Motherless Brooklyn

“That’s the ticket,” rasped Minna. “Best jokes start the same fucking way, don’t they, Gilbert? The guy, the bar.”

“I guess,” said Coney.

“Funny already,” said Minna. “We’re already in the black here.”

“So guy walks into a bar,” I said again. “With an octopus. Says to the bartender ‘I’ll bet a hundred dollars this octopus can play any instrument in the place.’ ”

“Guy’s got an octopus. You like that, Gilbert?”

“Eh.”

“So the bartender points at the piano in the corner says, ‘Go ahead.’ Guy puts the octopus on the piano stool- Pianoctamus! Pianoctamum Bailey!-octopus flips up the lid, plays a few scales, then lays out a little etude on the piano.”

“Getting fancy,” said Minna. “Showing off a little.”

I didn’t ask him to specify, since if I had he’d surely have said he meant me and the octopus both, for the etude.

“So guys says ‘Pay up,’ bartender says ‘Wait a minute,’ pulls out a guitar. Guy gives the octopus the guitar, octopus tightens up the E-string, closes its eyes, plays a sweet little fandango on the guitar.” Pressure building up, I tagged Coney on the shoulder six times. He ignored me, driving hard, outracing trucks. “Guy says ‘Pay up,’ bartender says ‘Hold on, I think I’ve got something else around here,’ pulls a clarinet out of the back room. Octopus looks the thing over a couple of times, tightens the reed.”

“He’s milking it,” said Minna, again meaning us both.

“Well, the octopus isn’t good exactly, but he manages to squeak out a few bars on the clarinet. He isn’t going to win any awards, but he plays the thing. Clarinet Milk! Eat Me! Guy says ‘Pay up,’ the bartender says ‘Just wait one minute,’ goes in the back rummages around finally comes out with a bagpipes. Plops the bagpipes up on the bar. Guy brings the octopus over, plops the octopus up next to the bagpipes. Octapipes!” I paused to measure my wits, not wanting to tic out the punch line. Then I started again, afraid of losing the thread, of losing Minna. His eyes kept closing and opening again and I wanted them open. “Octopus looks the bagpipes over, reaches out lifts one pipe lets it drop. Lifts another lets it drop. Backs up, squints at the bagpipes. Guy gets nervous, comes over to the bar says to the octopus-Accupush! Reactapus!-says to the octopush, fuckit, says gonnafuckit-says ‘What’s the matter? Can’t you play it?’ And the octopus says ‘Play it? If I can figure out how to get its pajamas off, I’m gonna fuck it!’ ”

Minna’s eyes had been closed through the windup and he didn’t open them now. “You finished?” he said.

I didn’t speak. We circled the ramp off the BQE, onto DeKalb Avenue.

“Where’s the hospital?” said Minna, eyes still shut.

“We’re almost there,” said Coney. “I need help,?said Minna. “I’m dying back here.”

“You’re not dying,” I said.

“Before we get in the emergency room, you want to tell us who did this to you, Frank?” said Coney. Minna didn’t say anything.

“They stab you in the gut and throw you in the fucking garbage, Frank. You wanna tell us who?”

“Go up the ambulance ramp,” said Minna. “I need help back here. I don’t wanna wait in some goddamn walk-in emergency room. I need immediate help.”

“We can’t drive up the ambulance ramp, Frank.”

“What, you think you need an E-Z Pass, you stale meat loaf? Do what I said.”

I gritted my teeth while my brain went, Guy walks into the ambulance ramp stabs you in the goddamn emergency gut says I need an immediate stab in the garbage in the goddamn walk-in ambulance says just a minute looks in the back says I think I’ve got a stab in the goddamn walk-in immediate ambuloaf ambulamp octoloaf oafulope.

“Oafulope!” I screamed, tears in my eyes.

“Yeah,” said Minna, and now he laughed, then moaned. “A whole fucking herd of ’em.”

“Someone ought to put you both out of your misery,” muttered Coney as we hit the ambulance ramp behind Brooklyn Hospital, driving against the DO NOT ENTER signs, wheels squealing around a pitched curve to a spot alongside double swinging doors marked with yellow stencil EMS ONLY. Coney stopped. A Rastafarian in the costume of a private security guard was on us right away, tapping at Coney’s window. He had bundled dreadlocks pushing sideways out of his hat, chiba eyes, a stick where a gun should be, and an embroidered patch on his chest indicating his first name, Albert. Like a janitor’s uniform, or a mechanic’s. The jacket was too big for his broomstick frame.

Coney opened the door instead of rolling down the glass.

“Get this car out of here!” said Albert.

“Take a look in the back,” said Coney.

“Don’t care, mon. This for ambulances only. Get back in the car.”

“Tonight we’re an ambulance, Albert,” I said. “Get a stretcher for our friend.”

Minna looked terrible. Drained, literally, and when we got him out of the car you could see what of. The blood smelled like a thunderstorm coming, like ozone. Two college students dressed as doctors in green outfits with rubber-band sleeves took him away from us just inside the doors and laid him onto a rolling steel cart. Minna’s shirt was shreds, his middle a slush of itself, of himself. Coney went out and moved the car to quiet the security guard pulling on his arm while I followed Minna’s stretcher inside, against the weak protestsf the college students. I moved along keeping my eyes on his face and tapping his shoulder intermittently as though we were standing talking, in the Agency office perhaps, or just strolling down Court Street with two slices of pizza. Once they had Minna parked in a semiprivate zone in the emergency room, the students left me alone and concentrated on getting a line for blood into his arm.

His eyes opened. “Where’s Coney?” he said. His voice was like a withered balloon. If you didn’t know its shape when it was full of air it wouldn’t have sounded like anything at all.

“They might not let him back here,” I said. “I’m not supposed to be here myself.”

“Huhhr.”

“Coney-Eatme, yipke!-Coney kind of had a point,” I said. “You might want to tell us who, while we’re, you know, waiting around here.”

The students were working on his middle, peeling away cloth with long scissors. I turned my eyes away.

Minna smiled again. “I’ve got one for you,” he said. I leaned in to hear him. “Thought of it in the car. Octopus and Reactopus are sitting on a bench, a fence. Octopus falls off, who’s left?”

“Reactopus,” I said softly. “Frank, who did this?”

“You know that Jewish joke you told me? The one about the Jewish lady goes to Tibet, wants to see the High Lama?”

“Sure.”

“That’s a good one. What’s the name of that lama? You know, at the end, the punch line.”

“You mean Irving?”

“Yeah, right. Irving.” I could barely hear him now. “That’s who.” His eyes closed.

“You’re saying it was someone named-Dick! Weed!-Irving who did this to you? Is that the name of the big guy in the car? Irving?”

Minna whispered something that sounded like “remember.” The others in the room were making noise, barking out instructions to one another in their smug, technical dialect.

“Remember what?”

No answer.

“The name Irving? Or something else?”

Minna hadn’t heard me. A nurse pulled open his mouth and he didn’t protest, didn’t move at all. “Excuse me.”

It was a doctor. He was short, olive-skinned, stubbled, Indian or Pakistani, I guessed. He looked into my eyes. “You have to go now.”

“I can’t do that,” I said. I reached out and tagged his shoulder.

He didn’t flinch. “What’s your name?” he asked gently. Now I saw in his worn expression several thousand