Twenty-Eight

Traditions die hard in Boston. Quincy Market was built as a place for pushcart vendors to hawk their wares and, by God, Bostonians were going to maintain that tradition for as long as there were vendors and wares. As a result, pushcarts adorn the outer edge of Quincy Market, protected by a glass lean-to that keeps shoppers warm and dry in the winter and cool and dry in the summer.

I was never one for shopping at the pushcarts. Not that anything was wrong with them, but they specialized in the kinds of trinkets and doodads that tourists buy. I didn’t need a sign that read No Pahking.

Lucy, on the other hand, reveled in the pushcarts. She pulled me from cart to cart, showing me Christmas ornaments, little men made out of corncobs, jewelry fashioned out of beads, and finally a scarf with a long zipper.

The guy at the cart demonstrated. “It starts out as a tube.” He tugged on a zipper that wound around the tube, unrolling it like an apple peel. “Then it unzips to become a scarf.”

Lucy said, “You should like this, Tucker. You’re an engineer.”

At the word engineer, my critical side slipped out. “It’s a zipper.”

“It’s a very clever zipper.”

I wasn’t going to let my evening get derailed over this guy and his zipper, so I stifled the comment that it was still just a zipper and went with, “It’s like a knitted Transformer.”

The guy selling the thing gave me a look. A Transformer? But Lucy was happy to run with the idea.

“Exactly! It’s a Transformer. It transforms from a hood to a scarf.” She wrapped it around her neck and let the tail of it trail over her breast. The scarf was a deep sky blue.

I said, “It matches your eyes.”

“Really?”

“Yes, I think it’s very pretty. May I buy it for you?”

Lucy blushed and said, “Why, thank you.”

I paid for the zipscarf, and Lucy and I walked back down among the carts. We were passing a cart full of sports pictures when the beer and coffee caught up with me.

I said, “Excuse me, m’lady. I need to pee.”

Lucy pointed at the restroom sign in the middle of the building and said, “Pee away, m’lord. I’ll be right here tchotchke shopping.

I said, “You go, girl,” and headed to the bathroom sign.

The bathrooms in Quincy Market are in the catacombs under the building. A hallway stretches from one side to the other. So you can leave one set of pushcarts, walk through the restroom hallway, and come up among more pushcarts. The hallway has white tile, and signs hang above the men’s room and the women’s room.

The men’s room starts as a twisty passage that ensures privacy without the need for a door. There is more white tile, and a gizmo that will weigh you for a quarter—perhaps for guys who want to do a before-and-after analysis. Once through the twisty passage, the bathroom opens into a long low rectangle with stalls and sinks to one side and urinals tucked away into a dead end on the other.

The bathroom was empty. Man Law dictated that I walk down into the dead end and take the urinal farthest from the door. This allows other men to use the urinals without having to stand next to you. You only stood next to another guy when there was no other option, and then you kept conversation to a minimum.

I approached the last urinal, unzipped, and started my business. Another guy came into the men’s room. I glanced at him peripherally but kept my eyes on the work in front of me. A cigarette in the urinal beckoned for destruction.

The other guy walked into the urinal cave and said, “Hey, Tucker!”

I looked up and got a glimpse of a narrow bald head. Then my world exploded. A loud cracking sound reverberated through my skull. My head whipped back around from the blow and smacked into the wall tiles.

The guy kicked my knee out from behind, the kneecap hitting the urinal as I folded backward onto the floor. He grabbed me by the shirt front, and I smelt the stink of cigarettes on him. I raised my arms to shield my face, but he hit me again on the side of the head with something hard. His boot caught me in the solar plexus. My eyes crossed. My stomach twisted. Nausea and dizziness overwhelmed me.

The guy grabbed my shirt and pulled my face close. He had yellow teeth, his breath stinking of beer. A black tattoo teardrop bled from the corner of one eye. Teardrop said, “Mind your own fucking business!” Then he dropped my head on the floor, disappearing as I puked across the tiles.