Then one night Joe disappeared. He came over with some wine and flowers, and they went into her room, and about an hour later he walked out. He passed me on his way to the door. He didn’t say anything, but he smiled. The rims of his eyes were wet, and I knew something was wrong, but before I could ask, he was gone.
Months passed. He never said anything to Suzanne, never called or sent a letter. Suzanne had a key to his apartment, and I went over with her. His closet was full of clothes. There was a pot on the stove, a bunch of beat-up books open on his bed. Rent came to the landlord, but Joe had vanished.
Suzanne and Robin got to be friends after that. They drank and listened to music. They tumbled to bed late at night, drunk out of their minds. Sometimes I would stare in, and Suzanne would be curled close to Robin. Their hair would be all messed together and their clothes scattered on the floor. Sometimes the covers would be half-off, and I would see the outlines of their dark bodies.
My heart would pound. I would feel so lonely and jealous and confused. And Suzanne whimpered in her sleep. I loved her. Every minute she sat drinking with Robin, I stared at her eyes and remembered kissing her under the streetlight. I wrote love letters to her, then threw them in the ocean. Sometimes I tore them up, sometimes I didn't. But I never signed them.
When I ran on the beach, I ran for her. I pounded barefoot through the water wheezing out her name until I fell into the sand exhausted. And sometimes I stared at my pathetic reflection in the mirror and said all the things I would say to her, that I knew I would never say to her.
I hated how sad she was now with Joe gone and how being around Robin was making her rough. She wore battered sweatshirts and a pair of old red sneaks instead of her dresses and high heels. She wore eyeliner thick and dark, and earrings like Robin’s, and necklaces and bracelets. She jingled and clanked like a can blowing over some sandy road.
She smoked one cigarette after another. She stared into space all the time. I figured Joe’d gone to Vietnam. It was scary, especially that January of ’68 when the Vietcong launched the Tet Offensive. They infiltrated our embassy in Saigon, and it looked like we weren’t winning after all. The North Vietnamese army captured a city called Hue, and brave marines in uniforms like my brother’s died in street-to-street fighting to take it back. A couple hundred others died under siege defending the worthless dirt at a base called Khe Sanh that we eventually abandoned anyway. Westmoreland kept asking for more boys, and I cursed at the television, looking for Joe Waters and hoping not to find him in all the grim war footage on the evening news.
I pleaded with Robin to do something, but she wouldn’t talk about the factory or Joe or the war. Nigel marched all over with his ridiculous army of radical goons, constantly fighting the cops, getting arrested and squirted with hoses and tear gas.
Robin would bail him out of jail. He’d stop by the apartment stinking of tear gas and sweat and say, “Thanks, love,” and beg her to join the cause. But she would shake her head, and send him off again. She didn’t seem to want to do anything, except drink and work. She took the hotel seriously. She put a lot of time into her places on Deadwhale’s pathetic strip of bars and nightclubs, mainly the doughnut shop and the bar Margaret Ditzlow left her.
Hot ’n Crispy Doughnuts stood between the Club Flamingo, where bleached blondes with tassels glued to their nipples – or so I was told – danced to Motown and hits from the Fifties, and Robin’s bar, where drugged-up rock bands tore down the walls with over-amped Stones and Doors and lots of Creedence.
Robin renamed her bar The Dead Whale and hung a sign over the door in purple neon that said, The World Famous Dead Whale. I laughed every time I saw it. It was a dangerous part of town, but the brawls and stabbings and busts, all the things Mayor Waters promised to clean up, usually happened on hot summer nights, and it was only March when Robin made me the manager of Hot ’n Crispy and raised my salary to a hundred bucks a week.
So now I was rich, but it was hard work. Sometimes I worked from midnight to seven and still made school the next morning. I studied at work and kept my grades highest in school. But I was awfully tired. Sometimes I slept in class. After school I ran the beach, took a nap, and got back to work.
My customers, when there were any, were mostly night workers, homeless old men, perverts from the club, and drunks from the world famous Dead Whale. Sometimes Nigel stopped by, smelling of smoke and tear gas, with crumbled maps of who knows where that he would smooth out on the table, and all kinds of strange women with tattoos and sizzled eyes.
My only regular was a mental case named Irv, who always wore a baseball glove on his left hand and a head full of dead leaves he'd rake out now and then with a chewed-up old comb with teeth worn down to nubs. His tongue was gigantic and gray and usually drooped about two inches above the counter. He wore a sports coat with no elbows and the collar chewed mostly off by I have no idea what.
All he ever said was, “Hey, Bub, what are you driving?” He would shout that with this gruff voice. I'd bend over to tie my shoe, and as soon as I came up, he'd shout, “Hey, what are you driving?”
And his tongue would hang there, like one of those chemically traumatized fish belly-up and half-eaten in the driftwood and random crud that washed in and out on our hissing yellow tides with the dead jellyfish, seaweed, cigarette wrappers, and spent condoms.
“A hard bargain,” I'd say, and he'd say. “I used to drive a hard bargain myself.”
He would sip his coffee, look up, and say, “Still driving that hard bargain?”
I considered him annoying and bad for business, but Robin wouldn’t let me kick him out. She said he gave the place character. Sometimes she sat with him, gave him doughnuts and coffee and attention, and the place brimmed with character.
Charlie visited in early April, just a few days after President Johnson decided not to run for reelection and threw the Democratic race wide open. It was great. It was Johnson's war mostly. There was no way he could end it. But McCarthy could. Or surely Kennedy, and I got my hopes up that it would end soon, and Joe would come home.
I hadn’t seen much of Charlie lately. He was missing school. We were both seniors because I’d started first grade a year late, but we didn’t have any of the same classes. He hung out with some guys down on the wharf, a bunch of dropouts mostly. Mostly from Fishtown and Little Brooklyn. They used to beat each other up, but after a few games of tackle on the beach, they developed some sort of mutual respect and merged into one big gang of dopey Deadwhale tough guys. Charlie drank with them every night.
I didn’t see him until Irv shouted the usual. “Hey, bub, what are you driving?”
Charlie took a long look at Irv’s baseball glove, his tongue, and his jacket, and let out a big laugh. “Well,” he said. “I don’t have my license. But I’m thinking someday of getting a blimp, you know, or like some big airship filled with gas.”
“Used to drive a big airship filled with gas myself,” Irv said.
“That’s great,” Charlie said. “And by the way, nice glove, man.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Hey, Itch. Want to smoke some illegal shit?”
“You’re kidding?” I’d started smoking a bit on and off with Suzanne and Robin, but figured no way would Charlie, being a football star and all that.
“Hey, I like it,” Charlie said. “I thought it was hippie shit, but I’ve seen the light, man. Hippies got some good ideas here and there.”
“I’m going to quit,” I said.
“You should,” Charlie said. “Preserve that precious brain.”
“You better ask the clientele,” I said. “And put it out if anybody comes in, especially Robin. See that door back there?” I pointed to a side door that was all splintered and gray. “It connects to her bar. If that door moves, stub it out.”
“She’s got you scared, huh?”
“She just won’t like it.”
“So how’s it going anyway? You humping her?”
"Am I what?"
"You know, man, humping her." He gave me a big dumb smile and raised his eyebrows.
“No, I’m not humping her, if we got to put it in such crude terms. She’s about thirteen years older than me.”
“So what, man? The older the better is what I always say."
"Really? I don't think I ever heard you say that."
"Sure, man, if I was in your shoes, you know what I'd be doing?”
“Yeah. You'd be saying stupid shit in shoes about three sizes too small.”
"Exactly." Charlie looked at Irv. “Hey, Babe Ruth, mind if I smoke some grass?”
“I’m driving a Packard now,” Irv said.
“No shit? Wow. Mind if I get high?”
“Used to get high myself,” Irv said.
Charlie looked at me. "Guy’s got some screws loose.”
"I know. Nails, too. And washers. Probably from smoking too much of that.”
“So I’m looking at my future?”
“Could be. I’ve got an old glove you can borrow.”
Charlie laughed. He sat in a revolving chair that was red, with the yellow stuffing popping out through the vinyl. He lit a really badly rolled joint and took a long drag. After he stopped coughing his brains out, he said, “Hey, Itchy, what are you driving?”
He laughed out a bunch of smoke and spit. His eyes were pink, and I smelled beer. I pushed him an ashtray and a cup of coffee. His hair'd grown in and gotten sloppy. He looked kind of beat and a little skinny, but he still looked powerful. He kept sniffling and rubbing his eyes. His clothes were wrinkled. His fingers were dirty, with all the nails chewed down.
The back of his left arm was scarred from his elbow to his wrist, this mound of gray and purple flesh. The scabs had gone away, but I still couldn’t get used to it. He’d done it with his penknife, holding the knife over a fire then carving and burning the letters into his skin. The scar said PATRICK.
I didn’t smoke with him. I liked it enough, but the race was coming in July. I was shaving a second off my time every week, and I’d come within twenty seconds of Donaghy’s record.
“You practicing for the race?” I asked.
Charlie blew out more smoke and spit. “Of course, man. Is it not a challenge? And do you not know that Charlie meets any challenge? I am going to kick Donaghy’s ass. How about you?”
“A little.”
“Shit, Itchy, you should practice every night. You got little stick legs, like them birds that’s always running in and out with the foam on the beach, you know those stupid little birds, like they're always late for work and missing the bus and shit. But you’re fast, man, like Patrick. Not as fast as me maybe, but fast enough. Wouldn’t it be cool if we both beat him?”
“He’s really fast. And he knows what he’s doing.”
“I know what I’m doing, too. I’ll just get out front and hold on. Pure will power, man. That Ivy League mother fucker ain't seeing nothing but my ass."
"So you’re running naked?"
"I just might, Itchy, I just might."
"Yeah, well, I won't be looking at your ass, that’s for sure."
That got a big laugh out of him. I was laughing, too, but then he ruined everything with a question.
"Hey, Suzanne ever say anything about me?”
I got this weird tight feeling in my throat and kind of had to squeeze out my answer. “No. Why should she?”
“Because, you know, I go see her a lot.”
It got a light tighter then, the feeling in my throat, like a couple fingers squeezing in. “What?”
“I heard she broke up with Donaghy, right?”
“Yeah, she says, but she still comes over with bruises and all, and I don’t think she’s falling down the stairs every day.”
“Yeah, I started stopping in at that frame shop. She shows me pictures by all these dead artist guys, you know, guys who paint with brushes, Vincent of Rembrandt, guys like that, and I was wondering if she ever mentioned me.”
“It's Van Gogh, Charlie, Vincent Van Gogh, and no, she didn’t happen to ever once mention you. Maybe it’s not a real big event in her life when you stop by.”
“I do that to her, too,” he said. “Mix up the names on purpose. Like I’ll say Pablo Pistachio, and really funny stuff like that. She doesn't laugh sufficiently, but I do, and then when I laugh, that makes her laugh, and then she might say something quiet and nice, like "you're such an idiot." And that makes me happy.
"And I don’t know, maybe it’s only a tiny event in her life, but she always seems glad when I come in, or at least, you know, less like she wants to feed herself to sharks. She touches me and all when she shows me things.”
“Where?”
“Where what?”
“Where does she touch you?”
“In the frame shop, man.”
“I mean, where on your body?”
“You know, my hands, my shoulders and stuff.”
“She does that to everybody.”
“Yeah, well I didn’t say she was grabbing my dick, Itchy. Shit, man, calm the fuck down.”
He sucked the joint. He coughed. He stole a look at me, and I bit down on my bottom lip.
Eventually he stubbed the joint in an ashtray and dropped the end in his shirt pocket so he could enjoy it later between a couple matches.
“Sometimes I think she’s crazy,” he said. “Like she’s convinced there’s some guy with fireballs for eyes, or something, who sits on top of the Ferris Wheel. I’m not sure if she’s playing with me, or if she actually believes it, or what.”
“I’m pretty sure she believes it.”
“Yeah. Well, look, man, you think she’d go out with me if I asked?”
I'm pretty sure my bottom lip started bleeding at that point. I picked up a really dirty old rag and started cleaning the counter. I kind of wanted to shove it down his throat.
“I don’t know, Charlie. You mean like on a date?"
"No, I mean like on a spaceship. Yeah, a date. A movie or something."
"She’s older than you.”
“I’ll be eighteen in November.”
“Yeah, well, she’s older. She’s mature for her age, and she’d been through a lot of shit.”
“Exactly how is she mature? She thinks there’s a man on top of the Ferris Wheel. She thinks she was Cleopatra in a past life.”
“Look, is that why you came here, to bug me about her?”
“Actually, I was hoping I could have a doughnut. You know how when you get high it makes you want to eat doughnuts till your eyes pop out?”
"Nothing makes me want a doughnut. I see them in my sleep. What kind you want? I got some with rat poison in them, want one of those?”
“Yeah, that sounds good, but how about one of them white jobs with the cream in the middle instead?”
“How many?”
“Can I have all of them?”
“There’s fourteen.”
“I’ll take them.”
“I said, ‘fourteen.’"
Charlie did some math with his fingers. Then he smiled and said, “Five minutes.”
“Five minutes, what?”
“One buck says I can eat all fourteen in five minutes.”
“How about four?”
"Four bucks?"
"Four minutes."
“You’re on.”
I laid fourteen cream doughnuts in front of Charlie. I’d done some math, too. I figured he would have to eat one every seventeen seconds to make it. I pointed to the clock behind us. When the secondhand came around, I said, “Go.”
Charlie jumped at the doughnuts. At first I laughed, but then I just sort of stared on in astonishment. Charlie stuffed a whole doughnut in his mouth and swallowed it, like some kind of big snake swallowing a pig whole.
“You’re going to kill yourself,” I said. I got out my wallet and made room for his money, and three minutes and forty nine seconds later, I fished out a dollar, and tossed it across the counter.
Charlie tromped around the place with his arms raised and powder all over his face, shouting way too loud. “Charlie meets any challenge. No giant pile of doughnuts. No race on the sand. No laws of man or nature are too big for him. The great Charlie will meet any challenge.”
He slurped down his coffee. I gave him a refill. He stuffed my dollar in his pocket and gave me a big creamy smile with sugar on his nose and in his hair.
“You should see your face,” he said. “What's that big word I know? Stricken. You look stricken, man.”
“Please throw up.”
“Throw up? I feel great. I can do anything. I am fucking immortal. Did you know I quit school today?”
“What?”
“Yeah I quit. No more fucking Julius Caesar. I mean who cares if somebody stabbed some Greek guy in the back two million years ago?”
"He was Roman."
"What's the difference, man?"
"Well, they had different Gods, for one thing?"
"What?"
“Come on, man, you only got two months.”
“I don’t care. I talked to one of Donaghy’s people, and I’m getting a job down at the factory.”
“But you’re not eighteen.”
“It don’t matter. They said since our old man’s been there so long, they could make an exception, as long as our beloved father signs a paper.”
“He won’t”
“He already did.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“He did, Itchy. I told him I quit and there’s nothing he can do. I told him I’m going to Nam, and there’s nothing he can do about that, either. Then he got...well, you know how he gets, wheezing like his car when it won’t start, and the hair standing on his neck. He just said, 'Charlie' real soft a couple times, then he bent down and signed.”
Charlie burped. His eyes were red, and he wrapped his huge hands around a sugar shaker.
“Know what, Itch? He walked out of the room real fast then, and I think he was...I think he might’ve been crying or something. Yeah. Maybe. Kinda made me feel...I don't know. Something I didn't like.”
Charlie poured some sugar into his hand, then licked it off. I checked the coke syrup and all the other sodas, making sure they were all filled to the brim. When I started talking again, it was only with half a heart.
“They’ll give you some shit job.”
“Oh, man, it’s just for a while.”
“And then what?”
“Then the war.”
I looked at the stains around the brim of his cup and the powdered sugar all over the counter. I squeezed my dirty rag and looked around for something to clean.
“When do you start?”
“Next week.”
“A lot of guys are dying over there,” I said. "Don’t you watch the news? It's not like some movie."
“That’s what a war is, man, a lot of guys dying.”
“So you have to be one of them? First Patrick, and now I have to watch the television every fucking night and worry about…”
Before I could finish whatever hopeless thing I was trying to say, the door between the doughnut shop and the bar banged open, like somebody kicked it from the other side. Robin stood in the dim light of her doughnut shop with a beer in her hand and some make-up smeared around her eyes. Behind her, the bar was dark and silent.
“Itchy, shut out the lights,” she said.
“What?”
“The lights. Somebody shot Martin Luther King."
"The black guy?" Charlie asked.
She looked at him. "Yeah, Charlie. The black guy. There’s smoke out by the slums and I think it’s coming this way.”
Charlie looked over at Irv. "Better rev up that Packard, bub."