The Ringer

by Bill Scheft

  The worst part about The Dirt King’s remark was this: It wasn’t a bad line. Funny, actually. Funny on levels The Dirt King wasn’t aware of, and he was the one who fucking said it. Just the notion of The Dirt King asking College Boy for a quarter, of anybody asking College Boy for a quarter then, just when the pay window had slammed, pinning his right wrist to the sill. The sign on the window, if a metaphor ever needed a sign, read CLOSED FOR THE SEASON. Funny. Not funny like “Did you hear about the Polish guy who froze to death at a drive-in? He went to see Closed for the Season.” But the same punchline.

  He did not want an ambulance. Maybe if it had been something with his knee. Maybe if he hadn’t been College Boy. A dozen times a year, the wagon would sideslip down the dirt path behind Diamond #5, an unmarked detour off Central Park Drive, as if a couple of EMTs were trying to skip out on the check at Tavern on the Green. Onto the paved, too narrow walk that encircled Heckscher Fields. Ambling to wherever a small crowd of players had gathered and told each other, “Don’t move him!” Always, fucking always, saving its screaming lights and blinding sirens for the last ten feet of the trip. Why? If you could answer that, you could figure out why, when the FBI goes undercover, it’s usually under the cover of those bright orange jumpsuits with FBI stenciled on the back.

  The wagon usually came in a half hour. Forty-five minutes if it was a new driver looking for the dirt path behind Diamond #5. Ten years ago, the first year of the ten o’clock Performing Arts League, College Boy’s first year with the Improvisation, one of the bartenders at the club leveled the first baseman from Art New York on a close play at the bag. It was three years before they added the outside bag at first for the runner to prevent this kind of collision, but there’s a good chance this was the incident that prompted the legislative response. The bartender broke the Art New York guy’s leg, clean. The wagon was called and the small circle of players saying, “Don’t move him!” gathered. The Art New York guy kept banging the ground, then covering his eyes to moan. In the middle of the wait, one of the Improv comics, Lawrence, wandered up to the circle, knelt down next to the Art New York guy, waited until after a particularly torturous moan, and asked, “If it doesn’t work out, can I have your mitt?”

  That’s the first and last thing College Boy thought about whenever he saw someone down and waiting for the wagon. The first thing was Lawrence’s line. The last thing was whether he had the balls to walk over and deliver Lawrence’s line. He never did. He wasn’t a comic, and a ringer can’t be funny like a comic. A ringer can only be funny like a ringer.

  Once a year, he tried to be funny like a comic. He’d get up on stage at the Improv on a winter Sunday night just before closing, with three or fewer customers and most of his fellow teammates in the audience, and stay up there just long enough to play in the Performing Arts League without being hassled. The Performing Arts League required all of its teams to have some connection with the performing arts, and all its players to have some connection with their respective teams. So, if you were going to have ringers, they had to be bootlegged. College Boy didn’t mind the ritual nonsense. He always made it through the drill without remorse or exemption, which really distinguished him from the comics. A couple of minutes, a couple of new old jokes, more than a couple of bourbons, and enough clumsiness behind a microphone to reaffirm annually that he was funny like a ringer.

  Manfrellotti and Rackham helped him off with his spikes, but ran screaming when College Boy asked if they’d help him carry Bagzilla up to Tavern on the Green. Butch the umpire opened the Advil bottle and unscrewed the cap on the Gatorade citrus cooler. College Boy popped four, took a swig, then backed it up with three Tylenol with codeine, and thanked Butch for keeping the part about his wrist being broken to himself.

  He would wait until 1:05, when he could tell Buddy from Columbus Restaurant that he would be unavailable for today’s 2:00 game. He’d either show Buddy his wrist or tell him he had a big audition. Screw it, he had an audition. And then he would wait until 1:15, when maybe, just maybe, Papa J would show up early enough to twist him up a couple of bon voyage joints for his cruise to the emergency room.

  Papa J showed at 1:14. Some guys just live right.

  “What’s the closest hospital,” he asked the cab driver, “Roosevelt, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then take me to Mount Sinai.” And College Boy started giggling, like the second man who discovered irony.

  Irony. Funny. Funny like a ringer no longer.

  12

  If anyone asked College Boy what happened to his arm, he would use the line from The Big Fix, the first movie he saw eleven times in a month on HBO. Actually, the private eye, Moses Wine (Richard Dreyfuss, post-Oscar, pre-rehab), had a different answer every time about the cast on his right arm, depending upon who asked him. But the exchange College Boy loved was with the ultra-left lawyer (Fritz Weaver. No, wait. Nicolas Coster. Fritz Weaver played the ultra-right evil industrialist.) who he tracks down teaching at Berkeley:

  LAW PROFESSOR: What happened to your arm?

  MOSES WINE: You know, same old stuff. Couple of cops hassling a black kid.

  That’s what he would go with. Couple of cops hassling a black kid. That was good. Maybe something different when Uncle Mort asked him. If Uncle Mort asked him. Don’t forget, this was the same guy who thought the catheter on his hip was somebody else’s gym bag. But just in case, College Boy waited by the nurses’ station on the fourth floor until he came up with something to say about the cast. Arm-wrestling with Marty Glickman over a locker at the NYAC? No. Indian wrestling with Jeane Kirkpatrick over a locker at the NYAC. Okay, all set.

  “Mr. Sussman, what happened to your arm?”

  “Uh…I broke my wrist going for a ball.”

  “You make the catch?” Sheila asked. College Boy looked at her in full furrow. “Sorry. Wonder Boy, right?”

  “College Boy.”

  “Who’s Wonder Boy?”

  “That was the bat in The Natural.”

  “Robert Redford, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well,” Sheila said, pulling her sunglasses to the edge of her nose, “honest mistake.”

  College Boy had to laugh, had to take her off the hook on which she had never really been.

  “How is he?”

  “Redford?”

  “Give me a break here, Sheila.”

  “He’s still out. They wheeled him up from surgery about an hour ago.”

  “He had the surgery?”

  “Yeah, I thought you knew,” Sheila said. “He called me last night at midnight to tell me to bring in his checkbook.”

  “But I gave him his checkbook last night when I visited him.” College Boy refrained from adding, “You remember, I picked up the checkbook when you were converting his apartment into Mustang Ranch East.” For a lot of reasons, mainly because it didn’t occur to him until Sheila started talking again.

  “That’s what I told Mort, but he said, ‘Well, I have to pay you and Dr. Levitz before the starter can hold my tee time, so you might as well come in.’”

  “How much was the check for Dr. Levitz?”

  “Five thousand dollars,” Sheila said.

  “He wrote a check to that guy for fucking five thousand dollars!”

  “Actually, I did.” And then Sheila explained how when she had come two hours ago, Mort’s room was empty except for two checks and a note on his sliding tray table. The checks were signed in the same unsteady hand as the note, which read: Sheila: Please make a check out to Dr. Levitz for five thousand dollars and to yourself for five hundred. I will testify on your behalf in court. Mort. P.S.: There’s another hundred in it for you if you can find my tie.

  Sheila had decided to wait until Mort was wheeled up from surgery to ask if this was really the way he wanted to do things, but that had been over an hour ago. He was in, but still out. Deeply. Although, at one point, she thought Morton Martin Spell might be awakening when she saw him spring bolt upri
ght in his bed and exclaim, “Ah! Sir Alec Douglas-Home!” before sliding back down. Alec Douglas-Home, whoever that was. Probably another guy who had a five-thousand-dollar check coming.

  Sheila ended up making out the check to Dr. Levitz and stuffing it in the blank stamped envelope that not enough women keep stashed in their purse. She got Levitz’s address from a NYNEX directory assistance operator who wasn’t supposed to assist her that much. It was purely for confirmation. She had the address pretty well memorized from fifteen years of mailing Mort’s bimonthly checks. She dropped it in the box across Madison in front of the Guggenheim Pavilion when she went to stretch her legs, her good wheels, before coming back to take one last look in on Mort, hoping he’d be with it enough to write out her check. She saw College Boy at the nurses’ station when she got off the elevator on the fourth floor and had plenty of time to duck back in and slip between the closing doors of confrontation. But she knew he’d be caught off guard seeing her again, so soon. And if you knew Sheila, you knew she couldn’t pass that up.

  “You mailed the check already? How could you do that?” College Boy asked.

  “I had a stamped envelope in my purse.”

  “Blank?”

  “Yes.”

  “I never heard of that.”

  “Are you impressed?”

  “Yes…I mean, no,” said College Boy. “I mean, what is he doing paying that piece of shit five thousand dollars?”

  “He probably owed him half of it, and gave him the other half in good faith. That’s what Mr. Spell does with doctors.”

  “But I let the guy go!”

  Sheila smiled quizzically. “Did Mort tell you to do that?”

  “No.”

  “Are you making those decisions for him now? College Boy?”

  “No, just that one so far. I’m hoping to work my way up to where I’m writing fucking checks for him.”

  College Boy was gang-shushed by the fourth-floor nurses’ station. Sheila grabbed him by the elbow just past the city limits of his cast and led him fifteen or so feet down a less trafficked hall. She whispered unmistakably.

  “Three things. First, I’ve never done anything for your uncle I wasn’t told to do.” College Boy smiled.

  “Ah, I mean, I haven’t handled anything of his I wasn’t supposed to handle.” College Boy looked like someone trying to keep a straight face who was sure he wasn’t. He said nothing, just enough for Sheila to say, “Shut up!” She knew any other attempts to rewrite this line of reasoning (“Ask Mort about the job I’ve done.”) would come off as yet another encore at the Theatre for Single Entendre. She’d move on to point two, and she knew he wouldn’t mind, just as he didn’t mind her hand on his elbow. Still.

  “Okay, second. Judging from all the visitors he’s had, it looks like you and I are all he’s got here in New York. If you would like to do this alone, be the nephew, that’s fine. I’ll respect that. I don’t know what your plans are, but that’s a tough gig. That’s a tough gig with two arms.”

  “I don’t know,” said College Boy. “I’m a little overwhelmed right now. I didn’t plan on being here till tonight, but then I thought, hey, wouldn’t it be funny to break my wrist, get it set here, and pop in for a visit? You know, one-stop shopping.”

  “And I’m sure you didn’t expect to see me.”

  “No.”

  “Okay, so that was a surprise.”

  “That makes two if you’re scoring at home,” he said.

  “And if you’re scoring the surprises accurately, that makes it 2–1,” said Sheila. College Boy hung his head as she let go of his elbow and started to walk back toward the nurses’ station.

  “What was the third point?”

  Sheila stopped. “I think,” she said, “we just made it. Tell Mort I was here and I mailed the check to Dr. Levitz. Tell him I’ll be by tomorrow. Or don’t.”

  College Boy grabbed her elbow.

  “Ask me again what happened to my arm.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m asking.”

  “What happened to your arm?”

  “You know, same old thing. Couple of cops hassling a black kid.” Sheila laughed. Dusty. The laugh of the great-looking woman.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll tell him.” She walked away like someone trying to keep a straight face, who didn’t give a shit she wasn’t.

  Sheila was proud of herself. Not the repartee with College Boy. That was batting practice stuff. She’d been going toe-to-toe with guys since high school, especially the jock and near-jock. They’d ask her out and she’d say, “Sure. How about the library?” and watch them back off. That’s when she was Sheila McCall, the most popular enigma at Astoria High. Did she really date black guys, or just like sitting with them in the cafeteria? If she wasn’t gay, what was with all the hand-holding with the field hockey players? Was that really her dad lying in front of the Presbyterian Church? Why would she sign up for Mr. Benezia’s advanced biology six months after slapping him? Didn’t she know she’d be sent home for wearing hot pants? Where in all of Queens did she find Rothman’s cigarettes? Why would anyone turn down a full ride to Cornell to pay for night classes at St. John’s?

  No. Sheila Manning (same girl, same initials, twice the wordplay) was proud of herself for having the courage to break a promise. The promise she made seven years ago when she walked out of Roosevelt. What were her exact words to herself? Who can remember, but it was something close to “I’ll never walk into a fucking hospital again. Not even as a fucking visitor.”

  This was a bright girl. But for all her mental nimbleness, for all the bon-mot elixir distilled from equal parts high IQ, and low self-esteem—clarified banter—when it came time to answer the Roosevelt Hospital Emergency Room doctor’s first question, “How’d you get the black eye and broken nose?” the only thing Sheila Manning could come up with seven years ago was, “I walked into a door.” Jee-sus. “I walked into a door.” The Citizen Kane of domestic lies. The doctor was nice enough not to press the issue, other than tell her to “watch out for those doors,” which hurt worse than her nose. If it ever happened again, Sheila would be ready. She’d say, “I walked into a euphemism.” But it wouldn’t happen again. It couldn’t, because she was never walking into a hospital again. Not even as a fucking visitor.

  When the bandages came off, Sheila was left with the tiniest bump in the middle of her nose. It kept her sunglasses up and gave her uncharacteristically toothsome face 20 percent more uncharacter. The bump, and a round-trip coach ticket to Mexico, would be her entire divorce settlement. And that was just fine. Ivana Trump fine.

  The ex-husband, Jerry, backed off like the rare piece of male who knew he’d fucked up. That made twice he’d fucked up. The right cross, and a year and a half earlier, when he’d left Sheila for another man. Johnnie. Johnnie Walker. Yeah, yeah, like the scotch.

  Jerry Manning had just enough AA in him, eight-and-a-half years clean and sober, to know when he went back out and picked up again, his word was no good. That’s why he knew he couldn’t tell Sheila this would never happen again. That’s why he knew he had to let her go. This was his path, his journey, and all that righteous twelve-step shit that only makes sense in a church basement. Another place in which Sheila would never be seen again.

  It took her just under a year before she could get the people living in her mother’s apartment on Roosevelt Island out of their sublet. She kept a room at the women’s hotel on Twenty-seventh Street, and when the caged skeeviness was too much, she would take whatever cat-sitting, plant-watering gigs she could get from her cleaning customers or anyone else at 301 East Sixty-fifth Street. Morton Martin Spell’s building.

  That was a little less than seven years ago, and that’s when it had started with the referral clients. Not immediately. Sheila needed time to grieve the end of her marriage while not impinging on the celebration of her escape. So, fifty-six days.

  And not on purpose, either. She was set up by Alexa Mulvoy, 16J, who had bee
n asking Sheila to “Let me know when you’re ready to hit the street again,” since the day she had returned, papers in hand, from Mexico. Alexa, the Widow Mulvoy as she referred to herself, had been living alone at 301 East Sixty-fifth Street for fifteen years, since her estranged husband, Mike, had the bad taste and worse timing to walk off a subway platform two days before her round-trip ticket for Mexico arrived in the mail. The Widow Mulvoy had waited twenty-seven days (“Three for every year we were together.”) before hitting the street, during which time she converted the second bedroom into a closet and the second bathroom into an office for her cat, Ratelle. So, to her, fifty-six days must have seemed like showing off.

  The Widow Mulvoy gave Sheila Manning two numbers. Both Wall Street guys. Sheila opted for “Brad” because the other guy’s name, Terry, sounded way too close to Jerry, the ex-husband, and she didn’t want the assonance of disrespect. “Brad” (not his real name) met Sheila in front of the Beekman, where they were supposed to see Once Upon a Time in America. “Well,” he had said, “you were right about recognizing you by your hair.” That was all the wiggle room Sheila wanted. “I forgot to feed my cat. My building is right across the street. Do you want to wait here?” Much better than “I walked into a door.”

  “Brad” walked her into the Fecters’ apartment and Once Upon a Time in America was seen by sixty-five other people. Most of whom didn’t get laid. None of whom got laid twice.

  Sheila could try and tell herself that she was equally surprised by the turn of events, but you don’t buy a three-pack of condoms at Tower Chemists across the street from the Beekman because you’re worried they might not have them at the concession stand. And you don’t bring a strange man back to your apartment fifteen minutes before a movie to feed your cat when it isn’t your apartment, and it isn’t your cat. Even if there is a cat, it ain’t yours.