Jacket Weather, page 14
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“D’jear Willie’s sick?”
“Yeah, I haven’t seen him here.”
“Yeah, I think it flared up again, the c-ncer. I don’t think we’ll see him back here.”
“Where’s he at?”
“Jacobi, in the Bronx. A few of us are going up to see him this week.”
“Let me know.”
•
Warm November morning. A puddle reflecting sky and a yellow honey locust, a maintenance man hosing down the sidewalk. Yellow leaflets plastered here and there. Without the cold, when you don’t have to fight your environment, you can expand and breathe. Someday there’ll be no more of these mild mornings that take you back fifty years: the strong breeze, wet sidewalks. This is what you lose.
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“Is she a good dancer?”
“Whadaya mean is she a good dancer?”
“Well . . . How does she dance?”
While Jeff’s in town from Stinson Beach, we go to see the Waldos at Bowery Electric, Walter Lure’s band. The place is packed—it’s backed up to the door, but Jeff and I follow Jane and June as they cut through the crowd, a couple of old pros, to the edge of the stage. Back in the nineties, June was with Walter’s younger brother, Richie, so she’s a friend of the family. Walter sees them and dedicates a song to them, “Love That Kills,” June’s favorite. A ripple goes through her coat—this is where she lives, this New York roar that gives no ground and acknowledges nothing outside itself. Basically they’re a more shambolic Heartbreakers. But Walter had a hand in those songs, so they sound about the same. And the sight of him with his bowler hat, tiger jacket, tie askew, and fuck-it attitude cheers you up—it’s like seeing Bugs Bunny. They sound great—you want to throw all your cards in the air. “Well you can CRY CRY CRY if you WANT TO”—she and Jane are singing along, doing their dance, perfect for crowded clubs and other tight spaces. I call it the Canarsie. Raise one hand above the crowd, pointing at the music on the beat, then waving it side to side, while thinking of something else, maybe a bag you saw earlier . . .
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We’re driving home on the Belt Parkway at night, flying past the Verrazzano. I’m at the wheel, Jane’s asleep in front.
In back, Jeff says “Nice, getting out here.” By way of thanking us for taking him out in the car.
June’s back there too. “See something different,” she agrees.
Just three words, but in them I hear my Italian aunts—women with a direct connection to life and death—and I spiral through the dark considering her Brooklyn-bred empathy, her fundamental understanding of what a person needs, and the simplicity of her expectations, with the shadows coming at me out of the road.
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The radiators clank, and hiss, and bang, and hiss.
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After three days of media hysteria over the coming blizzard, after they pronounced it historic in advance and called it the blizzard of the century, after all the canceled flights and closed airports and chains on the bus tires, after the supermarkets sold out of bread including the honey-nut whole-grain English muffins and toaster-ready corn cakes and Portuguese festival spelt loaf, and after the bodegas sold out of bottled water including every last bottle with a label printed in Cyrillic, you know what happened? It snowed. Yes, on Saturday night it snowed, and Sunday we walked up Fifth Avenue through the slush moats at every curb, and I wound up in a boyfriend chair at Lord & Taylor.
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White-topped water towers on a white sky. The snow is whiter by the minute, in contrast to the sky. There’s no such thing as time, and the world is yours. Snow white on grey sky.
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I missed her before dawn with the radiators coming on.
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I’m so happy I’ll turn to steam. Evanesce.
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Early morning still dark I’m in the kitchen trying not to make any noise. In the other room, her first words are “Michael Michael Michael.”
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To Tere: “Six months, we’re doing great. All I want to do is follow her from room to room. We’re thinking of having an operation to turn ourselves into Siamese twins, sharing one of the minor organs. Or getting a pair of four-legged pants.”
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green Brussels-sprout leaves in a white sink
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Lou calls, he’s got a gift card for a juice place called Liquiteria. It came to him by way of the shadow economy of favors, barter, and regifting in which he participates. In this case, his buddy did some work for the owner of the place and the owner couldn’t pay so he gave the guy four $50 gift cards and the guy gave one to Lou in payment or trade or tribute. So Lou wants to take me there for a juice.
We’re walking over, he tells me he found another wallet. Lou’s in bed by 7:30, so he’s up before the birds. Two thirty, 3:00 he’s walking the streets. Who knows why? But he finds wallets. Not just once or twice: he’s a finder of lost wallets. He found one a few weeks ago with $230 and spent a whole day tracking a woman to the Lower East Side, waiting outside till someone let him into the building, leaving a note in her door, going back out to meet her in front of Best Buy on Union Square to give it back. Now another one. No money, just a card case with a driver’s license and credit cards, ATM. This guy’s on 15th Street.
Lou called him and said “I’ll meet you at Fifteenth and Seventh, the southwest corner, at quarter to twelve. How will I know you?”
Guy said “I’ll be wearing a pair of red jogging pants.”
To me, Lou says “I figure he’s gonna be anxious to get this, he’ll be early, maybe twenty to twelve. So I leave the house eleven thirty, it’s a five-minute walk because I stop at the deli, I get there eleven thirty-five. He’s not there, I go into Sabon, the soap store—”
“Sabon? What for?”
“To get warm. It’s cold out here! Plus you use the scrub and the hand cream.”
“Okay.”
“So eleven forty, he’s not there. I see Jim across the street, I go across to talk to him. You remember I introduced you? Hangs around the Donut Pub.”
“I remember.”
“So I’m talking to him, now it’s quarter to twelve, the guy’s still not there. What a banana! Here I got his American Express, his driver’s license, all his other cards. Can you believe this guy? Twelve o’clock he shows up—I can see him coming. So I let him wait, I finished talking to Jim and then I went over. The worst thing is dealing with people.”
•
We’ve lost the Chrysler Building. One day there’s a crane. A year later there’s a black tower, all glass, like a strip of black redaction tape in the sky. Part of the proliferation of redactions that are canceling out the skyline of old water-tower New York. Not to mention Hudson Yards, which is like a Death Star landed on the west side. Jane says “Pretty soon it’s gonna look like Dubai.”
Not long ago we were driving back to the city and for the first time, I didn’t recognize the skyline.
•
I sat in this room as it got dark. I didn’t pick up a book or a magazine. Didn’t get dinner started. Just sat on the couch, looking out the window. The sun had got below the cloud ceiling and chosen the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings and a band of apartment buildings, which stood in a dark blue sky transmitting now a burning auspicious gold, now vermilion. At 5:00 the lights at the top of the Chrysler Building started in quick increments like the opening of a fan, and soon the others, only just now red, had given up the ghost, gone dull, and left me with the feeling of a drug wearing off, returning me to my senses and time’s flow, and it was just another night.
•
I zoned out, and was just about to reenter my life through a pinpoint portal, but I didn’t know where I was coming into it. I mean—at what point? During what era? What skirmish or engagement? What was I coming back to? And where?
I was so relieved it was here with you!
•
Cathode-grey sky. The dead brown leaves went red with the taillights of a parking car.
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She came down the subway stairs with her customary caution, and then she was laughing on the platform. Always gets me, that laugh. On the platform, I was watching the something-else in her silvergreen eyes—something not personal—a joy that was beyond her—and she was so alive I felt I was seeing her in the moment of her death. And I ached that this was her portion. That she should ever die. Not that I should lose her but that life should lose her. I mean I understand that rules are rules, I get it, I get it, but everyone has to die?—no exceptions?
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Ahead of me on the sidewalk there’s a guy with a shock of orange hair and a long black coat—an Egon Schiele figure come to life—pulling an aluminum walker—contorted—dragging it—lunging one step at a time—heroic!—along 14th Street in the morning rush.
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L MANHATTAN 4 MIN.
L MANHATTAN 8 MIN.
A rainy night, on my way to her. It’s always exciting, it’s never enough, and it’ll never end.
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Lou and Philly are sitting in the lounge area with the whole day ahead of them.
Philly’s saying “They didn’t have a table for me in front, so they sat me in the TV room. But I made them turn off the TV. I told them ‘I can’t eat with a TV on.’”
“What place you talking about?” I ask him.
“Capucine’s,” he says. “It’s an Italian restaurant for Irish people.”
“I walked past a place on MacDougal Street last night,” I tell him. “Little place three steps down. Said it’s there since 1918.”
“Monte’s,” they say in unison.
Philly says “They threw me out of there one night for wearing a hat. It used to be there were restaurants you couldn’t wear a hat.”
“There used to be a guy there,” Lou says, leaning forward and lowering his voice, “Jewish guy, so tall he had to bend over to go in the kitchen. Herb. Nice guy.”
“I remember,” Philly says.
“He was there thirty years. You know how he got there?”
“How?”
“They needed a guy one night, they were short one guy. So they called up the agency, Martini, used to send guys to all the restaurants downtown. Waiters, short-order cooks. There was a guy looked like Spencer Tracy, he was a salad man. That’s all he did, salads. He was an artist. He’d put designs on them, everything. They used to ask for him special, ‘Send that guy.’ They always wanted him to stay, but he didn’t want a steady job.”
“’Cause he drank, or whatever.”
“Right, right. He lived in an SRO, ten dollars a night, on Broadway in the twenties, there used to be a lot of ’em. Anyway, this Herb—this is going back in the seventies now. They said ‘Send over a guy for one night.’ So they sent Herb. He was there for the next thirty years.”
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B&J FABRICSB&J FABRICS
BEAUTIFUL FABRICS SINCE 1940
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC 2ND FLOOR
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Our pal Clinton was in from London, we were talking on the couch. He brought up the subject of a man in England who was in the news because he turned 108 years old and got a letter from the queen. He’s been getting them every year since he turned a hundred and he says they’re piling up, these letters—enough’s enough.
So we’re laughing about that when June speaks up to say she once saw an item in the paper about a man in Florida who was about to have his hundredth birthday—they were encouraging people to write to him because he didn’t have anyone left—and she sent him a card!
While I’m cracking up with this, Clinton says to June “See? You do something nice and that is what you get!” and she shrinks back down in her chair with an uncertain smile like she can’t tell if she’s being with or laughed at.
She says “I wanted him to get a birthday card from New York City.”
“When was this?” I ask her.
“Long time ago,” she says.
“Like when?” Figuring this is forever, right? Because we’re together ten years at this point, and she never mentioned it.
“At least a year ago, maybe two years.”
“A year! You mean this happened recently? You didn’t tell me about this!”
Now she’s up and pretending to check her phone.
I said “So you went out and bought a card and addressed it to this man in Florida?”
She still thinks we’re laughing at her, but I’m laughing because she’s too good to be true.
“What’d you say, in the card? What’d you tell him?”
“I told him ‘Way to go!’”
•
brown curls of onion skin in a white sink
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“What time is it?”
She opened her eyes and checked. “Twenty-one twenty-eight.”
“Almost nine thirty. Pretty soon we’ll be going to bed at eight o’clock. Like the old Italians. Like Lou.”
“What’s wrong with that?” she said, eyes closed.
“It’s okay for you because you’re a woman.”
“Don’t lump me in with all other women,” she said, turning over.
“I’ve never met a woman who didn’t like to sleep.”
“What do you like?” she said into the pillow.
“I like to be awake.”
She said nothing.
“I regard sleep as a surrender,” I said.
“Quiet now,” she said.
•
Meanwhile, behind Jefferson Library, a car backing up threw red light on the iron palings, and the shadow of a bicycle was ridden across them, projected by headlights from West 10th.
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In gym news, Skeezix, the world’s foremost authority, has affected a beard and a pair of thick-framed glasses, which he whips off when making a point, like a news anchor, or when going off script, dilating on a topic, like a lecturer. I’m told he interrupted a recent tai chi class, his first, to give the teacher the benefit of his knowledge. Everyone gives him a wide berth. He’s the only one on the kibitz bikes now. So he has to shout from his bike to a woman across the room to relay his impressions of a New Yorker piece. Glasses in hand. Through Zeppelin I can hear him.
“Congenital educator,” I tell Lou on my way out.
“Ugh. He’s got logorrhea, this guy. He’s got the malad’. The only way he stops talking is when—” Lou puts a gun finger to his head and clicks his thumb.
•
Full moon, 4:30 a.m., 39 degrees, steam coming on. I’m over here and you’re over there.
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“You can never die. That’s the one thing. You can. Never. Die. Do you hear me? Michael. You can’t get hit by any cars or buses or taxis. You have to hold on to the rail so you don’t fall overboard. You have to wear a seat belt at all times. You have to keep your hands inside the vehicle while it’s moving, so you can’t get swept away.”
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From the inbound B on the Manhattan Bridge, the outbound train is a blur through which I can see, in pinpoints of light, the outline of the Brooklyn Bridge.
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Willie’s back, for now. I see him from behind, skeletal, shorn, limping up the aisle with a cane and some sort of torso brace that looks like an exoskeleton.
“Willie! Welcome back!”
He turns. “My man.”
“Good to see you.”
“I know.”
“Everybody’s been asking about you. It must feel good to be back here.”
“Shit yeah, baby.”
•
Still dark out. She rolls over with her eyes closed and says “You’re my bunny.”
“Yeah.”
“. . .”
“. . .”
“We’re not waking up yet,” she says. “Go back to sleep, Michael.”
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Four a.m. I can see red exit signs on three dark floors of a building a block east and two blocks north.
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Get up to piss, I’m wobbly on my knees. Sharp pain from running yesterday. The bathroom’s black, but there’s another dimension in the mirror. A red pinpoint from the bedroom or somewhere out there in the city. I find the seat to lift it. I used to see better in the dark. Even a few years ago. I hate the idea that one day I might have to know the world by habit. I go back to bed dreading that we won’t be able to look after each other. She’s curled up, turned away from me in a short white flounce of nightgown, fearless. The alarm wakes me at five.
•
Two fifteen in the morning I was awake. Warily, she reached across and laid a finger on my right eye.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m trying to see if you’re awake.”
“Next time just ask.”
“Why are you awake?”
“I dunno, why are you awake?”
“What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re worried about something.”
“No.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not worried, I promise.”
“Tell me.”
“Actually, I was just thinking about all these old Italian places I’ve been to in the boroughs.”
“How many did you come up with?”
“Oh, I dunno. I wasn’t counting.”
“Do you want to list them?” she says, turning over and pushing onto my chest.
“No, that’s okay.”
“Go ’head, honey,” she said, settling in. “What are they?”
“Well, Dominick’s, of course, and Roberto’s, in the Bronx. On Arthur Avenue. And another place up there, F and J Pine. In Brooklyn, there’s Bamonte’s and the Frost Restaurant, in Williamsburg. Queen, on Court Street, and Sam’s, farther out on Court. Ferdinando’s, in Red Hook. Monte’s, in Gowanus; Two Toms, in Park Slope, where I was the only one there who didn’t feel free to go into the kitchen, open the fridge, go behind the counter and make a call. Michael’s, in Midwood. There’s Randazzo’s, in Sheepshead Bay . . .”
