Final DayOf The Regular Season
– Hello?
– I love you, Mom.
– Henry.
– TellDad I love him, too.
– Oh, Henry.
– I got to go, Mom. Bye.
I stand there on the corner of Prince and Mercer, holding the pay phone receiver. It’s about 10:30, half an hour since we met Roman in the park. I can’t stop shaking and it’s making it hard to get change in the slot to make my next call. All around me, kids from NYU and weekenders from Jersey are walking the streets of SoHo, asking for directions to Balthazar. I bite down hard on my tongue until I taste blood and the shaking eases up.
The card is in my back pocket where I put it when I changed clothes at my apartment. It’s folded inside the police photo of Yvonne’s bruises. I fold the picture back up, put it away and dial the number. It rings once.
– Yes?
– It’s me.
– ’Bout time.
– Yeah.
– That’s some fucking mess you got over there, boy.
– Yeah.
– Shouldacalled me like I said.
– Yeah.
– Got anything to say ’bout that?
– Sorry.
– Yeah, well. So you ready to work together now?
– Yeah.
– Good, glad to hear it.
Ed can’t come for me right away. He tells me I’ll have to wait and lie low until tomorrow evening. He tells me where and when to be, then hangs up.
Every time I get a chance to stand still, I realize how much everything hurts and how tired I am. The wound in my side burns, my face throbs, all my bruises ache and my feet are cramped beyond belief. I stand here on the corner and look around at the normal people who aren’t being hunted by psychotics and the police, and I hate them.
I stink of sweat and my clothes are a mess. I’m a wreck and I look it and I need a place to lie low and to not be noticed until morning. I eat twoVics and try to sleep on a sheet of cardboard spread out on the sidewalk under a construction scaffold outside theAngelika movie theater and no one bothers me at all. I’m now homeless in New York and, just like all the other homeless, I have become conveniently invisible.
It’s not good sleep. I’m cold, the ground is hard and when I do manage to drift off, some pain or other fights through the chemicals and wakes me soon after. Mostly I lie on my right side with my back pressed up against the building and watch people’s feet walk past. I have Bud’s bag half-open and I keep one hand tucked in there, feeling him breathe and purr. I think about Russ, dead and alone on a downtown local. I think about my aluminum bat, the murder weapon, splotched with blood and covered with my fingerprints. I can’t remember if I left it in my apartment or his. No matter. The cops will have it soon, if not already. I wonder if Roman and Bolo grabbed an uptown train back to Spring Street or if they got off at Canal to wait for our train. What will they do if they find Russ? My head is clogged with mud. I wish I had a beer. I can’t tell if I’m falling asleep or just blacking out.
Yes, I have the nightmare. Yes, it’s changed. Yes, Russ is in there now. I don’t want to think about it.
At some point, while I sleep, Bud crawls out of his bag and curls up under my chin. When I wake he’s still there, trying to keep me warm.
It’s light out, but Ed and Paris won’t pick me up for many hours. Bud is making a pained sound and I dig in the bag until I find his little bottle of pills. I hold him tight and force his jaws open and push one of the pills to the back of his throat. I hold his mouth shut until I feel him swallow. I look at the label. He’s supposed to take them with food. Fuck.Food. When was the last time he ate? I tuck him back in the bag, trying not to hurt his leg, and zip him in. Gettingmyself off the ground takes a couple of minutes. I can’t catalog the pains; everything hurts. I take a look around. It’s early Sunday morning.Little traffic, no people. I love Sunday in New York. The city exhales at the end of the weekend. It’s nice.
I walk up the block to the grocery at the corner of Mercer andBleecker. I keep my Yankees jacket zipped way up and I have on my sunglasses and headphones. I try to get some news on the radio, but the batteries are dead.
The store is empty except for the kid at the cash register looking at a martial arts magazine. He gives mea once-over, but I think it’s just because I look broke. I grab a couple cans of 9Lives, some AA batteries and a bagel with cream cheese wrapped in cellophane. I look at the beer; the coolers are locked until noon on Sundays. I get a bottle of water. The kid rings it up and I pay with the singles I got in change when I bought the tokens. On my way out of the store, I see the papers and remember the games. I want to check the scores, but I look at the headlines instead.
The
The
All feature large reproductions of my booking photo. I glance at the kid. He reads his magazine, not bothering with me now that I’ve paid. I flip the
The clock next to the register says 8:22A.M. I have almost nine hours to kill and I need to stay out of sight until then. I shuffle my way over to Broadway and Prince, just another stinky bum with a bad haircut and a cat in a bag.
The token booth in the station for the N and R trains has a photocopy of a Wanted poster taped to the window. Guess who? I give the girl one of my twenties and ask for a fifteen-dollarMetroCard. It’s a great deal: they give you one extra ride free. She slides me the card and the five bucks change and never once looks at me. I walk down the stairs to the platform and wait about fifteen minutes for the N and take it out to Coney Island. Where else am I gonna kill the day?
SPANG!
There was no one on the train, so I opened a can of 9Lives, unzipped the bag and let Bud out. He went right through that first can. When it was empty I filled it with water from my bottle so he could have a drink, then opened the second can and watched him eat all of it.
SPANG!
Iunwrapped my bagel and had my own breakfast. It didn’t taste like anything at all, but I ate it in about thirty seconds and wished I’d had another. I drained my water bottle and put all the garbage back in the grocery sack and stared at the advertisements in the train. Dr. Z: dermatologist extraordinaire. Learn English!Jews for Jesus. Get your high school diploma now! It took about forty minutes to get to Coney Island, so I read them all a few times.
SPANG!
