The Ask

Twenty-eight

I still had the key to the life I'd been evicted from, and the next morning I took the train out to Astoria, let myself into the apartment. Life was doing fine without me. There was Maura, jabbing at her laptop, always this, the work before work. It wasn't her fault. It was how they had us. There was Bernie on the sofa, watching his favorite show, the one where children mutated into gooey robots, sneered. It was like a parable from a religion based entirely on sarcasm. I'd seen the program before, tried to ban it. But there was no banning it. This wasn't China. This was dead America. If Bernie lucked out, he'd only be as warped as Horace. I could live with that. Assuming I could live.

"Bernie," said Maura. "Put on your velcros. Daddy's taking you to school. I'll see you at pickup."

There were not too many school days left. It would be another summer on Christine's concrete apron: blood and corn dogs.

I gathered up Bernie's sandals, slipped them on his feet.

"I want to see this show," he said. "Daddy, are you crying?"

"I have something in my eye," I said.

"Both eyes?"

"Yes, Bernie."

I walked into the bedroom, threw a few things into a knapsack. I took the money Purdy had given me, peeled off some for my wallet, wadded up the rest with a rubber band.

I dropped the wad next to Maura's laptop.

"What's this?"

"I don't know," I said. "Child support?"

"Do you need to be so dramatic? This is still your home. We're still your family. We're in a rough patch. We're taking a break."

"Rough patch? That's kind of a worn image, isn't it? I'm not sure what it means. Is it a driving thing? We're driving over a patch that's rough? Or is it like a patch on your coat? A smooth coat except for this little rough flap you ironed over a rip in the elbow? Or maybe the elbow skin is rough. Remember that time you said my elbow skin was like an elephant's? Is that what this is about? Is that what it's always fucking been about?"

"Language," said Maura.

"Indoor voice," said Bernie.

"Let's just patch up this rough patch now," I said. "I can't take this anymore. I want us all together."

"You seem really strung out, Milo. You need some rest. Aren't you getting rest at your mother's house?"

"Yeah," I said. "Nothing but rest."

I walked Bernie down Ditmars toward his new school. His little hand slid around in my palm.

"Daddy, are you sick?"

"No, I'm fine. Why?"

"You look funny."

"I'm just tired."

We passed a souvlaki cart and just beyond it a man with a chapped face slept sitting up on a bus bench. A pint of gin stuck out of his sweatpants.

"That's Larry!" said Bernie. "He must be back from Elmira. I wonder if Aiden knows."

I pushed Bernie past the bench.

"Bernie," I said. "I want you to be a good boy."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why do you want me to be a good boy?"

"Because that's the best thing to be."

"That's stupid."

I took a knee on the sidewalk, clasped Bernie by the shoulders. I'd seen fathers kneel like this in movies, standard posture for the rushed essentials, the Polonius rundown. A little too in love with itself, Don might judge this moment, but that didn't diminish its necessity. Bernie might not understand what I told him today, but he would carry the words with him forever, and with them, me.

"Listen," I said.

"Yes, Daddy?"

"Squander it. Always squander it. Give it all away."

"Give what away? My toys?"

"No, yes, sure, your toys, too. Whatever it is. Squander it. Do you understand?"

"Not really."

"Don't save a little part of you inside yourself. Not even a scrap. It gets tainted in there. It rots."

"What does?"

"I can't explain right now. Someday you'll know. But promise me you'll squander it."

"I promise. What's squander?"

"You don't need to know that yet. Here's what you need to know: The boy can walk away from the ogre's castle. He doesn't have to knock. Some people will tell you that it's better the boy get hurt or even die than never know whether he could have defeated the ogre and won the ogre's treasure. But those are the people who tell us stories to keep us slaves."

"Daddy?" said Bernie.

"Yes?"

"Can I have a stegosaurus cake for my birthday like Jeremy got?"

"Yes, of course. For your birthday."

I yanked him to me, buried my face against his strong, tiny neck.

"I love you, Bernie."

"Will I ever see you again?"

"Yes," I said. "Later today."

"Will you be dead?"

"No."

"Will I?"

"No."

"Can it be a brontosaurus cake instead?"

"Yes."

"With an asteroid flying into his face?"

"Sounds wonderful."

"Let's go to school."

"Good idea," I said, stood.

After I'd dropped off Bernie I walked down to the park under the Hell Gate Bridge. It was one of those beautiful Fridays when everybody decides to ditch work, trust sheer numbers will protect them from retribution. Hondurans roasted chickens near the river, kicked soccer balls at their toddlers' knees. Indian families spread out curry feasts on blankets. A magician did card tricks for a field trip of drooling tweens. Mothers puttered around the quarter-mile track in velour running slacks.

Beside a stone tower some youngish men played touch football with a battered Nerf. They were young me's by the look of them, their watch caps and lazy passing routes, their Clinton-era trash talk. They had marked the end zones with packs of organic cigarettes and film theory pamphlets.

I skirted their game, found a quiet spot in the grass under an elm, read Schopenhauer, or read a scholar's long introduction in the paperback I'd dug out of my closet. Some of the stuff I remembered from college. It was foolish to want. You would never get what you wanted. Even if you got what you wanted you would never get what you wanted. It was better to strip yourself of the wanting. But this was impossible. So you suffered. Your raw eyeballs suffered.

I fell asleep before I got to Professor Schopenhauer's tips on dating. The introduction noted that he once beat a woman senseless on his doorstep. She sued for assault and he paid her off for twenty years. When she died, he wrote, "Obit anus, abit onus."

"The old woman is dead, the burden is lifted."

As I slept in Astoria Park, I dreamed of a park in 1820s Berlin. I squatted at the lip of a pond, tossed hunks of black bread to geese. A man with fierce side-whiskers and a greasy coat pushed an immaculate Maclaren stroller along the walkway. A cigarette bobbed in his lips. Two children hunched in the stroller, a boy and a girl. The boy sat on the girl's lap. They were laughing, but suddenly the boy punched the girl in the mouth.

"Anus," said the man, "don't hit your sister."

I tried to say something, couldn't get my tongue right.

The man smiled, spoke, his voice muddy and loud.

"Hey, you," he said.

Something pressed into my side and I opened my eyes.

Predrag stood over me. He tapped my ribs with his boot.

"You," he said.

"Predrag," I said.

"Hungry?" He dropped a doughnut on my chest.

"Thanks," I said, sat up, bit into a honey-glazed. "Thank you. Wow, I was having the weirdest dream."

Predrag held up his doughnut sack.

"I like to take some around, spread the wealth, you know? I usually give them out to homeless guys. But then I saw you."

"I might be homeless one of these days."

"Yeah?"

"It's tough to call."

"You come to the store, you need help."

"That's nice of you."

"We've got to stick together," said Predrag, lifted his face to the sun.

"Who exactly are we?" I asked.

"The American Dreamers. There aren't too many of us left."

"I don't know if I qualify."

"You an American? Or want to be an American?"

"I am an American."

"You said you were having a dream."

"It's true, I did."

"Was it the one where you're inside the girl and you are pumping her and pumping her and you are so happy but then it turns out it's not a girl, it's really one of those super poisonous box jellyfish, and it stings you and you are screaming and screaming and the sky rains the diarrhea of babies?"

"The… no, I don't think so."

"I get that sometimes. Anyway, see you around."

I went home to the home that Maura said was still my home and made myself some breakfast. It had been a while since I'd been alone in the apartment. I pulled books off shelves, dug into boxes of old junk, snooped through Maura's drawers. The pills were gone. I sat on the sofa and did nothing for a good hour but sit on the sofa. I could not remember the last time I had managed such a thing.

I tried to recall the words I'd hurled at McKenzie Rayfield, the outburst that started it all. I couldn't really summon them, or at least the proper sequence. A few individual utterances returned, like "shut," and "mouth," and "spoiled" and "dreck" and "sopressatta" and "daddysauce." But most of it was gone. I was glad of it. Those words had never made me proud.

Out the window I watched a deliveryman ride up on a bicycle, buzz the house across the street. He wore a sweatshirt that read "New York Yankees 2001 World Champions." The Yankees, however, had lost the series that year. Arizona, with no regard for the national narrative, or even story, beat them in game seven. The deliveryman must have gotten the shirt in a poor country in Asia or Africa or South America, wherever they sell the runner-up crap, the memorabilia of a parallel universe, maybe the one with the gesso-smeared assistant and my name on public radio. I wondered if Sasha had learned to tip these guys yet.

I still had her cell phone number and I called her now. When she answered, it took her a moment to place me.

"Right," she said. "That guy. The envelope man. Why are you calling?"

"Just… I don't know… checking in."

"You still on some kind of mission? For Purdy?"

"I don't work for Purdy. I don't work for anybody right now."

"Got downsized?"

"Right," I said. "Cut down to size."

"Okay," said Sasha.

"I wanted to say hello," I said. "Maybe I could even… I don't know. Come up and talk about things. About all that's happened."

"You think I might ask you to squeeze my tits again."

She spoke evenly, nothing coy in her tone.

"It hadn't occurred to me."

"Liar. Anyway, you know how high I was that last time? I had to get away from Don to get my head straight. Unlike you, I do have a job now. And a guy I love. And I'm going to school."

"Don told me. That's great. I didn't call for that. I really didn't. I just wanted to talk. To ask some questions."

"What, like a detective?"

"Not really. I'm just…"

"You're a little too obsessed, is what you are. A little too involved in a situation that's got nothing to do with you."

"You're probably right. Things have been pretty tough for me."

"Believe me, mister, I don't want to hear it."

"Sorry. Well, I guess Don's heading back your way."

"I know. He called me. Like I'm up here waiting for that bastard. I've moved on. My boyfriend, Bobby, is the best thing that ever happened to me. Besides, this is probably not the best place for Don these days."

"What do you mean?"

"Things got sort of bad up here for him before we went down to the city. He had a fight with some guys at Cudahy's. You know how it is. You can bitch about the government all you want, but don't talk shit about the troops. He shot his mouth off about something or other. They really started messing with him, kicking his girls and stuff-I can't believe I still call them girls. God, he was crazy! But those guys got out of hand. They were clubbing him with pool cues."

"Was it that guy Todd? The happy warrior?"

"Todd Wilkes? You've got a good memory. No. Some of them were Todd's friends, maybe. Todd really doesn't leave his house much anymore. People say he's got PTSD really bad. And his burns, they never really got better. He's a sad case. Anyway, after those guys messed with Don at Cudahy's, Don went and got a tire iron from his car. People busted it up before it could get too bad, but Don broke one guy's ribs. A rumor went around they were planning to go after Don. And the whole thing didn't help his reputation around here. Probably why he was itching to get out in the first place. Everybody treated him nice with what happened to his mom and the injury. But then they started to wonder about him. At least the ones drinking at Cudahy's. Look, I've got to go pick up my boyfriend."

"Okay."

"You have my number in your phone?"

"Yes."

"Do me a favor. Delete it."

"Delete it?"

"Just do me the favor. Just for peace of mind. My mind. I want to start over. I don't want people like you to know where I am."

"I'm not one of those people," I said.

"Right," said Sasha. "Bye."

I did not delete her number.

I studied our block in the sun's glitter, listened to the wind in the trees, thought vaguely of Jimmy Easter. Then I watched some television. There was a movie with the male lead's father from Caller I Do. He was much younger, on a chestnut stallion, waving, or maybe brandishing a saber for the Confederacy. He loved a lady but he had no cell phone and could not save her from the Union cannon.

Maura would be home soon. Then it would be time to get Bernie at Christine's. But this really wasn't my life right now. My life was across the river. My life was in the rough patch. My life was vaporing about. But I'd be back. I belonged here.

A man sat beside me on the bus out to Nearmont. He looked about my age, with black and gray stubble on his face, a flannel shirt. He tapped a packet of guitar strings in his hands.

"Do I know you?" he said. "You look familiar."

"I don't think so," I said.

"Pat?"

"No."

"No, that's me, Pat White. You look familiar. You play music? Did you ever play with Glave Wilkerson? Spacklefinger? Out of Eastern Valley?"

"No," I said.

"Sure?"

"Yes," I said. "I'm pretty sure."

I pointed to his packet.

"You play?"

"Hells, yeah," said Pat. "Used to have a band. Alternative. You like alternative?"

"I guess."

"What they play now, that's not really alternative. My generation, maybe our generation, looking at you, we were truly alternative. My band, we played all over. We dominated the area in terms of battle of the bands and whatnot. We even beat Spacklefinger one time."

"What was the name of your band?"

"Sontag."

"Really? That's an amazing name for a band."

"It means Sunday."

"Oh, right."

"That was the days of true alternative rock," said Pat. "Now it's just commercialized. But anyway, what was I saying?"

"I don't know," I said.

"That's 'cause I didn't say it yet." Pat laughed. "Oh yeah. We were good, is my point. But our drummer, he fucking signed up for the army, went to the Gulf War. Never came back. I mean never came back around here. Went to California. And that was the end of the band, because, I'll tell you, man, you can teach any human ejaculant to play bass or guitar or even front the frigging thing, but you can't turn somebody into a kickass drummer. People are born with that gift, and not many, bro, trust me. Look at what's his name, the British dude, who died of his own puke. Nobody's hit like that since, and that was forty years ago. Forty years is a lifetime. Forty years is my lifetime."

"Let's hope you have more than that," I said.

"Bro," said Pat, "I have no intention of outstaying my welcome. I came, I saw, I rocked, I made no money, I got Hep C. End of story."

Pat pulled a fifth of whiskey from the gym bag at his feet. He took some clandestine pulls, offered it up.

"No thanks," I said

"It's decent stuff."

"I'm trying to cut back."

"Dude who says that is never cutting back. He's either drinking or not drinking. I know all about it."

"All the same," I said.

Pat slipped the bottle back into his bag. We both put our seats back and stared out the window for a while. Night fell and I stared at the dark shapes of trees until they were just dark shapes.

There was city darkness and the dark outside the city, the Nearmont dark, the Eastern Valley dark, which, being only one town over, was pretty much the Nearmont dark. I pictured the Pangburn Falls dark as something else. Darker, maybe. Did Purdy ever stay the night in those upstate motels, cuddle with Nathalie under scratchy bleached-out sheets, kiss her shoulder to wake her before his dawn drive home? Or did Nathalie leave first, nervous about young Don, his dinner, his suspicions? Only Purdy knew. Only Purdy's version would ever stand for truth. Maybe that was what Don finally understood. There was no use fighting it. Especially when all you were really fighting for was the love of a man you hated.

Nobody was going to tell Nathalie's story. Stories were like people. We pretended they all counted, but almost none of them did.

"Hey," said Pat. "Want to rethink your decision?"

He was hunched over with the bottle near his knee.

"What the hell," I said, took a sip.

"That's the way," said Pat. "This country was built on the backs of dudes who drank on buses. What we do honors them. Anyway, it's all highly dealable in the end."

"What's that?" I said, drank some more.

"Everything. As long you don't choke on your puke. That's my golden fucking rule."