Blaze

Chapter 6

WHEN BLAZE GOT UP the next morning, snow had piled in drifts all the way to the eaves of the shack and the fire was out. His bladder contracted the second his feet hit the floor. He hurried to the bathroom on the balls of his feet, wincing and blowing out little puffs of white vapor. His urine arched in a high-pressure flow for perhaps thirty seconds, then slowly faded. He sighed, shook off, broke wind.

Much bigger wind was screaming and whooping around the house. The pines outside the kitchen window were dipping and swaying. To Blaze they looked like thin women at a funeral.

He dressed, opened the back door, and fought his way around to the woodpile under the south eaves. The driveway was completely gone. Visibility was down to five feet, maybe less. It exhilarated him. The grainy slap of the snow on his face exhilarated him.

The wood was solid chunks of oak. He gathered a huge armful, pausing only to stomp his feet before going back in. He made up the fire with his coat on. Then he filled the coffee pot. He carried two cups to the table.

He paused, frowning. He had forgotten something.

The money! He had never counted the money.

He started into the other room. George’s voice froze him. George was in the bathroom.

“Asshole.”

“George, I—”

“George, I’m an asshole. Can you say that?”

“I—”

“No. Say George, I’m the asshole who forgot to wear the stocking.”

“I got the m—”

“Say it.”

“George, I’m the asshole. I forgot.”

“Forgot what?”

“Forgot to wear the stocking.”

“Now say all of it.”

“George, I’m the asshole who forgot to wear the stocking.”

“Now say this. Say George, I’m the asshole who wants to get caught.”

“No! That ain’t true! That’s a lie, George!”

“It’s the truth is what it is. You want to get caught and go to Shawshank and work in the laundry. That’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. That’s the truth on a stick. You’re bull-simple. That’s the truth.”

“No, George. It ain’t. I promise.”

“I’m going away.”

“No!” Panic seemed to stop his breath. It was like the sleeve of the flannel shirt his old man had crammed down his throat once to stop him bawling. “Don’t, I forgot, I’m a dummy, without you I’ll never remember what to buy—”

“You have a nice time, Blazer,” George said, and although his voice was still coming from the bathroom, now it seemed to be fading. “You have a good time getting caught. Have a good time doing time and ironing those sheets.”

“I’ll do everything you tell me. I won’t fuck up again.”

There was a long pause. Blaze thought George was gone. “Maybe I’ll be back. But I don’t think so.”

“George! George?”

The coffee was boiling. He poured one cup and went into the bedroom. The brown sack with the money in it was under George’s side of the mattress. He shook it out on the sheet, which he kept forgetting to change. It had been on for the whole three months George had been dead.

There was two hundred and sixty dollars from the little mom-n-pop. Another eighty from the college-boy’s wallet. More than enough to buy

What? What was he supposed to buy?

Diapers. That was the ticket. If you were going to snatch a baby, you had to have diapers. Other stuff, too. But he couldn’t remember the other stuff.

“What was it besides diapers, George?” He said it with an air of off-hand casualness, hoping to surprise George into speech. But George didn’t take the bait.

Maybe I’ll be back. But I don’t think so.

He put the money back in the brown bag and exchanged the college kid’s wallet for his own, which was battered and scuffed and full of nicks. His own wallet held two greasy dollar bills, a faded Kodak of his old man and old lady with their arms around each other, and a photo-booth shot of him and his only real buddy from Hetton House, John Cheltzman. There was also his lucky Kennedy half-dollar, an old bill for a muffler (that had been when he and George had been running that big bad Pontiac Bonneville), and a folded-over Polaroid.

George was looking out of the Polaroid and smiling. Squinting a little, because the sun had been in his eyes. He was wearing jeans and workman’s boots. His hat was twisted around to the left, like he always wore it. George said that was the good-luck side.

They worked a lot of gags, and most of them — the best of them — were easy to work. Some depended on misdirection, some on greed, and some on fear. They were what George called short cons. And he called the gags that depended on fear “short con heart-stoppers.”

“I like the simple shit,” George said. “Why do I like the simple shit, Blaze?”

“Not many moving parts,” Blaze said.

“Correct-a-roonie! Not many moving parts.”

In the best of the short con heart-stoppers, George dressed up in clothes he called “a little past sharp” and then toured some Boston bars he knew about. These weren’t gay bars and they weren’t straight bars. George called them “gray bars.” And the mark always picked George up. George never had to make a move. Blaze had pondered this once or twice (in his ponderous way), but had never come to any conclusion about it.

George had a nose for the closet queers and AC/DC swingers who went out once or twice a month with their wedding rings tucked away in their wallets. The wholesalers on their way up, the insurance men, the school administrators, the bright young bank executives. George said they had a smell. And he was kind to them. He helped them along when they were shy and couldn’t find the right words. Then he’d say he was staying at a good hotel. Not a great hotel, but a good one. A safe one.

It was the Imperial, not far from Chinatown. George and Blaze had a deal going with the second shift desk-man and the bell-captain. The room they used might change, but it was always at the end of the hall, and never too close to another occupied room.

Blaze sat in the lobby from three to eleven, wearing clothes he wouldn’t be caught dead in on the street. His hair always gleamed with oil. He read comic-books while waiting for George. He was never aware of passing time.

The true indicator of George’s genius was that when he and the mark came in, the mark hardly ever looked nervous. Eager, but not nervous. Blaze gave them fifteen minutes, then went up.

“Never think about it as coming in the room,” George said. “Think of it as going onstage. The only one who don’t know it’s showtime is the mark.”

Blaze always used his key and walked onstage saying his first line: “Hank, darling, I’m so glad to be back.” Then he got mad, which he did passably well, although probably not up to Hollywood standards: “Jesus, no! I’ll kill him! Kill him!”

At that he would heave his three hundred-pound bulk at the bed, where the mark quivered in horror, by that time usually wearing only his socks. George would throw himself between the mark and his raging “boyfriend” at the last moment. A flimsy barrier at best, the mark would think. If he was capable of thinking. And the soap opera was on.

George: “Dana, listen to me — this isn’t what it seems.”

Blaze: “I’m gonna kill him! Get out of my way and let me kill him! I’m gonna throw him out the window!”

(Terrified squeals from the marks — there had been eight or ten in all.)

George: “Please, let me tell you.”

Blaze: “I’m gonna rip his balls off!”

(The mark begins to plead for his life and his sexual equipment, not necessarily in that order.)

George: “No, you’re not. You’re going to go quietly down to the lobby and wait for me.”

At this point, Blaze would make another lunge for the mark. George would restrain him — barely. Blaze would then tear the wallet from the mark’s pants.

Blaze: “I got your name and address, bitch! I’m gonna call your wife!”

At this point, most marks forgot about their lives and their sexual equipment and began to concentrate on their sacred honor and neighborhood standing instead. Blaze found this strange, but it seemed always to be true. More truth was to be found in a mark’s wallet. The mark would tell George he was Bill Smith, from New Rochelle. He was, of course, Dan Donahue, from Brookline.

The play, meanwhile, resumed; the show had to go on.

George: “Go downstairs, Dana — be a dear and go downstairs.”

Blaze: “No!”

George: “Go downstairs or I will never speak to you again. I am sick of your tantrums and your possessiveness. I mean it!”

At this point Blaze would go, clutching the wallet to his breast, muttering threats, and making baleful eye-contact with the mark.

As soon as the door closed, the mark was all over George. He had to have his wallet back. He would do anything to get his wallet back. The money didn’t matter, but the identification did. If Sally found out — and Junior! Oh God, think of little Junior

George soothed the mark. He was good at this part. Perhaps, he would say, Dana could be reasoned with. In fact, Dana could almost certainly be reasoned with. He just needed a few minutes to cool down, and then for George to talk to him alone. To reason with him. And pet him a little, the big lunk.

Blaze, of course, was not in the lobby. Blaze was in a room on the second floor. When George went down there, they would count the take. Their worst score was forty-three dollars. Their best, taken from the executive of a large food-chain, was five hundred and fifty.

They gave the mark enough time to sweat and make bleak promises to himself. George gave the mark time enough. George always knew the right amount. It was amazing. It was like he had a clock in his head, and it was set different for each mark. At last he would return to the first room with the wallet and say that Dana finally listened to reason, but he won’t give back the money. George had all he could do to make him give back the credit cards. Sorry.

The mark doesn’t gave a tinker’s damn about the money. He is thumbing through his wallet feverishly, making sure he still has his driver’s license, Blue Cross card, Social Security, pictures. It’s all there. Thank God, it’s all there. Poorer but wiser, he dresses and creeps away, probably wishing his balls had never dropped in the first place.

During the four years before Blaze took his second fall, this con was the one they fell back on, and it never failed. They never had a bit of trouble from the heat, either. Although not bright, Blaze was a fine actor. George was only the second real friend he had ever had, and it was only necessary to pretend that the mark was trying to persuade George that Blaze was no good. That Blaze was a waste of George’s time and talents. That Blaze, in addition to being a dummy, was a busher and a fuck-up. Once Blaze had convinced himself of these things, his rage became genuine. If George had stood aside, Blaze would have broken both of the mark’s arms. Maybe killed him.

Now, turning the Polaroid snap over and over in his fingers, Blaze felt empty. He felt like when he looked up in the sky and saw the stars, or a bird on a telephone wire or chimbly with its feathers blowing. George was gone and he was still stupid. He was in a fix and there was no way out.

Unless maybe he could show George he was at least smart enough to get this thing rolling. Unless he could show George he didn’t mean to get caught. Which meant what?

Which meant diapers. Diapers and what else? Jesus, what else?

He fell into a doze of thought. He thought all that morning, which passed with snow whooping in its throat.