Bucky F*cking Dent (25 page)

Mariana said nothing.

“That time when I saw you in the cafeteria with that young, handsome guy, when I bought you Jell-O. I got a feeling—you were fucking him, too?”

“Does it matter, Ted?”

“Yeah, it fucking matters.”

“Would that make it easier for you to move on?”

“Fuck if I know. I just got here, I'm not trying to move on.”

“Yes.”

“Yes? Yes, you fucked him? You fuck all of them?”

Mariana did not say yes and she did not say no.

“You fuck all of them? Jesus, what is wrong with you?”

“What is ‘wrong' with me? What's wrong with you? There's nothing wrong with me.”

“Really?”

“Okay, there's everything wrong with me. Can we be done?”

“No, we can't be done.”

“It's just sex, Ted, no big deal.”

“You didn't like it?”

“I loved it.”

“Thank God.”

“I always love it.”

“Fuck.”

“What?”

“So cold.”

“Am I? You don't really know the first thing about me.”

“I'm beginning to see that. I'd like to, though. If you let me.”

She sounded now like a mother admonishing a child who wanted too much candy. “Ted. No.”

“What happened to you? I mean, in the past. Talk to me.”

“There's nothing to talk about.”

“There's everything to talk about.”

“What? Are you gonna make my team win for me? You gonna be my hero? You gonna make all my pain go away? You got that power? You gonna make that promise?”

“I can't promise.”

“No, you can't.”

“I'd like to try.”

Mariana stared into his eyes. Was she looking to see if he could deliver or was she just staring into her own darkness? Ted didn't know. She spoke before turning to leave for good. “I'm sorry, Ted, this is what I do. Make no mistake. I don't help people live, I help them die.”

She walked down the hall, and her beauty moving like that away from Ted made him cry to see it go.

 

58.

Marty was unconscious. There was nothing Ted could do. Maria came in to visit. She sat holding Marty's hand, speaking to him quietly in Spanish. Ted went home, back to his place, where his mechanical fish did not need to be fed. All he brought with him from Marty's house was the notebook, “The Doublemint Man.” He said hi to Goldfarb. Goldfarb played it cool as usual.

He reread his dad's novel/journal/whatever again and again. Puzzled over where it stopped. Right in mid-sentence, “They were…” like it was calling to him over the years to complete the sentence. Ted grabbed a pen, sat by the window, and waited for the words to come. He lit up a joint with his Grateful Dead lighter and waited for the high words. Here they came, here they began. Ted put pen to old paper and began to make shapes, and those shapes became letters, and those letters became words.

 

59.

Back at Yankee Stadium, Mungo was worried about Ted. His aim was off, had never been worse.

Ted took “The Doublemint Man” to the ballpark and wrote there on his short breaks. You never knew when the right words would come, but they wouldn't come if you didn't write. He glanced up at the huge clock in right field and saw that it was “Longines” for the first time, that the name of the watch company was Longines. Ted laughed because he had always seen it as “Longingness,” and that it wasn't the name of the company, but rather a comment on the passage of time itself, and yearning. The Longingness. But no, it's just French. What I thought was a brilliant, sad yearning was just French.

He looked away from the Longingness to his boss standing back in the concourse, a stupid, angry look on his face.

 

60.

Ted stood before his supervisor, the martinet, clearing out his locker. His boss was monologuing him even though Ted had received the communication twenty minutes ago—he was fired, he got it. They knew he'd stolen the VCR and the tapes. They knew he ate some of the peanuts he was meant to sell. They suspected he might be a spy for the Boston Red Sox. They knew enough to bring criminal charges, but they didn't know if they would. Let them do their worst. Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks and all that shit. He didn't need this fucking job, working for peanuts. Ha ha. He wasn't Mr. Peanut, he was a man, a fucking man with big clanging balls, spell that M-A-N. Like Muddy Waters. The Dead started up “Candyman” in his head and Ted wanted to sing along, grab a shotgun, and blow this Mr. Benson straight to hell.

But Ted said nothing at all. Mungo stood watching from a safe distance as Ted stuffed the remainder of his junk into his knapsack. On the way out he passed Mungo, who lifted his arm, the one with the bowling forearm guard, high in the air like John Carlos and Tommie Smith at the '68 Olympics. As Ted left the stadium for good, he returned the Black Power salute.

“Up the workers, Mungo.”

“Up the workers, Teddy Ballgame.”

 

61.

No job. Ted spent pretty much all his time at the hospital. Sometimes Maria would spell him, and he'd go watch the softball leagues in Central Park, but mostly he stayed with Marty. He and Mariana locked eyes occasionally, but they managed to avoid each other mostly, and Ted stifled his impulses to make a scene. Every day, he'd pull his seat up to the side of Marty's hospital bed and read him all three daily papers from start to finish. It took hours, but Ted had nothing else to do. He had heard that people who awoke from comas could remember things that were said to them while they were gone. Ted felt a piece of Marty still remained. Somewhere. And he spoke to that part. Sometimes he would hold his dad's hand.

The Red Sox were awful. Chokers. They were cursed. They had totally tanked to the Yankees, and the Yanks had taken a sizable lead. But then there was yet another shift, and the Sox showed signs of life while the Yanks started showing nerves. By September 17, Boston had made up some ground and were just two games down to the Yanks. Both teams kept winning now. It was neck and neck for weeks.

Ted read from the back of the
Post
to his father. “Sox made up a game, Dad. They're hanging in there. Don't leave the party yet. Try to stay, stick around and see what happens next, okay?”

 

62.

Ted had not been back to his dad's house in a while, but he returned to fill the gray panthers in on Marty's condition. In the meantime, Tango Sam, seemingly the most vital of them all, had died. His heart exploded in his sleep. Death was one random motherfucker. Ted imagined Tango Sam at the Pearly Gates or, better yet, at the gates of Hell, saying, “Lucifer, Prince of Darkness, Lord of the Underworld, Satan himself, you look red and tremendous, loan me fifty.”

Ted let himself into his father's house. It felt now like a museum, a mausoleum. He wanted something from there, though, something curated from the past. Something he had come for. But first, he would cut his hair.

 

63.

A newly shorn Ted dropped the papers off in his dad's hospital room and started to remove his clothes. He had brought the old scuba equipment from his boyhood closet. He put it on right there, flippers and all. He paraded back and forth in front of Marty as he had when he was a kid hoping to get his father's attention. The snorkel was in his mouth and condensation soon formed on the mask like tears so it seemed to Ted he was looking out at the world through a lens of sadness. A nurse saw this amphibious spectacle and went running to alert someone, but just then Mariana walked by and stopped her. She looked in and saw Ted, mostly naked in a scuba outfit, walking back and forth doing silly dances in front of Marty. Ted glanced up, and he and Mariana saw each other. Ted held her gaze for a few moments, and then turned his back to her. He adjusted his mask and snorkel for another dive and went back to dancing for his father.

As he danced, the Yankees lost to Cleveland, 9–2, and the Red Sox beat Toronto 5–0. The two rivals ended the season in the same place they began it, even, 162 games erased in a blink. The past four months never happened. The slate was clean. There was only now.

 

64.

Ted arrived at the hospital looking fresh faced and handsome with his new, late-'70s short hair. He was half hoping Mariana would see him and have second thoughts, but he didn't see her. Papers in hand, he entered Marty's room and sat down beside him. He took Marty's hand and ran it over his scalp. “I cut that fucking hippie hair, Dad,” he said, “like you wanted me to.”

He picked up the
Post
and pointed. “And guess what? They're tied. Boston did it. They came back. They won their last eight fucking games in a row, like champs. They didn't fold, so now you don't fold. C'mon, Dad, you're immortal till October, you can't go till the Sox win.” Even though there was not even a hint of response, Ted continued, “There's a one-game playoff. They did a coin toss and it's up in Fenway. They have home-field advantage. One game decides it all. I like Boston.”

Marty didn't move.

 

65.

Ted got some food from Brooklyn Jerk and sat outside eating chicken in the crisp fall air. He'd asked for Virgil and Virgil came out. “Anotha nickel bag, brotha?” he asked Ted.

“No. Harder.”

“Sinse-blow-smack-dust?”

“Harder.”

“Respect, brotha, but ain't nothin' 'arder.”

“Yeah, there is.”

Ted motioned Virgil in close and began whispering in his ear. Virgil listened, his mouth dropped open, and he shook his head no. Ted moved in closer, determined, unstoppable, as Virgil began to nod his dreads, and then began to laugh.

 

66.

Ted hustled straight back to the hospital. There was urgent business at hand. He pulled up a chair by Marty. He took two tickets out of his pocket and, pushing the oxygen tube out of the way, held them under Marty's nose.

“Smell that? Smells like victory. Smells like baseball, Boston. Playoff game is coming up and I got us two tickets. I got 'em. C'mon, buddy, time to get up. Rise and shine.”

Marty was still. Ted put the breathing apparatus back under his nose and, feeling his own fight leaving him, surrendered and said, “I'm sorry, Dad. I'm sorry I'm such a fuckup. I'm sorry I'm Mr. Peanut. I'm sorry I'm not the Splendid Splinter. I'm sorry I got in your way, the way of your writing, of your life. And Maria. And I'm sorry I left you, abandoned you. Forgive me, Father, please forgive me…”

Ted put his head down on his father's chest, so he did not see when Marty's eyes began to flutter open. Marty croaked through days and weeks of dryness, “Did you say
two
tickets?”

 

67.

The doctors were astounded at Marty's recovery. Astounded and oddly chagrined. They showed about as much emotion as doctors are allowed to show when something better than they expected happens through absolutely no agency of their own. Which is to say they showed very little joy and a lot of skepticism, like Marty's resurrection was some sort of elaborate magic trick orchestrated by Ted, who just looked askance at them and said nothing about the ticket cure. The doctors didn't want to let him go, but Marty scoffed at their dire warnings. This was his story, he told them, not theirs. Marty and Ted waited for a quiet moment and then simply walked out without checking out. It wasn't prison. Opening the door to exit the hospital felt to Ted like rolling away the stone. He actually felt like he was in a story, his father's story. This was a miracle of some kind, of that Ted was certain. Marty said goodbye to Mariana on his own as Ted waited outside in the car. Marty felt okay, actually, not bad at all, considering, and he had a date with destiny. He and Boston both.