Another Broken Wizard (6 page)

“… It was the Domino Theory. We couldn’t let Communists take over the little countries and we couldn’t really go all out, because of the threat of nuclear annihilation. So we were painted into a corner, kind of,” Joe was saying.

“What’s going on?”

“Joe was just telling me why we didn’t win Vietnam. It fucking sucks. It’s sad,” Tommy said.

“Yeah, trying to get our way while being careful as a long-dicked dog in a room full of rocking chairs, basically,” Joe said

Unfortunately, the drugs brought the image to life. I rubbed my face and blinked until it faded.

“That’s great, Joe. Now I won’t be able to watch CNN without thinking of dog dicks smushed on a wood floor. Thanks a bunch,” I said.

“Fucking dog dicks!” Tommy yelled into the night.

“Oh man, don’t think about dog dicks. I was just talking about mutually assured destruction. Think about that instead.”

“Great, that’s just great. Thanks, man.”

“Dog dicks!” Tommy barked.

“Tommy …”

“Dog dicks!”

“Enough dog dicks …” I started, and then trailed off.

Things were still weird, but not as surprising anymore. The peak had passed. We walked back up the hill, which seemed about five times longer and twice as steep as he one we’d come down. Back at Joe’s, Tommy got in his car and drove home. He made it, I hear.

Joe and I took our positions on his sprawling plantation of a bed. I set my cell-phone alarm and closed my eyes, praying for a little sleep. Coming down from the cocaine and mystery drug was a dose of hell.

“What’s up?” Joe asked into the darkness.

“I’m just figuring out tomorrow, writing e-mails, sending off resumes, helping Dad around the house, stuff like that.”

“I am going to sleep for twelve hours, then eat two Dunkin Donuts’ egg sandwiches and watch some movies at my mom’s house.”

“Well, then I have to say, having thought it over, screw you.”

“Jim you Mick yuppie bastard, you’re my oldest friend, I love you,” Joe said.

“Back at you, you froggy, last-of-the-Mohicans nutjob.”

9.

Sunday, December 28

Dad had his season tickets since the early nineties. Back then, the Patriots were one of the worst teams in the league, playing in a stadium where you rented seats to clip onto the aluminum bleachers. But lately, they’d won a few Super Bowls and built a new stadium, with working seats, plentiful urinals, an alert security force, and even a shopping center outside of it.

It was only around ten in the morning when we pulled into the dirt lot outside the stadium. We parked under a pine tree and I went to work unfolding a table and chairs and setting up the grill. Dad sat down and I poured him a beer. The shouting drunks and the Patriots flags hoisted from trucks and campers at the edge of the trees made the Foxboro parking lot feel like the encampment of a Gothic tribe nearing the gates of Rome.

I cooked cheeseburgers on the grill. Dad criticized how I handled the spatula, how long I cooked the burgers and how much cheese I used. But when it was done, he grunted in praise. Hot and bloody, held in cold hands, surrounded by trees, camaraderie and washed down with beer, the burger didn’t have to be perfect to be damn good.

The game was Dad’s last hurrah before his surgery. The next day, he’d start his pre-operation fast.

Police and news helicopters cruised the sky above us. The game was one more chance for Massachusetts to matter, and everyone was excited. Among the fans, a few had dressed for attention, with body paint and costumes. One strolled the parking lot in a new Arizona Cardinals jersey screaming “Let’s Go Cardinals” at the top of his lungs and otherwise taunting the fans who milled around their grills and coolers. Greeted by jeers and insults that included most of his family tree, he went on screaming in blinkered rage, cheering on the opponent.

“What’s the story with that guy? He was here last time I was up, rooting for the Dolphins,” I asked.

“He’s here for all the games. He’s always wearing the other team’s jersey and shouting up a storm. He must have season tickets.”

“And hate the Patriots.”

“Something’s wrong with him. Even if he doesn’t have tickets, he’d have to pay for parking. And those jerseys aren’t cheap,” Dad said.

I could hear the guy scream that the Cardinals would sexually humiliate the Pats, and the fans in the row of cars behind us cursed and mocked him. Anger was part of our excitement for the violent game ahead. But anger is hard to focus, hard to limit. And it’s hard not to be changed by it. The begrudged man kept on screaming against the Pats, until he was out of range.

We finished off the burgers and the beer. I packed up the car and we walked up the hill, toward the stadium. Though early, the sun was low. With thousands of edgy, half-drunk fans, we crossed the bridge over Route 1, past thousands more drinking beers, roasting meat, throwing footballs, shouting over each other and laughing.

The new stadium was state of the art. The seats were intact and clean, the concessions varied and pricey, the field synthetic and vivid green. I bought a pair of beers, left one with Dad, and walked down to the field to watch the big men warm up. Millions of dollars rode on the shifting of their shoulders, the strength of their thighs, the durability of their ankles and the sureness of their hands.

Dad and I stood and sang the national anthem along with the local celebrity. The clock by the scoreboard clicked down as she sang about rockets and bombs. It was zero by the time they got the microphone off the field.

The Patriots were favored by more than a touchdown. But as the big, fast men from all over the country ran toward the kickoff, fear took hold. The fear said me and my kind weren’t worth a damn, that we were trash, whom history had passed by and would soon regret. But there was still a chance, and the game would decide the matter. It held me rapt until the Cardinals kickoff returner was tackled at his own eighteen-yard line. No billionaire owner, Nevada bookie, professional athlete, or scout, my interest was the irrational interest of a fan. And the game below was only more of that vast and mysterious exercise called entertainment. I yelled until my voice was hoarse from phlegm and blood and beer.

Anyway, the Pats killed them, 38–10, holding our worst suspicions at bay for another week. The stadium lights were on and the sun was setting by the time the clock struck quadruple zeroes. And we the faithful thousands streamed back to our cars, warmed by victory and beer. There were still fights in the parking lot, though.

Dad drove back to Westborough with the same careful drunk-drive he taught me. We passed the maximum security prison and the historic Massachusetts towns along Route 27, down the silent Sunday night streets, listening to the sporting opinions of the drunk, the mad, the lonely and the dull on the car radio.

Back at the apartment, I cooked up a pair of sausage sandwiches and we watched what was left of the four o’clock game. Dad went to bed as the 8:15 game started. Torn between a lackluster late game and the amorphous promise of the other three hundred channels, I flipped around and tried to convince myself that I was tired. Then Joe called.

10.

Joe sounded distracted when he invited me over. But I was glad to be free of my obligation to watch TV and go to sleep. I wrote Dad a note, pulled on my shoes and cut through the night in my rental car.

At Joe’s, it didn’t take long to realize that something was wrong. The apartment he shared with his roommate Marissa was in disarray when I arrived. The furniture sat at odd angles from the walls. There was a fresh hole punched in the sheetrock a few feet in from the door, with a big smear of blood by it. Joe offered me some rum and then excused himself to take a shower. Then Marissa came out of the other bedroom. She and Joe had been friends since high school, when they used to play hooky and get stoned together.

“I thought I heard something, what’s up, Jimbo?” she said. I never liked being called Jimbo. I think she knew that. Being a pain in the ass was part of Marissa’s charm. “How’s New York?”

“It’s alright, could be better. I’m just hunting for a job right now.”

She pulled up a creaky wooden chair across from the couch I shared with a small pile of dress shirts and textbooks. She crossed her legs and leaned forward. She somehow managed to have a tan in December. Always pretty, she never pressed that point. Not with me, anyway.

“Looking for work sucks. The place I’m at is looking for waiters.”

“Thanks, but I think I’m just going to stay in town until my dad gets past his surgery.”

“Okaay,” Marissa said.

She said it like she might humor a recovering alcoholic who said he just wanted one little drink.

“I have some interviews lined up back in New York,” I lied. “I think I’ll stay around there a while longer. What’s up with you?”

“Just working, spending time with little Angelica, and partying.”

“How is Angelica?”

“She’s good. Her dad has her most nights, until I put some money away and get my own place. That should be soon. I’m going to get better shifts at the place I work. I’m banging the night manager.”

“Well, there you go. You can’t keep a good woman down.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” she said, lighting a cigarette.

“What happened here?” I asked, nodding toward the hole in the wall, the blood and the general disarray.

“What? The bloody hole in the wall? This is Worcester. Most apartments have that,” Marissa said, a devilish smile spreading, like a child who’d put something on your chair.

“It’s a nice touch, really. But what happened?”

“The apartment is just the beginning of the mess Joe made. I had to spend most of today cleaning the place up just so it would look like this. That’s what happened,” she said, rage suddenly animating her features.

“That’s bullshit, Cravesi!” Joe yelled at Marissa, leaning out of the bathroom in a towel, his wet hair hanging down by his shoulders.

“Fuck you, Rousseau! I was cleaning all fucking day.”

“You did maybe half the cleaning, and it only took a few hours.
And
I bought lunch.”

“One grinder for two hours of work? Yeah, you’re the fucking dictionary definition of generosity.”

“So what the fuck happened?” I interrupted.

Joe walked out of the bathroom, wearing jeans. An unfinished tattoo of a samurai warrior covered his chubby midriff. The tattoo artist had illustrated every fold of the samurai’s robe, but hadn’t gotten around to filling in the colors, so the picture looked more like a map of the Balkans than anything. Joe paused next to the couch and picked up a pack of cigarettes.

“Marissa, can I have a cigarette?”

“Fine. But admit that I did most of the cleaning for your dumb bullshit.”

“Okay. Even though you didn’t do most of the cleaning and I paid for lunch, I admit it,” Joe said, lighting the cigarette with a level of focus that seemed like overkill. Then he shoved his pile of shirts and books onto the floor and sat down next to me.

“Enough already. What the hell happened?” I asked.

“Fucking last night got out of hand in a big way,” Joe finally said, laughing.

“
Out of hand
doesn’t really express it. I might have to move back in with my parents,” Marissa added.

“You know Sully?” he asked.

“From up on Burncoat?”

“No this is a different guy, from Main South, by The Pickle Barrel. Well, me and some of my friends almost killed him last night.”

“What the fuck, Joe?” I said, looking at the hole in the wall.

“I know, right?” he said, laughing his convulsive machine-gun laugh. It took a minute for Joe to gather himself back to a storytelling condition.

“So I had some people over. There was Smitty, Burger and Rich Papadopolis and a bunch of guys. And we’re just hanging out and drinking. We do the coke that’s left over from the night before, then someone gets the totally original idea to score some more coke. So Smitty starts calling around, and I remember this guy Sully, who I used to buy from. But Sully is a real prick. I think he stole some CDs at a party I had here in the summer, and he just generally acted disrespectfully when he was here. Nobody likes him. But he always has coke, because he hangs out with these thugs from around Main South.”

“Okay, let’s just stop there: Main South, plus the fact that he sells cocaine, should tell you that he has friends who can fuck you up,” Marissa said to me, angry at Joe and amused by the danger all at once.

“So I tell Smitty, Burger and Vietnam and them about Sully.”

“Vietnam?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“Yeah, you don’t know him. Vietnam is just his nickname. You want to know why? Because he’s Vietnamese! Are we clever or what?”Joe said, taking a break from his story to laugh at the snowballing absurdity. “Anyway, we’re drunk and coked up and pissed off. So I call Sully and invite him over. I’m all nice on the phone, just calling to invite him over and I say we have a lot of beers and weed and that we’re just hanging out, no big deal. So he says he’ll come by. And I guess I’m talking shit about Sully and we’re all getting amped up, right until he shows up. When he gets here, he barely says hi. He grabs a beer from the fridge without even asking, downs it like he’s in a hurry and asks where the weed is. So Papadopolis says ‘It’s right over here!’ and pops him in the eye. Then Vietnam and me smack him. It would’ve been awkward if we didn’t. So Sully goes down. And we’re all kicking at him and he’s fighting to get out. He gets up and he’s running toward the door and I’m chasing him and I go in for a haymaker. But I slip on some blood and I just fucking nail the wall.”