bitch tried to torch your house.”
8
“ARE YOU TRYING TO FUCK MY GIRLFRIEND?”
When you’re confronted with a question from a person, a legitimately crazy person with a proven penchant for violence that is, in the deepest sense of the word, irrational, you really only have two options: engage and hope for the best, or go numb, aka the grizzy bear defense.
I opt for the latter. But the bear keeps pawing. “It’s you,” he says, “isn’t it?” His severe lazy eye makes it possible that he’s not addressing me at all, but a spot on the wall above and beyond my left shoulder. But I’m pretty sure he means me. I squirm in my chair and wait for Daphne to arrive.
“Leave him alone, Vincent,” she says as she drifts into the room.
I’m struck by the urge to laugh: It’s Daphne dressed for Halloween as a crazywoman. An inch of mousy brown hair now separates her peroxide tips from her scalp. Her eyes are glazed. She’s even wearing the requisite puke green hospital gown and slide-on slippers. In a few seconds, she’s going to drop the façade and smile. We’ll smoke a joint and find a place to fuck.
A few seconds come and go. “I know,” Daphne says. “I look like shit.”
“I beg to differ,” I say. “It’s very punk rock.” Adding, when she looks like she’s about to cry, “The gown looks incredibly comfortable. You know where I can score one?”
She tries to laugh but comes up short. “I know a guy,” she says. “Hey, Vincent . . . a little privacy.” The bear runs anguished fingers through greasy Hitler hair and lopes off to a different area of the commons room.
Commons room. Daphne and I had one of our Top 5 Fights (Number 3, to be exact) in a room that looked a lot like this one. I’d blown off a catering gig for a party, or that’s what I told Daphne. The truth was that I’d gone out to dinner with an ex-girlfriend who was passing through Ithaca on her way to Toronto. We’d begun the night talking about how weird it was that we weren’t in high school anymore and ended it with her demonstrating her newfound maturity with a blow job in the front seat of her rental car. Daphne had friends at every restaurant and, once alerted, stormed directly to my dorm room. The floor’s residential adviser, clearly unhappy to be woken at three A.M. by a screaming match in the hallway, threatened to call Campus Security. I dragged Daphne into the commons room, where the fight continued into daylight hours.
That was just over a year ago. It’s been a long year. Today’s Daphne hardly looks primed for a fight. The woman who just last week, according to the police report, splashed gasoline onto my parents’ home as she screamed my name now appears to be a candidate for the world’s longest nap. She’s here at Kings Park, undergoing psychiatric evaluation, thanks to the Herculean efforts of Larry Kirschenbaum, whose connections and savvy kept her out of the general population at Rikers Island when my father refused to drop the charges.
“How are your parents?” she asks.
“Mom’s a little ticked about her rosebushes.”
“I am so sorry.”
“Don’t be. Insurance will cover most of it. The rest can come out of Dad’s hooker fund. But hey … next time you want to get ahold of me?” I hold up the Motorola. “I’ve even got one of these now.”
“Ha,” she says. “What are you, a drug dealer?”
“Funny you should ask….”
I fill her in on the details of my new life, minus the gloomy stretches of loneliness and my recent make-out session with a rising supermodel. Daphne manages a real smile when I tell her about the Chelsea. My words seem to nourish her and I remember why we stayed together long enough to make a list of Top 5 Fights. Sure, she’s done some crazy things, but I wasn’t always an honest boyfriend—if she was nuts, I’d helped to get her there. So I continue for an hour, like a rookie camper trying t
o make fire from flint; there are a few sparks, but in the end, Daphne’s deadened eyes refuse to ignite. She rests a hand on mine, letting me know that it’s okay to stop trying. I promise her I’ll visit again, that she can call me anytime if she needs something, even if it’s just to talk.
“There is one thing you can do for me,” she says. “I want to find my father.”
Her father left home when she was five. A few years later, he’d completely disappeared from her life. Daphne and I had a running debate over whose grass was greener, the guy with the kind of dad who steals money from his kid to take his mistress out to lunch, or the girl without a father.
“Wow,” I say. “Are you sure now’s a good time for that?”
“His name is Peter.”
“Peter?”
“Peter Robichaux. You said if I needed anything….”
“I meant something that I could actually do. Finding a guy who dropped off the map ten years ago doesn’t exactly play to my strengths.”
“Forget it,” she says, forcing a smile. “I was just fucking with you. I’m crazy, you know.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Do you have any other information, an address or a phone number?”
“That’s all I got,” she whispers.
It’s a five-minute walk to the parking lot from the building where Daphne is housed. Tana is waiting for me in her car. She holds up her wristwatch when she sees me.
“Really?” she asks.
I climb quietly into her passenger seat. I feel disoriented—spend an hour in a mental institution, and the outside world starts to seem a little weird. Tana, God bless her, parses my mood. We drive back to Levittown in silence.
9
CHRISTMAS IS HERE, IF THE CROWDS DESCENDing on the Macy’s in Herald Square are any indication. Which for me means that walking—the bedrock principle of my workday—is getting tougher. Bitter winds off the river pounce like Clouseau’s man Kato, knocking about the unprepared. Mini-tsunamis form by whatever angle of intersection causes rubber tires to launch numbingly-cold waves of ash-colored snow and gravel onto already icy sidewalks. Getting from point A to point B requires determination, concentration, and fortitude.
None of which is enough to bring me down. Then again, I’m high.
“The whole visit to Daphne, I think it transformed me. It just felt like I was doing the right thing. Like I had a place in the universe as a force for good.”
Or so I explain to Tana as 21 Jump Street goes to commercial break. She smiles brightly, unsure how seriously to take my epiphany. “You going to bogart that spliff all night?” I pass her the joint. “You’re not going to join the Peace Corps,” she asks, taking a puff. “Are you?”
“No,” I reply, taking the weed back from her. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought this all the way through. But it’s almost like my whole life has been leading to this point.”
“You have spent a lot of time in the food service industry. And delivering pot, you’re helping a lot of people.”
I nod gravely, examining the burning stick in my hand. “Food for the soul.”
“Uh-huh,” she says, reaching toward me. “Now share. Me hungry.”
Earlier that evening, I’d spoken to Larry Kirschenbaum about Daphne’s father. He gave me the name of a private investigator he thought might be able to help—an excop named Henry Head—but he’d probably charge me five hundred a week.
“Not a problem,” I responded a little too quickly, causing Larry to study me in a new light. Not respect, exactly—more like the instinct, earned from decades of defending criminals, that I might sometime soon require his professional services.
The truth was I could afford Henry Head, thanks to my ongoing business relationship with Danny Carr. I’d planned to reinvest the extra salary into my ongoing efforts to woo K. away from Nate. But so far it hadn’t mattered: I hadn’t seen her in the nearly two weeks since we’d mashed in the bar. In the rush to leave I’d forgotten to ask for her number. Ray thought he had it, but couldn’t find it, and suggested I “just drop by her place.” Which I did, once again feeling like a stalker, again with zero success.
That Friday night, I debark the elevator on Danny Carr’s floor. His assistant Rick is outside the office door, hovering over a fax machine.
“So if it isn’t the man of mystery,” he greets me.
“Howdy, Rick. The boss around?”
“Just finishing up a call. You guys gonna …” Rick places his thumb and forefinger in front of his mouth and sucks in, mimicking a toke.
“I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”
Rick smiles, or at least bares his canines trying. “So it’s like that, huh?” He turns his attention to the inbox on his desk. A minute later, Danny pokes his head out from his office.
“My new best friend,” he says, gesturing me in. “You can go, Rick.”
“What about the fax?”
“I’ll get the fax,” Danny replies. “Now get out of here.”
Rick gathers his things slowly, a man with something on his mind. “You decide about those tickets?” he finally blurts out.
“Yeah,” Danny says in a flat voice. “I don’t think that’s going to happen this time.”
“Ain’t no thang,” replies Rick. “See you on Monday, Boss. Don’t party too hard this weekend. Later days and better lays.”
Danny’s already on his way back into his office. I follow, closing the door behind me per his request.
“What a prick,” he says, already removing the vaporizer from his sin cabinet. “Wants my fucking Knicks tickets to impress some piece of tail from Staten Island. What a fucking waste of a human penis.”
Danny hands me the money, five hundred dollars already promised to Henry Head, who during our five-minute telephone conversation would guarantee no immediate results but assured me that “when you need a private dick, you can count on the Head.” I’d kept reminding myself that Larry Kirschenbaum had vouched for him.
“You want ’em?” he asks. “The tickets. I’m supposed to be on a plane to Saint Bart’s in …” He looks at his watch. “Right now. Come on, take ’em. They’re behind the Sonics bench. You can play bongos on the X-Man’s bald head. Don’t … You can’t do that, I’ll lose my tickets, but you know what I mean.”
It’s amazing, I tell myself as I exit the office with the tickets in my pocket, what you can accomplish by just not being a dickhead. And it only gets better: The elevator is waiting for me when I push the button. The uptown 2 arrives the moment I reach the platform. There is an open seat near the door. And when I finally reach the hotel with time enough to change—out of slavish loyalty to what I now consider to be my brand, the well-dressed drug dealer, I’m still wearing business-casual—I hear a familiar voice call my name. I spin around to see K.
“I thought I recognized that ass,” she says.
“Hey,” I protest. “I’m not just a sex object you can ogle.”
“Mmm. Too bad. I had fun the other night.”
“Me too. I tried to call you until I realized I didn’t have your number.”
“I’ve been superbusy,” she says.
“Life in the big city.”
We wait together for the light at Seventh Avenue. “Also …,” she starts, then trails off.
“Don’t tell me. You’ve got herpes.”
“Gross me out. No, I’ve got a boyfriend. And I probably shouldn’t be kissing strange men in bars.”
“I think if you get to know me,” I say, starting across the street, “you’ll find I’m really not that strange. And besides, there’s the whole thousand-mile rule.”
“That’s riiiight,” she says, catching up to me. “I forgot about the thousand-mile rule. I’m sure Nate would understand.”
“He seems like an understanding guy.”
“Only I can’t ask him tonight,” she adds, “on account of the band being in Cleveland. How far away is Cleveland?”
“Cleveland, Spain?”
/> By the time we reach the Chelsea, I have a date for the Knicks game. We agree to change and meet in the lobby in fifteen minutes.
“WEED MAN!” MY DATE CALLS to me from the end of the row. “You’re our only hope!”
“Yell it a little louder, Nate,” I reply. “I don’t think the whole team heard you.” One of the Sonics’ bench players turns around and winks at me, confirming they had.
I take some solace in the idea that he’s not trying to embarrass me as much as draw attention to himself—while I still don’t have enough information to judge his musical talents, it’s clear that Nate already has a rock star’s appetite for attention. He’s the only person in the Garden wearing a purple velvet Mad Hatter lid festooned with peacock feathers.
“I seem to have departed the manse without my portfolio,” he continues, his voice faux-preppie, a nod and a fuck-you to the millionaires who surround us, it seems. “Would you be so kind as to slap a twenty on me? The local stout runs five a pop.”
I wonder how badly we have to behave for Danny Carr to lose his season tickets. I give us a fighting chance.
After waiting for a half hour in the lobby at the hotel, staring at the art and evading Herman’s questions about poems I had no intention of writing, I’d foolishly climbed up the stairs.
I find the door to K.’s suite partially open. I knock and no one answers, so I cautiously push open the door. Nate walks out of the bedroom, cradling his cock.
“Wart or canker sore?” he asks, holding it up for inspection.
Nate’s dick is long, skinny, and buck naked, like everything else about him. Even from a distance I can see what appears to be a red blemish near the tip. But Nate’s not looking at his dick—he’s staring at the Knicks tickets, which for some idiotic reason I’m holding in my hand.
“The Knicks? Bangin’!” Nate turns toward the bedroom, mock-Ricky Ricardo. “Oh, Lucy … you have a vis-i-tor.…”
K. emerges from the bedroom in a robe. Her eyes plead for forgiveness. Everything else about her screams freshly fucked.
“Need a date?” Nate asks, referring to the tickets. “I fly home early to surprise my girl only to discover she’s ditching me for the Isle of Lesbos.”