The Astral (10 page)

Then I walked along the riverfront. At the foot of North Seventh Street was a corporate, manicured waterfront park, just a lawn with some hideous cast-iron sculptures and benches scattered here and there and a big sign on a fence listing all things verboten, dogs and booze and other things that used to be allowed everywhere as a matter of course. This was the place where not so long ago local hipster kids used to climb through the fence and have wild parties on the heaving weed-wrecked concrete pads with ashcan fires and hibachis and jugglers throwing burning sticks, flames in the night leaping and giving off sparks. An entire ragtag marching band had rehearsed here every Sunday afternoon in warm weather. To give Luz some solitude and breathing room, I used to come down with Karina and Hector and a sack of deli sandwiches, potato chips, cookies, and soda. We’d sit on the concrete by the water and eat lunch and listen to their rough-hewn renditions of Balkan songs. I enjoyed eavesdropping on their fights, which were as heated and intense as a group-sized lover’s quarrel and were often set off by the shouts and hectoring of the band’s de facto leader, a good-looking, cocky, loudmouthed trombonist, muscular in his wife-beater and falling-down old-man pants and straw boater hat, a guy everyone seemed to love even as he pissed them off. My kids, who were teenagers by this time, thought the band was the coolest thing they’d ever seen. Those picnics had been a high point for all of us, until the Towers fell, and then we’d stopped going.

Chapter Nine

  I
walked on toward the Williamsburg Bridge, which looked in this uncertain light like a gray-purple dragon-serpent hybrid spanning the river on massive haunches. To my right was the new ghost town, the unfinished, uninhabited, unsold boom-time developers’ hubristic folly of forty-story waterfront towers. They served no purpose but to blight the view of the river and Manhattan, which had in days past been achieved by looking out across a beautiful, bleak, flat landscape of rubbled lots and rotting piers and torn chain-link fences. I scuttled under the bridge along Kent, past the old Domsey’s Warehouse, where, back in bygone days, you could buy cheap, good used clothes, the old Domino factory with its glowing, blue-green-white glass sugar-cube tower, soon to be torn down to be made into condos, the antiseptically corporate entrance to Schaefer Landing, and to my left, the dull gray factory building where fashion designers and “turntablists” and video artists lived in overpriced, squalid lofts with astounding views. Then I was at the entrance to the lumberyard where my one Hasidic acquaintance, a crackhead accordion player named Yanti, had told me they might hire me someday if I ever needed a job.

J & B Lumber was housed in a corrugated-tin warehouse on a fenced-in lot on the river. Trucks drove in and out; Hasidic guys in wool scarves and work gloves bustled around looking important and busy and white-faced with cold, side curls flying, eyes blinking myopically, shouting the harsh gibberish that was their mysterious language. Having lived in this neighborhood for so many years, I had had enough experience with this medieval Jewish sect to know that in the aggregate, they could be unpleasant to deal with, but I was willing to work for them if they paid me what Yanti had said the going rate was. At this point, I was willing to work for anyone for anything. The first thing to do was find Yanti, who always worked on weekday mornings and so would certainly be here now.

We had met back in the late eighties in a long-gone bar on Berry Street called the Ship’s Mast, back when they used to host local bands there and serve chafing dishes of free, not-bad macaroni and cheese, hot dogs, baked beans, and chili. They had cheap beer, which was nice and cold. I was there that night for supper, but the music was not optional, so I listened. They turned out to be surprisingly good; Yanti was playing the accordion with his group, a motley bunch of Hasidim in their shirtsleeves playing what sounded like half rap, half klezmer. By pure happenstance, when they’d finished, he and I struck up a conversation at the bar, and then a couple of weeks later ran into each other in line buying cigarettes at Amjed’s deli on Bedford Avenue and walked out conversing some more, lighting up as we went. Of course, being the hustler that he was, Yanti handed me a flyer for his group’s next gig, and, having nothing better to do when the night rolled around, I went, and brought Luz with me, and three meetings made a friendship of sorts. Luz didn’t like him, instinctively, on sight, or ever. Given this, and the fact that I was not a Hasid, the development of my friendship with Yanti was limited in terms of things like dinners at each other’s house and whatnot, but within our constraints, we were always affectionate and frank and unguarded with each other when we met in the street or talked on the phone.

He was the exception that proved the Hasid rule. He was something of a black sheep among them, I gathered. His wife had understandably fled with their five kids back to her family in Toronto, so he had rented a room from his boss and was sending his family every cent he didn’t put into his pipe. Most Hasids apparently spent their fun money on blow jobs from crack hos, but Yanti just went straight for the crack and cut out the middlewoman.

I wandered around through a whirling ballet of hand trucks full of bags of cement, men carrying stacks of two-by-fours, and forklifts laden with drywall. Finally I found Yanti behind a counter with two other Hasids, with a stubby pencil behind his ear and a scowl on his face as he totted up a line of figures with another stubby pencil. He wore Dickens-urchin gloves, the kind with the fingertips cut off.

“They recently invented things called calculators,” I told him. “Also adding machines. Or so I hear.”

He looked up at me, about to tell me to go fuck myself, then he saw who I was. “Harry! Go fuck yourself!”

“Yanti! I will!” I said. He came out from behind the counter and gave me a boisterous hug. He was fatter and pastier than he’d been the last time I’d seen him, about five or six months before, but other than that, he looked the same. And he still smelled faintly of chicken fat and mustiness.

“So what can I get for you today, my friend?” he asked urgently, clapping his arm around my shoulders and leading me back into the stacks of lumber. “You finally fixing up that place you live in for your beautiful wife?”

“Used to live in until she threw me out,” I said. “No, I’m here to ask for a job.”

He stared at me. He had always had a puppy-dog crush on Luz and made no secret of it, which was probably why she didn’t like him. “Threw you out,” he repeated.

“That’s right,” I said. “I’m homeless at the moment and broke and I was hoping you’d put in a word for me here, even though I’m not Hasidic, and I probably have a rabbit’s chance in—”

“Of course,” he said, but he was still obviously stuck on the fact that Luz had pitched me out.

“I can load things or something,” I said. “I promise I’ll earn my keep.”

“Yeah yeah,” he said, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, then his nose on the back of his thumb, then his eyes on the back of his wrist, an odd, possibly diagnosable tic he had. “Yeah. So how you been? What have you been writing these days?”

“Oh,” I said. “Luz wrecked my new book. So I have nothing to show. I can’t remember any of it, either. I think she erased my brain’s hard drive on top of everything else.”

He laughed. Being dumped by one’s wife was old news to him, and if anything, it was also probably good news, because now we were on equal footing. Back when I’d lived in my warm little nest with my own wife, he’d felt, probably, in a one-down position with me. Now we were two bachelors, two womanless guys, shooting the shit together by the racks of four-by-sixes and whatever those other boards were.

“Shit,” he said. His lower teeth were uneven and tobacco stained, but his upper teeth were spanking white and even as a picket fence. I guessed he’d run out of money to pay the dentist, but maybe he liked the effect. It was certainly arresting. “She’s a nice girl, your wife. Eh, what are you gonna do. So what else you been up to?”

“Looking for a job,” I said.

“Yeah?” he said. “Where are you gonna work?”

“I hope here,” I said.

“Here,” he said. “This place is a death trap. Last week someone cut his finger off.”

“I’ll take my chances,” I said.

“You work here, you’re taking your chances all right.”

“I’d be happy to,” I said.

“What are we talking about?”

“I want to work here,” I said. “I want a job.”

“You don’t. Believe me. This death trap? Forget it.”

“If you can find me anything at all, I’ll take it.”

“Yeah, and cut your finger off.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“It’s great to see you, Harry!”

“You too, Yanti.”

“It’s been what, a year?”

“More like eight months.”

“Too long!”

Yanti’s brain had a natural tendency to short-circuit. He had explained to me that since childhood, his skull had been full of static, like a radio tuned to no station with the volume turned up. This was why he needed the drugs, to quiet the buzzing roar. Nothing else worked for him. If he didn’t have them, he went a little nuts trying to focus. Just walking to the corner to buy milk and the paper became an Olympic-scale trial of concentration. As a result, conversations with him were always like this, circular and exploratory. I sometimes felt as if I were walking an intelligent dog. And, as with a dog, I found I had to tug on the leash to get us to go in a straight line.

“Are there any openings here right now?”

His mouth twitched in the patchy nest of his beard. “Yah.” He scratched his head under his navy blue watch cap. “What can you do?”

“Anything,” I said. “Within reason. I can lift things and add numbers and answer the phone. I can put screws in little paper bags. I can order things from a sheet. Anything except drive a truck. No license.”

“I’ll talk to Shmuley,” he said. “We might need someone in the office. An office job, that’s better for you. You’re no macho guy. You’re no Rambo.” He laughed so hard he wheezed.

I smiled and waited for his mirth to die down. “Thank you,” I said. “An office job would be fine. I need it. But I’ll do macho work, I don’t mind. I’m flat broke. If you get me anything, I’ll owe you a big one, Yanti, I mean it. Let me give you the number where I’m staying.” I reached up and took the pencil from behind his ear and scrounged up a piece of paper in my pocket and gave him Marion’s house number. Then I put the pencil back in its slot, kissed him on both hairy cheeks, shook his hand, and let him get back to his totting up.

I threaded the streets up to Berry and went back under the bridge, to the Mullet, the bar nearest Marion’s house, which I knew would be open, even at this hour. The Mullet’s motto, emblazoned on a shingle under the bar name, was “Business in the front, party in the back,” and the décor was some urban northerner’s idea of vintage, authentic trailer-trash: hubcaps, beer signs, laminated paneling, linoleum in the front room, shag rug in the back. The bar top was Formica; the curtains were polyester zebra print. I sat at the bar and ordered a Moonshine Fizz, which came in a miniature tin bucket and tasted cheerful and deadly in about equal parts, which was exactly what I needed at the moment.

I began to work my way through it, inspired by the barmaid’s shirt, which ended at her sternum to show off her bare midriff, and was sleeveless, to show off her muscled biceps, as well as tight, to show off her cute breasts. I also loved her jailbait braids tied with twine. I would have sweet-talked her, but that would have accomplished nothing but getting myself thrown out of there, since girls like that invariably turned out to be lesbians with chips on their shoulders. Occasionally, I liked the daytime drinking of hard liquor. It made the daylight seem artificial and the air extra oxygenated and gave me an adrenaline rush, like being in a casino.

I was about halfway through my drink when I heard a voice above and behind me saying, “Well, if it isn’t Harry Quirk.” I turned to behold my auld acquaintance Dan Levy, a small, wiry fellow in a down coat and jeans. Dan lived around the corner from here. No doubt he had come to the Mullet for the same reasons I had: proximity to home, a desire to blur the edges, and, not least of all, the girl behind the bar.

I thumped the bar stool next to my own. Dan sat, ordered what I was having, and when it arrived, we hit our miniature buckets together. He took a big swallow and said, without preamble and not without sympathy, “I hear you’ve been having some personal troubles.”

“My God,” I said. “Quite a grapevine in this small town. Aren’t we too old to care what we all do anymore?”

He had the grace to look chagrined. “I guess we are,” he said. He looked into his glass. “What’s in this drink, anyway?”

“Tastes like bourbon and lemon soda,” I said. “And a little extra something. Sweat, maybe.”

He tasted his drink again. “I hope it’s hers,” he said with a flick of his head.

The bartender pretended not to hear him. So did I; it made me uneasy to see Dan Levy still playing the cocksman. Marion had always thought he was a blowhard, a troll, but as far as I could tell, this view had not been shared by most other women. Dan had left many parties over the years with many lovely lasses. Eventually, he married a girl, or rather a woman, named something like Terry or Tina, one of the loveliest of the lasses, and they had kids, and the decades went by, and now he looked as hangdog and restless as anyone else. This disappointed me, for some reason. We’d been tacitly rivalrous once, Dan and I, back when we were young and it all mattered. Dan was a language poet. His work was cerebral and experimental and, to my tastes, cold. In the olden days, he had frequented poetry slams and sported an ostentatious Jewfro and affected a kind of literary street diction that went straight up my spine. Sometimes he read his work accompanied by a black free-jazz sax player. Meanwhile, I was, in Dan’s estimation anyway, a throwback, a nonentity, a noncontender, writing my defunct lyrical, visceral rhymed verse in my corduroy trousers and Irish sweaters. But now here we were, two hoary practitioners of a skill as useless as bloodletting or butter churning, sitting side by side on a cold late-winter noon in a hipster bar.

“It’s true,” I said. What the hell. “I’m having some personal troubles.”

“Right,” he said. “It’s never fun.”

The silence that ensued was difficult for me. I wanted to defend myself, but my pride prevented it. I owed no explanation to Dan or anyone. But I wasn’t cheating on my wife. He hadn’t said so outright, but he’d obviously heard I was. Anyway, somehow I had thought my long years of neighborliness and fellowship with everyone around here would give me a pass, a benefit-of-the-doubt card, while Luz and I sorted all this out. But it hadn’t, I could tell from Dan’s expression, which was half sympathetic, half rapacious predatory zoo animal. Of course no restraint or loyalty kicked in when something scandalous was being thrown around; gossip was a drug no one could turn down, raw, bloody meat to caged cheetahs. My suspicion that everyone would believe the worst without question had just been confirmed.

“Funny day,” I said after several pulses of silence went by. “I was just remembering old times, walking through the streets.”

“Which ones?”

“Which streets?”

“Times.”

“The ones when we were young and no one cared what we did.”

“So we thought.” He said it scornfully.

“No one cared,” I said, trying not to bristle.

“I guess you have reason to be nostalgic these days.”

He did not say it with any particular judgment, but still, I quelled a volcanic eruption of anger in my stomach. Two weeks ago, I might have told him to go fuck himself up the ass. Now that I was marked as a pariah of sorts, I needed his fellowship. “Yes,” I said. “I guess I do.”