Slowly they draw back their words, form them into a fist, hold them in mid-air a moment, then propel them forward.
Because we got a guy on camera wearing a Brooklyn Cyclones hat and he looks like a dead ringer for you.
Where?
Outside Chialli’s, leaning over the dead man.
I don’t know nothing about it.
On camera, Pedro. A dead ringer.
For me?
You and him, Pedro, dos gotas de agua.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
More to the point, the endless journey home. Let freedom ring, Sally, from the hilltops. Throw another log on the fire. Warm the pan, boil the milk, melt the chocolate, position the chair, unfold the blanket, hear the lumber hiss. Perhaps I should call her and let her know I’m on my way. Then again, she’ll probably rush out into the storm. What in the world are you doing, Mr. J.? I’m coming home, Sally. Jilted by my very own son. He left me high and dry. Not even dry, come to think of it. I could have done with some winter gear. He even let me pay the check. Still, we’ve a little salmon and a lot of steak to see us through the storm. Unwrapped for some reason. Dandinho didn’t do his job.
Awkward this, having to hold the plastic bag and the walking stick at the same time. But here we go, onwards, upwards, away.
Well, almost.
He stands in the outer foyer and hears the restaurant door close behind him. Goodbye now, Mr. Mendelssohn. Her sweet Rhodesian Zimbabwean voice and the last strain of music from inside. Should hurry back in and order myself a hot brandy. A spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down.
Good God, but it is curtaining down. Never seen anything quite like it. Slantways, broadside, edgeways. A theater, a blockbuster, an opera of snow. All the taxi drivers onstage, sliding left, right, sideways into the pit. An applause of windshield wipers. Trucks and vans, headlights blazing, and some poor idiot on a motorcycle. An actual biting snow. Like those little circular weapons, a million flying chakri aimed my way.
Hardly a soul on the street. A tad early for the mommies and the nannies on their way down to PS 6. No flowerboys. No deliverymen. No one shoveling. No rock-salt rollers.
Should hail a taxi, really, but he would have to take me past the synagogue, up to Eighty-eighth, down the block, back down Park Avenue, along Eighty-sixth again, and who knows what sort of trafficjam there might be in that direction. Car horns blaring everywhere. A terrible sound, really. Isn’t the snow supposed to deaden the sound? How is it that my hearing gets worse but the awful sounds get louder day after day? A cacophony. That’s the word. The pianist playing the contrabass. The saxman on the violin. The flautist on the horn, so to speak.
Isn’t there supposed to be a fine for overuse? Listen up, Elliot. They have it for car horns, they’ll get you yet.
What is it that happened to him? Why couldn’t he be the boy he promised he would be? He did well in his final exams, threw his graduation hat in the air, took his mother by the arm, walked her proudly around Cambridge. She was happy then, she laughed, we did, together. Moved back to the city. Lived in the Village. Found himself a little French girl. What was her name? So long ago now. Chantal. And she could. Sing, that is. Eileen was a big fan. A voice like a wren. At the holiday parties she was always there. And then she wasn’t. A ladle dipping down into the well of the mind. The strangest things appear and disappear. Who was it who gazed into the bottom of the well? Who was looking for their reflection in the dark?
Dark it is too. For this time of day. But onwards, let’s go.
A chill at the neck. Didn’t even button up my coat properly. Spent so long inside sliding my arms into the sleeves, they must have felt they were getting me in a straitjacket. Still, they were happy, all of them. Left a ten-dollar bill for a sulky Dandinho, and gave Rosita thirty percent, why not, she deserves a thing or two beyond the blue mark on her wrist.
A beauty.
Reminded me somewhat.
As all beauty does.
He balances precariously against the wall of the foyer, shifts the collar and lifts the scarf out and over his mouth. An impromptu balaclava.
Here, Eileen, come take my hand and step me out onto Madison. Many days we walked here together, though I remember you in sunshine, you wore a pale sundress and a simple pearl necklace, though the truth is we probably remember things as more beautiful than they actually were. The years put a few pounds on her in the end, and she walked with a bit of a lopsided limp. The folds and the creases and the humps at the hip. Cruel, the way God plays it. The more we know of time, the less we have of it. The less we have, the more we want. The scales of justice. If there is such a word. I was born in the middle of something or other.
On now. Soldier forth.
Sally too.
Out into the hard bite of snow, one step, two. An immediate chill against the high of his cheeks. He closes his eyes and tries to shake the burn away. The shock of it. The wind and the storm wrapping itself around him. He stops to adjust the precarious leftovers. How quickly we step from one state to the other. Can’t be much beyond two o’clock and it’s already pitch-black. The dark rises from the ground and wings itself up.
— Elliot Mendelssohn.
Yes. No. Of course not. Question or statement? Who’s to hear a thing when the goddamn car horns are going and the wind is howling and your scarf is up around your ears and the city is in uproar and there’s still a symphony in your head from the restaurant, it’s simply impossible to hear anything at all, but was that my name? Am I my son? Surely not. Not in this lifetime at least. The voice seems to come from behind and he turns to look over his shoulder, his tongue flickering against the wool scarf. Am I the son of my son? A better question. Though not one I’d like to answer right now.
Get me out of this storm, please. Good God, it’s cold, and the snow stings and I can hardly see a thing, but there’s no voice from behind at all, just the orange light of Chialli’s catching the snowflakes and the footprints of others who have gone on before me.
Should have called Sally.
He turns slowly and the tip of the walking stick crunches in the soft snow. He slides his right foot around and follows, inch by inch, with the left, careful now, no handles along Madison, more’s the pity, two glasses of Sancerre rolling through me, and who is this spectacle striding up to me now, deep brown eyes behind spectacles and a little spray of grayish hair from the baseball cap, who, leaning forward, a shade this side of homeless, maybe looking for a few shekels, though something vaguely familiar about him, who, and why in the world do his eyes have that shine, where is that coming from, how many faces have I seen like his, they were out there in Brooklyn for so many years, the hustlers the haters the barkers the bakers the shoeshine boys the two-bit conmen from every corner of the globe, but he knows my name, or my son’s name at least, and maybe something has happened to Elliot, he might have slipped in the snow, hurt his back, or landed soft on his wallet, who knows, he didn’t, after all, pay for lunch.