I thought it was about the ugliest, most forlorn-looking house I had ever seen. Chunks of brown paint were flaking off the wood shingles. A crumbling porch had been partially screened in on the left side of it, but the screen was full of holes big enough to stick your head through. The poor thing looked as if it had been abandoned, left to rot. So much for Mr. Fix It. And none of this would have been so bad if the one tree shading the house, a spindly oak about twenty feet high, hadn’t been drooping as if it wished it were dead. An old-fashioned wheelbarrow sat by itself in the dirt yard; behind it I could see rusted engine parts splayed out on the ground, an incidental arrangement of inner tubes, coils of rope, a snarl of rubber hose, and, to the left at one edge of the property, an empty doghouse with half its roof caved in. Long, bold weeds shot up through all this debris in unlikely places. And I could see the rear end of the old Mustang, its tailpipe dragging, sticking out of a small shed next to the house. A hedge about five feet high ran along the left side of the property, and a tall, unpainted wood fence bordered on the right, which created the impression Evelyn’s neighbors had done their best to block this scene out.
The single charming detail was the healthy-looking Saint Bernard that had begun to bark at me from just inside the front door, which swung open presently to reveal a man in a red T-shirt and blue-jean overalls. The man bounded toward me, down the sandy path leading from the house. His black hair, underneath a dirty white sailor cap, was greasy and combed close to his scalp. As he got closer, his soft blue eyes shone with pleasure and he smiled, revealing an open space and the clean outline of pink gum where at least four of his upper front teeth should have been. But the smile was so confident and sweet, like a baby’s grin, that I found myself thinking about the superfluity of front teeth. He extended his hand and shook mine warmly.
“Dan’s the name.”
“Hi, I’m Janet.”
“Yes, I know that much.”
The Saint Bernard was jumping up on me by this time, trailing a fibrous length of drool that threatened to glob off and drop itself perhaps on my face, now that its own was next to mine. Dan pulled the dog by the scruff of its thick neck so that it danced a minute backward on its hind legs. Then it fell to all fours and lunged again, tongue out ready to lick, the gooey saliva dangling dangerously above my outstretched hand. I was hoping the animal would settle for a pat, but it ignored the gesture, throwing its front legs around my neck like an old friend who’d been dying to see me.
“All right, Bear, that’s enough,” Dan said, too calmly, I thought, as I stood there trying to keep my balance. I watched the spit swing over my sandaled foot.
“C’mon now, you silly brute,” Dan said, this time giving it a man-sized push.
The animal galloped to the left; in three swift strides it reached its destination, a hole in the high hedge. I followed, curious to see what was on the other side. Above the hedge, another house stood, the mirror image of Evelyn’s, only this one was trim and tidy, its wide clapboards painted a crisp white. Little beds of pink and blue hydrangeas posed at the corners of the emerald-green lawn. The smugness of it inspired one of my acute attacks of longing for the orderly assumptions of middle-class life. For a few seconds, I suffered a driving impulse to go visiting over there instead. Meanwhile, the dog had planted its feet squarely before a mysteriously empty-looking break in the neatly clipped hedge. It was barking viciously at something.
“She seen a squirrel, or maybe it was a groundhog. But it was them squirrels ate up my strawberries out back. She could kill one or two. I wouldn’t mind,” Dan said, joining the dog and me.
“You grow things behind the house?” I asked.
“We got near half an acre stretching all the way to the edge of the cliff above the water. I started a patch of berries and put in an orchard of apple trees, oh, this was ten years ago, before I was living here myself. Evelyn had her heart set on an apple orchard back there for some reason. The apples don’t seem ever to ripen proper. They fall out the tree green. Doesn’t matter really. It’s a pretty kind of tree.”
Dan spoke in an unexpected, loping cadence—unexpected because City Island lies right off the Bronx, after all. But this thin strip of land has always been a forgotten stepchild of the city, nothing more than a sandbar boasting a row of cheap fish restaurants that feature local lobsters, along with a large marina just beyond us at the far end of the island.
“You from around here?” I asked.
“Never left. I mean, I been to the city, but I never traveled yet. Maybe one of these days,” he said, sounding as if he meant it. “Let’s go in the house and I’ll fix you a drink.”
The inside was a Mary Poppins surprise: gleaming blond wood; a ceiling with exposed beams; yards of sofa covered in a cerulean blue, which looked pretty clean, not counting the animal hairs (a fat little calico cat was there to start rubbing up against me as soon as I crossed the threshold); state-of-the-art hi-fi center; accommodating-looking brown leather swivel chairs with ottomans to match; and a long glass coffee table with nothing but a couple of brimming-over ashtrays on it. The living room and the stairway were carpeted in wall-to-wall shag. The entire house smelled like roasting meat.
Dan caught the look of shock on my face as he rejoined me with my requisite scotch and soda. (Sometimes I could be persuaded to have a beer in the morning, but any time after midday was scotch time.)
“Everybody does the same when they first get a look at the place. Taxes, you see, the IRS. Can’t flaunt nothin’. She keeps most of what she makes in a box at the bank. Not even too much jewelry or anything else fancy. Doesn’t believe in attracting attention. Smart one, she is,” Dan said.
Just then, a set of legs could be seen at the top of the staircase followed by the rest, one lithe teenage girl with long hair like her mother’s, coming down the steps. She stopped midway, greeted me with a dull hello, turned and disappeared upstairs again.
“That’s Ava. She likes to stay in her room most of the time.”
Dan had poured himself a large drink of something. Couldn’t tell what it was because the glass was tinted. We were about to go and sit on the couch when we heard the kitchen door slam. Evelyn, dressed in jeans and a halter top, came bursting into the living room, her arms outstretched like a school crossing guard blocking traffic.
“Hold it, hold it. Don’t sit down. There’s an emergency.”
“What’s the matter, anyone hurt?” Dan asked, looking genuinely anguished.
“Nope, but somebody’s gonna be if we don’t find that damned snake.”
“Where’s the snake?” Dan asked.
“That’s what I’m saying. The snake booked, vamoosed, took a powder. I just went out to the shed to get a few bottles of wine—he’s gone! No telling how long it’s been. We got to find it before Eddie hears about it, or we’re all dog meat, capiche?”
“But that’s impossible. He’s in a cage,” Dan said.
“Yeah, well, somebody left the cage door open. The snake’s gone, I’m telling you.”
“Eddie’s most prize possession, a boa. Keeps it in the shed,” Dan said to me.
“I’m organizing a posse right now,” Evelyn said. She went to the foot of the stairs and yelled, “Ava! Come out of there now!”
The girl appeared immediately.
“Go over to the hedge. Look up and down it until you see Eddie’s snake. You didn’t open that cage door, did you?”
“No, Mother,” she said, stressing the word ‘mother’ in a fairly cheeky way.
“Doesn’t matter. You’re part of the expedition. Go on to the hedge.” She turned and faced Dan and me. “Dan, you look up and down the fence—on both sides, I don’t care what the McCormacks or the Kravitzes have to say about it. Capiche?” she said, addressing herself to everyone. “OK, go. Look carefully. Dan, wear your glasses. C’mon now”—she waved Ava down the stairs and out the door—“I’m taking the road. Oh, Janet, you go out back. Check the orchard.
“We’ll catch him. How far could a snake travel in a day?”
No one knew the answer to that.
I didn’t particularly want to be the one to find it, but I went through the kitchen and out the back door, where I intended to sit under a tree until I thought an appropriate amount of time had passed. If the snake were on the ground somewhere, I would just as soon miss it.
The orchard was a maze of apple trees, a few green apples already fallen and rotting in the tall weeds. I was wandering in it, lost in some romantic dream about Michael, when I heard a voice.
“What’s up?” it said.
I looked around, didn’t see anyone.
“Hi, what’s doin’?”
I followed the voice into a tree. There, naked to the waist, with his blue-jeaned legs stretched out on a branch, sat a faun. He had a nimbus of long, soft ringlets framing his boy-face. His shoulders were broad and knobby. His skin was so pale it was translucent, touched with the faintest patina of green, but it didn’t look unhealthy. It looked more like the wings of a gypsy moth, or the tint of something that had turned recently from a leaf-thing into an animal shape. He might have just conjured himself up minutes before I got there. His gray eyes were murky, like smoke. He was smiling in a beatific way. Instead of pipes, he held a cigarette to his mouth and pulled on it.
I jumped a little. He laughed.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I live here. My name’s Eddie, Eddie Carnivale, but they call me Eddie Apollo. I’m tripping on a thousand mics right now.”
“You seem very calm,” I said.
“Acid always calms me down,” he said.
“Didn’t mean to disturb you. I was looking for a snake,” I said.
“Look no further,” Eddie said, smiling.
There were other hunting parties arranged by Eddie in the following weeks, and Evelyn told me later that everybody walked outside more or less with their heads down for a long time after that, but they never did find the poor snake.
Finally, conceding temporary defeat, we assembled in the dining room. Evelyn disappeared into the kitchen. I had offered to help, but she wouldn’t hear of it, preferring to steer Ava ahead of her through the swinging doors. That left me to entertain the two men, Danny and Eddie. Danny was tucking into another highball. Eddie was still tripping his brains out and for the moment seemed the least concerned of anyone that his pet was missing.
“He’s a brave boy, gone out to see the world,” Eddie said, sounding philosophical and maybe a little proud that his boa got away. If it were my snake, I would’ve been worried about it, but then I didn’t have the perspective a thousand mics of acid was likely to provide.
Eddie poured himself a tall glass of what looked like rum. I was on my second scotch and soda by this time. I was almost hungry because I’d had no methedrine since early in the day, before I left on my long trip on the Seventh Avenue 1 train to the last stop, followed by an interminable bus ride to the end of City Island. I was getting sleepy, too. So I excused myself and went upstairs to the bathroom, where I promptly did a line, a fat line. I came down buzzing and no longer in the mood for dinner.
Eventually Evelyn and Ava emerged through the kitchen door carrying a big platter of pot roast adorned with carrots and potatoes and another platter piled high with surplus vegetables. They went back and came out again with a gravy boat, a bowl of penne, and a large tomato-and-iceberg-lettuce salad already dressed and tossed, this time accompanied by the Saint Bernard, almost within slurping distance. Danny took the dog by the collar and pulled it outside. He came back in and poured the decanted wine to the rim of each person’s big goblet. I was grateful for that. Then he raised his goblet as if to toast but thought better of it and just drank. Evelyn, still standing, piled our plates with food and passed them along. The entire elaborate meal seemed out of place. Everybody but Danny sat staring at their plates for what struck me as an ungracious amount of time.
“C’mon, kids, eat up. I worked my ass off and this is good food. You gotta eat! Janet, I know that’s not your bag, but you probably need the calories. Eddie, you, too. You’re going to disappear if you don’t eat. And, Ava, I’m sick and tired of your anorexia or whatever the hell it is. Eat, eat. Capiche?”
We tried to oblige, pushing the meat in its heavy gravy around and around on the plate. I was shoving food into my mouth one carrot at a time, which I would then chew and chew in the hope I could break it down enough to swallow it.
“You kids are crazy. You don’t know what you’re missing. Great dinner, Evelyn! We got to do this more often,” Danny said, taking a big long drink of wine.
“Seems sacrilegious to be eating when my boa is out there somewhere starving to death,” Eddie piped up. He was using the snake as an excuse not to eat. Can’t hustle a hustler.
“Yes, I know, Eddie, but you won’t bring him back by starving yourself,” Evelyn said. She probably knew he was playing her but liked being his foil all the same.
“What about you, Ava, are you mourning the snake, too?” Evelyn asked.
Ava barely looked up. “No, of course not. I’m glad it’s gone. I’m just not hungry, that’s all.”
“You’re never hungry. What, you think that’s sexy, the skeleton look?”
“Honestly, Mother, you are such a drag. Did anyone ever tell you that?”
“Hey, Ava, cool it, man.” This from Eddie.
“I don’t understand you two girls—why can’t you get along?” Danny said, helping himself to another round of food.
“May I be excused?” Ava asked, her tone as hostile as she could make it.
“No, that’s rude to Janet, our guest. Besides, I want to see you eat something.”
“OK, Evelyn, Mom, let the little bitch go. We don’t need her around anyway, bringing me down for sure,” Eddie said.
“Maybe Eddie’s right. You’re bringing us all down,” Evelyn said.
Ava left the table immediately and went upstairs, where she disappeared inside her room and slammed the door.
I had moved on to my second carrot, which I was chewing endlessly like it was a tiny bone. The gravy was starting to congeal on top of my largely untouched meat and pasta. Lucky for me the family was dysfunctional. I was blending in.
Finally, Evelyn, with Danny as helpmate, took all the platters and our food-laden plates back into the kitchen.
Evelyn came out and said cheerfully, “Judging from your plates, I see that no one wants dessert.”
“What’s for dessert?” Eddie wanted to know.
“Ice cream and cookies,” Evelyn said.
“I’ll have some of that,” he said.
“Oh, that’s nice, you can’t eat all that food I prepared, but you’re suddenly hungry for dessert,” Evelyn said, but she went back into the kitchen, where Danny was loading the dishwasher, and came out again with bowls, ice cream, and a box of Entenmann’s chocolate chip cookies. I could tell that nobody expected me to have any. I was off the hook.
“You don’t want to go home in an old crate like that,” Eddie said.
We were standing behind Evelyn’s old Mustang. The moon hung over us, low and full.
“Why not?”
“Nah, this ain’t the right kind of short for a girl like you. I can do better. C’mon.”
He fished a metal wire about a foot long out of a pile of junk at the back of the shed. Then I followed him onto the road, where we turned right, passed the fancy neighbors, and came to a parking lot. A lit-up sign said MEMBERS PARKING ONLY. It belonged to the yacht club. Eddie darted ahead of me and trotted up and down the mostly empty rows. Now and then he circled the occasional car and peered in its window. He stopped, put his hands on his hips. His curly locks, his skin, the white T-shirt and blue jeans, turned a monochromatic gray in the moonlight. I came up and stood beside him. He pointed to the far corner.
“That one.”
As little as I knew about cars, it was unmistakably a Corvette, a cream-colored Corvette. Eddie went to the edge of the lot and motioned for me to get behind him. I stood in the weeds just beyond the asphalt. The crickets around my feet stopped singing. I could hear the tiny scratch of wire in the lock. Once the door opened, Eddie stuck his head in and leaned over the front seat. He connected something up underneath the dashboard. Then the engine began to hum. He went around and opened the other door for me.
“You should always ride in style,” he said.
We were both drunk, and Eddie must have still been tripping, too, but the road was empty. He gunned the gas pedal right away and did not slow down to a fast cruise until we reached the main part of the little town. We swerved all over the Throgs Neck Bridge. On the highway, the cool air assaulted me steadily from the wide-open window. I felt giddy. I couldn’t keep from grinning.
“Smokin’, ain’t it?” was all Eddie said.
I turned to look at him. The wind was blowing his hair back away from his determined face, and for the first time, I could really see it. He was much less ethereal than I had supposed. In fact, his face was bottom-heavy, dominated by a strong chin. His lips were sultry, his nose straight and a bit wide. Thick lashes framed his gray-blue eyes, which were splintered with tiny specks of white like a hundred blind spots. The bone above his eyebrows was strangely prominent, and his forehead was smooth and low, with a clearly marked widow’s peak. While I stared at Eddie’s profile, he ignored me, keeping his eyes on the road, both of his white-knuckled hands gripping the wheel. He knew he was stoned and drunk.
The air turned acrid and warm and stung our eyes and our noses even before we entered the midtown tunnel.
“Where to?”
“Seventy-Sixth and Second. And thanks.”
When we got to the Traveling Medicine Show, Eddie pulled up with a squeal of the tires, then burned rubber again after I slammed the door. I watched him tearing off down Second Avenue, just making the graduated green lights. I remember thinking he was hip for a kid.