Twelve (8 page)

Chapter Forty-Five

MOLLY IS WONDERING
what to do about this guy Tobias. He called her again, asking her to come over and “chill” with him. She doesn't call him back. Instead, she calls her friend Mike and asks if she can come over.

“Of course.” White Mike is glad she is coming over, but he has to switch modes.

White Mike and Molly have been friends since that Bahamas trip. And Molly was at the funeral for White Mike's mom, but she never saw White Mike cry. She saw Charlie cry about it, though, and White Mike's father. And Molly spent the night at White Mike's house once when her parents had one of their huge marathon fights. White Mike is always surprised by Molly's beauty and, for some reason, is glad they didn't go to the same school. He tidies the house before she arrives.

“How's working with your dad going?” Molly wants to know. “Glad you're taking the year off?”

“Yeah. It takes up all my time, but I'm learning a lot. I think I know how to run a restaurant.”

“What do you do? Like, what's your day like?”

“I work late.” He hates this. “But the nice thing is that I can sleep late, right, so I go in at around one, and then I'm, like, my dad's assistant. I do errands and bookkeeping and stuff like that, and then at night sometimes I'll be the host, or help out the waiters or be a bar bat or whatever. Then I help close up and get home at around three, and read for a while and then go to sleep.”

“But you have Mondays off?”

“Not really, but Mondays and Tuesdays are the slowest,” he says, not looking at her. “How about you? Still the smartest girl in school?”

“Think you're going to go to college next year?”

“That's not what you came over to talk about.”

Molly throws her hair. He knows her so well.

“Well, there's this guy,” she says. White Mike smiles as Molly laughs and shifts in her chair. “Yeah. He invited me to this big New Year's Eve party. As his date, I guess, I'm not even really sure.”

White Mike runs through all the parties he knows are happening. “Where's the party?”

“Chris somebody and Sara Ludlow.”

White Mike tries to keep his face straight. “What's the guy like?”

“He's actually a model. Tall, brown hair, kind of long. Really handsome.”

“Well, what's the problem?”
I know the damn problem
, thinks White Mike.
The guy's a pothead. And an asshole.

“Well, I don't know, I'm sort of suspicious of those parties, you know. And models are jerks.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“No, I'm serious, I don't know, he just doesn't seem like the kind of guy I'd like. I don't know.”

“Well, those parties can get weird.”

“Have you ever been to one?”

“Mostly they're not really even parties, just a bunch of kids getting wasted, listening to music, flirting with each other.”

“I think I might go. You should come too.”

“Maybe I'll stop by.”

He tells Molly it is his father at the restaurant when his beeper goes off.
I
am
those parties
, thinks White Mike.

Chapter Forty-Six

ANDREW HAS NOTHING
to do. He walks with no destination in mind and ends up in Carl Schurz Park near Gracie Mansion where the mayor lives.

A tall man with a knitted wool cap pulled over his ears is sitting alone at a stone table with a chessboard painted on it. There is a little pom-pom on top of the cap, and his bristly white mustache glistens with moisture from his condensed breath. His pores are huge, craterous, even from the distance at which Andrew views him. There are chess pieces covering the board before him. Apparently he is playing against himself. Andrew stands and watches the game. The man sits deep in thought for several more minutes. Andrew pretends to study the board while he studies the man and his bulbous pink nose. Finally the man moves a pawn one space. He does so with startling force, a sharp bang as he whaps the piece down on the stone. He gets up, circles the table, and looks at the game from the inverse perspective.

Andrew walks a little closer to the table. The man
still does not look up; just exhales heavily, sending a plume of white mist into the air. He pulls his overcoat about him and readjusts his yellow scarf.

“Want to play?” He looks up suddenly and catches Andrew's eyes.

“Sorry?”

“Do you want to play,” the man repeats impatiently.

“Umm, I'm not very good.”

“Don't say
umm
.”

“What?”

“Don't say
umm
. Am I going to have to repeat everything with you?”

“I'm not sure if I want to play, actually. I think I might have somewhere to go.” Andrew begins to leave.

“Oh, bullshit. Stay and play. It's your move.”

Andrew looks at the old man incredulously but sits down.

“There we go.”

“Don't you want to start a new game? I think I interrupted yours.”

“Nonsense. Play what is there. You have the advantage. You'll need it.”

Andrew looks hard at the board. He decides he really wants to beat the old man. They play in silence. The man slowly pushes Andrew into a corner. They both ignore the cold. When the man scores Andrew's queen, he takes out a long-stemmed oak pipe and a bag of tobacco and taps down a bowl. His match flares in the cold afternoon, and he lights the pipe and sucks on it
silently, looking at the boy across from him as much as at the board. Three moves later he has the boy in checkmate.

“You played better than I thought you would.”

“Thanks, I guess. I'm Andrew.”

“Sven.” They shake hands.

“What happened to your head?” He points at the bandage around Andrew's forehead.

“I got run over by an ice-skater.”

Sven laughs a hacking old-man laugh around his pipe. “Fell down, did you? Ahh, heehee. Well then, what are you doing out here in the middle of the day, a youngster like you? Don't have any friends, huh? You a loser?”

“What? Whatever, man. Thanks for the game.” Andrew starts to move away.

“Well now, wait up a moment. Come and I'll buy you a drink. Don't say
man
.” Sven gets up and packs the pieces into a little plastic bag and puts it in a pocket of his old overcoat. He limps off a little ways, then turns back to Andrew, who is standing by the table. “Are you coming or not?”

“Umm, yeah, yeah.” Andrew jogs over to catch up, as tall old mustachioed Sven limps off toward the edge of the park. “So where're we going?”

“You'll see when we get there.”

“Hold up, I want to know where we're going.”

“Well, Mr. Big Britches, if you're that uppity, we're going to O'Reilly's.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“You know the place, do you?” Sven grins. “Aren't you a little young to be drinking?”

“I pass by it all the time.”

“Live around here?”

Uneasily: “Yeah.”

“Ahh, don't worry, I'm not going to come and rape you.” Sven turns suddenly on the boy and shoves his face close— “Boo!” Andrew starts, then lets out a sigh as Sven hoots with laughter. “Be strong.”

Chapter Forty-Seven

THERE WAS A
bum whom White Mike walked by every day on the way home from grammar school. He was short, with light dark skin and bad acne and a long chin and a narrow nose and a big Afro that he wore with a sweatband sometimes, and he was always exercising—push-ups, sit-ups—on an exercise mat. He was rag-ass, but clean by White Mike's bum standards. His name, as far as White Mike knows, was Captain. That was how he introduced himself when White Mike handed him half a roast-beef sandwich one day. Lettuce, tomato, mustard, cheddar cheese, no mayonnaise, pickles.

Captain asked: ‘Where's the mayo?”

“Sorry,” said White Mike.

“No, I mean not for me.” He gave a great whooping laugh and turned the heads of the people waiting for the bus. “I mean you, you don't like mayo? Mayo's good, brotha.”

“I never liked it much.”

“I'm Captain, nice to meet you.” The man extended
his hand. White Mike felt how it was rough like sandpaper, callused and hard.

“Mike.”

“Mike, huh? Well, you know, got to finish my workout.” Captain went hack to his mat and started exercising. Captain was the strongest guy White Mike knew. He did push-ups one-handed on his fingertips and crazy sit-ups and all sorts of stuff. White Mike could have done chin-ups on Captains arm.

Chapter Forty-Eight

THE BAR IS
empty. It is not even five o'clock. Sven leads Andrew to a table in the back. The bartender nods at him on the way in. As soon as they sit, a young waitress comes up. She is pretty, dark red hair and big brown eyes. She speaks with an Irish lilt. “Hi, Sven.”

“Evening, Megan. Could I have a Dewar's and soda, please, and the same for the young man.”

Megan smiles at them both with slightly crooked teeth and strides off to the bar. Sven removes his overcoat and gloves and hat to reveal a faded vest with a pocket watch, and sun-splotched hands and a great mane of gray hair to match his bristly mustache. They sit in silence until she returns with the drinks. “Here you go. Cheers.”

“Thank you, dear.” Sven takes a drink and settles himself in his chair. “Now then. What is your story, Andrew?”

“My story?”

“More repeating, eh?”

“Well, what do you mean?” Andrew is already thinking about how he is going to tell the story of this
bizarre afternoon to Sara, the hot girl from the hospital.
This crazy old dude Sven is sitting in the park alone, playing chess with himself. He gets me to play with him, and then he beats me, and then he takes me to O'Reilly's. Yeah, O'Reilly's. And he buys me a Scotch and soda
.

“Everybody has stories. Tell me a story. What do you do?”

“I'm a student.” Andrew decides he does not like Scotch and soda.

“Of what?”

“I go to high school.”

“What do you study?”

“Everything. You have to study everything. Remember? Didn't you go to high school?”

“Well, what is your passion? What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“A fireman. So I can drive the truck.”

“Don't bullshit me.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Why don't you?”

Andrew can hardly keep himself from laughing. “I can't believe this. Okay. I think I'm interested in medicine.”

“Well, then, a doctor.” Sven finishes his drink and motions to Megan for another. “Got a strong stomach?”

“I guess.

“It is a bad thing to guess about if you want to be a doctor.” Sven takes a swallow. “You need a strong stomach.”

“What do you do?”

Sven looks at Andrew for a second and then back down into the bottom of his glass. He speaks slowly, motioning with his free hand and pronouncing every word. “I was in Japan once, on a fishing boat in the sea. It is beautiful there, a great expanse of blue, the sky over the ocean; and in the evening it all shimmers.” His eyes focus elsewhere as he takes another sip. “This was years ago, and we went out in little skiffs to finish off the whales. We were whalers. I learned to speak Japanese. I threw the last harpoon, the coup de grâce, and it pierced the whale's lung.” He suddenly pantomimes throwing a spear, and Andrew jumps and grips the table. “And then it flipped its tail up through the water as it was dying and knocked the boat over, and we were all in the water. And there was blood in the water from where the whale was bleeding and rolling, so sharks started to come. Now, the big boat was maybe three hundred yards off, and it started speeding over, but not before we were in a school of sharks. These blue-gray bodies swimming all about us. You would knock them in the nose with a piece of wood from the boat, but they kept coming. And some were ripping meat from the whale, and finally one got to me.”

“So you're the old man and the sea,” Andrew says, searching the man for scars or missing fingers.

Sven finishes his second drink. “Well, then. It came up behind me, and I could feel its teeth tear at my calf, and sure enough it ripped the muscle right off. The
water all around felt warmer for the blood, I remember it perfectly. And then the boat got there and pulled us up out of the water. The other two from the boat were unharmed. But there was no doctor on the boat, so they took me in to shore to try and get my leg fixed up. I knew it was hopeless. The calf was just gone. Back on land they brought me to the man who was supposed to be the doctor. He was really just a gardener, and he would dispense herbs from his garden or grind them into potions for the village. But when he saw my leg, he had to run and be sick. I was lucky; there was an Englishman passing through on a tour of the country, and he was a much better doctor. He fixed me up. That is why you had better have a strong stomach if you want to be a good doctor. But then you never said you wanted to be a good doctor. You just said you were interested in medicine.”

Andrew just stares at him.

“Well, then. Haven't you anything to say?”

“That's why you limp?”

“That is correct.”

“That must be some scar on your leg.”

Sven smiles and his face crinkles. He relishes the moment. “Want to see?” He brings his leg out to the side of the table and pulls up his corduroy pant leg. There is a metal prosthesis up to the knee.

“Oh. Sorry.”

“So what classes do you take?”

Andrew decides to leave off the APs and honors from
the names of his classes. “Molecular biology, English, calculus, European history, and Latin.” He counts them off on his fingers.

“Latin
. Not
Laddin
.”

“Yeah, well, it's not my favorite class.”

“Who are you reading? Caesar? ‘
Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres
...'”

“No. Catullus.”

“Ahh. I'm afraid I don't remember any.” Andrew glances at the old man's half-empty glass. “So what do you do now, Sven?”

“In Japan, the sands are black in places. Pitch black.” Andrew rolls his eyes, but Sven doesn't notice. “You could go into the bazaars and buy or trade for anything. There were these brightly colored fish and fruits and silk. And you could go to some places and the girls would line up and you could choose them and they would take you inside and make you tea or dance and then for a couple dollars you could spend the night with them. They were so small. Such tiny hands and feet.” His eyes are clouding again and his hands are trembling; he looks hungry to Andrew. “Well, I don't need to tell you what that was like. Been with a girl yet?”

Andrew takes out five dollar bills from his jeans and leaves them on the table. “No. But I think I better be going.”

“Where've you got to go? Sit down. You didn't even finish your drink.”

Andrew looks at the old man. “Sorry, Sven. I've got to go. Nice talking to you, though. Maybe we'll play another game of chess.”

“Fine, then. Leave.” Sven takes another swallow and resettles himself and looks at a painting on the wall. Andrew turns and walks out, and Sven watches him go. “Watch out for the old guy,” Andrew says to Megan on the way out.

“Don't worry, love, I do.”