Made to Break (8 page)

My boys and girls were at it again, none of them eager, of course, to know how we'd fared. The two girls and Dinky sat round Basil sprawled on the floor with a bottle in his fist.

Lucille was making a pile from the mud she'd pinched off her man. She paused when I walked in, more, it seemed, from the disturbance I'd created than anything else.

Dinky had propped himself on an elbow to motion at his drink. No doubt he'd struck the pose merely to impress. In all our years, our lasting pride was standing off the Comedown.

The Comedown—ah—what's got to be the nearest drunks can get to Old Scratch's terror when Sir Nothing cast him out—far from your mother's kisses and the SweeTarts bought on Sunday with the coins from Saturday's chores after waffles and bacon and eggs—crushed in that void, totally confounded: Jim
Carroll's lovely at the corner of Seamen and Dripp, who every Friday night bangs this jerk or that to rise come
mañana
with a frog in her throat and Ding Dongs and beer and rubs on the floor: the tone arm's bouncing in “Angie's” last groove, the stench is sick as a cheeseburger's ghost, the light through the blinds are the fires of hell, and
nothing
—nothing like a blot—of true love is lost in the depths of her hair. Still, and for all that, you'd never find us giving in to the thing, admitting our defeat, not ever. The Comedown could gouge our eyes and break our teeth, stab us and choke us and carve its name in our heads, but we'd only scream for more. It didn't matter that we'd slipped down its throat, our hands gone utterly wild. Fuck that beast! It could swallow us whole! And whenever we did find ourselves in that dark fix, really and truly—and we did, we did—you'd not once hear us say it. Someone came along to ask our thoughts, they'd get the old two thumbs. Serve up that grime. Serve up the shit entire. We'd be there sure with bibs besides, slurping it down to the drop.

Something good and mean had Dinky all right, if not the Comedown then some other such piece of woe. Anyone could see it. He gazed out emptily now, frogish and huge. A person could've slapped his face with a skunk or crammed his ass full of melon, he wouldn't have squawked a peep. His face didn't lie. It was a fallen house, in whose halls slunk that oaf, Remembrance.

“You're back,” he said, struggling to his hands and knees. He couldn't decide to stay put or stand, or even what to say. “Welcome once again, old pal… to our little… fold.”

And then Hickory rose to greet me, the shag fell away, goofy and light she floated my way, petals in her hair and from her eyes, though still I was numb, still my head was a bucket of sand, that floating blossom, dancing girl, she came my way to pour herself out and smother me gold, it was only for me to
cry the word, her with her voice, her with her lips and eyes, for now I was home, made limber and fine, another time yet I'd been brought clear, I could smell her now, she drove me bent, hallelujah, lord, praise be the stars, for man, oh man, this I knew, I was most certainly fucked…

“Look at you,” she said. “Your face…”

They were gawking at me, then, all of them, the mannequin, too, staring me down with its empty eyes. Then clarity took me, and I snatched up the mannequin to kiss it again and again. And then I tucked it in my arm and with my free hand high went forth.

“My friends!” I said. “My friends!” I grabbed a bottle and poured five shots. “I'd like to propose a toast!”

“Come again?” Lucille said.

“A toast, my dear. In fact, a toast to you. In honor of your promotion.” I raised my glass. The spirit of the underground man had crept into my head, through the porch of my sleeping ear. “Let us all drink,” I shouted, “to the success of Lucille Bonnery. May she live long and prosper in her new status as Queen of the Corporate Raiders!”

Dinky found the strength to burble “Hear! Hear!” while Basil sat up with “I'll drink to that—hell, I'll drink to anything!” They emptied their glasses with a single draught, Hickory and Lucille, too. “A toast!” they said, and drank.

I choked down my shot and began to convulse…

When at last I came to from an apparent fit of speaking in tongues, Basil was standing above me, rubbing his eyes. He looked hideous and comical, encrusted with mud, it and that hat perched on his head like some ugly bird from the sea.

“Maybe you guys've got the skinny from the inside,” he said, “but I haven't understood half the crap this whacko said.”

“So your question is…?” Lucille said.

“
Hatchet Lady!
” Hickory said.

“Nice,” Dinky said.

On the mantle, between a badly carved falcon and some frou-frou matches, stood a little doll from Mexico, huaraches, serape, sombrero, all. When you pulled the sombrero off its head, a giant boner sprang from its pants, only some wise guy had wedged a twig beneath the thing's sombrero to keep the boner boned.

I held up the mannequin like some ventriloquist's dummy. “This is not a prison,” it said. “Because if it is, what the heck is the world?”

Dinky coughed. “Well put, mannequin,” he said.

“You, my fat-headed friend,” said Basil as he whirled on Dinky with more savagery than he seemed able, “had better watch it.”

Dinky fell into another fit, his worst so far. Super had returned to fix the phone, I remembered. That's what he'd been doing in the basement, working on the wires for the phone. If the phone worked, we could call for help, we could bring in a winch for Basil's truck. And if the roads hadn't been washed away like They were saying they might, we could run our friend to the doc's and throw a celebration. And if the phone didn't work, well, Super had got here somehow. If he was here, so was his truck.

Fancy ideas, and probable, too, had the phone not been made worthless for good. From the other room, the news warned folks trapped in the storm to remain inside with patience. Mr and Mrs Jones would love this, I thought, free of the flood in their cozy dens. They'd hunker round the tube with their top-shelf booze and gourmet ale to point and exclaim, taken for a time from gluing their models or paging through zines or waking from another nap.

Dinky was hacking so bad my friends couldn't help but see. They gathered round him now, outrageous. They wouldn't admit it, not yet, but the sons of bitches were scared. Dinky looked worse than he had in the rain. “What's wrong, what's wrong?” Hickory said, and cried.

Pretty soon they got him on the couch, and pretty soon again he set into the lines from some old poem while making gestures no one could stop. “Dinky's sick,” he said. “He must die—Lord, have mercy on us!” Then he'd cough or burble or whimper or sometimes even laugh. And then the tedium would repeat.

“That's not funny, Dink,” Basil kept saying. “That's not funny.”

“It's no joke,” I said.

“Really?” Lucille said. “Maybe you could tell me what you're doing with that mannequin then.”

“Not right now,” Basil told her. “Just don't.”

“Well,” Lucille said, “then maybe
you'll
let me know when I've got your permission, O Lord of Lords.”

“I'm serious, Lucille.”

I dropped the mannequin and kicked it. “Now you're serious. It takes Stuyvesant getting like this for you to get serious.”

“That supposed to mean something?”

“Unbelievable,” I said.

“What, like you've been telling me something?” Basil said. He flung his hand toward Dinky. “I mean, look at the bastard.”

Hickory's face had become a mask, not so much of sadness or despair, though these were plain, too, in a tired sort of way, but more of simple disgust. “Someone get me a towel,” she said. “And another pillow.”

We heard Lucille in the kitchen rifling through cupboards and drawers. From another room a door skreeked open, and Lucille returned with a rag and icky pillow.

“The situation's evident,” I said. “But if we stay here much longer we might not be able to leave.”

“Anyone can see he's sick,
dork
,” Basil said. “A fucking bat in a goddamned fucking cave could see that.”

“
Dinky's sick, he must die—Lord, have mercy on us!
”

Hickory took the rag from the bowl and passed it over Dinky's head. She caressed him with easy words.

“Anyone,” I said, “could've seen the guy was sick a-way back when,
squeeze
. But no one here gave a goddamn till the shit was in their face.”

“Who cares?” Lucille said. “The point is we give a damn now. At least I do.” She looked like she'd just been indicted for some heinous crime. Her eyes leapt from face to face. “I
do
care,” she said.

“Not enough,” I said, “to've ever been straight with him. Not when you had the chance.”

“I know you're not talking about what I think you're talking about.”

“Just how many were there before the Gladden brothers, Lucy? How many after?”

“That's not fair, AJ.”

“Or what about telling us all why you didn't care for Dinky enough to confess the fun you were having that summer he was away? Or any other time you couldn't shrug off your seven-month itch.”

I was getting to her all right. She was crumbling. “That's not fair,” she said.

“You think he doesn't know all about your games?”

“
You
don't know the half of it, you bastard,” she said. “I had my reasons.”

“You did,” I said. “And I know the hole they crawled out of.”

“That's not fair. It's not fair.”

“It's a little hard to cry wolf when you're one of them.”

“None of that stuff had anything to do with how I feel about Dinky. How would you know what he means to me?”

“I wouldn't, Lucy. That's my point. I can't see you give a stinking straw for the son of a bitch.”

“You bastard.”

I ignored her and went on. “Is that what you told Basil last summer, fucking him under that Mexican moon? I know how you are, Lucy. Hang the cost!
Shit
. You care so much for Dinky you just sent him into a hurricane for a bag of ice.”

Basil rose. “I should cave your skull in right fucking now.”

My hands flipped up to frame my face with a set of waggling fingers. Somewhere in my heart I'd hoped to look like Munch's screaming man. “I'm sooooo fwightened,” I said. And then I snarled. “You cock head. If you had anything in your skull to make it worthwhile, I'd have done you a lifetime back.”

Basil stood there in his suit of mud. He still had that blackface, and the hat besides, perched on his head like an ugly bird.

“I'm your
boss
,” he said. “Remember that? In fact, now that I think about it, I'm your
former
boss.”

“I never worked for you.”

“I suppose I'm not the one who's been signing your checks these last eight years then.”

“You jerk. Everyone here knows your grandma owns the buildings. That she got from your grandpa no less. All of which makes you nothing but a trust-fund piece of crap with insurance and fancy clothes.”

My friend was fazed, I could see, but that didn't keep him from shooting back. “It's a hell of a lot better than being a talent-lacking toilet-scrubber,” he said.

“
Dinky's sick, he must die—Lord, have mercy on us!
”

Hickory had stayed by Dinky throughout, hand-in-hand,
passing the rag along his brow. Now she turned our way with liquid eyes.

“Please, you guys,” she said. “Stop.”

“
Dinky's sick, he must die—
”

“Shut up!” Basil said.

“Dinky,” Lucille said, “we're going to get you out of here.”

“After Pac Bell comes in to fix the phone we might,” I said.

“
Dinky's sick, he must—
”

“Dinky,” Lucille said.

“
He must die—Lord, have mercy on us
!”

“He doesn't even know what he's saying anymore,” Hickory said.

“Maybe Super's still around,” I said.

“What?” said Lucille.

“
Fuck
that guy,” said Basil.

“No,” I said. “I mean, if he's around, so's his truck. He had to get here somehow, didn't he?”

“
If
we can find him,” Hickory said.

“Maybe we can. Me and Basil, I mean. At least we can try.”

“The hell
I
am. After what he did to me?”

“What
he
did to
you
?” said Lucille. “I thought you said he was just some old nut.”

“But you don't know. The guy's a freak, as in for real. It's like he's the actual
devil
or something.”

“That doesn't mean he won't help us,” I said.