'Perhaps you can help me, miss. I'm at a pay phone and I have to leave the number with my office for a call back, and someone defaced the phone with spray-painted graffiti in such a way that the number is impossible to make out. I wonder if you could possibly check the line and supply it for me.' An' I ain't even through sayin' it when she's readin'
off the number for me. Matt? Oh, shit.'
The recording had cut in to ask for more money.
'Quarter ran out,' he said. 'I got to feed in another one.'
'Give me the number, I'll call you.'
'Can't. I ain't in Brooklyn now, I didn't happen to con nobody out of the number for this particular phone.' The phone chimed as his coin dropped. 'There, we be all right now. Pretty slick, though, way I got the other number. You there? How come you ain't sayin' nothing'?'
'I'm stunned,' I said. 'I didn't know you could talk like that.'
'What, you mean talk straight? 'Course I can. Just because I street don't mean I be ignorant. They two different languages, man, and you talkin' to a cat's bilingual.'
'Well, I'm impressed.'
'Yeah? I figured you'd be impressed I got to Brooklyn an' back.
What you got for me to do next?'
'Nothing right now.'
'Nothin'? Sheee, ought to be something I can do. I did good on this, didn't I?'
'You did great.'
'I mean, man didn't have to be a rocket scientist to find his way to Brooklyn an' back. But it was cool how I got the number out of that operator, wasn't it?'
'Definitely.'
'I was bein' resourceful.'
'Very resourceful.'
'But you still ain't got nothin' for me today.'
'I'm afraid not,' I said. 'Check with me in a day or two.'
'Check with you,' he said. 'Man, I'd check with you anytime you say if only you was there to be checked with. You know who oughta have a beeper? Man, you oughta have a beeper. I could beep you, you'd say to yourself, 'Must be TJ tryin' to get hold of me, must be important.'
What's so funny?'
'Nothing.'
'Then how come you laughin'? I be checkin' with you every day, my man, because I think you need me workin' for you. An' that is final, Lionel.'
'Hey, I like that.'
'Thought you would,' he said. 'Been savin' it up for you.'
IT rained all day Sunday and I spent most of the day in my room. I had the TV on and switched back and forth between tennis on ESPN and golf on one of the networks. There are days when I can get caught up in a tennis match but this wasn't one of them. I can never get caught up in golf, but the scenery is pretty and the announcers aren't as relentlessly chatty as they are in most other sports, so it's not a bad thing to have going on while I sit thinking about something else.
Jim Faber called in the middle of the afternoon to cancel our standing dinner date. A cousin of his wife's had died and they had to go put in an appearance. 'We could meet someplace now for a cup of coffee,'
he said, 'except it's such a lousy day outside.'
We spent ten minutes on the phone instead. I mentioned that I was a little worried about Peter Khoury, that he might pick up a drink or a drug. 'The way he talked about heroin,' I said, 'he had me wanting some myself.'
'I noticed that about junkies,' he said. 'They get this wistful quality, like an old man talking about his lost youth. You know you can't keep him sober.'
'I know.'
'You're not sponsoring him, are you?'
'No, but neither is anybody else. And last night he was using me like a sponsor.'
'Be just as well if he didn't formally ask you to be his sponsor.
You've already got a professional relationship with his brother, and to an extent with him.'
'I thought of that.'
'But even if he did, that still doesn't make him your responsibility.
You know what constitutes being a successful sponsor? Staying sober yourself.'
'It seems to me I've heard that.'
'From me, probably. But nobody can keep anybody else sober. I'm your sponsor. Do I keep you sober?'
