Though I didn’t see Nicky over the next few weeks, I don’t think a day went by that I didn’t hear his name. He was spotted all over the neighborhood by drivers and customers. He was reported to be skulking around on Thirteenth Avenue—shoplifting, begging, even collecting bottles and cans. Each new story portrayed him in a more derelict condition. At first I went out of my way to look for him, but as time passed, I avoided areas where he’d been seen. The person described was more and more removed from anyone I could think of as Shades. I found myself wondering if there was someone who resembled him staggering about while the real Nicky was safely tucked away at a Daytop Village somewhere.
Gina still hadn’t cooled down. She was really putting the screws to me this time. She wouldn’t talk to me unless I was talking marriage. If I hedged at all she hung up. Two weeks was her average for this sort of thing, but so far she showed no signs of giving in, and this was a new record. Her mother was probably pumping her full of all kinds of wonderful advice. I was thinking of poisoning the old bag’s cat.
Anybody can Monday-morning quarterback, but I’d always suspected that Gina and I would have been history ages ago if my mother were still alive. I’d sort of come to terms with that, and with the role we had in each other’s lives now. Interestingly, it was the same thing that kept me ducking the marriage. When my mother got sick and then died I spent a long time thinking about how she’d lived her life. She had never traveled farther than from Red Hook to Bay Ridge—except for two trips to New Jersey—and it didn’t seem fair, let alone satisfying. When the time came for Gina and me to plan our wedding, I’d developed a strong interest in a college education.
It was when my mother was in the hospital for treatments that my father and I first began communicating by not communicating at all. During her bout with cancer we raised telepathy to a high art. Commenting briefly, glibly; saying what we liked and didn’t like about the neighborhood or the planet, we expressed what we did or didn’t like in each other and in ourselves. My father, for example, never told me outright that he despised Gina, and he never would. But it was abundantly clear to me that he thought she was a whining bitch. I didn’t so much disagree as feel that it was none of his business, which was after all a more defensible position.
I wished to hell I’d asked my mother’s advice more when she was alive, because she’d always been so direct with me. I wasn’t nearly grown-up enough to ask her opinions back then, and she was altogether too smart to offer them unsolicited.
Thanksgiving came and went with little fanfare. I had no interest in dining in Red Hook, and my father must have felt the same way, because he didn’t press the issue. We made reservations at Lento’s on Third Avenue and ate turkey and pasta. Ours was the only table with fewer than six people. If my father noticed or cared, I couldn’t tell, but it depressed me.
One Friday morning early in December my father was waiting for me in the kitchen. I was already dressed and had my books, planning to eat a quick breakfast before school. Seeing him sitting there shocked me. We probably hadn’t occupied that room at the same time in years. I hadn’t even known he was home. He must have waited quietly for some time while I was getting ready. He looked old. His face and hair seemed the same shade of gray, like cigarette ash. He’d always been a big man, but I could see his face starting to hang loose, the cheeks dropping into the beginnings of jowls. I felt like I was looking at his father. Maybe I felt like I was looking at me. I shivered.
“Sit down,” he said. I did. He looked at a point on the wall over my head and spoke. “Last night I spent most of the evening in Tony’s club playing cards.”
“Have any luck?”
“Enough. I was up about four hundred at one o’clock. That’s when Nicky Shades comes in with a monster fuckin’ gun and holds the place up.”
I stared at him, waiting for the punch line. He kept looking at the wall.
“Tony was there,” he said. “Shades didn’t wear no mask—just robbed the place like it was an A&P.” My father looked down at me, nodded once, and stood. “I wanted you to hear it from me because I was there.” He walked past me and squeezed my shoulder, then took his jacket off the hook and went out the door. I watched him until he left, and then I moved to his chair and looked at his spot on the wall, waiting for an explanation.
I sat in a class called Sociology of Deviance, staring at the spiked green hair of the mutant in the seat in front of me. I was trying to concentrate on the lecture and not think about Nicky or anything my father had told me that morning. I hadn’t been all that tight with Shades, so why did I care? I wanted suddenly to be like Little Joey—just blow everything off.
The class concluded and I started gathering my books. The green porcupine turned to me and handed back the pen he’d borrowed.
“Thanks, Mike,” he said. I nodded. “Want to grab a brew at the Pub before you push off?”
“No thanks,” I said. “I want to try to clear the bridge before rush hour.” I’d gone out a few times with people from this class, to have a couple of drinks or get stoned in the park. I didn’t find them offensive; I simply had nothing to say to them. They were mostly from East Cupcake, Long Island, and talk always seemed to focus on socialism, feminism, or, insanely enough, the subject matter of the lecture we’d just left.
“A couple of people are gonna stop off. Cat Woman’s gonna be there.” He nodded toward Kathy Popovich, the most attractive girl in the room. She was, as always, dressed completely in black.
“Well,” I said, “she’s got the body, but I still can’t hack this bullshit.” I gestured at the class in general.
“She has her own apartment,” he said, raising one eyebrow.
Maybe Green Hair wasn’t a total hamster. I trailed along.
The Pub was a dreary plastic excuse for a bar as far as I was concerned. Each social group down there staked out its own quadrant. Much as a prison dayroom will have its black, white, and hispanic sections, the Pub was split into preppies, jocks, and punks. There wasn’t much, geographically speaking, for normal people to do except sit alone. Then again, there was no overwhelming reason for normal people to be there at all.
The group I entered with went catatonic at the prospect of having to make a decision. After pulling each other in different directions for a while like an amoeba trying to reproduce, they settled on two large tables at the fringe of the punk district, but near the preppies. Keeping their options open.
I don’t know if it was because of the tension I’d been feeling about Shades, or if I was just mellowing with old age, but I enjoyed myself. There was something refreshing about hanging out with people who spoke in complete sentences. I discussed urban decay with Kathy Popovich, and found that by smiling and nodding my head at appropriate moments I could appear quite well-informed.
“It’s devastating,” she said, “the kind of environment these children are growing up in. Nightmare conditions that you and I couldn’t imagine.” “Absolutely,” I said, smiling and nodding.
“It’s no wonder they turn to violent crime. And do you know what’s at the root of it?”
“Racism?”
“Education!”
Shit. I was going to say education. “Education, sure. But I mean, it’s really racism in the broadest sense.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I think I know what you mean.”
Kathy Popovich was majoring in anthropology, and when she looked at me I felt like I had a bone through my nose. After chatting with her for a while I took a shot and asked her out. She told me that she was planning to see a midnight movie in the East Village on Saturday, but that I was welcome to join her. It certainly wasn’t what I would have picked, but whatever got me in the ballpark.
“Sure,” I said. “What’s playing?”
“Satyricon. A Fellini film.”
“I’ve never seen it.”
“You’ll love it. Fellini presents such a unique world view.”
“Sounds great. Should I pick you up?”
“What for?” She laughed. “I live ten blocks from the theater. I can walk. I’ll meet you there.”
“What time?”
“Let’s say eleven. I don’t know what kind of line there’s going to be.”
“Afterwards maybe we could grab a drink?”
“Maybe,” she said, and smiled.
A few minutes later I excused myself and left. On the walk back to my car I picked up a copy of the Village Voice. I figured I might be able to rake enough horseshit out of it by Saturday to get laid.
Friday night some of the guys on the block had a fire going in the trash can in front of the fruit store. They huddled in the doorway, or moved from one double-parked car to another, socializing. I lifted a bottle of Wild Turkey from my old man’s stock and joined them. I didn’t stay too long. Winter was setting in.