Hands grabbed at my coat, but I spun away and stumbled. “I want to talk to Mia.”
“Who the fuck is Mia?” someone said.
“Maybe it’s his mother — like Mama Mia.”
There was laughter, and another voice shouted: “He don’t look Italian!”
More laughter, and still another voice. “She can’t come to the phone anyway — she’s in the can, giving head to Lenny.” Louder laughter, and someone had my arm.
“I want to talk to her,” I said, and I threw my elbow back. It hit something soft, and for a moment everything went quiet. And then the walls came down.
Rocks, stones, big boulders — in my face, my gut, my balls. I was on my knees, on my stomach, curled up with my arms around my head. There was blood in my mouth and in my eyes, and nothing but ringing in my ears.
Then there was a sudden boom like thunder and the sound of breaking glass, and it all stopped.
“Jesus Christ, Mickey — what the fuck’s with you? That’s my goddamn windshield.” It was Len’s voice.
There was another sound — a mechanical slide and click — and Ross’s voice, nervous.
“For chrissake, Mickey, put that thing down.”
“Just as soon as you drive away, you and your pals.”
“C’mon, man, we’re having a little fun is all.”
“Have it somewhere else, and with somebody else.”
“Christ, Mick, he’s just a drunk.”
“He’s my drunk, Ross.”
I heard shuffling and someone spit on me, and then the space around me cleared. I saw the sky, and Mickey and his daughter standing over me.
“Can you walk?” Mickey asked.
“Sure,” I said, and I passed out.
I woke in my room on the fifth day, surprised to be anywhere at all. In the mirror, my face was cut and skewed, like a shredded document glued back together but with pieces gone. And the rest of me, from what I could see, was no better. Someone had gotten my clothes off, but I still smelled like smoke and vomit and burnt garbage. I hobbled to the bathroom to piss, and when I did, it was dark and felt like a wire going through me. I stood at the sink and ran water on my hands. It stung in the cuts, but it was nothing compared to the pain in my throat, which felt like lye, and the pain in my head, which felt fatal.
I climbed into the shower and let the water boil me. After a while, heat overcame pain and I washed myself three times. Then I boiled myself some more, while memories of Strickland and our last meeting rose from the steam — the smiling face, those teeth, you know how the game is played His face and voice mixed with scraps of the night before — the circle of men, Ross’s questions, and Mickey’s words. Get even and get out. After a longer while, I smiled. I was still a shambles — brittle, scrambled, full of broken glass — but my mind felt clearer than it had in weeks, in years maybe. I finally had a plan.
There was nothing complicated about it: good lawyers, a plea bargain, whatever testimony they wanted, and then a book deal. It wouldn’t be easy, and it would cost me every cent I had and more, but I knew I could make it work. The very first step, even before the lawyers, was to call Mia. I needed to talk to her — to hear her voice and tell her everything. And then I needed to get the hell out of this dump and back to civilization.
I turned off the water and wrapped a towel around me. I hobbled from the bathroom, and that’s when I noticed that my clothes were gone. Not just the stuff I’d worn the night before, but everything — underwear, socks, shoes, all of it. And not just my clothes. My bags were gone, too, and my wallet — even my stack of newspapers. I went to the window. No car.
“Motherfuckers.” I picked up the phone and was listening to silence in the receiver when the door opened. Mickey came in, followed by his daughter and an icy wind. I shivered and put the receiver down.
“They robbed me, those bastards. They took everything.”
Mickey sat in the only chair. His daughter closed the door and leaned against it. I tied my towel more tightly.
“Plus, the fucking phone’s not working,” I said. Mickey nodded and I took a deep breath. “You saved my ass last night, and I owe you big time. But I need your help again. I’ve got to get out of here — and in a hurry — but those fuckers cleaned me out.” Mickey nodded some more and looked around the room. “I’ll pay you back for everything,” I added.
“Sure you will,” he said, and smiled. “But it wasn’t Ross that cleaned you out.” His daughter opened her big coat and produced a newspaper. It was the Philadelphia Inquirer the business section, one of the papers off my stack. I sat on the bed. My face was throbbing, and when I touched it, my fingers were dotted with blood.
“You don’t look much like your picture,” she said.
I peered at Mickey. “What the hell is this?”
He shrugged. “It’s getting something back.”
My throat was tight, and I had to force the words out. “Getting what?”
Mickey smiled. “Two weeks ago, I had four hundred thousand in my retirement account. Not as much as I thought I’d have at this point — not as much as I would’ve if my old company hadn’t messed with our pension fund — but with the income from this place and the bar, it was enough to keep body and soul together. At least until you came along.”
“What did I—”
“The money was in a fund that bet big on bank stocks. Stupid of them probably, and probably stupid of me to invest, but it was doing fine until you. Now it’s all but gone.”
My head was spinning, and I couldn’t seem to get any air in my lungs. I looked in the mirror and for an instant I thought I saw Mia behind me. “And what do you want from me — money?”
The pimply girl took her hand from the pocket of her big coat. There was an ugly black gun in it, and an ugly smile on her face. Mickey shook his head sadly. “For starters,” he said.
Today we hit
by Megan Abbott
110 W. 139th Street
Her mother taught her there could be something lovely in the way a rainbow would arc through a tub of soapy water, even as the smell pinched her nose and her hands cracked red from the bleach, from a hundred splinters off the cracking wood of the mop handle. A thousand rainbows could span that tub now and she wouldn’t bat an eye.
And there he was, how many paychecks for that almond-green felt derby of his, telling her once more that he would soon be covering her broken hands in rose milk and fine perfumes, a bauble for every bleach-brined finger.
“Say it all you want, my man. But that won’t make it so,” she said, looking out the browned window, the fading orange light streaking the building tops.
He laughed. He always laughed and it was charming once, that gentle burr, the lilt of the islands twisting through it like a stick of peppermint.
He had taken his hat off and unfastened the very top button on his coat. The room was hot and she herself, laid up all day with an awful pain, had settled on the bed so he might have the chair in the corner that came with the faintest breeze. Wearily, she opened two buttons on her dress, buttons tacky to the touch with the awful thick in the air, and reached for her hand fan, the one he bought her at the curio shop on Pell Street.
“I’ve walked this road before, my man,” she said to him. “I won’t walk it again without something more than a honey promise.”
Over the past year, she’d said it to him ten, twenty times or more. And he’d always nod, even laugh, and never press the point. And that ease, the kindness in it — sometimes it brought heat under her eyes when she thought about it and she hated him for it. How dare he do that to her, bring that out in her when he’d yet to make money enough to put more than a paper fan from Chinatown in her cracked hand.