Passenger(54)
“I guess it is. In a way.”
She says, “Goddamn it, I wish I knew your name.”
There are kiosks set up along the street. As Nicole sits on a bench, I go to a kiosk for two cups of hot chocolate. The heat from the fryers causes me to break out in a sweat. My body lacks energy. As does my soul. I feel I am slowly sinking into myself, becoming less and less real with each passing day. A lack of history will do that.
I buy two Styrofoam cups of hot chocolate and stand at the corner of the kiosk fumbling a pair of plastic lids on the cups. When I glance over, just a few people away through the crowd, I see the woman and the child from the art museum. The child notices me first—is looking up at me, in fact, as I turn in his direction. Soft-featured, towheaded, fragile. There is a smear of chocolate on the side of his face and along his lower lip. As I catch his eyes, which are a brilliant steely gray, he offers a proud grin. Only children can be so proud. Then the woman—the mother—looks at me, and there is first shock then distrust in her eyes. Something deep, soulful, inbred. Quickly she grabs the little boy’s mittened hand and, still staring at me, tells the child to move along through the crowd. She has to tell him twice—the second time, her voice raises considerably—before the child moves.
“Excuse me,” I hear myself say…and I’m about to ask if I know them when I suddenly realize that I do not: that these people are strangers to me and I am a stranger to them. I’ve just been sinking, sinking.
“Stop following us,” says the woman, “or I’ll call the police.”
They vaporize like mist through the crowd.
TWENTY-ONE
One evening, after what the Devine brothers called a “long-haired session” at The Neighborhood, Maxwell and Dougie invite me upstairs. Each brother with a slinky blonde on one arm, I follow them up the narrow, unsteady stairwell to the second floor where a wall of warped windowpanes faces Thames Street. Beyond, flecks of snow float like dust motes in the darkness. The Devine brothers are talking in deep voices into the ears of the blondes as they walk several steps ahead of me. Their footfalls hardly register on the warped floorboard. At one point, Maxwell Devine turns his head and pushes his face through his companion’s veil of blonde air; his bright eyes and jowls materialize like the face of a ghost through the wall of a mausoleum.
A door stands open at the end of the hall. There is a maroon shag carpet on which sits a red velvet sofa. The walls, vibrant under the glow of neon lights, are aggravated with graffiti, the numerous phrases unintelligible hieroglyphics. Dougie Devine and his woman slip inside. Maxwell ushers his female friend in as well…then pauses and turns toward me, a long-fingered black hand on the frame of the doorway. I catch the twinkle of an animal glint in his eyes.
“You got plans tonight, Wurl?”
“Me? No.”
“Good set tonight.” He pinches a sandwich of bills from his rear pocket and, licking his pink-padded thumb, counts off five twenties. He extends his hand and the hundred toward me. “Go on, take it. Won’t bite.”
“What for?”
“For kicking it real tonight.”
“Thanks.” I take the money and, instinctually and without thinking, stuff it into the inside pocket of my coat instead of my jeans. And think, See that? That’s instinct kicking in. You are who you are and there’s no way around it.
“You wanna hook up with one of these bitches?”
“No,” I say. Behind Maxwell, I can see his brother on the red velvet sofa, kissing one blonde then the other, sharing his tongue with them. They sit on either side of him like bombshell bookends.
“Think you could he’p us out with something tonight, Wurl?”
“Sure.”
“Go downstairs, have a drink. We won’t be but a minute.”
I go downstairs and sit at the bar. It’s late and most of the patrons have left. Olivia Sorenson, the waitress, sits slumped in one booth while she watches Tate Jennings, the homosexual busboy and dishwasher, clear the tables. She watches him with a forlorn, ancient glitter to her eyes. Since Olivia’s suicide attempt, something had overtaken her, something like a reverse Florence Nightingale effect. Once she returned to The Neighborhood, her wrist bandaged and her skin, like a phantom’s, without color, her demeanor toward Tate, her savior, had completely changed. Two nights after her return to The Neighborhood, Olivia had cornered Tate in the stockroom and made a pass at him—a rather clumsy and uninspired pass at that, as she was on her way to a good drunk, where she simply reached out and cupped the crotch of his jeans while, following a deep breath, dove in to push her mouth against his. Word is Tate only laughed nervously and pushed her away. Then she said she loved him, that he was her hero and that she wanted to spend at least one night with him if she couldn’t have him forever. Just one night. When Tate pointed out that he was gay, she admitted that she knew he’d felt very strongly about being with her for a long time now. His being gay, she explained, was all right, and anyway, their love for each other could transcend gender. It didn’t matter. What mattered was being together. Extracting her hand from his crotch, he cradled her hand in both of his and brought it up to his face. Perhaps he even considered kissing her digits but, in the end, he didn’t. He only patted her hand and, keeping his voice low as to dictate compassion, said that he cared very much for her but he was homosexual—that he did not feel for her in that way. There must have been some misunderstanding, he told her. Slapping his arm in a playful fashion, she called him a crazy joker, a sick little pup, a ruined and twisting acrobat, and then they hugged. Yes, Tate assured her, he was a crazy joker, a sick little pup, an acrobat, all that…and his face burned with each word. Having saved her life—having witnessed her at her lowest—or, perhaps, now armed with the knowledge of her attempted suicide, the love Tate had for Olivia, the love that transcended gender, was no more. Now, in a bitter twist of fate, it was Olivia who pined after the homosexual busboy.