On the Nickel (16 page)

Gloria held up her own cell. ‘I've been trying. She either means to be out of touch or she's in trouble.'

‘Of course.' The nun seemed amused at herself. ‘I'm sorry, Gloria, I completely forget about these mobile telephones that everyone has, even the children. You know, I've never driven a car, never watched television. I suppose I'm the true Luddite. I was cloistered and silent for many years, but I think I've learned that claustral adoration of God isn't really my vocation, even a second time, no matter how hard I tried. I need to be more active, and I guess I need to feel I'm being of use.'

‘You were
silent
all that time! Sweet Jesus. That would kill me. I need to chew people out now and then. I need to bang against them.'

The nun laughed softly. ‘I think Jack's found someone who's really good for him.'

‘You'd have to ask him that. It hasn't been all roses and firecracker sex.'

She'd said that on purpose and saw the woman blush a little. ‘I'd like to give you something,' the nun said, looking away.

‘Uh-huh,' Gloria said, as neutrally as she could. The woman finally gave up her distracted, half-hearted attempt at making coffee and left the room. Gloria brooded for a moment and then studied the poster that faced her, above the desk. She liked the look of the woman on the poster and rose a little, leaning forward, to read that it depicted someone named Dorothy Day (1897–1980). Across the bottom was a quote that was presumably from the pensive-looking cleft-chinned woman: ‘I firmly believe that our salvation depends on the poor.' She'd never heard the woman's name before and would have to ask Jack if he'd heard of her.

Why such a big deal? Gloria thought. Why the fuck not care about the poor? It's supposed to be the deal.

She finally decided that watching what powerful people kept doing to the poor was part of what was killing her. She liked the look of the woman on the poster. As a cop, she was supposed to be observant, but she wasn't sure she'd ever looked as closely at a photograph as she looked now at this plain-looking dead woman in black and white with the transparent plastic eyeglass frames, the vertical worry furrows over her nose and the squared-off jaw.

The nun came back into the room with a large loose-leaf notebook in black pebbled covers, fat with celluloid-encased pages, like somebody's memory book. She flipped through them rapidly and finally stopped with a closed-off unreadable look. She handed the open book to Gloria.

Each page seemed to contain a photograph of an oil painting, back-to-back. But that wasn't what caught Gloria's attention. The book was open to a startling oil portrait of Jack Liffey, a whole lot younger and more full of vigor than she'd ever seen. He was hiking one leg of his trousers to sit on the edge of a table. The painter was pretty good – probably this annoying nun herself, ex-nun, nun-again – and Jack Liffey looked back at the painter as if captivated by some ambiguous emotion, a little full of himself as usual, curious, almost smiling. Oh, it was Jack, all right.

‘I want you to have it,' the woman said.

‘Did he pose for you?'

‘No, I did it from memory.'

‘Where's the original?'

‘Who knows? They were probably all thrown in the trash down in Cahuenga after I left. I want you to know I have no designs on your man, Gloria. This is all I have of him and I give him back. Jack is all yours now. I'm married to Jesus. Please take it.'

Gloria studied the woman for any nuance of irony or spite and saw nothing. ‘In another universe I might have liked you.'

‘I find I'm stuck in this one,' the nun said. ‘If we ever started competing, God knows where we'd end up. Just take care of Jack. Jesus and Mary watch over you.'

‘It's getting really dark over here,' Conor announced.

‘No shit, Sherlock.' Maeve was so frightened and so intent on watching a faint line of gray at the foot of the cubicle wall that she'd almost forgotten who it was talking inanely at her from nearby. That was unfair – but still. She was preoccupied with her own fear. The animal noises had gone on skritching, now and again, along that disappearing line of gray. Catbox sounds, holding her full and utter attention.

Somewhere deep in the funhouse, somebody had decided to test one of her worst fears: it was Room 101, if she'd got the number right, from Orwell's
1984.
The room that held everybody's worst nightmare. Winston Smith's had been rats. And rats would do for her, too,
absolutely,
she thought. Oh, yes, rats eating at you when you're helpless. ‘I wish you could save me,' she called. She figured she'd always wanted somebody to save her. Mostly her father, of course, who was incapacitated now and so self-obsessed by it all that he was impossibly far beyond saving anyone.

‘I'm not very good at saving,' the boy called. ‘I can't see myself as anything but myself – a guy who's a bit wretched at anything useful. I can't saw a board the right length, and I can't hammer a nail straight. But I
do
feel risk in the air right now, and it scares me. I'd sure like to be one of those people who always knows what he's doing, but I'm not.'

‘Thank you, Conor. For your honesty. Let's try to help each other through this terrible night.'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘I don't know what options we've got. I've been trying to get my wrists out of these handcuffs for hours.'

‘Well, I'll be honest,' Maeve said. ‘I'm so terrified by these animal sounds that I've almost gone into another state of being and I'm surprised when I notice I'm still the same person I used to be. I'm almost catatonic.' It seemed more like a nightmare than an event, and she wished she could wake up in a cold sweat with the danger over.

Just then she saw it, saw its vague ovoid shape scurrying along the base of the cubicle wall. She screamed as she'd only screamed in dreams – all her terror pouring out at once as if she'd unstoppered a big vat of fright.

‘What is it?'

She brought her knees up to protect her face, assuming a fetal mania of denial.

‘Maeve, please! Tell me!'

Nothing bit her, nothing brushed against her, and after a while, after increasingly desperate pleas from Conor, she forced herself to breathe slowly and deeply, to imagine the rat somebody's scientific subject – a harmless furry creature that could be set to hunting through a maze, at the whim of some geeky psychologist. Then fed to a boa.
Yes.

‘Just a rat,' she snapped.

‘I'm so sorry.'

‘So am I. My scream probably scared the poor thing spitless.'

‘I don't know about the rat, but my mouth is pretty dry.'

Jack Liffey dragged himself along the gutter with what strength he still had in his arms and found he was long past worrying about the smells or the muck that he was accumulating on his clothing as he plowed through the unmentionably squishy heaps. Eventually he did navigate his body a few feet away from the curb, away from the worst filth as he moved toward light. Up ahead – either impossibly far or only a short walk, depending on your condition – he could see an old-fashioned streetlamp that was still functioning, spilling a yellow pool across a crumbling curb. Oh, yes, light. Better to be visible and to be able to see.

He felt a bit detached from his fear now, but maybe that was just a sign of coming unglued. He was doing his very best not to worry about Maeve; there was nothing he could do for her right now. The last true memory he nurtured of being able to use his muscles with competence, he had twisted himself around to embrace her but avoid pressing himself against her breasts as a mammoth mudslide headed for them. He had been told quite a lot about that event, but he had no memory of being buried alive. The idea alone was enough to bring back a brain-freezing horror.
³

Needing a powerful image to push away the shuddering, he thought of his father, across town. A wizened old man down in San Pedro harbor, hunkered down in a bungalow that was surrounded now by the Latino families whom he loathed as he wrote his bizarrely scholarly, obsessively footnoted articles for the racist eugenics magazines that they still published for some indescribable purpose in Denmark and Sweden and now Middle Europe.
The Aryan Comeback
.
Nord Ren. En Framtid för Våra Vito Barn
(A Future for our White Kids).
Tsar Lazar –
a compilation of racist screeds named for the ancient hero of Serbia who'd fought the Ottoman Turks.

Jack Liffey had received these articles in the mail for years, and some superstition had made him tuck them away in a closet rather than burn them immediately.
Don't try to explain any of that to yourself,
he insisted.

A siren sounded, then died.
You explain too much as it is,
he thought.
Just get yourself into the light right now and plan from there.
A big truck rumbled past him, and its headlights couldn't have missed picking him out, but the truck made no effort to stop and help a prostrate human form in the street.
Thanks a lot, guys. I must look terribly threatening down here – a cripple who's arm-crawling along the gutter.
Of course, this was the borderlands of Skid Row and he was probably no more unusual than a lot of other sights down here.

He could imagine driving on past just such a person himself.
What a sad case,
he would think. Probably drunk as a skunk. Don't want to get caught up in
that,
for sure. Everyone knew that the chances of saving a booze-martyr were almost negligible.

²
See
The Concrete River,
1996.

³
See
Palos Verdes Blue,
2009.

T
wo black boys squatted beside him, then rolled him over. ‘You ridin' on candy, old man? Juiced? Maybe you take some dust.'

‘Ack!'

‘Don't be talkin' no chop suey now.' One young man, maybe sixteen years old, patted down Jack Liffey's jacket pockets. At the same time, he felt an exploring hand testing his pants. He knew the wallet was already gone. What was left? A Chapstick maybe. A pocket knife. Loose change.

A drawling caution came into the boy's voice. ‘Waal, you don' move now, old man.' A hand dug and found something, a Chapstick that the boy studied for an instant and contemptuously flung away. Then he found the penknife, an expensive Swiss Army model. ‘Hey, a uptick in life. Old woman promise some Freddy got a gift for me. Not much of a gift, but I guess you can't never want stuff too bad or the stuff end up lightweight.'

‘Ack.'

‘Don't blow no gaskets. I be get to like this new lingo you got – the ack-ack talk.' The boy stood up. ‘Ack to you, dad. Ack-ack-ack.'

‘This guy my favorite flavor. Bye, sucker.'

The boys walked away laughing, tossing his penknife back and forth between them, the one shouting ‘Ack-ack!' every time he caught it, and ‘Ack, my niggah!' when he tossed it back.

Jack Liffey was so addled that he addressed a kind of secular prayer to the fates who might or might not be watching over him.
Protect me with a plastic bubble, please. And protect Maeve, too.

This was probably the worst spot in the city to find yourself lying defenseless and immobile in the street, even if there was a tickle in his legs now. Maybe they'd strip you even faster in Beverly Hills, he thought. No, that was sentimental nonsense. In Beverly Hills a man lying in the gutter would be ignored, as long as possible, but nobody would ever fish in a derelict's filthy pocket. Over there, the stealing was all done with a pen and a bogus smile.

He glanced around, looking for further danger. The human need was so desperate that almost anything had value – even a beat-up wheelchair. He was surprised they'd discarded the Chapstick.

He heard a truck engine approaching up the road, saw its headlights flood the pavement, then heard the engine gun hard as if trying to get up the speed to run him over. He closed his eyes tight but the roaring missed him by several feet. The drizzle had diminished to a slow sprinkling, a mist. He rolled and lay face up, the front of his clothing soaked through, and he felt the fresh prickling on his cheeks.

How ridiculously frail I am now,
he thought. A few angry tots, still in their Pampers, could finish him off with their rattles, hammering away in some maddened infant frenzy. Imagining just that, he lay there laughing for a few moments, wondering if he was descending into a hysteria.

Were the gods of neurology laughing
with
him or
at
him? He rolled back to his stomach and tried to drag himself toward the curb with his arms. He made some progress but ran out of steam after three determined crawl-strokes. There were hints, just hints, of feeling in his legs. But something had drained all his energy. When he opened his eyes, an emaciated gray cat was stalking toward him to investigate.

‘Ack!'

The hungry-looking wet cat halted and tried to fluff up to appear larger than life, but then a car approached, flooding light past him and sending the cat fleeing along the gutter, tail low.

Sorry, kitty, but I'm probably not edible, not without some chopping.

The car diverted by a wide margin, audibly squishing through gunk in the far gutter. He wondered who but cops would be driving down here now in this menacing dark. Maybe a Korean importer on his way home from the toy district. Maybe a lost tourist trying to find his way back to the Biltmore. A carload of high school thrillseekers.

‘Hombre,
you need a big hit of tequila.' A powerful-looking teenager, holding a long brown cigarette, knelt to stare at Jack Liffey's face, grasping his chin and twisting to get a better view. ‘You my own Idaho. Not so bad. If we in jail, I make you my bitch.' He massaged Jack Liffey's ass.
‘Bienvenidos,
cherry, eh, sweetie? I guess you lucky. Too cold tonight, way too wet, too
swami.'

Swami? Jack Liffey thought.

‘Good shoes. They worth something.'

He felt the comfy Rockports wrenched off his feet and was surprised he felt it at all. Maybe some sensation was returning.

‘What the big nobs say? Walk a mile in my shoe, uh-huh. Maybe I will. But
El Chibo
always give full value.
Aqui, esse.'

Jack Liffey tried to turn his head away from the cigarette – he hadn't smoked in over ten years – but the kid wrenched his jaw back.

‘Don' be no
pendejo.
You suck on my Sherm or you suck some-thin' else, eh? This a real gift – me to you.'

Jack Liffey inhaled and knew immediately the cigarette was laced with something. The skinny Shermans were notorious as conduits for angel dust. Shit! Just what he needed.

‘Yeah, take a big one, man. I gotta give fair for you Rockafella shoes. They hardly use at all.'

Fingers pressed Jack Liffey's lips closed over the cigarette.

‘Go,
hombre.
You a real man.'

He drew in a mouthful, trying not to inhale.

‘No, no.'

The boy pounded on his back and Jack Liffey was jolted into inhaling, watching this all happen from far away. He began to feel the high, whatever it was, needle points dancing on his cheeks.

‘Ack!' He exhaled and closed his teeth tight.

‘Wan' more,
hombre
? Jus' so I be you tycoon tonight.'

He gave in and inhaled. He held it, like his last memory of working on a joint, maybe fifteen years back, his world starting to spin now. Why the hell not?

‘Love you, man. You got pretty eyes. Bye-bye.'

He heard the footsteps recede as the spinning carried on and on. Christ – but maybe this was just what he needed to get through the night. Relax and accept it. You're just a piece of useless meat anyway. A siren sounded not far away, and he heard fire engines speeding out of a station, one tire squealing in a turn, but nothing came his way, not even a hint of their light.

Alone now,
he thought.
Lying on my stomach and going dopey. OK, I am a fortress. Of all that I have done and known. It's all got to protect me now.
His spine tingled as the sounds of something small and living scrabbled along the gutter nearby. He turned his head. Rats. A running parade of big fat rats hustled past only a foot or two from his face. They leapt small piles of wet garbage, one after another, like children at follow-the-leader. Then they were gone, and he realized his jaw was clenched so hard it hurt.

Something like sheet lightning flashed above him, revealing his entire universe for an instant. Oddly, there was no sound to the lightning, only the urban rumbles and grumbles far away. He was dizzy and euphoric. For a moment he felt he could float upward, if he only willed it hard enough, let himself detach from the earth. Stay focused, he thought. This was the damn Sherm acting on him. Fight for control. The sleep of reason produces … what was it? Giant flying bats?

‘Hey, Lonnie's it!' The voice of a child cut through his thoughts, and he wondered if he was hallucinating. Maybe the sheet lightning, too. Even the rats. But his shoes were truly gone.

‘Ollie-ollie-oxen-free!'

A small hand pressed his shoulder and released. He screwed his neck around and saw four pairs of dirty sneakers, attached to four children, maybe eight or nine years old.

‘Ack.'

‘This guy's home base. Guess what?'

‘No “guess what,” fucker.'

‘I say we playin'. I'll go to a hunnert by fives. Step off, fools!'

‘I'm there!' Foot-sounds scattered.

‘Five, ten, fifteen, twenty-five …'

Jack Liffey gave up and resigned himself to being home base for a while. And why not? His immobile lump of a body would serve a useful purpose, and it pleased the kids. The cruelty of the irony was almost perfect.

‘Here I come, ready or not!'

How little things change, he thought. The same words he had cried out in hide-and-seek so many years ago, and now, in an irresistibly circular logic, he had become the big forked tree at the south end of the bridge in Averill Park, San Pedro. At least he could look forward to human touch in the near future – touch with no ulterior motive.
Lord, make me useful. I'm all raw perception now. I'm the done-to, the object, the sheer modesty of a person so without deceit he's only thing.
At least he was out in the open, not trapped in a dark hole that would stir up his gravest fears like the panic of claustrophobia.

Two sets of footsteps churned toward him, and almost simultaneously hands slapped his shoulder.

‘Home free!'

‘Jammie's it – ah, fuck it. Least y'all didn't have no time to oxen-free.'

‘Brah, De-shayla hidin' behind the pottie. Bet you can go injun up and kiss her.'

‘You the best, my shizzle.'

The soft plop of tennis shoes receded, and one of the small black boys sat down cross-legged to study Jack Liffey's face, like a Zen monk contemplating a candle flame. Jack Liffey wanted desperately to speak to the boy, ask about his life down here on The Nickel, where his mother was, if he was able to go to school. Anything.

‘Ack.'

‘You funny, man. Why you lay there?'

‘Ack.'

‘Ain' no answer. You a boozehound? But I ain' smell no booze.'

Jack Liffey shook his head as best he could, if only to try to put the boy's mind at rest.

The boy edged closer and patted his pockets, but finding nothing at all gave up. ‘You be clowned on, ain't you? Not even no shoes. Hope I never be a sucka like dat.'

The streetlights, none too close anyway, went out for a few seconds, and it was as if everything in the city was holding its breath. It gave him the creeps – but the lights came back on and, weirdly, traffic sound seemed to resume at the same moment. More hallucination? A pause as he drifted downward into an even more malign universe?

‘How you gone take a whizz, man? You in a bad way. You need all yo' shit together to do things right down here.'

A car approached and the boy jumped to his feet to wave the car away to guard his new charge.

Thank you, my friend,
Jack Liffey thought.

‘Fucker got to be careful.' He turned back to Jack Liffey. ‘I born Cuba, man. Moms come on the boat a
long
time, when I little baby. She say she from some place call Sen-fway-gos, but the Cubans here all rich white mothahfuckas – they don' like they own niggahs. She say Fidel her man.'

Jack Liffey nodded.

‘You like him, too?' The boy appeared surprised. ‘I don't got much Cuba-talk, but I know who I is. My name Oswado.'

‘Ack!' The frustration was reaching breaking point – he wanted badly to reach out to this boy.

‘OK, you be Mister Ak. I be Oswald. That what they say here, but Moms say Oswado.'

Small running feet were on their way back, and, amazingly, Jack Liffey looked forward to the human touches.

Several tiny hands hit his shoulders, and he warmed up with a rush of sympathy for them all.

‘Ollie-ollie-oxen-free-free-free!'

‘Ah, fuck you, ho'. Cause I don' be kissing you ass an' be nice, you bus' my balls.'

‘Hey, you kids! Leave that old man alone!' It was a deep woman's voice from somewhere toward the sidewalk. The children cursed her and stomped and objected but eventually scattered when she yelled several more times. In a few moments, a very large black woman peered at his face and then tugged him forcefully toward the curb in fits and starts.

‘Dear heart, I see you in some trouble. Gonna get ran down out there. I save your butt.'

‘Ack.'

She grabbed him by the jacket and pulled, and as he moved, he could see the mounds of wet filth approaching. He closed his eyes as he squished over them. Ah, Christ, what was it he was doing penance for? He knew this woman wasn't a hallucination. Powerful black women were always real.

‘You some fall-down wino, Freddy?' She laughed a little. ‘Sorry I laughin'. I know
you
ain' laughin' cuz you ain' laughin'. It all strike me funny, tho. Your hair gettin' thin on top, I can see you scabby head.'

Woman, male pattern baldness is the least of my problems,
he thought.

‘You got boojie-lookin' clotheses. You been take off and lef' here. Kin you nod, Freddy?'

He nodded, as she sucked in a big breath and yanked his face and chest over the curbing and up on to the sidewalk. She sat down with a sigh, duty done, and put his head on her ample lap.

‘You can call me Precious, Fred. Problems jus' keep comin', ain' it the truff. I jus' hope you ain' no crack-head. I hates swiffers.'

He had no idea where she'd got the name. He'd never heard whites called Freds or Freddies.

‘How you soul doin'?' she said, as she patted his head the way you'd pet a dog.

‘Ack.'

‘Myself I'm poetical in my soul,' she said. ‘I have a story for you. I surely love a man who gots to listen.'

All the lights downtown went out again. He just happened to have a view of the skyscrapers a mile away, and it was a shock – like a nuclear attack. After a few seconds, there was a chorus of groans and cries in every direction.

‘Whooo-wee,' his rescuer said. ‘End of de worl'.'

Then the lights flickered back on, area by area, one of those unexplained power interruptions that happened about half the time that it rained anywhere in the city.

Then she told him a long, long tale about marrying a Pentecostal from her hometown in Arkansas, a childhood sweetheart, who'd joined the army and called himself, improbably, Armor Gedden. He'd been posted to Germany with the Second Armored ‘Hell on Wheels' Division, but when she wouldn't join his church and bark out gibberish with him to attract the End Times, he eventually went AWOL and abandoned her in their military billet in Heidelberg.