We had been listening to the Yardbirds, Bobby singing along as he straightened up the place. Who knows, maybe a close brush with death turned him into a neat freak. It certainly hadn’t improved his voice. He may have gotten past nearly getting crushed beneath the wheels of a Caddy, but I hadn’t. Never mind my aching shoulder; I kept replaying it in my head: the rumble of the engine, the pale headlights emerging from the white veil of snow, the car bearing down on us, the slight swerve. There was something else I couldn’t ignore — Mindy’s ominous warning.
I brought up her name, but if I thought the mere mention of it was going to get a rise out of Bobby, I was bound for disappointment. He barely reacted, continuing to sing. There was no reason he should have reacted. He and Mindy were old pals — more than that, apparently — but given her warning to stay away from Bobby and his nearly getting turned into roadkill, I figured to see if anything had changed on his side of the equation.
“What’s going on with you and Mindy, anyways?” he asked as Jeff Beck took a short solo.
“I don’t know. She was kinda weird last night.”
He cupped his hand around his ear. “Huh?”
“Turn the goddamned music down, Bobby. You’re the one who asked me the question.”
He twisted the volume knob on the steel-faced Marantz amplifier, its single dial glowing in the gloomy basement. “Sorry, Moe. What were you saying?”
“I said she was kinda weird last night. Before I went to bail you out — ”
“Shit! I owe you five hundred bucks,” he said, getting back to sweeping. “I totally forgot. I’ll get it to you soon, okay?”
“Fine.”
“So what were you saying?”
“I was about to say that before I went to bail your ass out of the Tombs, Mindy and I had this really sweet phone conversation. You know Mindy, she doesn’t do sweet and romantic. We were all set for a little action and then to go out to dinner, but when I showed up here, she was crazed.”
That seemed to finally get Bobby’s attention. His smiling lips went straight as a ruler. He stopped fussing with the broom and went to the fridge. “You want a beer to take the edge off the pain? I want a beer.”
“Nah,” I said, “Suffering is my duty as a Jew.”
He opened his first Schaefer and took a big swallow. “Suffering’s nobody’s duty, man. Mindy was crazed. How do you mean crazed?”
“I found her outside smoking cigarettes and drinking Four Roses. When we got inside she practically raped me.”
“And you’re complaining? Half the guys at BC would give their right nut to — ”
“No, Bobby. It wasn’t like that. Something definitely happened between the time I spoke to her on the phone and when I showed up here. I’ve seen her in bad moods. I’ve seen her sad, but I’ve never seen her like this. She was like a different person.”
Bobby got started on his second beer. He seemed unwilling to take a stab at explaining Mindy’s behavior, so I pushed a little harder.
“Then, when we were done screwing, she started crying.”
“I heard you have that effect on women, Prager.” Bobby’s smile returned as he finished off his beer. He went for another. “Mindy’s a lot of things, but she’s not a crier. She must’ve been putting you on. Or maybe Mindy thinks it’s her duty to suffer too. I mean, no offense, but she is dating you.”
Bobby was uncanny in his ability to dodge trouble, but I couldn’t let him off the hook that easily. Instead of giving him a little push, I gave him a full-on shove, much harder than the one I’d used to save his ass.
“After she stopped crying, she told me about the two of you.”
He moved the beer can far enough away from his lips to say, “What about the two of us?”
“Cut it out, Friedman. You know exactly what I’m talking about. That you were her first.”
Bobby dropped the charade and went for his fourth beer. “We were kids at camp, man. No big deal. It went the way those things always go. It hurt her and I lasted five seconds.”
“No big deal for you, maybe, but it was for her. It always is for girls. You know that. It may be 1967 and the whole world might be going crazy, Bobby, but you know it matters. You have any idea why she would want to tell me that? Why she would tell me about you guys at that moment?”
“Who can understand girls? When you find someone who does, let me know. Besides, she’s your girlfriend. Maybe you pissed her off or something.”
“Or something,” I said. “Do you have any idea what could’ve happened between the time I talked to her and she showed up here?”
“How the fuck should I know?” he barked back. It was the first time he’d ever yelled at me. Was it the beers? Maybe. He’d had four of them in record time, but I didn’t think so. His voice steadied and his smile returned. “As you may recall, dear comrade, I was a guest in the deep cold womb of the fascist state at the time. I have many talents, but knowing what Mindy Weinstock is up to while I’m behind bars isn’t one of them.”
His words were reasonable, but rang in my ears like a cracked bell. He was pushing back too hard when a simple no would have done the trick. I didn’t know much, but I did know when people were full of crap. Bobby was no different than anyone else in that he was sometimes prone to little lies and minor exaggerations, but at the moment the needle on my bullshit-o-meter was off the scale. I left it at that for the time being. He had another beer and chased it down with one more for good luck. A few minutes later we were in Bobby Friedman’s rough beast, slouching toward Brighton Beach.
• • •
I’d smoked a little grass and hash, dropped acid twice — twice was enough, believe me — and done speed a few times. That was the extent of my drug use. At heart I was a gym rat, and preferred playing ball to getting stoned, but the pain in my shoulder was getting worse. So when Bobby offered me something to help, I didn’t hesitate. And almost like magic, I was feeling no pain. Trouble was, I wasn’t feeling much of anything else either. Suddenly there was more slush inside my skull than on the ice-slickened Brooklyn streets. The world was an out-of-focus tapestry of red taillights and slow-motion people blurred around the edges, their featureless faces blending one into the next into the next as we rode past. This soft weave of colors and vague figures was set against a slate gray canvas that seemed to darken with each blink of my eyes.
All my senses were dulled but for smell. I was acutely aware of the beer on Bobby’s breath, of the sour stink of my own dry mouth, of the chemical pine scent from the green cardboard tree dangling on a string below the rearview mirror. I was conscious of Bobby’s mouth moving, of him talking to me, his voice like a muted horn set against the rhythm of the softly slapping wiper blades. It wasn’t unpleasant, exactly. I felt as if I was stuck at the edge of sleep, unable but not unwilling to take that last step into the well of dreams.
Time passed in a lazy gallop, and when I looked outside again, I thought I recognized the part of the world we were in. There was thunder overhead, the thunder of subway wheels. I was aware that the car was no longer moving, though the engine kept running and the wipers kept the beat. Now looking right at me, Bobby spoke, the rank smell of beer filling up my head. I could tell there was some urgency to what he was saying, if unable to make sense of the phrases themselves. I was vaguely aware of some words dripping out of my mouth too, words like cold maple syrup. Then Bobby disappeared, and so did I.
CHAPTER FIVE
Some days it just ain’t worth opening your eyes and no matter how fast you shut them again, it’s too late. So it was for me … way too late. Last night’s slush was gone. Now my head was filled with wool, my mouth with cotton. Apparently someone had shoved a harpoon through my right shoulder while I slept. Other than that, I was ready for action. Put me in, Coach. I’m your boy. Fuck that! I was nobody’s boy. I forced my eyes open again and time-traveled into the present. The air no longer smelled of beer breath or fake pine trees, but of Woolite linens and burnt coffee. The comforting clank and rumble, the ka-ching, ka-ching of subway wheels on rails, had replaced the slapping of wiper blades as the backbeat to my life. I was still in my clothes, my Chuck Taylors still on my feet. Not that I remembered how, but I’d managed to get from Bobby’s front seat into my bed. And there was something else. Unclenching my left fist, I found five one-hundred-dollar bills folded neatly in my palm — the bail money.