City Boy (14 page)

“It was great seeing you,” said Fran, only too relieved to fall back into hostess mode, even though her eyes were skidding around in her face and she had to be wondering if anything worse was going to happen before she could get rid of them.

“Reg. Always a pleasure.”

“Sure, guy. Anytime.” Reg made as if to shake hands, but Jack had both of his on Chloe’s arms, steering her ahead of him. Her shoulders tried to squirm away but he kept his grip. At least she was quiet, though she raised her chin to look back at him in a smug, knowing way.

When they got to the front door, Fran said, “Chloe, your purse.” She scooped it up from the hallway table and presented it.

“Thanks, hon. I love you.”

“I love you too, Chloe. I hope you feel better.”

“I feel fine. I feel a remarkable sense of clarity. I’ll call you. Lunch.”

“That’d be great.”

“Reg. You’re my hero.”

“That’s swell, Chloe. You’re a swell girl.”

“I always think that a man should have a career, I mean, it makes them so much more interesting. Gives them something to make conversation about.”

“Good night,” Jack said, propelling her down the pathway, to the car. Chloe shook herself loose from him and walked with mincing care to the passenger side.

Jack started the car and pulled away, leaving Reg and Fran standing in their pink-wreathed doorway. They would go inside, look at each other, secretly excited by the ugliness of it all. He imagined the things they would say, how they would both feel better satisfied with each other, at least for a time.

Chloe settled back and half-reclined in the seat, her knees braced against the dashboard. “Go ahead, say it.”

“What am I supposed to say.”

“Your righteous, pissed-off … you know, how much you hate me.”

“There’s no point in talking to you when you’re like this.”

“Chick-en.”

“Is this just a drunk thing? Or do you always think I’m not worth shit, and it only comes out when you’re drunk?”

“I thought you weren’t going to talk to me.”

He shut up. Chloe sank deeper into the seat, turned her head away from him. He only wanted to get home, not be here with her. His eyes were having trouble with the freeway darkness. He was afraid he might missteer in traffic, send them crashing into one of the cars that floated past them with only a shimmering rush of sound, then he was afraid they might not crash, and his furious heart would propel them all the way, and he would have to endure this and more. The city approached and unrolled around them, the El stops that always surprised him with their crowds of people waiting for trains in the tinny yellow light, as if each of them had some perfectly reasonable reason for coming and going this late, well they probably did, they weren’t standing out there just to make him feel lonesome and menaced. Then the vacant, tenementlike
factories, or perhaps they really had been tenements, which stood at some distance in their no-man’s-land of rail sidings and burned-over ground. Then the grand downtown buildings filled the windshield and it was time to look for their exit, and Chloe said, “You know we really can’t think about having children until you bring in an actual income.”

She had not previously sounded sloppy or slurred, the way you thought of drunks, and she didn’t now. Instead she was calm, matter-of-fact. Whatever poison the drinking set loose in her was of some other sort.

Although Jack knew better, he couldn’t keep himself from answering back. “So it’s money. That’s the important thing now.”

“Well don’t tell me you don’t need to have money around if you want to do the kid thing.”

“Fine. You’ve made your point. Everybody tonight was enlightened.”

“You know what’s totally, totally unfair of you? The way you make fun of Reg.”

“Reg? What the hell does Reg have to do with anything?”

“I respect Reg. He gets up in the morning, puts on his shoes, and slugs it out in the real world. Sells them air cleaners. Brings home the bacon.”

“I make fun of him? You told me Fran only married him because she wanted to play house. Never mind. No point arguing with a drunk.”

“Oh right, that’s the answer to everything. I’m drunk.”

“Why don’t I take you back to good ol Reg, see if he wants you on his hands.”

“Yeah, that way maybe you’ll get to fuck Fran like you want to.”

He was startled enough to let the car slip away from him before he bore down on the steering wheel. He barked out a laugh. “That’s not even drunk talk. That’s just crazy.”

“Sure.” Her tone was absent, as if she no longer cared, or perhaps had even forgotten what she’d just said. An image of Fran, her offered breasts and mouth, seized Jack like a spasm,
What the hell was happening to him?
He wasn’t going to fuck Fran, he had no intention of doing so, but the two of them had made him want to.

Chloe roused herself. “At least they have a real house. When are we going to be able to afford a house? Oh, forget it. What’s the point.”

“We have enough money. If you want some yuppie fantasy life, that’s too bad.”

“Sure,” she said again. This time her tone was drawling, lazy. The mocking stranger inside her who felt only contempt for him.

“You know, never mind about kids. Probably not a good idea.”

“I always knew I was going to have to do everything myself. Earn the paycheck. Have the children. Arrange the social life—”

“Like you did tonight. Thanks.”

“—but I thought you’d have more pride than to
let
me do it. Put up more of a fight.”

“You don’t know what you want.”

“Oh, but I guess you do. You know everything about everything in the entire, absolute world.”

Once more Jack gave up on talking. He concentrated on navigating the streets. He was tired beyond fatigue now, wondering how he was ever going to be able to sleep and get up again, drag himself into tomorrow morning’s classroom, get words to come out of his mouth, or reenter any part of what had been, until a few hours ago, his normal life. Chloe said, “Then you make it sound like I’m some completely greedy bitch who wants to run through some guy’s money, and that is so unfair. Money is money, okay? I mean it’s not that I worship it. It’s more like what it represents. Stability. Serious, serious … Have a real life. An actual adult, not some I’m still a kid so I can just play around. Children? Don’t make me laugh. You can’t take care of yourself. Or me. Or anything. Let alone, you know. An actual baby.”

She was running down, as she always did eventually, losing the thread of language. They were only a few blocks away from home and if Jack could just find a parking space quickly enough, no easy thing this time of night, he wouldn’t have to listen to much more of her.

As if she was again aware of his thought, as if alcohol gave her some spooky, direct-current access into his brain, she sat up straighter, appeared to get a second wind. “You know what your problem is? You think you’re so
sensitive
, you never have to
do
anything, just hang
around looking all droopy and superior, Mr. Artist-in-Residence. Your problem, one of them at least, is you think you’re the only one in the world who knows things. Feels things. But everybody’s really writing their own story, baby, writing it down some place you can’t see. Me. Everybody. You—Well looky here.”

Jack saw it too. Three squad cars collected in the middle of their block, flashers shooting red and blue panic into the darkness, a couple of halogen spots washing the sidewalk with white glare. As they drew closer Jack felt his skin register the cold knowledge that it was their building the police were camped in front of.

He stopped the car on the street, left the engine running. “Stay here,” he told Chloe, who only raised her eyebrows in perfect indifference to whatever mayhem was going on at their house.

Jack jogged a little way up the sidewalk to the nearest cop. At least there wasn’t any ambulance. The cop was standing next to one of the squads, talking into his shoulder mike. He was a middle-aged, slab-faced guy and he looked annoyed at having his conversation interrupted. “You blind or just stupid? You can’t come through this way.”

“But I live here.”

“Sure. Take a hike.”

“Seriously. I live here. What happened?” Jack reached for his wallet, presented his driver’s license. Proof of residence. Beyond the cop’s hammy shoulder were more cops engaged in standing around, talking to each other, at ease, like none of this was any big deal. Jack registered the usual mild shock at the realization that those were actual guns holstered at their sagging belts. The cop with his driver’s license was taking his sweet time and still hadn’t given Jack any clue as to what was going on. Something to do with H.P.R.B., he guessed, or maybe that was just what he hoped. They’d come to haul him off for the drugs, most likely. Damned shame.

The cop, with Jack’s license still in hand, turned his back and sauntered off to join his fellows. Jack was able to edge closer. The sidewalk before their building’s front door sparkled with glass nuggets, and the door itself was splintered and shattered in a jagged jigsaw pattern.

“Well this is a fine howdy-do.”

Chloe had come up next to him. “What did I tell you,” she said.

“Safe neighborhood, right.”

“Get back in the car.”

“Stop telling me what to do. What do you think, somebody forgot their key? Or we got ripped off?”

“I don’t know yet, all right?”

“Wow, something you don’t know the answer to. I want to make a note of the date.”

The cop walked back to them. Chloe huddled up against Jack, as if she were cold or frightened. He wanted to strike her. The cop got himself an eyeful of Chloe, handed Jack’s license over to him. “Which apartment’s yours, sir?”

“Ours,” said Chloe. “His and mine. First-floor front. Did you catch whoever did it?”

“Not yet, ma’am.” The cop had manners now. “But we’re on it. Let’s go check your apartment. Watch your step here.”

“Thank you, Officer. You know people always take the police for granted until they need them,” said Chloe, laying it on with a trowel. The front door was propped open and they eyed the wreckage. Above and below the central emptiness, the glass shards formed a pattern like a shark’s mouth. A lump of aggregate the size of two fists lay just inside. They stared at it as if it might cause some further trouble, take it upon itself to explode or levitate.

At his doorway Mr. Dandy was holding forth to yet another cop. When he saw Jack and Chloe, he turned to them, already in mid-sentence: “—believe this? I’m going out and get me a gun. Shotgun. Next time somebody comes around here that don’t belong, they’re gonna get what for.”

Jack sidestepped him, checked the apartment door. The lock held, undamaged. “Give me your keys,” he said to Chloe, who handed them over grudgingly. When he got the door open and turned on the entryway light, everything looked the way they’d left it. Computer, TV, stereo. The cop was behind him, and Chloe was behind the cop. “Seems fine,” Jack said, and the cop said it was best to make absolutely
sure. Jack led the others in a procession through the rooms. He was trying to think just what else of value they owned, couldn’t come up with much. It was surpassing weird, having a cop marching through their bedroom, but nothing should surprise him about this night by now.

When they reached the kitchen, Jack said, “Nothing’s missing. Nobody’s been in here.”

Mr. Dandy, uninvited, had come in behind Chloe. “We’re lucky we wasn’t murdered in our beds.” It was as if some unclean phantom had materialized in their kitchen. Mr. Dandy wore his usual old man’s pants, a dull, shiny green, hiked up too high and defeated at the knees. A plaid shirt that seemed to be rotting away underneath the arms. He was bending his head this way and that, he was actually
sniffing
, either the room itself or Chloe, his inflamed, red-veined nose perched over her bare arm.

Chloe was stuck between him and the cop, the cop trying to turn his bulk around in the narrow kitchen doorway. She was giggling. “Oh, excuse me. I don’t know who that was, but excuse me.”

As soon as they’d retreated to the dining room and cleared enough of a path, Jack pushed past them to the front door. “Where are you going?” Chloe called after him, her voice still swallowing down a laugh.

“To move the car.”

He shut the apartment door behind him. He didn’t want to have to go back inside, although he knew nothing was ever that clear or simple, that he was only in the middle of things and with no end in sight.

In the lobby a workman from the board-up service was already unloading a sheet of plywood. The broken glass had been swept into a pile. Jack had to give credit to people who dealt with emergencies on a daily basis. They had the drill down cold. There was one cop still out on the sidewalk, maybe the partner of the officer still inside. The rest had taken themselves off to somewhere more urgent or interesting. Jack stepped back out of the way of the workman just as H.P.R.B. and Raggedy Ann approached on the sidewalk. He heard them in conversation with the cop, Raggedy Ann’s squeal and Rich Brezak saying, “No shit,” then saying it again, and then a third time, with different inflec
tions to indicate the different degrees of his amazement. A moment later they stepped into the lobby and stared at the heap of glass fragments as if trying to figure out where each piece had fit into the door.

Jack guessed they were stoned. That was always a safe guess. Their expressions were rubbery and unfocused, and they walked as if their feet were half a beat behind the rest of their bodies. “Hey man,” Brezak said by way of a greeting. He still wore his hair in those yarn-wrapped braids, although the hair seemed to have worked loose into a layer of fuzz, so that his head resembled a large and unkempt spider. Raggedy Ann was treading delicately on the edge of the glass pile, enjoying the crunching sound it made beneath her boots.

“What a fucked-up mess,” observed Brezak, in the tone of a disgusted property owner. The cop had followed them inside. Jack wondered if he’d caught the whiff of pot smoke that clung to the two of them, but then figured the cop wouldn’t care. He only wanted to finish up his business and get back to watching cop-reality shows down at the precinct.