Another Broken Wizard (7 page)

At this, Joe held out his hand, the top two knuckles of which were swollen to the point of deformity.

“What about the cop who lives next door?” I asked.

“He’s in Rhode Island for the night. I’m walking his dog. So Sully makes it out the door and down the steps and we’re all on the porch, all except for Burger. And I’m like, ‘that’s for disrespecting my house, you little bitch!’ And he’s like ‘You just got yourselves fucking murdered,’ and stuff like that. And he’s bleeding and weaving and yelling at us and we’re yelling back. That’s when Burger comes running out of the house with a chair from the kitchen and chucks it off the porch and nails Sully in the face so the chair breaks apart and Sully falls down. Blood everywhere.”

“That was my chair, too, by the way,” Marissa offered, lighting a cigarette.

“For a minute, he’s just laying there, and I’m afraid we killed him. But he finally gets up, bleeding and kind of wobbly, and runs off to his car. He revs the engine and runs it into my neighbor’s van and peels out.”

“Real fucking smart, Joe,” Marissa said.

“Yeah, I hate to rain on your parade here, but what the hell were you thinking?”

“I don’t think we were exactly
thinking
, in the sense that you mean it,” Joe said, laughing the same laugh that had gotten us through our childhood.

“Okay. So what’s the upshot? Sully and his friends—are they just fuckups, or are they honestly dangerous people?” I asked.

“Remember when Tim Duggan was blind for a week last summer?” Joe asked, with his ridiculous grin growing.

“Yeah.”

“That was Sully’s friends.”

“Seriously. And this isn’t just a drunk brawl at a party. You practically set up an ambush,” Marissa added.

“It probably wouldn’t have even been anything if he’d just acted decently when he showed up. But we were coked up and I guess it did get away from us.”

“Got away from you?” Marissa repeated, growing visibly less amused. Joe shrugged, grinning.

The whole thing was senseless. And none of it surprised me. I’d seen dumber, crazier and even more violent from Joe and his friends over the years. This wasn’t new. But, laughter aside, Joe was afraid now. And that was.

“So what are you going to do?” I asked.

“I’m trying to figure it out. I think I’m pretty safe here for now, what with my neighbor being a cop. It’s just outside that I have to be careful. I’ll stay away from the places Sully and his friends go, and not go out unless I have friends with me.”

“What? Are you going to do that for, like, ever?” Marissa asked.

“I have two thoughts on that. The first is that this should blow over in time. Something else will happen to Sully. Also, he can’t be that well liked by his friends. They’ll get tired of looking for me.”

“That’s a pretty lame long-term plan,” Marissa said.

“Maybe. But that’s where Plan B comes in. Jim, do you think I could stay with you in New York?”

“Of course. God knows I’m paying enough to have the apartment sit empty.”

“How much?” Marissa asked.

“I don’t even want to think about how much.”

“Really, I could stay there?”

“Yeah. I can give you the keys right now, if you think you’re in real danger.”

I said it without pause, despite my apartment’s small size, despite Joe’s habits and despite the close quarters when I got back. I said it without pause because Joe was the nearest I’d ever had to a brother. I said it without pause because I felt pretty sure he wouldn’t take me up on it.

“I’m not sure yet. I want to get the temperature—ask around first. And New York is an expensive town. I want to get together a decent pile of money before I go. I think I can do that in a few weeks. I have an idea.”

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Let’s go get a drink and I’ll tell you about it,” Joe said.

11.

Joe had hidden his car, so I drove. We ended up at a place called Vincent’s. It sat among weed-tangled lots and half-abandoned warehouses behind the highway, behind the train station, behind downtown, behind the showcase the city was trying to make of Shrewsbury Street. Vincent’s felt hidden.

No one shouted out Joe’s name when he opened the door. Animal heads and stuffed birds peered from the darkness above the bar. A five-item menu was drawn on a blackboard by the bar. It all bespoke a pleasant surreptitiousness. We ordered drinks and found a table at the back, by the bathroom and the cigarette machine. Joe took the seat facing the door. It was Sunday night and the crowd was sparse and sedate.

After a few sips of whiskey, Joe described his plan to me. He would quit his job, cash out his pension, buy a lot of cocaine wholesale, cut it and sell it carefully, only to friends, then do the same one or two more times. That way, he would move into my apartment in style.

“Now I wouldn’t say anything. But you actually seem serious about this. So here goes. There are some holes in your plan,” I said. “In fact, it sounds like a terrible idea from start to finish.”

“Really? I think I’ve covered my bases here pretty well.”

“Well, for starters, you will be selling drugs. There are still laws against that.”

“But I’ll only be doing it for a little while, and only to friends. That limits the chances of me getting caught to almost nothing. I’ve known a lot of people who have done it. Some have gotten caught and some haven’t. It’s all about keeping a low profile.”

“But Joe, you’re one of the least low-profile people I’ve ever met. And assuming that Sully and his friends are coming for you—wouldn’t things be at their most dangerous now, when you’re still at the top of their priorities? Wouldn’t you be better off taking a vacation from work and getting out of town for a few weeks, and then coming back?”

“I can be careful for a little while. I can be low profile for a while, but not forever. I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder all the time. This thing with Sully could take a long time to sort out.”

Joe’s phone rang. He puzzled over the number, then opened it. His eyes and mouth opened into a defiant smile as the phone call progressed.

“Hey dickbird, go ahead and try it. I have a state trooper living next door and a shotgun under my bed. You will not come out of it looking too pretty, I
promise
you! So bring it on!” Joe yelled into his phone and clacked it shut. “That was Sully. He said he and his friends were going by my house now with a can of gasoline.”

“Jesus. Do you just want to skip town now? I could drive you down to New York if you need.”

“Nah. They’re just trying to scare me.”

“You sure you want to risk it? You’re not the only asshole in town who knows how to perpetrate an irrational act.”

I wanted to argue with him for as long as it took. Failing that, I wanted to leave before I went down with him. I had done a great deal of both in our long friendship.

“Don’t worry. These guys are tough in their own neighborhood, they’re tough in a group at a party. But they don’t travel much. And my apartment is in a totally different part of town,” Joe said and took a gulp of more whiskey than could have been pleasant.

It was a heinous plan. But in a weird way, I trusted Joe to pull it off. His lunacy never put him in jail or the hospital for longer than a long weekend. And his lunacy certainly stood out against the grim monotony of the coming weeks.

“Well, it’s one hell of a pickle you’ve gotten yourself into.”

“A pickle indeed. I mean, I have a gang actively hunting me. How about them apples?” Joe said.

“You’ve come a long way from Venerini Academy. I forget, weren’t you voted ‘Most Likely To Be Actively Hunted By A Gang’?”

“I forget. It was either me or Anthony DiStephano,” Joe said, cracking up.

We laughed and got more drinks, Sunday be damned. The middle-aged band started warming up at the front of the room. My driving instructor, a bald, acne-scarred man with a sad, hound-dog face, was playing bass.

“But seriously, you don’t have a gun, do you?” I asked.

“No. That was a lie. But I’m getting one. I think Marissa’s boyfriend knows somebody.”

“Again, it seems like you’re trying to put out a fire with gasoline. Say you get a gun, and say you do defend yourself with it, then what? You go to jail, at least until they can prove it was self-defense. And even then, they’ll probably charge you for having the gun. Two stupids don’t make a smart.”

“I don’t think I’ll have to use it. But fuck it. Sully and them can fucking bring it on. I was born here and I have friends everywhere. I’m not going to just back down and run away. I’m a lot smarter than they are. So if I do go, it will be on my terms. I’m not going to New York with just a thousand dollars and starting from scratch.”

“I’m just saying, it seems like you’re putting yourself at risk for no good reason.”

“Maybe it is foolhardy, but life is boring. I mean, I’ve gone to school, I’ve worked, I’ve travelled, I’ve done drugs, I’ve slept with beautiful women. And that’s all great. But it’s not
that
great. It’s not
that
impressive. I’ve never had a job I wanted to keep, or met a woman I’d want to marry. It’s all a big
so what
. I mean, tomorrow, I’m back in the office, filing records and giving out parking permits. So let it get nuts. Let the dice fly high.”

“That didn’t work out so great for Caesar.”

“Maybe not. But he had a good run, and I bet he wasn’t bored. I honestly do not give a damn.”

Not giving a damn was Joe’s particular faith. It was his way out of a dead end. It protected him from the frightening moments that came with being at odds or in league with dangerous people. He had booze and drugs to keep from being bothered by the shallowness of dubious friendships and hookups. And he had not giving a damn to shelter him from the inevitable betrayals and disappointments of that life, from how the nights added up to very little over time.

The band started playing a Dire Straits tune. Joe got up to use the bathroom, and when he wasn’t back after a song, I spun around, suddenly afraid. But he was at the end of the bar, hitting on a middle-aged Spanish woman who looked the worse for wear. I drank my drink and ordered another one, giving Joe room to operate. The band played a few more cover tunes and closed out their set with an original song about fast cars and child support. I looked back over at Joe. His mouth opened in big, crazy laughs, and the Spanish woman’s eyes followed him, amused and hungry.

I went outside. The steps were icy, pocked with salt. The windows in the warehouses across the street were still lit, with no other signs of life inside. In New York, those warehouses would have been made into million-dollar loft condominiums ten years ago. But in Worcester, they just hung over the street, four stories of mostly dark windows. They were reassuring and ominous all at once. I dialed Emily’s number, and beneath Vincent’s blinking neon sign, told her voicemail that I was in town, and to call me. Emily was one of the handful of people I’d kept in touch with from Worcester. I knew she was living there, finishing a PhD in history at Clark after a long time out of town.

Back in the bar, Joe was chatting up the same woman and the band was still on its break. Joe caressed the woman’s knee with his fingers. He wasn’t exactly smooth, but methodical and practiced when approaching women. I walked over.

“Jim, this is Monique,” Joe said, looking excited. I saw a quartet of empty shot glasses and chewed lime wedges before them.

“I told you, it’s Moniqua,” she said.
Mo-nee-kwa
.

“Nice to meet you.”

“Oh honey, your friend is cute!” Moniqua said, her gap-toothed smile and lazy eye shining out over her cleavage.

Moniqua was probably very attractive around the time Joe and I started high school. And though her face told a chaotic tale and the perfume was a bit much, she was complemented by tight jeans, a push-up bra, copious makeup and a general lack of single women at the bar.

“You have a friend for him? Because I’m keeping you all to myself,” Joe said and pinched her side. She giggled and gave him a deadly serious look. “He’s a big New York executive, but he’s in town for a few weeks.”

As I waited for the cover band to deliver me from Joe’s pick-up, Emily called.

14.

Out in the cold, I gave Emily my recap. It wasn’t fun. The more you tell a story, the truer it becomes.

“Sounds like a perfect storm. You always wanted to get out of Worcester. Now you get shoved right back,” she said.

“Apparently, all it takes is a crumbling economy, a divorce and an anomalous mass near my father’s heart. Wicked are the ways of fucking fortune. What are you doing tonight?”

“Not much, just reading.”

“I’m out with Joe right now. But it looks like he’s got his hooks into a lady at the bar. And some street gang is hunting him and says they plan to burn down his apartment.”

“Jesus, how long have you been back?” Emily chuckled.

“Five days.”

“That’s a lot of drama for five days.”

“Never a dull moment, I guess. Can I come by in like an hour?”

“Sure. I’ll go nuts if I have to read much more tonight. I’m at the same place.”

In Vincent’s, the band played an Elvis Costello number while Joe and Moniqua got sloppy at the bar. She clutched at his ponytail with her veiny hands and long, orange fingernails and he kissed her with the same overkill he applied to lighting a cigarette or eating a chicken wing. I settled up the tab and tapped Joe on the shoulder.

“Hey man, I’m going to head over to Emily’s. Do you want me to drop you and Moniqua somewhere?”

“Emily? Emily Urbonas?”

“Yeah, from junior high.”