“What’s with this we bullshit? The only time I’d go into business with you is if I had to choose between that and crucifixion. Even then I’d have to think about it.”
“Keep it up, Moe, and you’ll end up broke like Dad. I’m not gonna be his age with a wife and a family and begging for crumbs. It’s not gonna happen to me, and I won’t let it happen to you, shithead. Even Miriam has more of a sense of purpose than you. How does it feel to have a little sister who’s more ambitious than you? Get ready in ten minutes and I’ll drop you off at BC on my way into work. There’s coffee on the stove.”
• • •
I cut my poli sci class partially because my professor was as stimulating as chewed gum and old enough to discuss the Civil War from memory. Bobby once asked him if Lincoln had been enjoying the play. The class laughed; the professor didn’t. I guess that was the other reason I cut poli sci: it was the one class Bobby and I shared. I had no intention of keeping my promise to Mindy, not if my friend was in trouble. On the other hand, I wasn’t going to rush headlong into a situation I knew nothing about. Totally avoiding Bobby was practically an impossibility, anyway. Not only did we have a class together, we were in Burgundy House and, more importantly, he owed me the bail money I’d laid out for him. Five hundred bucks was nearly all the money I had, and I couldn’t afford to float that much money for too long.
I decided to go over to Burgundy House and clean up a little. Part of me was embarrassed by the state of the apartment. If the other guys were willing to let their girlfriends navigate a filthy minefield of beer bottles, chip bags, and soda cans just to go to the bathroom, that was their choice. Mindy deserved more than that from me. Of course she would have found my concerns utterly bourgeois. Still, my parents had raised me a certain way and I didn’t see anything wrong with respecting some basic social graces. So I pulled up the collar of my ratty pea coat and turned left off the quad and onto Bedford Avenue.
The snow, which had been falling in lazy flurries for most of the morning, was now bombarding the streets of Midwood. I couldn’t see twenty feet ahead of me, the wind whipping the snow into little whirling white cyclones. My face was so cold that the flakes felt like pinpricks on my cheeks. I quickened my pace to a steady trot until I got to East 25th. By then, the big gulps of icy air I’d been sucking in were burning my lungs. More than a few times on my way over, I thought about heading down to Ocean Avenue to catch the bus toward home. Would’ve been the smart thing to do, but even I knew that doing the smart thing wasn’t always the right thing, that smart and right were often at odds with each other.
When I came around the corner and saw Bobby’s Olds 88 parked across the street, I stopped dead in my tracks. Apparently, I wasn’t the only student skipping Myths of Post-Civil War Reconstruction. I’d cut class in part to avoid Bobby Friedman and now here he was; at least his car was. For some odd reason my heart was thumping itself out of my chest and, in spite of the cold, I could feel trickles of sweat rolling down my left side. My half-frozen feet didn’t seem to want to budge. I’d known Bobby my whole life, I thought, and what, suddenly I’m afraid to see him? How ridiculous.
I was on the opposite side of the street, no more than thirty or forty feet away, when Bobby came trudging up the driveway toward his car. His long brown hair was blowing every which way. He didn’t see me because his face was pointed down against the weather. I slipped and struggled to keep my feet. When I steadied myself and looked up again, Bobby was just passing in front of his car. Something wasn’t right. I couldn’t say what it was for sure. I just knew it. Maybe it was the rumbling of an engine coming to life beneath the howling wind, or maybe it was the flash of lights I caught out of the corner of my eye. Whatever it was, it sent me running as fast as my legs would carry me. I tossed my books aside as I went.
“Bobby!” I screamed. “Bobby, look out!”
That was exactly the wrong thing to do, because he froze in his tracks. When I was within ten feet of him, I could see the headlights emerging through the swirling sheets of snow. Maybe it was all in my head, but the car seemed to slow down ever so slightly and swerve a hair to my right. They say that in battle the world slows down. Maybe that was it, for in that brief second the world slowed down. No matter. I took one last stride and jumped, arms forward. My palms hit Bobby squarely in the chest and sent him sprawling backwards out of the path of the oncoming car. I wasn’t that lucky. The car clipped my right ankle and spun me, slamming my shoulder into the front bumper of Bobby’s Olds. I was down, face first in the snow, my right shoulder barking at me. Stunned at my brave stupidity, I lay there for several seconds. Then brakes squealed, tires skidded, and there was a loud crash. The moans of twisting metal cut through the heart of the bellowing storm.
Shaken, I forced myself up onto my hands and knees. Bobby was up too, and pulling me to my feet. We turned, looking down the street, but the snow was falling harder than ever and obscured our view. Without a word, we ran — he ran, I limped — to the corner. There, down Avenue I toward Ocean Avenue, was a silver ’67 Coupe de Ville. It had hopped up onto the sidewalk and smashed head-on into a big, old oak tree. The front end of the car was like a steel accordion, and steam gushed out of the radiator. The Caddy’s doors were flung wide open. Whoever had been in the car was gone now. They couldn’t have gotten very far, but the blinding snow made it impossible for us to tell how far. We carefully crossed to where the Cadillac had come to rest.
“Look at this. There’s blood on the steering wheel,” I said, rubbing the driver’s blood between my fingertips, “and on the seat. A lot of it. The windshield on the passenger’s side is all smashed in too.” Then, pointing at the spotty red trails in the snow, “People got hurt here and they’re bleeding pretty bad too.” I dipped my fingers into the snow to wipe the blood away.
“I hope the driver bleeds to death. What a dumb bastard, driving like that in this weather. What was he thinking? The schmuck nearly killed us.”
“Yeah, Bobby. It almost looked like he was aiming for you.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Moe. Why would anyone wanna hurt me?”
I shrugged my shoulders, wincing as I did it. “You tell me.”
He ignored that. “You all right?”
“I’ll live.”
“Come on, let’s get outta here before the cops show up asking questions. I’ve had my fill of the goddamn pigs. Anyway, we need to get some ice on that shoulder of yours.”
“Sounds good.”
“Moe, one more thing.”
“What?”
Smiling that smile of his, he said, “Thanks for saving my life.”
He just had to say it, didn’t he? I guess he did have to thank me and I guess I would’ve been pretty pissed off if he hadn’t, but it weighed on me. I couldn’t recall just where or when I first heard about the old Chinese proverb: Save a man’s life, and his life becomes your responsibility. Probably on Captain Kangaroo. Yeah, thinking back, I’m almost certain it was on Captain Kangaroo. I don’t suppose it would have mattered one way or the other. In a flash of headlights and metal, Bobby Friedman had gone from being my friend to being my responsibility.
CHAPTER FOUR
Driving would’ve been treacherous enough even if Bobby hadn’t consumed a six-pack of Schaefer while I iced down my shoulder and we waited for the storm to let up. My ankle was okay, and it didn’t swell up much at all. My shoulder was a different story altogether. I didn’t need to see the spreading purple bruise to know I’d been pretty badly banged up. It hurt like a bastard, throbbing as steadily as a bass drum.