Chapter Ten

A TAXI DROPPED CHARLIE in front of what looked like a condemned complex of brownstones complete with yellowing notices about pesticides and an imminent wrecking ball, scheduled for next Thursday, 1978. The driver assured him the Pen & Pencil Club was “somewhere inside the bullshit.” They were in a warehouse district. No people, no stores, few cars, just the smell of steam. Waiting for a sign of club life, he felt as if a silent animal were watching him in the distance; he remembered a Crumb’s vague threat about the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, where living, breathing mountain lions, in view of the skyline, sharpened their claws against petrified tree trunks, making sparks in the night. If the wildcats pounced, he’d yell up in the direction of the building’s upper floors; he’d yell that Paula should know that Tommy was with Iñez. Time permitting, he’d also yell that he loved her.

“You help us settle a bet?” From his blind side appeared two Crumbs, but not the Falstaffian version. These Crumbs were younger, scruffier, caught perhaps in a botched becoming.

“Me?” asked Charlie.

“Yeah, unless you’re too good to settle a bet for us.”

One wore an army jacket and camouflage pants, the other a 1950s bowling shirt and slicked-back hair. Man-children of a mean-spirited Halloween.

“How can I help?” asked Charlie in his Jee-Jee voice. How his father’s arms would open so wide when a stranger would ask him for directions or for a dollar.

“This guy says that you’re only carrying twenty dollars, and I say you’re carrying a hundred dollars.”

Charlie started to reach for his inside pocket to show them his cash envelope and help decide on a winner, but he had the good sense to stop, his hand frozen like Napoleon’s. A pose that fascinated Jee-Jee, who often tried to copy it but looked less like an emperor and more like a heart attack victim. Napoleon’s heart probably never beat this fast.

“So, which one of us got lucky?” asked the army jacket.

“Yeah, who won the bet?” asked the bowling shirt.

“I don’t have a lot of money, so I think neither of you won or we could say that you both won.”

“Aw, see, we’re gonna need verification of who won the bet, just because we gotta be sure,” said the army jacket.

There was still a small chance that the bet was real, thought Charlie. Maybe this ratlike strain of Crumb is especially fascinated by amounts.

“Okay,” said Charlie. “Around nineteen hundred dollars.”

The army jacket smiled wide. “We gotta take that to the lab to verify it isn’t counterfeit, ’cause if it’s counterfeit we gotta make a citizen’s arrest on you.”

“It’s not counterfeit,” said Charlie. “It’s mine.”

The smile was gone. “They got trash bins around here cops don’t even know exist. Throw a kid in there. Padlock it shut. You’ll become a skeleton they’ll find in 2001.”

“We can share my money. Please. I don’t want to be a 2001 skeleton. Not tonight. I’m in love.”

“Get on your knees, Romeo.”

“Please,” said Charlie, kneeling. “You can take it all.”

“That’s more like it, but we’re still gonna give you a new home in the trash bin. Got my padlock right here.”

From behind, Charlie felt a hand like a meat hook under his armpit. It hoisted him upright. In Neil’s other hand were two bottles of White Horse whisky, one of which he gave Charlie to hold.

“Oh, hey, Neil,” said the army jacket.

“Oh, hey,” Neil replied, then hit him with the bottle over the side of his head at an angle, across the eye and nose. The army jacket dropped, holding his face, blood and whisky pooling around him.

“Give me that other bottle,” Neil said to Charlie, approaching the bowling shirt.

“What the fuck? We were just having fun, Neil.”

“I’m not going to waste a second bottle of White Horse, but the next time I see you, I’m going to crack you. So, if I were you, I’d start hiding right now.”

“Fuck, Neil,” the bowling shirt said. He skulked away after examining the army jacket, who was out cold, his cuts sopping up the White Horse.

“I told you,” said Neil to the comatose man, “you should have never sold me your World Series ring. Assistant equipment manager for the ’80 Phils,” he told Charlie. “Bought the ring off him summer of ’82, down at the shore. Nine hundred bucks. I told him the moment he sells me that ring, bad things will start to happen. And they have. Just look at him.”

“Should we leave him there?”

“I have to finish my chess lesson. Just went out to the car to get my private stash. Lucky thing, they would’ve taken your wallet, maybe roughed you up. Come with me.”

“Should we call an ambulance?” asked Charlie.

“Nah, he’ll wrap his face in his camouflage jacket and stumble home. It’s good that jacket will get some blood on it. He’s been lying about ’Nam for years.”

Entering the Pen & Pencil Club involved climbing up a fire escape to a first-floor landing, then going down a hall. Neil moved as if it were his own home, whistling as they went, flipping the White Horse bottle. Once inside, they parted ways, leaving Charlie to the inky darkness—a purple darkness, interrupted by crooked lampshades and their weak bulbs. He couldn’t decide whether it was decrepit or cozy until he sank into an old loveseat that was right by the front door and waited for his eyes to adjust. This was a comfortable place, he thought, until he saw a very old woman rolling a mop bucket.

“Next time they kick the hot dog crock over, they can clean it up themselves,” she barked.

Indeed, the club smelled like hot dog water. He could hear the phtt of cork in the distance, a dartboard in a faraway room. Sound didn’t travel well here, like on an airplane, deep into a transatlantic flight; you could be sitting next to speaking lips and still only hear the white noise. On Charlie’s first trip to Europe, he’d boarded the plane with a slight fever, but by the time the stewardess pulled the plug on the night and put up the window shades, he’d been cured. Charlie considered it medicinal, the air inside a Paris-bound cabin, a blanket of powdery aspirin covering everything and everyone.

“What the fuck? Thought you were here to see my chess lesson.” Neil was back, carrying a rook instead of whisky.

“I’m actually here to see Paula,” said Charlie. “She said I should stop by.”

“She’s in the back with her Chi-knee friend. If you want to learn some chess, I’m in the bar room with Slutsky, bald Russian. Uses his forehead like I used my bottle of White Horse.”

Paula was standing near the jukebox, smoking a cigarette. Her friend, a squat girl of vaguely Pacific origins, Hawaii, maybe Tahiti, was gyrating around Paula’s long legs.

“Hey you,” said Paula. “Most people get dropped off here and turn right around.”

“It was a little dicey outside, but Neil and I took care of it.”

To see white bra straps beneath her black tank top. To see black-and-white straps carried by her shoulders, her curls even curlier from sweat. She wore her pants low, and in the jukebox light Charlie could make out the hairless pores of her abdomen.

“Good man,” she said, sounding less like herself and more like Tommy. At least she didn’t call me gent.

“This is Jazz,” she said. “My roommate, Jasmine.”

“Night-blooming jasmine is one of my favorite smells,” said Charlie.

“Good for you,” said Jazz.

“Be nice, Jazz,” said Paula.

“Penn guys can be such assholes,” said Jasmine.

“Charlie’s different. He’s a gentleman.”

“I’m going to do a dance,” said Jazz. “Don’t watch me, Penn boy.” She slunk away in her combat boots, laced almost to the knee. They were half her person.

“What is it with this city? Everyone’s pissed off.”

“She’s just making a statement,” said Paula. “Let’s sit. I’m buzzed.” She seemed so happy, but Charlie could tell that her happiness was not due to him, nor really the buzz. To be with a girl whose smile belongs to another guy is awful, he thought. She chose a sofa, ripped, like all the seating at the Pen & Pencil, and sank in, the smile growing as the couch became her bed. “Night-blooming jasmine, huh?”

“It’s a great smell,” Charlie said, trying to move closer to her hair in order to smell her last shower.

“It’s a wonderful flower,” said Paula. “I know all about it. I study plants and animals that function at night.”

“Owls?”

“Especially owls. Fireflies. The night is a better world. I’d hate to see this club in the daylight, it would ruin everything. When he was first starting out, Tommy used to mop down the place in the morning. He said it was pretty disgusting in the light.”

“Tommy,” said Charlie.

“I know he comes across a little rough. It’s the whole Irish thing. But there’s a poet inside of him. How about you? You have a girlfriend? Someone you can smell the jasmine with?”

“I dated someone this summer, but things are strange now.”

“I can relate.”

“Are things strange between you and Tommy?”

“Of course, but then I’ll—forget it. It’s stupid.”

“No, tell me.”

“I don’t think you’ll want to know.”

“I do want to know. I want to know everything about you.”

“I can be so mad at him, but then I’ll smell his neck.”

“His neck?”

“It has this sweet man smell. He uses Old Spice, just a drop, and probably forgets half the time. I could float away with that smell. I told you, you didn’t want to know.”

She was right. Sorry, Tommy, he thought. But enough’s enough. Her pink lips on your odorous neck? No mas, Tomas.

“I saw Tommy again tonight,” said Charlie.

“You did?”

“At World of Wines.”

“No, you probably saw him at the Irish bars in the old neighborhood, with his cousin. Look, I know he’ll tell me one thing, then end up at the Irish bars. He just works so hard that he needs to let off some steam, and he doesn’t want me to worry. Like I tell everyone, there’s another side to him. Did you know that some Sunday mornings he drops off boxes of pastries at the church? They’re a little stale, but still.”

She put a cushion over her head.

“Are you okay?” asked Charlie. “Can you breathe in there?”

“Are you sure it wasn’t an Irish bar?” Paula spoke through the cushion.

“It wasn’t an Irish bar,” said Charlie. “It’s more of a European place, just a couple of blocks from the Oyster House—”

“I know where it is,” she said, sitting up. “Tommy doesn’t go there anymore.”

She scoured the room for proof that he was anywhere but with that Spanish woman. “What was he doing there?” she asked Charlie. Iñez had an aunt who sometimes worked there. A nice older woman. There was a chance Tommy saw the aunt in the window and stopped in for a friendly chat, even though he swore on his life, and the afterlife of his deceased mother, that he would never go in there again.

“He was hanging out,” said Charlie.

Paula tossed the cushion to the floor. Her face had turned white, aside from the red stars on her cheeks that looked as if they had burst and were bleeding. Her lips were parted, paralyzed in a state of pre-trembling.

“Was he drinking?” she asked. “You’re an idiot, Paula. Of course he was.”

“He was having a little wine,” said Charlie.

“That means bottles. Was she there?”

“I know that he likes you so much, and you like him, so maybe—”

“Was she there?”

“You mean was Iñez there?”

“I don’t want to hear her name, please.”

“She was there.”

“Were they—to your eyes, did it seem that they were a couple? Were they doing couple things?”

“It was a little hard to tell. Maybe I have everything mixed up.” Hurting this girl felt wrong. My life is allergic to hurting her, thought Charlie.

“Yeah, maybe you mixed it up,” said Paula. “But that’s okay. Look, just—um—tell me . . . tell me all about your girlfriend.” She righted herself on the couch. A fresh start. Boys have girlfriends, and girls have boyfriends. Loyalty rules the Earth, and no one needs to suffer.

“She’s going to NYU next week, and she and I are probably broken up, or in some limbo she’s created so she can be effectively young. I might have cared this morning, but tonight?” He twisted his mouth into a question mark signifying comedic indifference.

“I understand her. I haven’t felt young—I haven’t felt young since I was thirteen. Sorry, but that’s what boys do. They fast-forward your life.” She gestured to Charlie’s Walkman.

“Sorry, I should stop fiddling with this thing.”

“A Walkman, a beach chair, a book; for a girl who likes things simple, my life always seems fucked up.”

“With Monica Miller, nothing came easy. I think I overthought everything.”

“Well, join the club. As far as I’m concerned, 90 percent of a love affair is in the head, right in here.” She grabbed a fistful of Charlie’s hair. “God only knows if the other 10 percent is anything at all.” Paula released her grip: “Fuck it,” she said. “I want to know all the facts.”

“About what?” He knew what she meant.

“Tommy. What you saw.”

“I was pretty buzzed.”

“I can take it. Talk.”

Charlie watched her friend Jasmine on the dance floor, turning round and round like a broken robot.

“Well, she was sitting on Tommy’s lap—”

“And?”

“He broke a wine bottle.”

“That’s normal for him. And?”

“They were together in the restaurant loft.”

“The loft. The loft that he told me disgusted him. The loft that he told me he’d never fuck in again.”

I have to lie, thought Charlie. Right now, say that Tommy was going on and on about how much he loved his Paula. That Tommy was there on a mission of celebratory love.

“Not really sure about what’s in the loft,” said Charlie.

“A futon,” said Paula. “A dirty futon with one sheet that she never washes.”

The bad man who fucks a madwoman on a dirty bed should not be with this earnest girl and her downy cheeks.

“Did it seem like they had sex?”

“I don’t know.”

“There’s a gun to your head: yes or no.”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay then, Charlie. Let’s say there’s a gun to my head. They’re going to kill me, and you’ll never see me again if you lie. Yes, or no?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“Can you please buy me a shot of Jack Daniel’s?” She held out a five-dollar bill.

“It’s on me,” said Charlie. When he returned with the shot, she’d already been bought another shot. When Paula becomes single, the line forms quickly, Charlie thought, wondering if he’d lost his place in that line. But then she downed both shots and took Charlie by the hand into the darkest corner of the club.

“I thought he was getting better,” said Paula. “I’m such a fucking idiot.” She leaned against his shoulder. “Your neck doesn’t smell like Tommy’s. No one’s does.” She was crying. Oh, to be a tear running down that face.

“I’ll buy Old Spice,” he said.

“I haven’t not had a boyfriend since I was thirteen. And don’t think I’m going to all of a sudden be your girlfriend. I’m not this thing to be passed around.”

“I would never think that.”

“Boys always say the right things in the beginning. Always.”

“I’m not like the other boys.”

“What makes you so special?”

“I’m different. You can ask anyone.”

“Who am I going to ask?”

“I feel things intensely. You and your life, this hangnail that I soaked in wine, the red light down the stairs at the Oyster—”

“You don’t know my life. You’re just a kid. You’re eighteen.

“So are you.”

“I’m nineteen. An old nineteen and getting older by the minute. Thanks for the drink.” She pushed herself away from Charlie and vanished into the gloom of the P&P. Charlie knew not to follow her; John would agree. Although he would not have approved of the Tommy revelation. “Don’t make girls cry,” was one of his top rules. “If you can make them cry, you’ve gotten too close. You’ve gone too deep.”