for a christening dress for her baby and he got her a beauty — why'd you think they made them pockets in the coats so big?
For me, as a kid, the shame of it sometimes seemed to blister my heart. When I started confession, I confessed for him. 'My father steals.' The priests were never uninterested. 'Oh yes?' I wanted to leave my name and address in the hope they'd make him stop. A boy's father is his fate. But this kind of stealing was a matter of society, forgivable and common. They told me to respect my father and pray for his soul, and better mind my own conduct.
'So much of life is will.' I had spun the golden cap off the pint before I knew what I'd done, and repeated that old phrase to myself. I had heard it from Leotis Griswell, not long before he died. I looked into the open bottle as if it were a blind eye, and was reminded for whatever reason of looking down at something else, another seat of pleasure. The sharp perfume of the alcohol filled me with a pang, as acute and painful as the distant sighting of a lovely woman whose name I'll never know.
So much of life is will. Leotis was speaking to me about Toots, his old student. Leotis had the skill I'd noted in many of the best lawyers, ardent advocates who at the same time held their clients at a distance. When he talked about them he could often be cold-blooded and he did not want me to be beguiled by Toots. 'He'll make excuses to you about his harsh life, but I've never cared much for sociology. It's so negative. I don't need to know what holds down the masses. Any fellow with an eye in his head can see that: it's life. But where does that rare one come from, what is the difference? I still spend hours wondering.
Where the strength comes from
Still, Leotis had it right, about life and will. It's an appropriate belief for a man born in the last years of the nineteenth century, yet it's out of phase for anybody else. Now we believe that a nation is entitled to self- determination but a soul is a slave to material fate: I steal because I'm poor; I feel up my daughter cause my ma did that to me; I drink because my ma was sometimes cruel and called me names and because my father left that trait, like some unhappy lodestar, in my genes. On the whole, I still prefer Leotis's outlook, the same one they taught me in church. I'd rather believe in will than fate. I drink or don't drink. I'll try to find Bert or I won't. I'll take the money and run or else return it. Better to find options than that bondage of cause and effect. It all goes back to Augustine. We choose the Good. Or the Evil. And pay the price.
And this, this may be the serpent's sweetest apple. I did not even seem to swallow.
I am drinking stars.
Thursday, January 26
B. Your Investigator Loses Something Besides His Self-respect
I have awakened so many mornings vowing never to do this again that there was almost pleasure in the pain. I felt like something fished out of the trash. I held absolutely still. The sunlight was going to be like a bullet to the brain. Along the internal line from head to gut there was a bilious feeling, some regurgitive impulse already stirring. 'Slow,' I told myself, and when I did I sensed for the first time that I wasn't alone.
When I opened my eyes, a kid was looking square at me, Latin he seemed to be, crouched about an arm's length away on the driver's side beneath the dash. He had one hand on the car's tape player, which he'd lifted half out, revealing the bleak innards of the auto, colored cables and dark spaces. Cutting the wires would be the next step. The door was cracked behind him and the dome light was on. There was a little sniffle of cold air riffling across my nose.
'Just cool,' he told me.
I didn't see a gun, a knife. A kid, too. Thirteen, fourteen. Still with pimples all over the side of his face. One of your sweet little urban vampires, out in the early-morning hours rolling drunks. Fifty coming, I could still pound this little fuck. Hurt him anyway. We both knew it. I checked his eyes again. It would have been such a frigging triumph if there was just a dash, a comma, an apostrophe of fear, some minute sign of hesitation.
'Get out,' I said. I hadn't moved. I was sort of folded up like a discarded shopping bag, piled sideways onto the passenger's seat. With the adrenaline I was waking fast and turning dizzy, whirly city. My tummy was on the move.
'Don't fuck around, men.' He turned the screwdriver to face me.
'I'll fuck with you, shorty-pants. I'll fuck with you plenty. And after I do, you won't be fuckin anybody.' I gave my head a sort of decisive nod. Which was a bad mistake. It was like tipping back in a chair too far. I rolled my eyes a bit. I picked myself up on my elbow. With that, it happened.
I puked all over him.
I mean everywhere. It was dripping from his eyelashes. His nappy head had got little bits of awful stuff all over. His clothes were soaked. He was drowning in it, spluttering and shaking, cursing me, an incoherent rap. 'Oh men,' he said. 'Oh men.' His hands danced around and I knew he was afraid to touch himself. And he was out of there fast. I was so busy waiting for him to kill me I actually didn't see him go until he was running down the street.
Well, Malloy, I thought, you are going to like this one. I patted my back all over a few times, before I straightened myself up, then realized that this story, like the tale of what really happened between Pigeyes and me, was going to go untold. After all, I had been bad. Weak. I'd had a drink. A bottle. I had fucked around with fate.
My guy at AA, my angel, guardian, hand in the dark, was a fella named Giandomenico, LNU, as we said on the Force, last name unknown, none used. Even though I haven't shown at a meeting in sixteen months, I knew he would talk to me and tell me that I still had what it took to do it. Today was no different than the day before yesterday. It was a day I wasn't gonna drink. I was going to get through today and work on tomorrow then. I knew the rap. I'd memorized all twelve steps. Somehow over the long haul I found A A sadder than being a drunk, listening to these folks, 'My name is Sheila and I'm an alcoholic' Then would come the story, how she stole and whored and beat her kids. Jesus, sometimes I wondered if people were making things up just so the rest of us wouldn't feel so bad about our own lives. It was a little too much of a cult for me, the Church of Self-denunciation, I used to call it, this business of saying I'm a shit and I turn myself over to a higher power, LNU, who'll keep me safe from John Barleycorn, the divil. I welcomed the support and got all warm and runny about a number of the people who showed up each week and held my hand, and I hope that they're still going and still safe. But I'm too goddamned eccentric, and reluctant to contemplate the mystery of why, with my sister's death, I no longer felt the uncontrollable need to drink. Had I finally filled even my own bottomless cup of pain? Or was this, as I often feared in my grimmest moments, some form of celebration?
Glyndora's little complex was across the street, gray on gray, the colors almost indecipherable in the subdued elements of winter, still looking like a stage set except for the sign in front, announcing that units were available, from 179 grand. What was her point last night? Was that whole thing, that interlude, just for laughs? I didn't think Glyndora enjoyed that kind of subtlety. She told you off face-to-face. But for some reason she had wanted me out of there. Was she afraid I would catch on to something? A boyfriend, maybe? Somebody's clothes were in the closet, shoes by the door. Archie's? Or Bert's?
I straightened myself up. I had a pretty good yuk thinking about Lyle getting in here with his buddies south of midnight and taking a whiff. I'd bet a lot of money he wouldn't know who to blame. He'd sit here trying to recall who'd hurled night before last. The little bastard had left worse for me. Still, I opened all the windows and threw the floor mat on the street. I shoved the radio back into the fragile plastic membrane of the dashboard. I thought about that little thief running all over the North End in the cold, searching for a hose. He'd smell like something when he got to school. Yep, I was feeling mean and humorous. I gathered myself together and slid across the seat behind the wheel, and only then noticed the absence against my hip. I began to swear.
The goddamn kid had got my wallet.
XI
