Idiot Wind

by Peter Kaldheim

  ‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘It’s your place, isn’t it? You’re a big girl. What’s the big deal?’

  She shook her head. ‘You don’t get it. Demetri still thinks I’m a virgin.’

  She was right. I didn’t get it. The girl had to be twenty-three or twenty-four if she was a day. Who stays a virgin that long in this day and age? I’d have accused her of pulling my leg if she hadn’t seemed so genuinely upset. She was frantically scurrying around the bedroom, plucking my clothes from the carpet and tossing them onto the foot of the bed.

  ‘Quick!’ she said. ‘Get dressed! He could be here any minute.’

  ‘Okay, calm down,’ I said, as I threw back the covers and climbed out of bed. ‘Let me use the bathroom first. I’ve got time to take a piss, at least, don’t I?’

  ‘I guess,’ she said. ‘But hurry, please!’

  Four minutes later I was buttoning my overcoat as Elena herded me to the door and whisked me out with a peck on the cheek and a parting apology.

  ‘Sorry, Pete. I’ll make it up to you next time, I promise.’

  ‘I’m going to hold you to that,’ I said, and left her with a smile.

  I knew there would never be a next time, but what else was I going to say to her? Have a nice life, you’ll never see me again? I liked her. I couldn’t do that. Sometimes the truth is just too cold.

  And sometimes so is the world, as I discovered the moment I stepped outside Elena’s door. While we’d been hunkered down in the darkness of Elena’s black-out-shaded bedroom, the storm had grown into a full-blown blizzard. The snow on the streets was knee-deep, and at the rate the clouds were dumping more there’d be another foot on the ground by nightfall. After the warmth of Elena’s bed, it was a real shock to my system, but there was nothing I could do about it except turn up my collar and start slogging through the whiteout towards the BMT subway station on 86th Street, eight long blocks away. Even if some miracle had sent a cab my way, I couldn’t have afforded to catch it. Last night’s cab ride out to Bay Ridge had cost me the last of my cash. I had nothing left in my pockets but loose change and a couple of subway tokens.

  The wind was against me the entire way, whipping snow into my face so hard it stung like hornets. For a good part of the trek, I was forced to walk backwards to make any progress at all. By the time I reached the shelter of the subway station, my ears and cheeks were practically frostbitten.

  How the hell am I going to get out of town in weather like this? The question was gnawing at me as I boarded the RR local for the forty-minute ride back to Manhattan.

  When you don’t have a dollar to your name, hitchhiking is usually your only option, but that was off the table. The only affordable alternative was Greyhound, if I could somehow scrape together the price of a bus ticket. Which wasn’t going to be easy. I couldn’t really borrow the money for a ticket. Anyone I knew well enough to hit up for a loan had already learned from experience that lending money to me was a losing proposition. That left me with only one solution. One I would rather not have resorted to, but I couldn’t see any other way to raise the cash I needed in a hurry.

  I was going to have to scam one of my customers.

  If I put in an appearance at the Raccoon Lodge, the odds were good that someone would approach me for coke, and when they did I’d tell them I was on my way to ‘re-up’. I’d take their buy-money up front and promise to be back within the hour. And that would be the last they’d see of me. Somewhere down the line I’d just have to send a money order back to the Raccoon to square the debt and ease my conscience. At least, that’s what I told myself to make the idea more palatable.

  I got off at Chambers Street and reluctantly started trudging south toward the Raccoon Lodge. The snow was still falling without let-up, but the howling wind I’d faced in Brooklyn had blown itself out, leaving behind a residual calm that felt somehow more threatening. Overhead, the sky was a solid mass of grey clouds getting darker by the minute, and the winter light, pale and weak, was fading fast.

  It was only a little past three in the afternoon, yet the electronics stores along Church Street were already locked up tight, shut down early by the storm. The scene was the same when I turned the corner onto Warren Street. Every shop gated and dark. But down at the far end of the block, the lights of the Raccoon Lodge beckoned like a beacon in the twilight gloom. I just hoped the bar wouldn’t be empty when I got there. You can’t run a con without a mark.

  Nearing the end of the block, I could see the neon glow from the beer signs in the bar’s window tinting the snow as it swirled past the plate glass. Snowflakes in borrowed colours – Budweiser red, Pabst blue, Rolling Rock green – danced in the air like party confetti. It was a festive sight, but it didn’t cheer me. The party was over, and I knew it. One for the road and I’d be on my way.

  When I stepped inside and started stomping my snow-crusted Reeboks on the doormat, I drew the attention of every person in the bar. All three of them. In the corner by the pay phone two meter maids in ear-flap hats sat huddled over mugs of hot chocolate, no doubt sheltering from the storm while they waited for their shift to end. The only familiar face belonged to Susan, the weekday bartender. Susan and I had been close friends for years. She looked up from the pile of supermarket tabloids she was leafing through and sized me up with a jaundiced eye.

  ‘Oh, Christ, look what the cat dragged in,’ she remarked, when I joined her at the far end of the bar. ‘You okay? You look like shit.’

  That was what I liked best about Susan. The girl pulled no punches.

  ‘Duly noted,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘What can I get you?’ she asked. ‘Coffee? Visine? A blood transfusion?’

  ‘Very funny,’ I muttered. ‘A cup of coffee will be just fine.’

  ‘Cup of coffee, coming right up,’ she grinned. ‘How do you want it?’

  ‘Straight up black,’ I said. ‘No cream, no sugar, no editorial comments.’

  ‘Ooh, poor baby!’ she cooed, mocking me. ‘Feeling a little thin-skinned today, are we?’

  ‘You might say that,’ I replied. ‘So cut me some slack, okay?’

  ‘If you insist,’ she said, pouring me a mug of coffee. ‘Not that you deserve it.’

  Susan’s tone of voice when she delivered that last comment left me with the suspicion that I might have offended her at some point during my weekend-long binge. Offhand, I couldn’t recall anything specific, but that didn’t mean I had nothing to regret. For all I knew, it might have been my binge itself that offended her. Susan was the kind of friend who will tell you the truth even when you don’t want to hear it – and she’d been hounding me to clean up my act for ages. It pained me to think I had hurt her feelings. Of all the things I would miss when I left New York, Susan’s hard-nosed friendship was high on the list. Still, probing for gory details wasn’t how I wanted to spend our parting moments.

  Of course, Susan had no clue that I was about to skip town, and I meant to keep it that way. Somewhere down the road I’d have to pick up a phone and ease her mind. In the meantime, secrecy seemed to be the easiest – if not the bravest – exit strategy. But the look of concern in Susan’s eyes when I’d walked into the bar made it that much harder to keep her in the dark, and I squirmed inside at the thought of sitting there much longer under the pressure of her worried gaze.

  ‘Oh, by the way,’ Susan said, ‘some guy named Bobby’s been calling here for you. I told him to call back at Happy Hour.’

  Some guy named Bobby’s been calling.

  ‘Okay, thanks,’ I said, though the news was hardly something to be thankful for. ‘Not much of a crowd today,’ I said, quickly changing the subject. ‘Any of the regulars been in yet?’

  ‘One too many,’ Susan replied, cryptically. It didn’t take me long to figure out what she meant. A moment later I heard the telltale creak of the men’s room door, and I pivoted on my stool just in time to see Kentucky Fried Danny stumble out of the john and carom off the pool table as he made his unsteady wa
y back to the bar.

  ‘Jesus, he looks extra crispy,’ I observed. ‘How long’s he been here?’

  Susan rolled her eyes and gave me the damage report. ‘They shut down his job site at ten this morning and I’ve had the pleasure ever since.’

  As Danny approached, Susan retreated to the middle of the bar and made a show of restocking the speed wells – leaving me to deal with the mess she’d made.

  It was no small mess.

  ‘There he is, Pete the Hat, my main man!’ Danny proclaimed when he got close enough to focus on me. He was still dressed in his ironworker’s clothes – a grimy set of Carhart coveralls smeared with iron rust, which had the unsettling appearance of dried blood. His greasy blond hair was still matted in a circular pattern by the webbing of the hard hat he’d shed hours ago. Danny was an overgrown kid from the hills of Kentucky, an apprentice ironworker who’d been shipped north by his union to work on one of the new skyscrapers down at the World Financial Center. He’d been in New York for almost a year, and in that time he’d become a fixture at the Raccoon Lodge – and, thanks to his union wages, one of my better customers.

  As Danny approached, I could see that his eyelids were droopy, but the rest of his baby face was frozen in a rictus-like grin. The grin was a dead giveaway. Young Danny was already deeply fried. But the sight of me seemed to pull him partway out of his stupor and he stood a little straighter as he walked up and clamped a beefy hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Brother, am I glad to see you!’ he blubbered in my ear. ‘Let me buy you a drink. What’ll you have?’

  The last thing I needed at that point was alcohol, but when Danny was on a tear it was a waste of time trying to argue with him. So I let him order me a peppermint schnapps. Not much of a drink, but I figured my breath could use the help. For himself, he ordered a double Jack and Coke.

  Susan brought us our drinks and the change from the twenty Danny had given her.

  ‘That’s for you, darlin’,’ Danny said, pushing back a five.

  Susan nodded her thanks and gave the mahogany bar two quick raps with her knuckles before retreating toward her tip jar. The moment she was out of range Danny got right down to business.

  ‘You holding?’ he asked. As usual, he cupped a furtive hand over his mouth when he popped the question. I’m sure in his backwoods way he thought that was proper form for conducting clandestine business in public, but all it ever did was draw attention to our transactions. Such a bush-league move annoyed me, yet I was never able to break him of the habit. This time, however, I let it slide. Considering the scam I was about to pull on him, it seemed the least I could do.

  ‘Not at the moment,’ I told him. ‘But I’m on my way to re-up right now. How much you looking for?’

  Before answering, Danny slipped his wallet out of his coveralls and checked to see how much cash he had left.

  ‘I could go for a half, I guess,’ he said, folding two twenties and a ten together and passing them to me beneath the bar.

  ‘No problem,’ I said, pocketing his cash. ‘Give me half an hour.’

  I took a final swig of coffee and got up off the barstool. Susan saw me buttoning my overcoat and shouldering my pack and she shot me a look of disapproval. She knew what was up. Or thought she did.

  ‘Leaving us so soon?’ she asked sarcastically, as I headed for the door.

  ‘Duty calls, but I’ll be right back,’ I lied, and then hurried out into the storm.

  In those days, when lying was my stock in trade, Susan had always been the one person I had never tried to deceive. The thought that I’d saved my farewell lie for her made the chill in the air feel that much colder. But the tears that filled my eyes as I retraced my steps to the subway for the trip uptown to the Port Authority proved I still had a conscience, so maybe there was hope for me yet.

  As long as the Greyhound buses were still running.

  CHAPTER 2

  When I surfaced from the subway, Times Square was ghostly white and hushed to a whisper. The only sounds were the clinking of tyre chains on a crosstown bus and the distant scraping of a plough blade echoing from somewhere up in the Theater District. Forty-Second Street was deserted, and as I headed for the Port Authority the loneliness that suddenly overwhelmed me was as harsh as the wind off the Hudson. I was totally on my own now, and that was painful to admit. Yet what did I expect? Once the last bridge is burnt, every addict becomes an island, no matter what John Donne says.

  The question is, why would anyone choose that path? I’d been ducking that question for fifteen years, afraid to face the answers I might find, and this was the result. In my heart, I knew there was no point running for my life if all I was running toward was more of the same. Somewhere down the road I’d have to find the courage to take the hard look that was necessary. But I’d been dodging the truth for so long I wondered if I still had it in me to face it. And that scared me more than Bobby Bats.

  My trousers were caked with snow up to my thighs by the time I reached the Port Authority and I was shedding clumps with every stride as I rushed through the concourse, praying I hadn’t missed the last bus out. When I checked the Greyhound Arrivals and Departures board, the storm’s impact was evident. Every bus heading north or west of the city had already been cancelled. But the board did offer one ray of hope from the sunny south – a bus to Miami was scheduled to depart at 6 p.m. and it hadn’t yet been added to the cancellations list. I was in luck! Would the fifty dollars I’d scammed from Danny be enough to buy a ticket to Miami? I doubted it. In any case, I’d have to hold back some cash for food.

  ‘How far south will the Miami bus take me for thirty bucks?’ I asked the churchy-looking black woman behind the counter.

  She sniffed and gave me the fisheye before consulting her rate book. ‘Best I can do for you is Richmond, Virginia. A one-way ticket will cost you thirty-six dollars.’

  I almost replied ‘Praise Jesus!’ but thought better of it. Heartfelt or not, it would have earned me another sniff, no question. Instead, I pushed two twenties across the counter. Eighty per cent of my net worth, gone. But I surrendered it with little regret. If it got me clear of the storm, it would be money well spent.

  ‘Bus leaves at six, from Gate 8, Mezzanine Level,’ the clerk said, as she passed me my ticket and change. ‘Don’t miss it, son. Might be the last bus leavin’ out of here tonight.’

  ‘Gate 8, thanks,’ I said, and hurried off to check the concourse clock. It was 5.40. I had made it with twenty minutes to spare. As the tension drained from my body, I realised I was starving. The concourse food shops were still open, but I couldn’t afford to pay their jacked-up prices, so I made a mad dash across the street to the Korean grocery store on Ninth Avenue.

  The Korean grandma behind the counter looked up when I entered, and as I rushed up and down the aisles frantically grabbing items off the shelves she watched me suspiciously, her face a stern mask of concern or disapproval – I couldn’t tell which. But I didn’t want her getting spooked and dialling 911, so I called out over my shoulder, ‘Sorry, I’m in a real hurry.’

  When I dumped my supplies on the counter and pulled out my last ten-dollar bill, the grandma’s stern expression softened and she rang up my order on a well-worn abacus. There wasn’t much to ring up. A loaf of Wonder Bread. A jar of Welch’s grape jelly. A twin-pack of Bic disposable razors. A travel-sized tube of Colgate toothpaste. And a pouch of Bugler brand roll-your-own tobacco. No one could say I wasn’t travelling light.

  ‘Nine dolla,’ the grandma announced, when the beads stopped clicking. To my surprise, as she handed over my change, she flashed me a gap-toothed smile and said in a flat, uninflected Korean accent that left me puzzled, ‘You go far.’

  I had no clue whether I’d just been delivered a prophecy or asked a simple question.

  ‘Go far?’ I repeated, unsure what else to say.

  ‘You go far, I put extra bag. Bad weather,’ she said, nodding toward the store window.

  ‘Oh, right,’
I smiled, getting the picture. ‘Thanks, an extra bag would be great.’

  The Miami bus rolled up to Gate 8 on the dot of six and was greeted by murmurs of relief from everyone in line. The doors popped open with a pneumatic hiss and the lanky, grey-haired driver stepped off and started collecting tickets. As I handed him mine, I asked, ‘How bad are the roads out there?’

  ‘Seen worse,’ he replied with a Down East accent that eased my mind. In Maine, you don’t survive long enough to get grey hair unless you’ve mastered the art of driving in snow.

  The bench seat in the rear of the bus was unoccupied, and I immediately claimed it. It’s the one seat on a Greyhound that lets you get horizontal, even if only in the foetal position, and I figured I’d better get what sleep I could on the ride to Richmond because there was no telling where or when I’d next get the chance to bed down in a warm place. After shucking my coat and my snow-filled Reeboks, I broke out the Wonder Bread and grape jelly, and belatedly realised I’d forgotten to ask the Korean grandma for some plastic utensils. I was forced to improvise, and I felt completely ridiculous as I sat there spreading jelly on bread with the only utensil I had available – the hollow plastic handle of a Bic disposable razor. But the jelly sandwiches cured my hunger pangs, and as the bus headed into the Lincoln Tunnel I felt the sugar start to perk me up. I welcomed the rush. It had been twelve hours since I’d snorted my last line of coke and abstinence was gnawing at my synapses with sharp little teeth.

  The tunnel’s sodium lights cast a jaundiced glow on the white-tiled walls as I gazed out the window, intent on catching a parting glimpse of the blue-tiled strip at midpoint, which marks the border line between New York and New Jersey. When it eventually flashed by, it left me with mixed feelings. In a sense, it was the starting line for the marathon race I now had to run to reclaim my life, and of course that was something to be glad about. But on the flip side it was also very much a finish line: a here-and-gone reminder that my life in New York was now behind me. And that was a sad thing to acknowledge – as shattered dreams always are.