Twenty-seven, man. It felt old. And on a dreary, drippy night like tonight it wasn’t lost on me how many people never made it out of that year, people whose talents far exceeded my own: Jimi Hendrix. Jim Morrison. Janis Joplin. Kurt Cobain. Amy Winehouse.
Otis Redding, I’d always thought—but I was wrong. He didn’t even make it past twenty-six.
Tonight could hardly have gone worse. And yet I’d made it home again without going down in a plane crash or overdosing on heroin or meeting any of a thousand tragic ends.
Call it a win, girl. Go to bed.
I awoke to sunlight. I got out of bed and made a real breakfast, a couple of over-hard eggs and a slice of toast.
In the living room, Ethel was preening. Julius, the fatter bird, jumped down from his wooden bar with a thud to peck at his food. There’s nothing exotic about doves, they’re just white pigeons, but they’re gentle, steadfast creatures, the avian version of Labrador retrievers. When I was done with breakfast, I dug through the junk drawer for Scotch tape to restore Brock McKnight’s hundred-dollar bill. (Fact: currency that’s been taped together remains legal tender.)
After taping half of the bill together, I put on some Chopin. The “Fantaisie-Impromptu.” Talk about technique. Hell, talk about magic. If I were ever to be granted three wishes, two of them would be to have the fingers for a piece like that. I tore off some more Scotch tape and reattached the third piece of the bill. Sunlight streamed soothingly through the half-open shades, and I let myself imagine that somewhere in New Jersey all that serotonin and vitamin D were having a similarly back-from-the-dead effect on my volunteer from last night. Maybe Lou Husk’s eye was better this morning. Maybe it would all be okay.
Then came the knocking on my door.
It was the police. That overconfident thump-thump-thump on the outer door sounded like every cop show, the officers smug with their warrant.
I’d never been arrested before. My pajamas were still on. Would they let me get dressed before parading me, handcuffed, to their squad car?
I went out to the small entranceway. The door lacked a peephole, so I opened it and got blasted by frigid air.
It was just some kid. Thirteen, fourteen. Spiky blue Mohawk, and those earlobe expanders. Whatever they’re called.
“Why do you do that to your ears?” I asked him.
The kid was short and I was up a step. He tilted his head up toward me and said, “Forget my ears.”
“I’m just asking.”
“So you asked.” He coughed, and spat onto the cement beside him. “You want me to shovel your car out of the snow?”
The morning was intensely bright. I made a visor with my hand. “What’re you talking about? There’s no snow.”
“Yeah, but when there is.”
The kid was all points. Pointy hair, pointy chin, pointy nose. Pointy elbows sticking out from his arms, which were crossed in front of him. He hugged himself. It was too cold for the Public Enemy T-shirt he had on, and he was hopping from foot to foot. Any closer to him and I probably would’ve heard the wind whistling through his earlobes.
“Explain this scam to me again?” I asked.
“Ain’t a scam. I’ll make sure your car is always ready to roll,” he said. “Fifty dollars for the whole winter.”
“But you’re not going to do that,” I told him. “You’ll take my money and that’ll be the last time I ever see you.”
“That’s not true. You have my word as a Christian.” He pointed across the street at the brick apartment building. “I live right there. First floor.”
I distinctly remembered seeing a very old woman watering the flowers in front of that unit. He was probably lying. Then again, when had I last seen that woman? There were no flowers out front anymore. A lot of people came and went in ten years. Babies grew up. Kids became teenagers and moved away. People died all the time.
“So what do you think?” he asked.
“I think this is such a stupid idea I’m almost willing to do it as a sociological experiment.” I was still feeling a little giddy that it wasn’t the cops.
“Huh?”
“Forget it,” I said, though now it was bugging me that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen the woman from across the street. I never even knew her name.
“If it snows,” I told him, “then come back and I’ll pay you a few bucks to help get me out. Deal?”
“No, no deal.” He watched the sky. “Man, I hope it snows tonight. I hope you get stuck.”
“Hey, look, don’t get all mad at me.”
“Well, I am mad. You’re calling me a liar and a thief.”
“I’m not calling you anything.”
“Yes, you are. Lady, you need to trust people. Plus, my mother’s really sick.”
“Oh, my god.” The kid really needed to work on his patter. “You’re going with the sick mother routine? Oh, brother. Hold on. Wait here a minute.” I went back into my apartment and returned with the unattached quarter of the hundred-dollar bill. “This is worth twenty-five dollars,” I told him, “but it’s of no use to either of us this way. Understand? Do a good job, and for Christmas I’ll give you the next piece. And so on. And it’s real, so don’t lose it.”
Fact: three-quarters of a bill is still legal tender. So I wasn’t giving up anything. But the kid didn’t know it. He eyed the quarter of a bill and jammed it into his pants pocket.
“Who lives upstairs?” he asked.
“Why?”
His blue eyes were full of hope. “I could do his car, too.”
“It’s a her,” I told him, “and she takes the bus.”
“Figures,” he muttered, his renewed entrepreneurial spirit
