ON TUESDAY, Tommy got transferred downtown to another site for the day. After work he drove to Banion's.
"I heard the weirdest thing today." Tommy leaned over the bar talking to Banion. "I'm workin' down on Orchard Street today on that new public school, you know. I'm walkin' on Second Avenue goin' over to Katz's Deli for some lunch, an' I see this kid comin' towards me. Couldn't a been more'n seven, a Puerto Rican kid, really little. Anyways, he's walkin' by himself an' he got a slice a pizza in his hands. He comes up to me an' he's frownin, you know. He looks up and he says, 'This pizza taste like puh-sy,' just like that, an' he keeps walkin'."
Banion chuckled and shook his head.
"I swear I almost dropped dead laughin'. Hey, Chubby!"
Chubby sat down next to Tommy, nodding hello to Banion. "Tom, len' me twenny?"
"For what?" Tommy chewed on an ice cube and flicked his mustache with a pinky.
"For what?" Chubby mimicked.
"It's six o'clock! Whatta you, a animal?"
"My cock don't wear a watch. See ya later." He took the twenty, pinched Tommy's cheek and left the bar.
"What a lover." Tommy fiddled with his mustache.
"I wouldn't want him on top a me," said Banion.
"Don't let his size fool you, the man knows what he's doin'. I bet you he could outbang this whole bar."
"I still wouldn't want him on top a me."
"Well, then you don't know what you're missing. The dude's a top stickman. Do you know why he's so good? I been in on a lotta three- an' four-way deals with Chub, so I know what I'm talkin' about. He's good 'cause he loves to fuck. He don't get hung up on that whole 'Was it good for you? Didja come?' number. He just goes right in there. I never seen a guy so much in love with pussy as Chubby. You gotta see him in action to believe it. I mean he loves the way it smells, the way it tastes, the way it feels. He's the only guy I know who can sing and scarf pussy at the same time."
"Hmpf, you'd never know it." Banion was fuming. Sex was such a major production for him because of his crippled legs. His wife had to get on top of him and do all the work or it was no go. The agony of his helplessness was such that at forty-six he had just about lost interest in screwing altogether.
"Oh, an' if you think Chubby's somethin' now, you shoulda seen him thirty years ago. Jesus Christ, he was built like a brick shithouse, like a fuckin' rock. He got an offer to play pro ball when he was eighteen ... he ever tell you about that?"
"Really?" Banion started fidgeting.
"Oh yeah. Nineteen forty-four Chubby was the triple crown champ at James Monroe, hits, homers an' RBIs. You know who he looked like? You remember that guy used to play for the Reds, Ted Kluszewski? You know, that guy with arms like tree trunks? He useta play with his sleeves cut off to his shoulders."
"Yeah. Yeah, I remember."
"Chubby looked just like him. In-fuckin'-credible. He was the most popular guy at Monroe. I remember I was a sophomore when he was a senior. I used to get laid by sayin' to girls, 'If you put out for me I'll put in a good word for you with my brother.'" Tommy laughed.
"What happened with the pros?" Banion didn't want to know but felt compelled to ask.
"That was the funniest thing. I don't mean funny ha-ha; it was more tragic than that ... Chubby got an offer to try out with the Browns, that's when they had guys like One-Arm Pete Grey an' such. With the war goin' on they were really hard up for talent. So Chubby's supposed to go out to St. Louis on a Sunday. That Saturday night we had a party, Banion, the likes a which I never been to since. The whole team, all twenty guys, we went down to Union Square and rented out an entire whorehouse for two hundred bucks, the pussy, the booze, the this, the that, in-fucking-credible. Fifteen guys lost their cherries that night, guys runnin' aroun' 14th Street in the nude, puking, coming, screaming. It was the most memorable night a my life, Banion."
"So what happened, so what happened is Chubby got drunk and he's trying to bang this chick while standing at the head of this long flight a stairs an' he loses his balance. She got a concussion an' he busted his fuckin' leg. Spent the next three weeks in the hospital."
"Couldn't he a tried out after his leg healed?"
"You know, that's one thing I could never figure out. I remember the Browns scout Buzzy Baker visitin' Chubby in the hospital an' tellin' him to call when his leg healed. Chubby never did. Always said, 'I'll call 'im tomorrah.' Then one day about six months later he joined the merchant marine an' shipped out to Surinam an' that was that. He came back a few years later an' started workin' with our old man as an electrician. To this day, I don't know what the fuck went on in his head." Tommy sighed. "Whatever, it's ancient history, right?"
Banion wanted to tell Tommy about playing forward for the All-Hallows High School basketball team. That his three-year career point total was the highest in All-Hallows history. That it took fifteen years and a six-eight nigger who later went pro to break his record. But it all seemed so distant and dim, it made him feel so angry to think about it.
"Yeah, ancient history." Banion whirred down the line. Tommy noticed somebody had stenciled "Ironsides" on the back of Banion's new wheelchair.
Tommy sat there thinking about Chubby. He had always felt that he knew Chubby inside and out, but every once in a while something would come up, like Chubby not going to St. Louis, like Chubby not having another kid, that would throw Tommy for a loop and a half.
Chubby cruised Eighth Avenue in the Forties, strolling down the block, occasionally stopping in porn book shops as a warm-up. It seemed to him most of the hookers were black, about six-foot-two, skinny, dressed in dirty hot pants and Afro wigs. Bad news. The street was steaming. He felt covered with a thin film of sludge and a slight wheeze crept into his lungs. He walked down from 48th Street to 40th by the Greyhound terminal, crossed the street and walked back up to 50th Street. Pimples and platform shoes. He was about to leave and check out the Carnegie Hall area when he saw her, coming out of a Blimpie's. Chinese. Bangs. Nineteen.
As they climbed the narrow stairs. Chubby's wheeze got worse. She was half a flight ahead of him. Aloof. Swinging her ass like a censer. She looked so much like Sooky Chubby had the shakes.
"Hot! Hot! Hot!" She minced over to the window across the small room, her hand waving in front of her tits like a fan. Chubby sat heavily on the corner of the narrow bed, trying to catch his breath. As she pushed up the window, her short white backless fishnet dress hitched halfway up her ass. Chubby smiled. "That's better!" She turned to Chubby, reached behind her neck to untie the strap holding up her dress and in an instant she was nude. Her dark brown nipples stood out like pencil erasers.
She patted the bed. "Come on. Lay down!" Cheery and efficient as a nurse.
Chubby stood up and undressed, sitting back down to pull off his pants. "What's your name, darlin'?"
"Tiny."
"Tiny, hah? You from Hong Kong?"
"California."
"California, hah? It's nice out there."
"Come on, big boy, lay down."
Chubby crawled across the bed and collapsed on his back. She sat by his side and took a foil-wrapped condom from her pocketbook. Then she stroked his fat, semihard cock gently but mechanically. Chubby lay with one hand behind his head and reached out to touch her nipples. He was having a tough time getting a hard-on. The pain in his lungs, the work he had to do to keep breathing, distracted him to the point of mortal fear. He didn't want sex. He wanted an iron lung. Tiny frowned at him. "What's the story?"
Chubby winked. Never say die. Finally he was hard enough for her to slip on the rubber.
"You want me to wear this?" She held up her hand displaying a wedding ring.
Chubby shrugged. "I'll tell you what, though, you into playin' make-believe? For the next twenny minutes your name's Sooky."
She nodded. "Sooky it is."
Chubby moved to get on top of her, but she stopped him. "I'll be on top, you're a pretty big guy."
Chubby laid her down on the clammy sheets and arched his body over her. "Never heard no complaints before."
She brought up her knees under his chest and guided him in. A band of pain encircled his chest and the room filled with the sound of his labored breath. She scratched her nose and looked off to the side. Chubby stopped moving and tried to gulp in air. He lost his hard-on.
"C'mon, baby, I don't got all day," she bitched.
Chubby fell off her and clutched his chest. "Can't breathe!"
She sat up in alarm. "You gettin' a heart attack? Don't get no heart attack on me!"
Chubby didn't answer, stroking his chest, rolling his head in pain.
"Shit!" She jumped up and quickly pulled on her dress. "Don't get no heart attack on me! I get all the fuckin' basket cases!" She ran from the room, slamming the door.
Chubby struggled to a sitting position on the edge of the bed, the rubber pinching the skin on his shriveled dick. He was too weak and dizzy to stand up.
The door exploded inward and two tall spades—one dressed in a yellow three-piece suit with a matching gangster lean, the other in a red and black two-piece with alligator platforms—ran in followed by Tiny.
"Oh shit! He a big mothafucka!"
The taller of the two men glared at Tiny, who cowered behind the door. "He pay you?"
She nodded yes. They hoisted Chubby by the armpits.
"Pull on his fuckin' pants!"
The one in the red and black suit grunted from the strain of Chubby's weight. Tiny slipped Chubby's pants over his condomed dick and buckled his belt. They let him drop on the bed.
"Hey, whadya... whadya doin'?" Chubby gasped weakly.
"Like I don't get enough mothafuckin' trouble," the one in yellow bitched. "Put on his fuckin' shoes!"
Tiny hastily obliged. They pulled Chubby up on his feet again and dragged him out of the room, Chubby's head rolling back, his tongue hanging out of his head. They cursed as they slowly carried him down the steep flight of stairs into the street, propping him up on the hood of a car, his head almost hanging to his knees. The spade in red threw Chubby's lime green sport shirt at him. Then they all split, the pimp in yellow screaming at Tiny. Blindly Chubby slapped the back of his pants for his wallet. It was still there. Staggering to his feet he clutched his shirt and made it to the traffic side of the car to hail a cab like a drunk. A police car stopped, two cops jumped out.
"S—Sooky?"
"What?" The cops supported him.
"Asthma," Chubby panted.
They helped him into the back seat and the car screamed uptown to Roosevelt Hospital.
***
An hour later, the phone in the back of the bar rang.
"Hey, Tom!"
"Yo!" He leaned back to see who was calling him.
"It's for you." Ray Buckley stood half out of the booth.
"Who is it, Ray?"
"Don' recognize the voice, some guy." He extended the mouthpiece as Tommy walked over.
"Hello."
"Who's this?"
"It's me."
It was Chubby. He was wheezing so badly it sounded like braying.
"Whassamatter?" Tommy's face darkened.
"I'm inna fuckin' hospital."
"Asthma?" He could hear only gasps and wheezes on the other end of the line. "What hospital?"
"Roosevelt."
"I'll be right down."
Tommy sat with Chubby on a wooden bench in a deserted room at Roosevelt Hospital. Between them stood two Styrofoam cups of cold coffee. Hunched over, Chubby stared glassy-eyed at the wall. The doctor had given him four shots of epinephrine to cut his asthmatic wheezing. He wanted Chubby to stay overnight, but Chubby refused. The doctor respected his wish but asked a nurse to hang around just in case.
"I can't even fuck no more, Tom. I got on top a her, an' I start gaspin' like I needed a oxygen mask." Chubby's hands were trembling from the speedy effects of the shots. He rubbed his forehead and yawned nervously.
"It's just an attack, babe, you had 'em before."
"No, no, it's gettin' bad, Tom. Soon I'll be like Jimmy O'Day. Can't fuck unless I got a nitro pill under my tongue."
"C'mon, Chubby, be right." Tommy opened a crumpled brown paper bag. "Here, Banion sent this for you."
Chubby accepted the pint of Haig & Haig with a grunt, setting it on the bench. "She was bored, Tom. I was just an old bag of shit to her." He shuddered and yawned again.
"Hey, c'mon, Chubby, she's just a Times Square pump."
"I know, yah fuck!" Chubby shouted.
The nurse popped her head in the door. "Is ev..."
Tommy waved her out of the room.
"Oh shit!" Chubby collapsed against the bench, eyes wildly searching the ceiling.
"Tommy, I feel so lost, what am I gonna do? What the fuck am I gonna do?" He blinked back tears, shaking his head from side to side.
Tommy squeezed Chubby's knee, patted his leg.
"I'm so lonely sometimes, Tom..." he gasped and his face wrinkled in an effort not to cry. "I feel so god... damn lonely sometimes. I sit, an' eat, and I watch TV. I wake up sometimes an'..." Chubby doubled over in slow motion as if he had just been kicked in the gut. Tommy put both arms around his brother, leaning his cheek on Chubby's shoulder. Chubby rocked back and forth. Tommy's tears ran down his nose. Chubby rocked them both. Tommy squeezed Chubby until his arms trembled. The nurse peered through the window confused, not sure she should be looking.
"I feel so old, Tom," Chubby whispered hoarsely. "I'm gonna die soon, I can smell it. I'm too fat. I ain't gonna last. I got a wheeze what makes me feel like I live in a box.... I was thinkin' a Pop the other day."
Tommy wiped the tears from his nose and held on tight.
"You remember that night? He just sat up an' said, I ain't sorry for nothin'!' That was it. I didn't cry 'cause I thought he woulda gotten up again just to punch me out." They almost laughed, rocking. "It's so scary, babe, it's so hard to get outta bed some days. I'm gonna be fifty come April." Chubby coughed and blubbered. Wrenching free from Tommy he stood up and shouted, "I was just eighteen!" He punched the wall. "What the fuck is goin' on!" Tommy grabbed him. Chubby didn't resist. He just looked into his brother's face. "I read this Reader's Digest once, you know, in a couple a years I'm gonna start gettin' pee dribble in my drawers in the mornin'." He tried to laugh. Tommy broke the seal on the Scotch. He handed the bottle to Chubby.
"Here, you can get a head start now."
Chubby snorted and took a long swig. Tommy took a longer one. Chubby laughed, took another. Tommy took another. Tommy laughed. Chubby took a long belt and gargled, half of it running down his lime green shirt. Tommy licked the Scotch from Chubby's chest, laughing.
The nurse, totally confused, was afraid now to walk in. Tommy and Chubby noticed her face in the window. They looked at each other and roared. Simultaneously they ran to the door, whooping and hollering, and chased her down the corridor.
***
Chubby and Tommy faced each other in the warm night air in front of the hospital.
"C'mon, babe, I'll drive you home." Tommy started walking toward his car. Chubby held back.
"C'mon."
"Nah, you go ahead, Tom, I wanna walk a while. I'll be home later."
"You sure?"
"Yeah. I jus' wanna do some thinking, you know." Chubby was pulling back again. Tommy was worried. "You O.K.?"
"Yeah, I jus' wanna walk a while."
"You want me to walk with you?"
"Nah, I wanna be alone for a while. I'll go home soon."
Tommy hesitated. "Call me when you get home, yeah?" Chubby hugged his brother. "Go home, Tom."
"You call me."
"Yeah, I'll call you. Thanks for comin' down, babe."
Tommy walked to his car, looking over his shoulder at Chubby. Chubby stood there with his hands in his pockets until Tommy drove away, then started walking down Eighth Avenue. He thought of trying some pussy again, but he was too scared. The Scotch was starting to make him spin a little. He kept thinking of his father, gaunt and wasted. He thought of pee stains in his underwear, helpless. The wheeze crept back into his lungs. He leaned against a parked car. He needed to sit. He went into a topless bar and sat staring at his drink for half an hour, oblivious to the fishnet and pasties dancing above his head. Sooky was a woman. The only real woman he'd ever known.
"I ain't sorry for nothin!" Chubby declared to the barmaid.
"O.K., then," she said unimpressed, taking his money and ringing it up.
He started weaving in his seat. "She was a real woman. You ain't shit!" She gave a little nod to a big Puerto Rican in a double-knit suit who came up behind Chubby. "You jus' a whore." He gestured at the dancers. "You all jus' fuckin' whores. You—" Chubby felt himself lifted off his seat and shoved out onto the street before he could finish his sentence.
He stood bewildered in the middle of Eighth Avenue looking around for his drink.
***
Summer night Forty-second Street was luminous black and slick wet. Strange and dangerous. Chubby walked past the gaudy neon, weaving through multicolored crowds, his lime green shirt open to the waist. Cardboard blowups of tits and fists wrapped around his head like a red band. In Chubby's rageful dream state he could only see blurred colors. Voices came from far away like he was dozing at the beach. The subway—go home.
"Blood, you got twenny-fi' cent?"
Chubby turned from the head of the subway stairs. A tall, young spade in a bright plaid shirt stood behind him, hands in pockets.
Chubby scowled.
"What you lookin' at, sucker?" Chubby turned to go down the steps. "Fat mothafucker."
Chubby stopped, took a deep breath. Mumbled something to himself. Turned again. He kept his head low, chest-level. The young spade's shirt was box plaid. Big boxes. Yellow-red-orange-green. Chubby hesitated until the kid's hands came out of his pockets empty. Then he zeroed in on a red square over the heart. Two quick strides, fingers closed around a chicken neck. Chubby slammed him twice in the same spot, lifting him off the ground both times. The kid grunted, dazed, finding himself on the pavement. Shouts. A crowd forming. Chubby swung around to face the crowd, they stepped back in unison. Chubby laughed. Taxis flew by in the street. Yellow blurs. Bruce Lee devastated a cardboard enemy across the way. Chubby lifted the kid with one hand, thumb digging into the soft flesh under the chin. The kid's eyes wild, teeth bared clenched, hissing in pain. Chubby carried him three steps to a parked Cadillac, sat him down on the hood, the crowd closing in. Laughing. Chubby held out a nickel.
"I don't have a quarter, blood, all I got's five cents." With his thumb he jammed the nickel into the kid's mouth. Pinching the back of the kid's neck, shoving it GAG ACK down his throat. Two hands slapped down on Chubby's shoulders, yanking him away. Chubby wheeled around, ducked, came up swinging from the ground. A 300-pound fist smacked into open crotch. Chubby backed off, lowered his head and charged, ramming the crippled cop into a woman into a newsstand in a splash of girlie magazines and newspapers. Laughing, the crowd danced around Chubby as if he were a Pamplona bull. Chubby turned to the kid doubled over and gagging between parked cars. Chubby drop-kicked him into a double somersault. Screeching tires. Screams. The neon bubbled furiously around the marquees. Chubby looked up at the stars. The woman buried under hundreds of Daily Newses screamed for blood. Chubby saw the word "SURCHARGE" in all the headlines. The cop was unconscious. The news dealer stood there in thick glasses and a white apron. Chubby sniffed, buttoned his shirt and pushed through the crowd down into the subway station. Sirens. Some of the crowd followed him from a safe distance, but he got on the train alone.
Chubby sat on the rocketing train, swaying back and forth like a moron. He saw everything as if he were wearing tinted glasses. White skin had the pastiness of death, black skin looked sickly green. He had his fat man's wheeze again, sitting hunched over, hands dangling below his knees. There was blood on his shirt. He sniffed it. The nigger kid's.
"He begged me, heh, heh." Chubby grinned and his eyes lit up as he talked to the white poles in front of him. "'Please, mister, please, mister,'" Chubby whined. "I said, I said, heh, heh," he cackled. "'Please, mister,' he said to me, whining, 'Unh!'" Chubby leaped out of his seat, lunging with an invisible sword at the groaning doors as they opened at 72nd Street. "Heh, heh." Collapsing back into the gray molded seat.
A middle-aged dumpy black lady in a brown coat and horn-rimmed glasses made a face as if she smelled shit, and moved away from Chubby. Chubby laughed and thrust his sword at her. She walked faster, banging into a pole.
"He said, 'Please, mister, I'm sorry.'" Chubby rolled his eyes and licked his lips. "Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah." Resting his head on the subway map, shutting his eyes, rubbing his palms over his face. His belly peeked out under his lime green shirt.
"Sooo-ky!" he moaned loudly. From the back of his throat came that eerie whine like a demented croon.
The sharp rap of a nightstick on the metal seat made him jump. "Hey, whatchoo doin', man?"
Chubby looked up into the bland face of a big black T.A. cop. He smiled like a little boy with his hand caught in a cookie jar and shrugged. "You be cool now. hear?"
Chubby winked and got off at the next stop.
The South Bronx. Fort Apache. The pits. Chubby wandered the humid streets like the last survivor of World War Three. Human shadows shifted along brick walls like rats. Building entrances like one-way tickets. Latin music sifted through the air high above his head. Chubby laughed, kicking a can into the gutter. A man in a flowered beige shirt and a denim beach hat passed him on the street. He called out something in Spanish and three more men strolled out of a candy store. The four of them followed Chubby for two blocks, until Chubby turned around, thrust his sword at them, laughing, and ran like hell for the safety of a bar.
"Tommy."
"Hey, Chub."
"Come an' get me."
"What?"
"Come an' get me. I'm in a bar in a very bad neighborhood."
"Whatta you talkin' about?" Tommy stood up and shut off the TV. "Chubby, where the fuck are you?"
"Sweetheart"—Chubby leaned out of the phone booth and smiled at a heavily mascaraed woman in a blond wig at the end of the bar—"sweetheart, where am I?"
She said something in Spanish to three people sitting next to her. They leaned back from their barstools and stared at him.
"Hey, where am I?" Chubby repeated.
"You lost." They all laughed. Chubby looked out over the sky-blue-painted pocked plaster walls of the room.
"They won't tell me, Tom." Chubby laughed. "Oh shit," he sighed.
"Who won't tell you?" Tommy passed the living room, the white cord of the phone trailing him like a tail.
"I dunno." Chubby picked his nose. "I'm somewhere aroun' a Hunnert Thirty-fifth Street, I think."
"Just stay there!" Tommy shouted. "Don't move!" Chubby froze like a statue, then burst out laughing again.
Tommy hung up, ran into the kitchen, grabbed a long steak knife, slipped into his pants and ran from the apartment in his bare feet.
Chubby sat down at the red and white Formica bar and lit a cigarette. Everybody at the bar stared at him. A loud pachanga played on the juke box. Chubby got up, one hand flat on his gut, the other raised at a right angle in the air, and cha-cha'ed into the street. He cha-cha'ed for two blocks down 172nd Street to Vyse Avenue before a forearm whipped around his throat, arching him backward. A mustached face came out of the darkness in front of him. The black barrel of a Saturday Night Special was shoved into his mouth.
"Ssh!" The man with the gun put a finger to his lips. "Just suck on it, like a tit." Chubby's lips formed a pink, fleshy O around the gun. He wasn't scared, just curious. Three men led him into a small hallway.
"Lay down." The gun was held in his mouth as he slowly lay back on a rolling wave of cracked, warped mosaic tile. As the three of them quickly searched his pockets, as he calmly sucked on the gun, as he stared up at the ornate brown plaster ceiling with its dim yellowish solitary light bulb, he thought for the first time in forty years of the time he had his tonsils taken out; sitting on his mother's lap, the doctor working without an anesthetic, cutting and yanking like a dentist, not able to scream, the sharp burning singeing pain like a starving rat in his throat, his mother's hands wrapped around his body, the doctor yelling at her to stop shaking her leg, the blood like a bib on his chest...
Chubby was crying as he lay spread-eagle on the broken floor. He was alone. Latin music drifted over the rooftops.
***
Chubby let himself into his dark apartment and felt his way to the bathroom. He sat on the fur-covered toilet lid in the blackness and smoked a cigarette in painful slow motion, flicking the ashes after each puff into the sink. His arms and legs felt stiff and heavy. His head felt huge—too big to be supported by his neck, and he let it droop onto his chest. When he eventually stood up to lift the lid and drop the butt into the toilet, his whole body ached as if all his joints and tendons were inflamed. Sitting on the edge of the tub, he ran his thick fingers through his hair, then slowly began to unlace his shoes. He took off his socks, flexed his toes and lit another cigarette. This one he ditched in the sink. Every once in a while he thought of Sooky and his body would twitch as if he'd just received a small electric shock. If a clear image or a vivid moment flashed across his brain, he flinched it away in a muddy blur. The cigarettes helped. He chain-smoked, ignoring his strangled lungs, his raw ripped throat. A smoky haze drifted through the small room. He followed a slow snaky wave of smoke until it wandered ghostlike into the hallway.
Chubby refused to collect his thoughts. He concentrated on each puff, listening to the soft crackle of tobacco and paper. He tried to say her name, but all that came out of his mouth was a stuttering hiss. Leaning over the tub, he peered through the partially open tiny frosted window at a vast field of buildings and a scattered grid of lit windows. Elbows on the window ledge, he watched as the constellation of lights randomly diminished by ones and twos. He was reminded of the logo for "Million Dollar Movie," the shot of the clapboard superimposed over the nighttime New York skyline, the theme from Gone With the Wind playing in the background. Jackie Gleason came to mind. Many years ago, some of his friends called him Ralph because he looked like Ralph Kramden. He absently hummed "Melancholy Serenade," the theme song from "The Honeymooners." "To the moon, Alice!" he muttered, then chuckled. His back started aching. He pushed himself erect, away from the window, slowly rubbed his hand across his expansive belly, and ran tap water to wash the ashes down the drain. He squeezed an inch of toothpaste into his mouth and ran his tongue across his teeth, spitting the toothpaste out under the thin stream. He sucked air through his tingling mouth, spat again and turned off the water. Chubby felt his way down the foyer to the bedroom, running his palm against the cool wallpaper, making a smooth sliding sound until he got to the doorway. As he sat on his side of the bed, Phyllis moved under the blankets.
"Whachoo makin? harden oranges sit down," she mumbled, then turned on her side and was silent again. Through the wide window over the bed he saw a grid of fluorescently lit parkways with occasional speeding headlights. Far in the distance he could see an elliptical string of lights, the curved contours of the cables of the George Washington Bridge. He reached for another cigarette in his chest pocket, decided against it, achingly slipped his shirt from his shoulders, stood up to drop his pants, quietly slid under the warm covers and fell into a mercifully dreamless sleep.
***
"Chub!"
Chubby bolted upright in bed.
"Chub, it's nine o'clock. You're late."
Phyllis' warm hand lay on his naked shoulder. Chubby swallowed. His throat felt like sandpaper. He rubbed his fingers briefly and fell back down on his pillow.
"I'm not goin' in today, hon. Do me a favor an' call for me."
"Whassamatter?" She frowned. Her scent drifted over to him as she rearranged her bathrobe. A familiar smell.
"My back hurts."
"Ya back?"
"Yeah, I pulled somethin'."
"What for?" Chubby reached for his cigarettes in the pile of clothing on the floor.
"He didn't say, he just wanted to know if you were home. He sounded nuts."
Suddenly Chubby remembered last night. He moaned, throwing an arm across his face.
"Whassamatter!" Phyllis got scared and leaned across him. "Ya back?" She reached out gingerly, afraid to touch him, tentatively bringing her fingers to her lips. "Ya back?"
With his forearm across his eyes, Chubby exhaled from his mouth long and low.
"Phyll? Do you love me?"
"Is it ya back?"
"Do you love me, Phyll?"
"A course I love you, what hurts, Chubby?"
"Get under the covers." His face still hidden, he pulled back the covers on Phyllis' side of the bed.
"Chubby, stop foolin' aroun'. I got a lotta things to do today. Tell me what hurts."
"Everything hurts. Will you get under the goddamn covers?"
Confused, Phyllis crawled into bed, pulling the blankets around her. Chubby hugged her to him. She folded her arms in front of her, her hands between her chest and Chubby's.
"You're my wife, Phyllis, and I love you." Phyllis blinked nervously. Her hands were curled toward her.
"Chub, does anything hurt?"
"Nothin', nothin' hurts."