Caught Stealing

day, consume at least a fifth of Irish whiskey and some beer. Let’s faceit, you don’t kick junk without filling that hole with something else. Everyone has to figure out a way to get through the day and booze is a very popular strategy. Tim is what we call a functioning alcoholic.

I let him into the apartment and he flops on the couch. Tim was at the bar when I got worked over. He holds his backpack in his lap and looks me over.

– Hey, man, how you feel?

I tell him I feel OK. We chat about folks from the bar while I slipKind of Blue into the CD player and Tim rolls a joint. We light up. Tim is a professional and informs me in detail about the weed we are smoking: it is a Virginian crossbreed of a classic skunk and a very potent Thai stick.

– Most importantly, this shit was raised in the wild, not in a hydroponics tank by some mad scientist. Hold the smoke. Hold the smoke,man, you can taste the mountain air.

I cannot, in fact, taste the mountain air, but I am getting high and, as I do, I start to think less about having a drink.

– Hey, you got anything to drink around here?

So much for that.

Tim takes off a short while later. He’s a true boozer; if he doesn’t have a belt soon, his hands will start to shake. On his way out, I give him some cash for the bag and he waves as he goes down the hall, then stops for a moment.

– Hey, did you ever find out what was up with those assholes, why they had it in for you?

I tell him it beats me and he says so did they and gives a lame laugh, realizing it’s a bad joke. Then he leaves. Itis a bad joke, but it’s a great question, and as soon as I can think straight, I’ll deal with it.

You can only smoke so much pot. I have smoked a great deal already and it’s time for a break. I really just want to have it around to smooth out the edges for the next week or so. I figure after that I should be in good shape. This is not the first time I’ve stopped drinking. I’ve hopped on the wagon a couple of times to see how it would go and, the fact is, with the kind of motivation I have, I don’t expect to have much trouble.Just as soon as I get the system all flushed out. But right now I’m just sitting here alone in my apartment with someone else’s cat in my lap, listening to the Clash’sCombat Rock, being unemployed and in debt and thinking about beer. I decide to do the laundry.

Tasks are good when you’re trying to give up something. They keep you occupied and make your life seem useful. I stuff my dirty clothes in a sack. I grab a handful of quarters from my change jar, but on the way to the door, I stop. Bud has a little blanket in his carry box and I decide to wash that too. Russ should be back in a day or two and it would be nice if Bud has a clean blanket. This is the way I think. It’s my mom’s fault. I grab the blanket and pull and it snags on something in the box. I tug harder and hear the blanket rip a little. I put the laundry sack down, get on my hands and knees, and reach into the box tounsnag the blanket.

Paul’sBar closes at 4:00A.M. On a Thursday it’s usually all regulars by 2:00A.M. So when I’m working, that’s when I start my serious drinking. Last Thursday there were about ten regulars hanging out in the place and I was starting to get my head on when the big guys came in. They plop down at the far end of the bar and I wander over. These guys are genuinely big; even sitting on the stools, they loom a little. But big means nothing, I’m more curious about the way they’re dressed. Both guys are wearing Nike tracksuits: one in black, one in white. They are sporting several gold chains each, which go well with the gold-rimmed Armani sunglasses they both have propped up on their shaved heads. These guys are not our usual crowd. I take them for Poles or Ukrainians left over from the old neighborhood before the East Village went Latino and then arty and now yuppie. They order anAmstel Light and a cosmopolitan.Each. They haveRussianic accents. And this is still far from the weirdest pair we’ve ever had in the place, so I fix the drinks and take the cash and they say thank you.

As I walk back down the bar to get my own drink and resume my game of movie trivia on theMegaTouch, I hear cursing behind me. I turn and the guy in the white tracksuit is holding hiscosmo like the glass is full of vomit.

– This is shit.

He turns the glass upside down and spills it on the bar. The guy in black tastes his and promptly spits it back up, also on the bar.

– This is also shit. I cannot drink this.

To prove his point, he takes another sip and spits it on the bar,then he stands and walks to the trash and drops the drink, glass and all, into the can.

I don’t like to fight. I have fought very little in my life, but what I have noticed is that even when you win, you get hurt. I work out four days a week and take boxing and self-defense on the weekends. I have steel-toed boots and a Buck knife. I have an ax handle behind the bar. None of this will help, because I don’t want to fight and these guys clearly do. I smile. I walk down the bar to the two tracksuits, a smile plastered on mysemidrunk face, radiating joy and love. I am Martin Luther King. I am Gandhi. I will ask these gentlemen if they would prefer another drink or their money back. I will carefully wipe their spit off the bar and all will be at peace, because I don’t want to fight. They sit at the end of the bar,Amstels untouched, the one upturnedcosmo glass before them and, as I approach, they both slip their sunglasses over their eyes like they’ve been blinded by my smile. And that is when I notice the small, girlish and simply beautiful hands they both have. I am not afraid. These men are lovers, not fighters. These men are concert pianists with graceful digits made for music, not pugilism.

I reach the end of the bar and open my smiling mouth to offer them a round on the house as compensation for their disappointment. They grab me, drag me over the bar, and beat the crap out of me. Then they leave.

I’ve been beat up before and had it hurt a lot worse. I don’t even look that bad. But I do close the bar early and spend the next several hours drinking and holding an ice pack to my ribs while Tim, a couple other regulars and I tell fight stories: the high and low moments of beating and getting beat. We have chalked up the tracksuits as psychos and, hey, what more can you say? A few hours later the blood shows up in my piss.

I give Bud’s blanket a gentle tug and I can feel that it’s caught on something. I reach in and feel around, expecting to find a flange of molded plastic or some other deformity in the case itself. There is a flat object taped to the bottom of the box and the corner of the blanket is caught under a bit of the tape. What I took for tearing blanket was tearing tape. I untangle the blanket and, in the process, I detach the object. It is a tiny manila envelope that feels like it contains a key. I look at the envelope. The key feels odd, a bit bulky in some way. This is not mine. This is not my business. This is the spare key to Russ’s apartment or his safe deposit box or something. It is not for me and I suddenly feel nosy. I untangle the tape and reattach the key as best I can, trying to get it exactly right. I also put the blanket back in. If the blanket is clean, Russ might figure I saw the envelope and it could make him uptight. This is what I’m thinking. Then I think about having a drink and this reminds me about the laundry. I pick up the sack, say good-bye to Bud and leave. I never put two and two together and, after all, why should I?

I moved into the East Village about ten years ago, when I first came to New York. There was a little grocery downstairs from me where you could walk up to the counter and buy crack or dope or coke. It’s a nail salon now and there’s a sushi restaurant across the street. There are still plenty of junkies and burned-out storefronts and a handful of hookers, but the wildwildwest feel the place had when I got here is gone. Condos, boutiques, and bistros are popping up like fungus. But murders, muggings, and rapes are way down, so when people bitch about gentrification I usually tell them to fuck off. I like sushi fine and the Japanese girls in the salon hold my UPS packages when I’m not home. And, hey, the place still has color.

I come out of my building with my buzz on and stand for a moment at the curb and enjoy the fall sun. Jason is sprawled at my feet. Jason is a wino who has lived on this block from before I ever got here. He’s a real old- fashioned wet-brain drunk. He is also the barometer of my own drinking habits and this moment is a good one for me to see Jason sprawled on the sidewalk at midday, utterly unconscious, with ashortdog of T-Bird still in his hand. I step over him and head for the laundry.

The truth is,I’m pushing it a little bit here. The doctor who yanked my kidney told me to take it real easy, going up and down the stairs with garbage and doing my laundry is probably not what he had in mind. I think he had more the lounging-around-on-the-couch kind of easy in mind. But I need the action, so I separate my darks and lights and add my detergent and bleach and softener and pump quarters into the machines at the Korean laundry. The place is pretty much empty, so I sprawl across two seats, pick up aDaily News someone has abandoned and check some scores.

This is what is left of the season: