The Ringer

by Bill Scheft

  “Oh, sure,” Sara said. “Preston acted like he was adjusting Mr. Spell’s pillows, which he does every night, so your uncle suspected nothing. Then, once he was behind him, he leaned him forward and pulled the tie off before Mr. Spell could do anything. Preston is very quick. He may not look it because he’s so big, but he’s quick. He kept telling everyone it was a martial arts move.”

  “Tie-kwon-do?” College Boy was sure someone must have already come up with this.

  “No!!!” Sara screamed, and ran back to the admitting desk. She grabbed three nurses and they went running into the ladies room. College Boy heard more screaming and the reverbed laughter of the bathroom. The muted toll of the call buttons from the other patients on the floor brought them staggering out. Sara still had the scissors.

  “How did he get the tie back on? And why is it so tight?”

  Sara wiped her eyes. “We were stupid. Preston should have given that thing to me and I could have burned it. But we’re not allowed to destroy patients’ property. So Preston put it in the closet.”

  “Didn’t he see Preston put it away?”

  “No. They’d given him a sedative by then.”

  “So, how—”

  “That’s what we were trying to figure out,” Sara said. “I didn’t come on until noon, and they brought him up after that. And he was still under. And he wasn’t wearing no tie.”

  “That’s what Sheila, Miss ah-Manning, said.”

  “What is she?”

  “She’s Mr. Spell’s cleaning woman.”

  “That lady that was arguing over there wit you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I never seen no cleaning woman like that show up here. Ever.”

  “Hey, Sara,” College Boy said, “what can I tell you?”

  “What happened to your arm?”

  College Boy hesitated. You can’t do the “cops hassling a black kid” to someone whose black kid the cops may have hassled. “Nothing happened. I just don’t want to get bitten.”

  Sara laughed and said, “Tell me ‘tie kwon do’ again.” College Boy obliged and she pushed him towards Mort’s room. College Boy held his uncle’s head to the side, while Sara found a slightly slacky spot behind his right ear and clipped it with one sure stroke. The aide stood by the door like an alarm might go off. Mort did not move.

  He had ten minutes to pick up another tie at the gift shop. He was actually worried they might be out of the blue ones, as if the Mount Sinai Glee Club had grabbed some last minute gig at the Ninety-second Street Y. He tried to get the cashier to charge the forty dollars to Mort’s room, but was told the gift shop operates separately from the hospital. All of which forced him to run back up to the fourth floor and fish forty dollars out of Hiding Place F—inside the top of Bagzilla’s aerosol can of Cruex. In the last three years, he’d gone through a couple cans of the jock itch spray but had always been careful to transfer the same red plastic cap with the two twenties crouched along the underside. Thank God the good people at Cruex hadn’t changed the can’s design. He hadn’t hit up Hiding Place F since maybe 1984. For College Boy, this was like spending principal.

  He got back to Mort’s room in time to put the new tie in the closet and the gift shop bag and price tag in his pocket. His left pocket. Thanks to the cast, that was the only pocket College Boy could do business out of, and in a few short hours it had bulged to resemble a hip goiter.

  Other than the Valium heists or the occasional eleventh-and-a-half-hour broken dinner date because of an “audition,” College Boy was not in the habit of deceiving his uncle. But he considered all of that to fall under the heading of victimless crime. It was nothing to puff one’s chest over, but it wasn’t lying. Well, it wasn’t lying to the man’s face. He’d never looked his uncle dead down the barrel of his eyes and said, “No, Mort. You distinctly said ‘Let’s try the Four Seasons next time.’ I thought it was strange, but you had your heart set on it. That’s why I put on this suit….” Dan Drake had a T-shirt he used to wear in the studio. Gray, with a grove of pine trees around a lake and over the left breast, in green loglike letters: “Camp Mindfuck Staff.” Morton Martin Spell, decent, brilliant, and confused in ways College Boy could only aspire to, had never been introduced to the staff of Camp Mindfuck.

  He woke frightened and went directly for his neck.

  “Did Sheila find my tie?”

  “I don’t know. I just came in.”

  “Good to see you. You’re looking awfully well.”

  “Thanks, Mort. Did you check the closet for your tie?”

  “I might have gotten up and done that. Or Sheila.”

  “Was she here?”

  “Yes. She and a couple of her friends from the track team were trying to find my tie.”

  “I must have just missed her.”

  “Of course you did,” laughed Mort. “They were track guys.”

  “Let’s look in the closet.” College Boy smiled and displayed the new tie pinched between the tips of his cast-peaking fingers. “Looks like she went out and had it cleaned while you were sleeping.”

  “How about Sheila doing that? And while entertaining her friends from the track team.”

  “Hey, Mort, what can I tell you?”

  “Kid, what happened to your arm?”

  “Broke my wrist Indian wrestling Jeane Kirkpatrick for a locker at the NYAC.” He forgot how easily he could make his uncle laugh sometimes. Just make up some shit with the right name at the end. Victimless crime.

  “Let’s have that tie.”

  “I thought you wanted to wait and dress for dinner.”

  “When did I say that?”

  The aide walked back in and sat down.

  “You know, Mort, I can’t remember. Maybe I made it up.”

  “Maybe you’re confusing it with the conversation you had with Jean Simmons at the NYAC.”

  “Jeane Kirkpatrick.”

  “That’s right. I forgot. They don’t allow women. Sorry.”

  The aide left because she couldn’t read with all the hysterical banter. It didn’t last long. The hysteria wore Mort out. College Boy, too. They both dropped off for another forty-five. College Boy usually needed a Valium to nod off that successfully in the late afternoon. But now, slumped in a straight-backed chair, drool puddling on the left shoulder of his Columbus Rest. jersey (which he had changed into out of habit and oblivious defiance to his wrist), Mount Sinai gift tie draped cluelessly over the entombed arm in his lap, really now, who was visiting who?

  College Boy had a dream while he was asleep. The Dream. Same one he’d had since before he was College Boy. He’s running down a long corridor. Fast, with the good wheels. There’s an open window at the end of the corridor. Two-thirds of the way there, he realizes he’s in the middle of a dream, and if he jumps through the window, he’ll die. And somewhere he heard—and this is all as he’s running—that if you die in your dreams, you die in real life. So, College Boy runs full tilt, Shemp-like, into the wall to the right of the window. The impact knocks him down, and always wakes him up.

  College Boy treated The Dream pretty much as public domain conversation material. He never offered it up unprovoked, but if someone started in with “Man, I had such a dream last night…,” he followed up with the corridor and the window and the Chevy Chase pratfall. Rachel and Trish had both heard about The Dream on early dates. His parents knew. Julio Rentas heard it and stopped laughing long enough to grab the joint away from College Boy. “No mas por tigo, amigo.” Dr. Bettles was told The Dream three times, and all three times he said the same thing: “Sounds like someone was on his way to the bathroom.” Actually, he said that once. The other two times he said that, followed by, “Remember how angry you got at me the first time I said that?” College Boy was never shy about telling anyone. Two reasons: He thought the whole thing had a cartoon whimsy to it, however black; and, unlike the rest of his dreams, he didn’t appear in either his underwear or with his pants around his ankles. That would have really
curtailed the wheels.

  Today, after however many years, The Dream had a slight twist. This time, College Boy slammed into the wall, fell down, then was hit in the head with a chunk of plaster. When he woke up, he found his right arm in mid-descent back to his lap. Mort’s tie lay on the floor.

  “Kid, when did you get here?”

  “I don’t know,” College Boy said.

  “They must have drugged you.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, find out who did it, and send them my way.” College Boy, who had gone through most of his adulthood comfortably deprived of the ability to anticipate, knew Mort’s next question. “Kid, you wouldn’t happen to have a Valium on you for a prickless relative?” Well, the asking for Valium part, not the “prickless relative” flourish.

  College Boy looked behind him, at Bagzilla, then back at Mort. He smiled the helpful smile of the staff. The Camp Mindfuck staff. “You must have been asleep, Mort,” he said. “A guy came by and added Valium to your IV.”

  “Did you offer him a drink?”

  College Boy held up his arm. “How could I?”

  Mort, who had brightened for an instant, got suddenly serious and painfully insightful. “Right, your wrist. I’m going to assume you made the catch.”

  “Yes.”

  And then just painful. “And,” Mort said, “I’m going to assume this happened before Lenny Merullo showed up.”

  “Ah, heh-heh, yeah.”

  Wow. Lenny Merullo. Wow. Fuck.

  It was a reference to the tryout Mort had arranged long ago for his nephew. Lenny Merullo was the East Coast chief of the Major League Baseball Scouting Bureau. The same Lenny Merullo that had struggled at shortstop for the Cubs in the 1950s and specifically, in Mort’s piece on Bing Crosby. Bertram Hargan Cup–winning piece on Bing Crosby. The same Bertram Hargan Cup once won by Rafer Johnson. The same Rafer Johnson. Funny how it all came together now. And it would have, but College Boy chose not to think further of that day.

  “Let’s have that tie,” Mort said.

  College Boy stepped on the front edge of the tie as he was trying to pick it up, leaving the dusty imprint of his Stan Smith Adidas and starting the sure parade of stains to follow.

  Mort caught the aide’s eye in mid–page flip. “And miss, let’s get those Saran Wrap boys in here with the Zamboni….” College Boy snorted with pleasure at Mort’s hockey metaphor as he handed his uncle the tie. But Mort was no longer playing for laughs. He snatched the tie and in a voice grabbed from the nastiest badass in some General Population lockdown, screamed, “…RIGHT FUCKING NOW!” Loud. Dolby in an empty theater during the previews loud. College Boy leapt back, got cut off at the knees by his chair, and landed in the seat, slump side first, as if he’d been thrown by the force of Mort’s voice. Which he had.

  The aide rose slowly, wagged a finger, and ambled out in the direction of oncoming hospital staff traffic. The two orderlies ran into the room as Mort Spell here was putting the last touches on his new 100 percent hand-sewn silk noose.

  “Oh. Hello, boys.”

  Oh. Hello, boys. Like nothing had happened. Worse than that. Like he had convinced College Boy nothing had happened.

  “Mr. Spell,” said Preston or Francis or whatever his name was, “we have to have a little conversation.”

  “Okay, doctor.”

  “I’m Preston.”

  “Okay, Oscar.”

  “Right.” He started to cellophane Mort’s tie. “Mr. Spell, we can’t be running in here every time you start screaming like Charles Motherfucking Manson. Now, you almost made it through the day, so we ain’t gonna strap you down.”

  “That’s damn nice of you, Oscar.” The other orderly pretended to check Mort’s IV, then handed Preston a medication cup.

  “Now, I want you to take this and order some dinner.” Preston edged closer as he finished with the cellophane. His voice softened to beta level. “You have two nights and one day left here, Mr. Spell. And I still like you. We cool now. But you can’t be having these out-bursts. Because if you have one more, then me, Preston, Preston’s gonna get angry. And when Preston gets angry, he puts cellophane on more than a motherfucking tie….”

  Preston shook Mort’s hand, as if he knew how much Mort loved to shake hands. On his way out he turned to College Boy. “I don’t know if we can get him another aide tonight, little brother.” He was in the hall when Mort called behind him, “Oscar, if you see our waiter, send him over.” College Boy saw Preston’s body ragdoll in delight. It must take a lot for Preston to get angry, he thought.

  Sara let both of them order dinner. Which made her nice, and clairvoyant. College Boy was starving. A pre-show bagel at the radio station was all he’d eaten in the last eleven hours, and the pillaging of Hiding Place F now rendered him virtually broke.

  Shit. He’d forgotten to play the Monday triples. Watch it come in. Watch it pay big. Watch the universe have a good laugh on College Boy.

  Supper was fine, only because it showed up. College Boy devoured his Salisbury Steak, beans, home fries, and airline-size salad. “You went through that Prague Roast like the Jews went through Miami,” said Mort, his standard postprandial remark to his nephew. The biggest intra-meal compliment he ever gave College Boy was one night at P. J. Moriarty’s when College Boy didn’t order bourbon. “You drink iced tea just like Arthur Schlesinger,” Mort said. “You squeeze that lemon like it owes you money.”

  Mort picked at his baked chicken leg, beans, and mashed potatoes and moved his salad around like an eight-year-old just enough to justify the assault on his and College Boy’s dessert, a square of what only some guy in marketing would call Black Forest cake. It was an even-up trade, College Boy’s cake for the hermetically sealed slice of white bread from the Fink (“Fink Means Bread”) Bakery. Before he passed it, Mort held up his piece and admired the packaging. “Maybe we can get the Fink people to come in and do my tie.”

  The two of them tried unsuccessfully to think of something equally witty until MacNeil-Lehrer came on. College Boy behaved throughout the newscast, which meant (1) not asking Mort to switch to Channel 2 at 6:25 to find out what the 9th race triple looked like, and (2) not asking Mort which one was Lehrer. He said nothing, yet Mort acted as if they were still in full conversation. At the beginning of each news story, Mort would hold his index finger in the air and say, “I’d like to hear this, thanks.”

  Mort hit his call button at the end of MacNeil-Lehrer to ask Sara if he could stand during Jeopardy. Right. He liked to stand while he watched the show. It had been a while since they had watched together. “Okay, Mr. Spell,” she said, “but just stand. Don’t be using your IV bag as a signaling button, like last week.”

  “Well, maybe if Alex Trebek would call on me I wouldn’t have to signal with my IV bag.”

  Sara put her hand on College Boy’s shoulder. “He used to use the nurse’s call button, and for the first three days we’d be running down here every ten seconds. ‘What is it, Mr. Spell?’ And he’d say, ‘Who is Moby Dick?’ or some shit like that. So now, one of us comes in before seven and hides the call button for a half hour. Just until the show is over. He always has the aide in here, in case something happens, like with the IV bag, so it’s no problem.”

  “Except tonight,” College Boy said.

  “Well, you’re here. You stay for Jeopardy.”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  Sara got fake tough. “Hey, you don’t think I let you have dinner because I felt sorry for you.” He did, but why be right about anything female all of a sudden? “That was your pay. Sara’s puttin’ you to work. You can leave at eight, after Wheel of Fortune.”

  Mort was already on his feet, waiting to take his cuts at Single Jeopardy. The categories were much too modern, except “Running Mates.” Sara leaned behind him and tucked the call button under the mattress.

  “We got your uncle someone for later tonight,” she told College Boy.

  “She comes on at eight?”
r />   “No, midnight, but he’ll be fine. That Vanna White wears him out.”

  “Who was Estes Kefauver!” Mort began to grab for the IV bag, but thought better. Sara, Mort, and College Boy all waited as the contestants drew blanks.

  “I’m sorry,” smugged Alex Trebek, “We would have accepted either of Adlai Stevenson’s running mates: who was Estes Kefauver or John J. Sparkman?”

  Mort looked straight ahead and mumbled, “Sparkman.”

  “You go, Mr. Spell,” Sara said.

  “Thank you, Vanna.” Mort waited until she was out of sight to put his right hand to the left side of his mouth and whisper, “She does a damn good job turning those letters.”

  “I’m sorry, the correct question, Who was William Miller?” Mort had turned away and missed “Running Mates” for five hundred, Alex.

  “CUNT!”

  College Boy dove across the bed and caught the metal IV bag holder, or whatever that three-wheeled apparatus was called, before it hit Mort or the floor. He backhanded the stanchion with his left hand while holding his injured arm out straight to the side, away from his body, away from impact, and hung on after the mattress threatened to buck him from his bellyflop. He wriggled off, then set the IV trellis, whatever it was, right and climbed over the bed to stand in front and guard the thing like it was on loan from the MoMA. Some catch, but no one was watching. Lenny Merullo had left. Left thirteen years ago.

  The catch, and it was some catch, came not without clamor. But Mort did not react, and College Boy couldn’t tell whether he was being ignored or unrecognized until his uncle turned around during the next commercial break.

  “You’ve got a lot of nerve showing up now, doctor.”

  Go ahead. Try and leave at eight. Go ahead.

  14

  College Boy was bone weary from what had turned out to be a ten-hour shift at the hospital. Two hours in wardrobe, getting fitted for his cast, eight with Mort. Ten hours. How did the rest of the world put in that kind of time? And every day? And indoors?

  What was so foreign about all this—about just sitting there as Mort fell asleep for keeps somewhere between Johnny saying “Welcome to The Tonight Show,” and “I’m Johnny Carson, poster boy for term limits”—was the staying. Not the hours. The staying. More specifically, the not leaving. College Boy had spent the first half of his life guilt-ridden and the second half guilt-rid. You couldn’t pull that “obligation” shit on him if you tried, and many, with and without the last name Sussman, had tried. So, forget that nonsense about hanging around because that was the very least he owed his uncle for all those meals and all those Valium and the big league tryout with whatshisname. Right, Lenny Merullo. He stayed because he didn’t leave. That simple. And he didn’t leave because whatever that mechanism, standard factory issue for College Boy, whatever that device was that turned his body into a compass and any door into magnetic north, had been jarred. It must have happened somewhere between the outfield ground on Diamond #4 and the Mount Sinai gift shop. College Boy would figure it out. But he wouldn’t hurry. Because the staying, the not leaving, didn’t feel that different. It felt like something he might have done before. And something—if a situation arose—he might do again.