Ten

Caught in memories of the past, I was surprised to find myself middle aged and staring out my bedroom window at four in the morning. Four A.M. is the devil’s matinee. It’s when human confidence is weakest, life is at its lowest ebb. Beside me, Matt lay defenseless, arms and legs akimbo, like a boxer who had been knocked flat. What I’d do with him when he came to was tomorrow’s problem. Meanwhile he was company of a sort and I was glad to have him.

Over in the park, leaves shimmered, streetlights outshone the moon, gleamed off the back of one-legged Peter Stuyvesant’s statue. On a bench a kid sat absolutely motionless. His expression, innocent and scared, evoked angels and runaways.

My heart jumped alarmingly as I recognized the boy from my Streetcar Dreams. A second glance revealed nothing but a trick of light and dark. I made a circle with my thumb and forefinger and thought about Matt and the kid on the streetcar and how the start and end of a life join together. In lots of ways, my own life started with Leo Dunn. I thought about Mr. Dunn then and about Celia, his granddaughter. I met her for the first time on the same day that Scotty and I played our last Islands Game.

That evening I had wondered what to tell Sarah. But when she came in the door there was no need to say anything. Scotty ran to her and she held him tight as they swayed together. All the while, she looked around like she felt something had changed. Maybe Sarah picked up the fact there was only the two of them now.

And me, of course. At that moment I was an intruder and my sobriety felt like a weight. So I went to the phone and called Mr. Dunn. “Come and pay a visit, my friend,” he said.

He was at the door of his apartment when I arrived. A young lady who was leaving turned back and hugged him. She was still a kid, maybe sixteen, tall and fair, already a beauty. And there was something more. I found myself thinking about Stacey Hale for the first time in years and not knowing why.

“My granddaughter Celia,” Mr. Dunn said. He looked at her with fond disbelief. She had his smile. Greeting her, I was momentarily light-headed. For an instant, as she said hello and slipped past me into the hall, it seemed that I was seeing not a young woman but her reflection in a dove gray mirror.

As Leo Dunn led me inside, I turned and found Celia was gone. I could have told myself the elevator had come. Instead I realized what had reminded me of Stacey. That first time we met in the doctor’s office when I was sixteen, she must have caught the hint of an aura, a trace of my Shadow. Celia’s magic was different, but that’s what I had sensed as she stood in her grandfather’s doorway.

But my mind just then was on Scott Callendar Sr. and Jr. I told Mr. Dunn as much as I thought I could about what had happened. “All I hope is that I wasn’t too brutal, that I did more good than harm. I was trying to break the hold that a particular past had on all of us,” I said.

Mr. Dunn looked out the window at the lights of Manhattan. “You’ve met Bob and Maggie.” Leo Dunn’s kids were nice people, a little younger than I was. I nodded.

“You’ve never met Diana, my oldest,” he said. “She’s managed to make a fairly stable life for herself. Hard to do when you have an alcoholic for a father. Worst thing for a child. Her mother and I separated when she was six. After I finally got sober, Diana and her mother were beyond wanting to have anything to do with me. I can probably count the times I’ve seen or spoken with her since. Once was at the death of her mother. Another was when she was expecting Celia. That was the last time I saw my oldest daughter.”

He looked away and lighted a cigarette. “It’s the great sorrow of my life.” He turned back with an enchanted smile. “Then, one evening last January, I was here alone when I got a visit from an almost grown grandchild whom I hadn’t seen since she was a baby. She’s been by a few times since. Curiosity, maybe.

“Our past is always with us. Be aware of that without letting it engulf you, Kevin. That’s all we’re trying for. Celia redeems, at least a little, a lot of shame and regret that I have. My bet is that with Scotty you’ve managed that.”

Suddenly, he clapped his hands together. “Sunday evening, you’ve doubtless noticed, is one of the great times for drunks and their self-pity. Especially Irish ones. My wife and Maggie are out visiting her family. I didn’t feel up for in-laws. Are you hungry? Let’s see what they left for us.”

While I ate cold chicken, he said. “I’m glad that you, of all the people I know, were able to be here and meet my granddaughter. Because you understand.” He paused, then looked at me hard. “Kevin, mention nothing about this to anyone. Especially to my family.” And I thought it was strange, but I agreed.

When I got back to the loft, Sarah told me that Scotty had a slightly high temperature. He was in bed with what seemed like a flu for the next couple of days. Sarah or I was with him most of the time. He told her about Garland Knot and the flaming cycle and she chose to think of that as fever dreams. I told her more or less what I had told Scott about his father’s last night on earth. She shook her head and replied, “Well, that’s been said. It would have to be sooner or later.” Then she told me, “Whatever you did, Kevin, it seems different here. I can walk in and not feel I’m under surveillance.”

Wednesday morning, I sat on the foot ot Scott’s bed, my back leaning against the wall, and read The Times. He sat up at the head, drawing. This would be his last day home from school.

“Kevin?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you going to move because of what I said?”

For this, I put down the paper and looked at him. His pajamas were a Mets sweatshirt and thermal long johns. “Not at all. I’m not leaving immediately. It’s time. I need privacy and so do you and your mother.”

“She doesn’t believe what I told her.”

“Not entirely. Most people won’t. But she’s really good. To you. And to me.”

“But she’s a mundane.”

“Wow! Where the hell did you learn that?” He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, and smiled. “Listen, Scott. I’ll be around. If anything happens, if you see that book or he comes back, you tell me right away. And I’ll be there. Okay?”

“Okay,” he said, like that was something settled. I started to pick up the paper. He went on to the next matter. “Mom said she won’t get me the board.”

“She didn’t tell me not to, though.” Because of things that happened when I was young, I tend not to grab at kids no matter how much I love them. But if they yell and jump on top of me, like Scott did at that moment, it feels like maybe I did something right.

At Christmas, Scott got his board. He gave me a set of antique marching fusiliers. I hadn’t owned any toys since I was fourteen. Sarah showered me with gifts. One was the deposit on a good, cheap apartment over on East Ninth Street (this was back when such a thing existed). Another was an introduction to a lady named Madge Hollings. Madge ran a decorating and antique business. She needed someone to help out in her store, Old Acquaintance, and she hired me.

One Sunday afternoon, I packed my belongings, which now filled several boxes instead of one bag. Sarah waited with me on Houston for a cab. Scott was out with friends. I heard a rumbling, turned, and saw him in a red ski jacket careening up the SoHo sidewalk toward us. He slapped me five and continued on his way. Sarah and I kissed and laughed in the face of time.

My new apartment was a block away from the building on St. Mark’s Place where I’d first lived in the city almost ten years before. Most midmornings, I walked from my gritty tenement block in the East Village to a winding tree-lined West Village street and opened the store at eleven A.M. sharp.

In my old neighborhood, I began seeing familiar faces. Boris, for instance, walked west with me a lot, returning to Gina’s apartment after a night in the after-hours clubs on Avenue A. We never talked about his business.

Back then, there was a huge bum with a dirty red beard and red-rimmed eyes who stood all day and every day in front of the truck rental lot on West Fourth Street.

At all those who passed from East Village to West or went the other way, he stuck out a filthy paw and yelled in a hoarse voice, “HEY SUCKER, HOW ABOUT A QUARTER!”

Because of what Mr. Dunn had told me, he got a quarter every time. But I didn’t pay him much attention.

One morning, Boris walked with me, stoned and acutely aware of wonders. Seeing the bum up ahead, he told me, “Kevin, they got a giant guarding the bridge! Maybe he’ll let us by if we can guess his name.”

As I reached the curb, the bum stepped in my path, stuck his hand in my face, and bellowed, “HOW ABOUT IT, SUCKER!”

My pal looked at him goggle-eyed and said, “I’m Boris. What do they call you?”

The man replied in an ordinary tone, “Spain.”

“No shit. You don’t look Spanish.”

“I ain’t. I’m Irish like your buddy.” He gestured my way.

“So, how come they call you Spain?”

Spain paused, looked puzzled for a moment as if there must have been a good reason but he couldn’t quite remember it. Then his eyes focused on me again. “HEY SUCKER, GIVE ME A QUARTER!”

That I did, gladly. Unlike Boris, I didn’t need drugs to see magic. The bridge Spain guarded led to what was starting to feel like a magic land: sobriety. A quarter was an easy toll. “You didn’t ask Boris here for money,” I said.

“’Cause he’s one of us. BUT YOU’RE A SUCKER AND YOU GOTTA GIVE!”

Boris laughed as we walked on. He wore post-hippy high fashion, fine leathers soft as butter and sunglasses that probably cost more than my whole wardrobe. His long, black mustache was a work of art. “Hey, at least I can still remember how I got my nickname.”

And I laughed, remembering the Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster impersonation that he could start and stop almost at will. The nickname became in effect an alias when we moved to New York. Except for a couple of his girlfriends and the cops, I was probably the only one in the city who knew his real name. Eventually he would ask me never to tell it. And I won’t, though we haven’t met in years.

That morning, his day ending as mine began, Boris was like a time capsule. “Remember that junk connection, Mama? It used to be you’d never take anyone along when you went to visit her. Someone told me she’s still in business.”

“I’d forgotten about her.” And didn’t want to be reminded. Certain charms Mr. Dunn had taught seemed to make me invulnerable to the dark. But I’d been trapped deeper in addiction than Boris was now.

He slid past my reaction. “Remember Bonnie?” he asked. Boris saw everyone. “Bonnie Lewis, the chick who used to live with Jimmy Dace? I met her the other night. Man, she was real interested in seeing you again. There’s a bunch of us going to an opening at the Public Theater tonight. Bonnie will be there. Some other good people. Come along.”

“I have to see Mr. Dunn after work.” We stood in Sheridan Square where we would go our separate ways.

“After the show, there’s a party at Phoebe’s. Stop by.” I nodded and turned. A headless, snuffling shape that seemed to be made of dirty plastic and old paper came toward us. The smell of piss and garbage choked me. Then I saw an extended hand and recognized a bag lady. Realizing I had no change, I felt for a moment that a promise was at risk.

“Hey, you got to do your good deed,” said Boris, and gave me a bill which I pressed into the dirt-caked hand. “I’m helping him stay holy,” he explained to the woman.

My visit to Leo Dunn is the main reason I remember that day, just as he’s the reason I’m here to remember at all. Though I didn’t know it when I walked in, that evening a year after my last bender was sort of my graduation.

Mrs. Dunn opened the door, as unfailingly gracious as she must have been to every drunk, druggie, and deadbeat who crossed the threshold. She also did counseling work with alcoholics. Behind her, spring sunset turned the windows across the street gold. Light flowed into the living room, glanced off the glass coffee table, formed an aurora around Leo Dunn. He sat on his couch, smiling at me, the wizard of sobriety.

“Forgive my not greeting you at the door, Kevin,” he said. “I’m tired today.” Then he leaned forward and hooked me with those stark blue eyes and said, “We’ve done this a hundred times. But you remember the four virtues?”

As in catechism class, where I had once also excelled, the answer popped out, “Temperance, humility, patience, charity.”

He nodded. “Temperance allows us to acknowledge our excesses. Humility allows us to subdue our diseased egos. Patience allows us to forgive ourselves for all trespasses real and imagined.”

Dunn had dozens of routines. That evening, like a fusillade at the end of a fireworks display, he ran through all of them: booze the Silent Partner, the record room with its catalog of failings. My attention wandered. Dunn caught it by moving an ashtray on the coffee table, flashing his silver lighter. “Charity is the most important, Kevin. Not just writing a check, but real charity. Answering the call of others as your call and mine were answered.

“I’ve always understood pretty much what people wanted to hear. When I drank and had money, that insight made me very contemptuous of my fellow man. Always, I was able to see right through everyone else’s fraudulence. Not my own, sad to say. That I managed to keep a complete secret from myself. Then one day, I woke up flat on my ass in a flophouse.

“Even when I found my way off the street and started trying to help others, my impatience destroyed all charity. So I swore to my God that I would give help to whoever came to me, without prejudice or favor, taking from them only what I thought they could afford. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be available to whoever needed me and I wouldn’t be available in the way they needed me.

“My reward has been the joy of doing something I love so much. Sometimes it takes a strength that doesn’t really belong to me. Because of my promise, I feel as though I’m able to borrow strength from all the people like you who have let me help them.”

He paused and took a long drink of water. Around us, the life of the household went on. A phone rang and someone answered it. Water ran in the kitchen. A cat’s paw darted out from under the couch and darted back.

I told Leo Dunn about the Irish bum called Spain who couldn’t remember why. He smiled and said, “When you’re down there at the absolute bottom, you can feel it all slip away. Possessions. Life itself. Your identity is more a burden than a right. And at that moment when you need charity most, it is hardest for people to look at you as a human being. You give him money when he asks?”

“Yes. Because of what you’ve told me.”

“Good. It may be the only thing standing between him and death. Or maybe he just needs a drink. You just do not know. It is not a judgment that is ours to make.”

The sun had set behind him. Dunn was in darkness as he told me in a quiet conversational tone, “Alcohol is a vicious, mind-altering drug. It will tell you any lie you want to hear. But I will spoil all its lies for you. You can run from this truth, my friend, but once you have seen booze for what it is, you will never believe in it again.” I remembered hearing these same words that first afternoon when I had come to him off the cold winter streets.

“Kevin, you have a good heart,” Dunn continued. “I love you and have every faith in you. I have given what I have to give and I believe you will do very well. Just remember what I said about giving to those in need. It will be a source of enormous strength. Not just for you, but through you for me as well.”

It’s great to be praised, to feel yourself in a state of mystical grace. Especially if the means of achieving it seems as easy as this did. “I’ll always try to do that,” I said, really imagining I knew what had been pledged.

No thunder roll accompanied the oath. No blood had to be offered. A slight chill ran through me on that balmy night but I ignored it.

“Good. Now, I’m old and my children assure me I understand nothing. But I can tell that you’re dying to get out of here. Go. And don’t forget to keep in touch. Call me in a couple of days and tell me how you’re doing.”

After that, riding back downtown, I felt a thrill of expectation. That spring in what I thought of as the official start of my sobriety, everything about New York seemed fresh and newly minted. I hooked up with Boris for an opening night party at Phoebe’s Bar. “This show was one more incoherent attempt to create the new Hair,” Sandy, a funny gay guy with a sad face, explained to me. “It’s been a few years, but no one wants to admit that the sixties are over.”

Gina Raille was there with Boris. Tall and zaftig, she was up for a part in another show. As Boris had mentioned, Bonnie Lewis was also present. I recalled Bonnie as a round-eyed and long-haired blonde who got taken advantage of. She was now a fierce little silver fox who took no nonsense.

At one point, Sandy jumped up to dance and lip-sync with Smokey Robinson singing “Tears of a Clown” on the jukebox. Bonnie, his dearest friend in the world, told me, “Sandy just broke up with his boyfriend and he’s doing a lot of coke. Too bad, but he’s always got drugs on hand. He’s one of Boris’s connections.”

We all left the party and walked through the bar area together. On the stools sat boys in shiny suits and wrinkled narrow ties, girls in tacky, backless cocktail dresses and high heels. The timeworn East Village which had once given us refuge was about to do the same for the next generation. At the sight of the fifties finery from the bins of Unique Boutique, all the stuff he had fled the suburbs to avoid, Boris reacted like a bull moose whose territory had been violated. “Fucking punks,” he yelled. “Go back to Great Neck.”

One of the kids cleared his throat and said, “Hippy scum,” like he was trying out the phrase. Boris lunged. Sandy and I grabbed him, but he broke away. Then Gina put a very expert headlock on Boris and the four of us hauled him outside and got him home.

In an unnatural place like Manhattan, it’s possible to lose touch with the seasons. Sitting one afternoon in Vaselka’s Coffee Shop on Second Avenue, eating cold borscht and challah bread, I noticed kids buying candy on their last day of school and realized that summer had officially begun.

That season I saw other people. But Boris and Gina, Bonnie and Sandy were the regulars in my life, a self-contained unit, a box made of people. I was very young, not in years, but in the sense of being newly hatched. Waking up sober every morning was exciting.

Bonnie helped make my place livable with a telephone and my toy soldiers on a bookshelf along with Lou Reed and Mozart records. She lived with a couple of roommates, the remains of an aborted commune, over on Tompkins Square. We two hung out some nights with Spanish poet friends of hers in a café way to the east where sunflowers grew in the vacant lots amidst tinned-up buildings.

Sandy too invited me out. We went to an opening down in SoHo for a guy who did Donald Ducks on silk screens. Gina and Boris came in later. “Tell him about the show you’re going to be in,” Boris said to Gina.

“It’s a takeoff on thirties movie musicals,” she told me.

“Except it, you know, is a thirties musical,” said Sandy. He and Boris turned away to talk and Gina told me, “I’m worried about Boris. It’s not just coke anymore. He’s doing a lot of junk.”

Boris turned back toward us and said in his Karloff voice, “I’m really not such a bad monster.” On impulse, I borrowed a pencil and wrote down Dunn’s name and number. Boris stuck it in a back pocket.

About then, my boss Madge Hollings began spending very long weekends in the Hamptons and I understood that it was August. Since Old Acquaintance was open Saturdays and Sundays, that meant she left me more or less in charge. I liked pretending I was a shopkeeper and not a shop assistant.

Mondays and Tuesdays were my days off. One lazy afternoon, I sipped tea amidst sullen painters and toothless Ukrainians at Vaselka’s while Boris made calls in one of the huge old wooden telephone booths in back. Returning, he slumped into a seat and remarked, “Summer, a lot of white people go away. Mostly only the serious druggies are left behind. The protective coloration is removed. We stand out. Easy targets for the old narcos.”

That moment of quiet despair was my opportunity to insist he call Leo Dunn. But just then Bonnie walked in with a whole bunch of people and the chance passed.

That same week, Bonnie and Sandy each suggested we become roommates. Bonnie made the suggestion one morning in my apartment before I went to work. She was quite frank. “We get along. The situation where I am is impossible. Our not being totally compatible can be a plus. I know ways to make a space like this one work better.”

“This loft is larger than the Starship Enterprise and not nearly as boring,” said Sandy at his place as I got dressed a few mornings later. “I’d like having you here.”

“I’m still not steady on my feet,” I told one. “It’s not that I don’t think a whole lot of you and about you,” I told the other.

Sandy shrugged, said, “It’s lonely at the top,” and smiled.

“You are a selfish son of a bitch,” Bonnie remarked matter-of-factly.

The truth was that I felt invulnerable and liked the sensation. But maybe that’s what selfishness is. I could hang around bars or watch Boris and Sandy deal drugs without feeling it touch me because of the enchanted quarters that I gave to Spain each time I passed him.

Mr. Dunn and I talked on the phone. Every couple of weeks, I would drop by and see him. He wasn’t feeling well. His wife was worried. “Kevin, he simply will not eat,” she said, handing him a milk shake. “Get him to drink this.” He made a face and shook his head. “Leo, the doctor wants you to go in for tests,” she told him.

“Not now,” he said. “I have a client starting. A very difficult case. He doesn’t think he has a problem. I know the the family and they persuaded him to see me.”

On an overcast day with deadly humidity, a stormy Monday brewing, I awoke feeling tense. The phone rang and Mr. Dunn asked, “Could you come up here?” He sounded tired.

On the street a few minutes later, I barely saw the wolf-faced junkie until he said, “Kevin,” and I recognized Boris. In the couple of days since I’d seen him, he had cut off his mustache, cropped and dyed his hair. He looked shaky and had obviously just thrown up. He said, “I need a favor. The narcs have shut everything down.”

“Man, I know what you’re feeling.” In truth I only dimly remembered. “But what can I do?”

“Mama. I went by and she’s still cooking. But she won’t do anything for me. Only people she knows. Remember you never wanted anyone along when you copped from Mama? Take this hundred and keep what you want. But get something to keep me going.”

The thought of that twisted me inside. “No, Boris.”

“Don’t look at me disgusted, man! Have I ever asked a favor from you? You can call up and say, ‘Boris, old friend, why don’t you risk a jail term transporting a stiff in your van?’ And I did it. I bought you fucking shoes so you could leave the hospital when you didn’t even know who you were. I helped you go clean so you can stand here like this telling me to go fuck myself! Okay. So you’re a prince and I’m a bug unworthy to be crushed under your shoe. Only do something for me before I die!”

Leo Dunn had said about giving Spain money, “It may be the only thing standing between him and death.” But I was late and it was going to rain and the thought of buying drugs terrified me for several excellent reasons. I said, “I’m on my way to see Dunn. Come uptown and talk to him.” As I spoke, I knew it was useless. In extremis all a junkie wants is heroin.

Boris screamed, “YOU THINK YOU GOT IT MADE? YOU GOT NOTHING, MOTHER!” Passersby pretended not to notice. I turned away.

Riding the IRT uptown, I felt not empty but dark, like some kind of light inside had been doused. As we pulled out of one stop, my eyes met those of a ragged figure sprawled on a bench. Despite the beard and dirt, the fresh cut on his cheek, I recognized his face. It was the one I’d have had if I still drank. My Silent Partner nodded to me.

Thunder rolled in New Jersey by the time I got uptown. The lamps were on in the Dunns’ living room. The unfamiliar light helped me see him plainly. I remembered the first time I was there, blinded by winter sun reflecting off the glass table. From behind that aurora, Leo Dunn’s eyes had looked into my heart.

Now he sat on his couch and his body was like a rig of wires inside the fine tan suit he wore. His head and his hands, unshrunken, appeared huge. He saw my reaction and said very quietly, “Yes, I took a good long look at myself in the mirror this morning. The doctor wants me in the hospital for tests. But I can’t. I have a new client, Damian. He’s difficult, a hit-and-run drunk driver who won’t admit he has a problem.

“Remember my telling you I draw strength from all the people who let me help them? Well, now I want to ask more than the usual charity from you, Kevin. You’ve seen a bit of life and understand things. Will you help me with this young man?”

Stunned by my encounter with Boris, I felt that my life had lost whatever grace and magic it may ever have contained. Unable to confess that, I just nodded yes.

Dunn gestured at himself and the room. “His first impression will be the most important one.” He had me close the curtains partway so that he sat with his pale head dead center in the silver light. Then he told me to turn off the lamp next to him and put on a couple of smaller ones in the far corners. In that way, while sitting absolutely still, he could dominate the room.

The windows were closed. It was warm and stuffy. “I feel so cold,” said Leo Dunn. “You know my appetite is off. When I was in my cups, I’d drink anything—hair tonic if it was all there was. But as to food, I had very discriminating tastes indeed. I ate nothing at all.”

He paused for a long moment, then said, “Let me tell you the whole reason I need you here, Kevin. The doctor I’m seeing has his office in the Village. We were there earlier today, my wife and I. On the way back uptown, the taxi driver took us east over to the Bowery. It brought back a lot of memories.”

The first drops hit the windows. “We stopped at a light and there was an old black man down on the pavement with one hand out to me. I tried to open the door, but I wasn’t steady enough. The cabby didn’t understand or didn’t want to and he drove on. I can still see that man lying on the sidewalk like a broken promise.

“Way back when I got the better of my own problem, I went back to the Bowery and gave people money and put them up at hotels. I’d spent Christmas Eves down there and I knew what it was like for the ones who weren’t able to make it out.

“My ability is a gift. I don’t understand its workings. My wife and I tried once to count all the people I’ve been allowed to help and we couldn’t. I’ve always known this was not my personal property. I’m only an agent, a custodian. But I’m happy to be that. And I’d hate to think I lost it through breaking my promise to do all that was possible for each person who came to me.”

The house phone buzzed, the lobby announced the client. “I asked you up here because in your own way you made a similar pledge,” Mr. Dunn told me.

My inadequacy was a gaping pit inside me. If Leo Dunn considered what he’d described as breaking an oath, then what was my walking away from Boris? Unable to meet his gaze, I turned to watch his wife open the front door.

“I hope you didn’t get wet, my friend,” said Dunn. The client shook his head. His name was Damian Greene and he came from Darien, Connecticut. To my eyes, Damian was a sullen rich kid who badly needed a kick in the ass. I know he didn’t fall in love with me either.

I took a seat where I could watch them both. Mrs. Dunn also stayed in the room. Thunder rolled, rain drove against the windows, lightning flashed behind Leo Dunn’s head as the client shook his hand. I saw the kid’s eyes widen slightly at the effect.

Then Leo Dunn began to speak clearly, forcefully. “My friend, you are here against your will, maybe against your better judgment. Even if you never come back to see me again, let me just try to convince you of one thing. Alcohol is a vicious and mind-altering substance that has wrecked much of your life and will wreck the rest if you give it any chance at all.”

After a long pause, Dunn said, “Kevin here can testify that booze is a Silent Partner. It is a partner who wants it all.” He glanced my way and another pause followed, during which thunder echoed off skyscrapers.

Suddenly, Leo Dunn put his hands over his face. “My friend,” he said, and his voice was muffled, “whatever your motive, you came here to be cured. What you found was an unworthy agent. I can’t help you!” His body convulsed and I realized that he was crying behind his hands. We all heard his sobs. “After seeing that man today and failing to help him, I was afraid that I’d never be able to help anyone again. And I was right, the gift is gone, taken from me.”

The client looked appalled. He was not used to having doors slammed in his face. I wonder what my own expression was. Mrs. Dunn came over and put her arms around her husband. She said, “I think Leo understands now that the doctor is right about his going into the hospital.”

That afternoon, I watched Mrs. Dunn check her husband into St. Vincent’s. By the time he was settled, the rain had stopped and I walked the streets scared and wanting a drink. Leo Dunn thought the loss of his power was all his fault. I felt I knew better. At least part of the responsibility was mine.

The phone rang as I came home wanting company for a quiet dinner. When I picked it up, Bonnie screamed, “Where the hell have you been? Hanging out with that turd Boris?” That’s when I found out how the rest of my little world had fallen apart.

“Listen, Bonnie, I had a bad day,” I began.

“Oh poor you! Did you know that Boris has dropped dimes on everyone he knows? Sandy! The cops busted him. I went to his place to have lunch and there were police everywhere. Sandy gets arraigned tonight downtown. I’ve spent hours finding a lawyer, raising bail. The one time I need your help, you disappear. You’ll come with me to night court, right?”

“Jesus!”

“I take it that means yes.”

When she hung up, the phone rang again and it was Gina Raille. “Kevin, where’s Boris? Everyone’s calling me.”

“How would I know?”

“Didn’t he go uptown with you to see your friend? Mr. Dunn?”

“Gina, Mr. Dunn isn’t…he’s not feeling real well.”

“But Boris came home this afternoon saying he needed money for Mr. Dunn. He said you were both going up there. I gave him all the money I had.”

“Gina, that was just some junkie scam. Boris stole your money to buy drugs.”

I did not feel proud that I hung up so as not to hear her crying. At night court, Bonnie and I sat between some pimps in silk suits and a woman who smelled like rancid butter. Bonnie looked around and said, “Kafka was a chump, a hick.”

She wanted something, support, maybe just conversation. None of that was in me. Poor Sandy, when we bailed him out, was hysterical. Since his house was a wreck, we took him to Bonnie’s. She dug up some Valium and he quieted down. As I was leaving, Bonnie said, “Kevin, you’re still warm to the touch, but you don’t care about much, do you?” And I couldn’t answer.

The truth was that my invulnerable shield was gone and it was my own fault. I wanted a drink badly and was glad the bars were closed and the streets clear of dealers. The night was cool. Passing Tompkins Square Park, I heard trees whisper in the predawn. Lights shone on a bench where a guy with my face sat all alone watching me.

Here was someone who would know where the after-hours bars were and how to get drugs during a police sweep. My Shadow, my addiction, raised a hand to beckon me. He grinned like a maniac when I backed away and hurried home.

That night, what sleep I got was tangled in dreams of being on a streetcar that rolled through a land of goblins and narcs to a black tower. I awoke full of dread, but knowing what had to be done. A quest awaited me, and not the kind you get sent on by the Queen of Elfland. Instead of donning my knightly armor, I shaved, showered, and put on running shoes, a hooded sweatshirt, and worn jeans. Carrying no weapons since I owned none, I set out to redeem Leo Dunn’s faith in me.

For those who disapprove of the action I am about to describe, I ask you to consider the Orc. Faceless slave of the dark that he is, an Orc dies at the hero’s hand and no one mourns. But what if, though now a hero pure and true, you had once run with the Orcs? What if one of the Orcs, whom you have come to recognize as a loathsome creature, was once as close to you as a brother? On a morning when you felt a touch of the old Orc in your bones, could you turn away from him?

With no idea of where to find Boris, I decided to raise him as I’d been used to doing. Though it was a day off, I walked from east to west. At Fourth and Bowery, two figures awaited me. Spain stood, as Boris had said, like a giant guarding the bridge. “HEY SUCKER, YOUR BUDDY HERE IS HURTING.”

Beside him was Boris, shivering in the crisp air. “You do one good deed every day, I understand,” he told me. “Yesterday, for instance, you warned Gina that she was getting ripped off by a junkie. She locked me out. Help me, man, I’m begging you!”

But I was the beggar, more desperate than he was. My peace of mind was gone. Boris and Spain were the instruments of my winning it back. “Let’s take a little walk,” I told my oldest friend and turned back the way I had come.

“HEY, WHERE’S MY QUARTER?” Spain shouted.

Boris, loping wary as a coyote beside me, asked, “Remember all the times you used to do this?”

Junk is just the high, copping is the habit. Memory guided me east to Avenue B where a faded thirty-foot mural of Satan played guitar and sported a huge erection. As we turned north, a couple of guys, impassive in an unmarked Chevy, watched us go. My anxiety began to rise. Like he could read me, Boris said, “Don’t fear the narcs. You’ll have the stuff in your hand maybe ten seconds, five seconds.”

“Nice job you did on Sandy,” I told him.

“What would you have done, man? I got busted last month and didn’t tell anybody. Some guy I knew around the bars turned out to be an undercover. I had two choices, jail or names. It used to be the cops were happy you gave them one name. Now you practically have to join the force. Sandy’s got the same choices I had, that’s all.”

Where a car frame filled with charred mattress springs sat next to a fire hydrant dribbling water, we turned east again. On that block, lots of stuff had fallen down, but Mama’s building stood, surrounded now by empty lots. I recognized the tower of my dreams the night before. A stray dog sniffed busted trash cans. From the far end of the street, two little kids stared at us.

While I had been away, part of the cement stoop had crumbled and the ground-floor windows had been tinned. The front door was a gaping hole into pitch dark. Past the light from outside, Boris guided me like he had night vision. On the second floor, a forty-watt bulb burned. Under it a sign read, “Take light and die,” with a skull and crossbones.

The front door of one apartment looked like it had been broken down with an ax. Music came from somewhere not far off. Someone turned it down and listened as we passed. My stomach was tight and there was bile at the back of my throat.

“This next one’s a mother,” Boris muttered. Sunlight shone down on us. The top steps of that flight were gone. So was part of the wall and a chunk of the hallway. It was like a bite had been taken out of the side of the building. This was new. Boris pulled himself up onto the third floor. “Don’t look out,” he said.

Of course I did, and saw sun hitting broken glass next to a brick path that led through grass and goldenrod to someone’s fenced-in garden. The vacant lot was empty. In the garden, tomato plants danced in the breeze.

The fourth floor was dark. Something breathed there, deep hibernating breaths. The music came back on downstairs.

On the fifth floor, there was a lighted bulb jury-rigged from a cable, and a familiar door. “Ten dimes,” whispered Boris and handed me the money.

“Watch close,” I said. “I’m not doing this again.” At the door, I cried, “Mama,” softly like I used to do.

Nothing. A truck went by in the street outside and the building shook. I turned to Boris and shrugged. Then, someone in slippers moved on the other side of the door. I said, “Mama, par favor,” my Spanish just as bad as ever.

There was a pause and a voice soft as a sigh asked, “You been in jail?”

“ Sí. Like that. Listen Mama, I need ten.”

“Six. For a hundred, six.” Boris grimaced but nodded and I slipped the hundred under the door. When it disappeared, I felt the same moment of anticipation and dread I always had. Then, there was a rustling sound and I gathered up the six little rolls of aluminum foil.

“Gracias, Mama,” I said. No reply. “Mama, I got a friend here, un amigo, Boris.” The packages burned cold in my hand. The chill ran up my arm to my heart.

“Mama?” said Boris. “I’ll be back, Mama.” Dead silence behind the door.

Copping was the habit, junk the reward, immediate relief of all pain and fear. I remembered Leo Dunn as I had last seen him, the best person I had ever met, limp and despairing in his hospital bed. It occurred to me that I had earned a share of the spoils. Boris saved me. “Hey,” he whispered. “Mine,” and took it all away. The cold left my heart. I thought of Mr. Dunn and imagined him in his hospital bed. He was smiling.

“Had to think about it, huh?” Boris said and moved quickly to the stairs.

On the fourth floor, the deep breathing stopped. From the dark, a voice dark as sleep, said, “You gonna come back once too often.”

On three, Boris leaped past the gaping hole to the stairs below. Again, I looked out. The lot was no longer empty. A tall, thin man in black leather jeans and vest, a classic rip-off artist, watched me scramble past.

Before I could say anything, Boris muttered, “Saw him.” His hand went to a back pocket. As we walked under the lightbulb, the music faded again and someone listened. Then sun and the street lay ahead but the figure in black stood at the front door waiting to take us off. I froze thinking there was no way this wasn’t going to be bad.

Boris, not missing a step, went toward the door. His hand coming out of his back pocket grasped a little semiautomatic. My heart stopped. The guy at the door melted away. “Must only have a knife,” said Boris, putting the pistol back. He opened one package and poured junk under his bottom lip. “Just to hold me until I can do up.”

Out in the sunshine we walked away fast. Relief made me babble. “I used to fantasize some Spanish Madonna behind the door but from the voice I can’t tell. It might be a guy sitting there thinking the whole thing is a huge joke. Anyway, that’s the connection. Listen, I’ve got a feeling Dunn is going to be able to talk to you.”

Boris said nothing. Remembering full well the ways of junk, I knew I should have been able to hold onto the drugs long enough to talk to Boris about Leo Dunn. It probably wouldn’t have done any good. An Orc with junk had no need for anyone else.

At Avenue A, he halted. His voice when he spoke was remote, like we had already parted. “Always at the back of my head was that I could get the cure like you. The thing is the cops want me to testify against guys who’ll whack me. Do me a favor. Forget my name. Forget you knew me. It was a blast while it lasted. Good-by, Kevin.” He turned and in seconds was gone.

If there is a god who cares for the likes of us, then what Boris did was between the two of them. And I will gladly answer for what I myself did that day. All I regret is never seeing my oldest friend again.

Mr. Dunn sat up in bed, his right arm attached to bottles and monitoring devices. He still looked weak but he smiled and said, “Damian just called asking if he could come talk to me. A half hour ago I couldn’t have found the resources to tell him yes. I was still in the same damn funk I was in yesterday. Then lying here, I suddenly dreamed of you helping some poor soul in a very bad place. All my useless self-pity lifted. Thank you, Kevin, for being as true as you are.”

All I could do was sink into a chair and look down at the floor so I didn’t have to face him. “You think I’m true, Mr. Dunn. But when you asked for my help yesterday, I should have told you that I had just walked away from my best friend on earth. If I had kept my promise and helped someone who asked for help he might be talking to you right now. I keep thinking maybe my doing that is what made you…not able to do your work.”

There was silence. Then Leo Dunn said, “Kevin, my sickness came from my own stupid pride. Your friend will get here under his own steam or not at all. The past has no power over the present. And present circumstances are that my client is coming here to see me. I can’t handle him alone. Maybe he’s not a favorite of yours, but will you stay and talk to him?”

I wanted to tell him how scared and alone I felt on a summer’s day with all the wonder drained out of the world. I wanted to tell him that oaths are hard and dangerous things, and that the way to peace of mind lies through perils worse than dragons. But he already knew all that. It took a long moment, but, beggar that I was, I nodded yes.

“Good man. What was it that you said the first time we met? I asked you how you got there, meaning how you had found out about me. And you told me you’d come by streetcar. What did you mean?”

While we waited for Damian, I told him about my Streetcar Dreams and he listened as enraptured as a child.