Stefani rounds the corner, is gone. Friday night is now officially early Saturday morning. The bars and clubs are peopled with those who’ve passed over or under a river to enter the City. They frantically drink off the week’s worries, crafting what’s to blossom into a crippling hangover.
From behind him, Morris hears, “Who’s the girl, man?”
“Jesus,” Morris says, startled. He spins around. It’s N.J., dressed in an ill-fitting tuxedo. “You scared me,” Morris says. “Where’ve you been all week, and what’s with the bad tux? You getting married?”
“No, man, and that’s the blessing. A pure blessing. Buy me a beer?”
Morris pauses. N.J. should be the one buying him a beer. He still owes Morris the ten dollars he borrowed last week, still owes him the thirty from three weeks prior. He owes Morris a lifetime of drinks. Looking at his friend N.J., he’s pleased to see him. “One beer,” Morris says. “But just one. I’m nearly broke.”
They go to a Polish tavern a block away, the Old Homeplate, a place whose name conjures an image of baseball, sports. It has nothing to do with activity or exercise. It’s a dive with a checkerboard patterned linoleum floor, a tilted pool table, and the odor of old tuna. Open at eight a.m., it serves until four in the morning.
There are only three others in the bar; silent, pensive men who are worn past use. Their money’s out before them, their thick, rough hands resting next to their drinks. The front door stands open; the air inside is still, stagnant.
“What’s with the cheese?” N.J. asks of the Brie Morris places on the bar. “Smells like it’s turning, like it should be eaten now.”
“It’s a gift,” he says, ordering two two-dollar draft beers from Mrs. Cruxo, the Old Homeplate’s matriarch and owner. She has a face like a baked apple, shiny and wrinkled. Smoking a brown Nat Sherman cigarette, she sets the beers in front of them. Morris pays.
“A gift from that girl I saw, man?” N.J. asks. “The girl that looks like your mom?”
The comment rocks Morris; he fights to breathe. “My mom? Do you even remember what my mom looks like?”
“Yeah, like that girl, man,” he says, taking a sip of beer. “At least a little. In the face. Maybe.”
Morris coughs, turns the shade of bleached bone. “My mother?”
“Or maybe not,” N.J. says, backing off. “Thinking about it, no. No, man. Not at all,” he says, then, putting his hand on Morris's shoulder, changes the subject. “All week, man,” he says, “I’ve been risking my life. Mors, man, I swear, I’m lucky to just be sitting here. Mawmaw’s, man, it saved me this afternoon,” he says, his face filled with wonder, like he’d just been shown how an instant camera works for the first time. It’s an affected look, like most of N.J.’s looks. It’s something he’s able to call forth; he’s a consummate mattress salesman pushing flawed goods.
N.J. has fair, wholesome looks, like that of an off-Broadway actor or someone who works at Banana Republic. He has the looks of someone who enjoys eating corn on the cob and collecting matchbooks, someone you can trust. It’s his one talent, the ability to make nearly anything he says seem true.
“Mawmaw’s?” Morris asks, distracted. His thoughts are on Stefani, and on his mother.
N.J. nods. “It saved me from The Cyndi, man,” he says, lifting his beer.
“It saved you from what?” Morris glances about the bar, feeling he’s being watched. The three other men are held rapt by an infomercial on TV for a product that stops perspiration. Mrs. Cruxo absently stares into a middle-distance while picking at her teeth with the corner of a folded dollar bill.
No one’s watching him.
“The Cyndi, man,” N.J. says, like Morris should know.
Morris and N.J. have been friends forever, or at least for a long time. Met when they were ten, at the Asser Levy pool during open swim. It was one of the few times Morris’s mother let him go alone. He was practicing his crawl stroke, swimming from one end of the pool to the other. N.J. worked to stay afloat. He fought the water like a man trying to climb a broken ladder, grabbing for rungs that weren’t there. Morris, gracefully slicing the water, saw N.J. mid-depth, halfway between the bottom of the pool and the surface. His eyes were open, blazing with terror, and his mouth moved like a snake’s whose head was lopped off.
Taking a deep breath, Morris dipped down and grabbed N.J. by the arm, giving him a tug toward the surface. N.J. spun with fright, grabbed Morris by the head, and tried to use him to climb his way from the water.
They both struggled.
They both sank. Morris panicked, the air exploding from his lungs. He elbowed N.J. in the stomach, scratched at his face, and then, in a violent burst of energy, sprang from the pool’s floor, rocketing both him and N.J. to the surface and the side of the pool.
The lifeguard, an obese girl with the face of a pumpkin and a thick back pinched in a faded red one-piece swimsuit, stood at the pool’s edge, looking down at them. She blew her whistle twice, motioned at them both, and shouted, “Quit the horseshit rough-housing.”
Yanking them by their gangly arms, she pulled them free of the water, dropped them onto the pool deck.
Coughing fiercely, N.J. shot a stream of chlorinated water and snot from his nose, spraying the lifeguard across the crotch. “Sorry, man,” he told her between gasps, then turning to Morris, said, “Thanks.”
They were banned from the pool for the rest of the day.
Morris’s Adam’s apple ached, his lungs felt charred by rubbing alcohol. Shaken, he toweled off and quickly dressed.
Heading out the door, Morris found N.J. waiting on the steps. “Man,” he said, “that was weird. Like sleeping in a mound of mud. I guess I owe you my life or something like that.”
“Forget it,” Morris said. He meant it. The one time he goes to the pool by himself he nearly drowns. He didn’t want it mentioned again.
N.J. trailed Morris home, talking a storm about anything and everything, finishing his tales with a story about how his father once shot him in the stomach with a Civil War-era rifle. “Should have killed me, man,” he said, “but it didn’t even break the skin. Did get an itchy rash, though.
“This your place?” he asked when Morris stopped before his apartment building. “I live on Fourth Street, next to the record store. Wanna to check out my Spanish sword collection?” he asked.
Morris said no, but from that day forward, N.J. was a part of his life.
Leaving his building or coming home from school, Morris would find N.J. sitting in the low branches of the tree out front. “Wanna see where some woman’s brains got exploded?” he’d ask, or, “Want me to show you where I saw two naked Mexican guys doing sick stuff to each other?”
Morris steered clear of him for weeks on end, thinking him irritating, bad luck. But N.J. didn’t give up.
“Hey, man, I know how to get some free ice cream,” he called to Morris from the tree one afternoon. “Want to come?”
Morris paused. What could it hurt? “Sure,” he finally said. “Sure, let’s get some free ice cream.”
It wasn’t free. Morris ended up spending his allowance on the both of them. Yet, like coffee, Morris slowly acquired a liking for N.J. Soon, he grew to need him.
“So what’s The Cyndi?” Morris asks N.J, wondering what’s real in his friend’s life, what’s not. Wondering if N.J. believes half the bullshit he spills. “What’s a Mawmaw’s?”
“It’s all about economics, man,” N.J. says. “How people spend money, what they spend it on. It’s all about the way people spend other people’s money.”
“Like my buying you a beer because you’re always broke?” Morris says.
“Not broke, man,” he says, “just frugal.” N.J. has an occupation but no job; he is a skip tracer, a bounty hunter, though his first and only catch happened over six years ago, and it was more by accident than skill or design.
N.J. bagged Chi Thomas, a tiny man with frail features who lived across the hall from him. Chi stood only
five foot tall, and had a gut that made his gait more a waddle than a walk. N.J. and Chi had become drinking buddies, spent long afternoons that drained into evenings sitting in N.J.’s cluttered studio sipping beer and listening to scratchy records N.J. found on the street.
One evening, after they’d split five forty-ounce beers, Chi drunkenly bragged that he’d been busted for robbing a grocery store, had jumped a twenty thousand dollar bail.
“Bullshit, man,” N.J. told him.
“Scout’s honor,” Chi said, making a peace symbol with his free hand.
“Twenty thousand bail,” N.J. said, pouring the last of the beer in Chi’s McDonald’s supersized plastic tumbler. “Where’d you get that kind of money for bail?”
“It’s all Ceetle’s, my bail bonds guy. Or most. My Ma threw down two thousand. Ceetle’s Bail Bonds,” Chi said, then sings, “ ‘When you’re down, we get you out.’ ” He smiled. He was drunk. “That’s their slogan.”
“Tell me the story, man,” N.J. said, opening the last beer and refilling Chi’s tumbler. “Tell me the whole thing.”
Closing time one Saturday night, with the grocery store near empty, Chi crawled onto a floor-level shelf of soups and hid by placing the cans all around him. “I was smaller then,” he says, burping. He patted his hard, round stomach. “Not like now. I could fit anywhere, could fit inside a drier, a suitcase. Used to scare the shit out of my Ma by popping out of the oven.” When the store closed and only the manager was left, Chi came out of hiding. “I threatened him with a bottle of Clamato juice,” he said. “I once dated a Dominican who drank that stuff like Champaign. Drank it all the time with gin. Swore it was an aphrodisiac. She was beautiful, but her breath got so bad after a couple of those, like rotting vegetables on a tar beach, that I couldn’t even kiss her.” He shakes his head, remembering. “What was I talking about?”
“The grocery store, man.”
“Right. Yeah, so I waved a bottle of Clamato juice at the manager and told him to give me the money or he’d be sorry. What a sad push-over. He gave me the money, something like seventeen hundred dollars and a bunch of food stamps. I grabbed two six-packs and walked out free and easy.”
Chi started rocking, like he was on a subway rounding a bend. “I got tripped up at church the next day,” he said, then finished off his beer. N.J. refilled his tumbler again. “The store manager was a member of my church, saw me the next morning. The cops came just as the collection plate was going around.” Chi held up a finger, making a point. “I thought…I thought he looked familiar, but…” He fell silent, glanced about the apartment, confused. Taking a deep swallow of beer, his face went rubbery and empty of thought. “I need a nap,” he said, and rolled heavily onto the floor. “Ten minutes. A quick nap,” he muttered, then passed out.
N.J. prodded him in the belly. “Hey, man, don’t get sick or anything.” Chi vomited on N.J.’s shoe, across his floor.
“Goddamn it, man.”
Chi vomited again, splattering N.J.’s bed.
Irate, N.J. found Ceetle’s Bail Bonds phone number. “I got someone here you might want, man,” N.J. told Ceetle.
He and Ceetle carried Chi down to the ninth precinct, turned him in. N.J. got a thousand dollars for the tip.
He’s fancied himself a skip tracer ever since.
N.J. tugs at the lapels of his tux. “Like Medusa and a mirror, man, the economics of Mawmaw’s broke the curse of The Cyndi,” N.J. says. “Nearly had to use this monkey suit, man.”
Morris feels drunk, uncertain. Extremely tired. He has no idea what N.J.’s talking about. “N.J., I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says, standing to leave. All he wants is sleep, his pillow and home. “Call me tomorrow.”
“Mawmaw’s is a buffet up in Harlem, man,” N.J. clarifies, finishing his beer. “The Cyndi was my fiancée.”
Morris stops. “Your fiancée?”
“What do you think I’ve got the tux for, man? I was getting married today.” He pulls out a wad of papers from his pocket and hands Morris a folded document. It’s a marriage license made out to Newton Ralph Jerzy and Cynthia von Swartz.
“Who’s Cynthia?”
“The Cyndi, man, the love of my life—until I saw the viper’s fangs at Mawmaw’s.”
Morris is pained. “You were getting married and you didn’t even tell me.”
“It all happened so quick, man.”
“You could’ve called. You could’ve said, ‘Morris, I’m getting married.’ ” He studies the marriage license. “How long have you been dating this woman?”
“The Cyndi,” N.J. says, signaling Mrs. Cruxo for two more beers. “I’ve known The Cyndi since Sunday, met her at church.”
“Sunday?” Morris asks. “Six days ago?”
“I like to think of it as a week, man.”
“A week,” Morris says, feeling displaced, caught in a joke. This is his best friend, a supposed known quantity. He seems a stranger. “When have you ever gone to church?” he says. “And this woman, did you even have time enough to find out her middle name?”
“Von,” N.J. answers. He points to the marriage license. “Her middle name is von. Cynthia von Swartz.” Then he adds, “A week can be a long time. Rome was ravaged in less time. The Seven-Day War changed the landscape of the Middle East. A lot can happen in a week, man.”
“A lot of destruction, you mean. And it was the Six-Day War that happened in the Middle East.”
“God created the world in a week,” N.J. says, then, “But what’s important is that it didn’t happen; I didn’t get married. I was saved.” He explains. “We had a four o’clock appointment with the judge to get married. The hottest state, man, The Cyndi and I. Really into each other. We were on each other like plaid on polyester, man. Morning, noon, night. Her place is in Harlem, so we go to Mawmaw’s for lunch this afternoon, a pre-wedding meal. Mawmaw’s is the best soul food buffet in the city, man. No kidding. Four dollars and twenty-five cents a pound buffet. Except for chitlins, which cost more. Great stuff. So at the buffet, she loads up on rice and beans. Nothing else. Not the ribs, not the greens, not the pulled pork. Nothing. Just the cheap, heavy stuff, man. Her meal ended up being seven dollars, all for beans and rice, man! And I was the one paying for it. We were suppose to marry in less than three hours and I suddenly saw it all, man, saw the true colors of The Cyndi. I broke it off then and there. How could I marry a woman who has no problem paying seven and change for a plate of beans and rice?” N.J. shakes his head. “Mawmaw’s, man, it saved me. The economics of Mawmaw’s.”
Two fresh beers are set before them. Mrs. Cruxo looks to Morris for money. Grudgingly, he pays. Economics, Morris ruefully thinks. The spending of other people's money.
“Who’s the girl I saw you with, man?” N.J. asks, dipping into his second beer. “She stalking you?”
“Stalking? No. Why?”
“She just seems like a stalker, man.” He prods the Brie. “Was this a gift or a threat?” he asks. “The thing stinks. Reminds me of that one woman I use to date. She smelled, man. Not a specific, put-your-finger-on-it stink, not like she wore too much perfume or used cheap shampoo or even had one of those after-a-workout-sweaty smells. She just smelled. You remember her?”
Morris shook his head. “No.”
“It wasn’t a really bad, bad smell,” N.J. says. “It was subtle, man, like something misted on her. Or no, something in her. Like in her skin, you know, coming from her pores. A weird, spicy kinda smell, like that soup at Indian restaurants that always upsets me. She smelled like that. That, and fried butter. I kept having these stomach and bowel problems each time we hung out, man. Ended up having to see a doctor because of her smell. It was a part of her. She couldn’t get rid of it. Even if she showered, I could smell it. It was her—what are they called?—Federalmoans.”
“Pheromones,” Morris corrects him, then adds, “You remember Jetski, that guy from high school?”
“Jetski? You mean that wiry kid w
ith the harelip who spit when he talked?”
“No,” Morris says, unable to think of who he means.
“Oh, man, I know who you mean,” N.J. says, rapping the bar. The three other patrons turn and look at him. “The guy who got his finger ripped off by that lathe in shop class. Frankenfinger. That thing never looked real after they sewed it back on.”
“Yeah,” Morris says, having forgotten about that. “That’s him.”
“Ol’ Frankenfinger,” N.J. says. “The guy’s an asshole, man. Use to work at the movie theater on Twelfth Street. Once tried to sell me popcorn he’d swept off the floor. Real asshole, man.” He downs the rest of his beer in a single swallow.
“Yeah, well, that girl you saw,” Morris says, “that’s his daughter.”
“Your girlfriend is Jetski’s daughter? Shit, man, how old is she, fifteen?”
“Eighteen,” Morris says, flushed with embarrassment. “And she’s not my girlfriend.”
“Well thank God for that, man.” He orders a third round.
“Why?”
“If she was, I’d have to tell you to dump her, man,” N.J. says, unwrapping the Brie. He takes out a small Buck knife, cuts a thin wedge of cheese. “My advice, man,” he says, licking the cheese off the blade, “would be to dump her quick.”
“Like I said, we’re not dating,” Morris says.
N.J. gives him a flat, perplexed look. “So you’re not dating her?” N.J. asks, savoring the cut of cheese.
The light in the bar is dim and failing and somehow reminds Morris of Coney Island in the early morning hours. “Just dig in, feel free,” Morris offers of the cheese, then, “No, I’m not dating her.”
“But you slept with her.”
“Listen, I met her today at—”
“Yes or no, man.”
“Okay, yes. I did. But what’s that have to do with anything?” he asks, but already knows the answer. It has everything to do with it.
“I thought so, man,” N.J. says. “I can tell things like that.” The third round is set before him. N.J. cuts another slice of Brie, offers it to Mrs. Cruxo. “Give this a try,” he tells her. She accepts, sniffs it, then takes a small bite.
“You know you can’t mail maps in India,” N.J. tells the both of them, pointing with his knife. “It’s illegal, man. Isn’t that crazy? If you get caught mailing a map in India, they throw you jail for five years.”
Morris gazes at N.J.’s marriage license. “I still can’t tell what’s real with you,” he says. “Even after all these years knowing you, I don’t know what to believe.”
N.J. places a hand on Morris’s shoulder. “One thing I learned when living in Cuba, man,” N.J. says, “is that keeping a hundred percent true to a tale isn’t what’s important. It’s the story that’s important, the moral. Whether it lingers and lives on after it’s been told. That, man,” N.J. says, “is what’s important.”
All three are silent. N.J. looks to Morris. Mrs. Cruxo looks to Morris, waiting to be paid for the beers. Noise and exhaust from the street slide in the open front door. Morris examines the even face of his best friend, the trustworthy features. “When have you ever been to Cuba?” Morris asks N.J. “When have you ever even left the city?”
Chapter 12
The Trouble with Bliss Page 12