“Prophet?”
No one had called me that in a while. Before I turned around, before I looked for his face in the mirror behind the bar, I knew, I felt who it was.
“Fly,” I said softly, turning, my eyes closed. Man sees the future, he used to tell everyone. Man knows what’s gonna happen.
“Yeeeeah,” Fly said, slow and soft. “You know. You still know.”
“I know,” I said, a little flatly, and squeezed his shoulder.
He winced and jumped back.
“She shot you,” I said, before I knew why.
Fly nodded and massaged his shoulder. “Yeeeeah,” he said. “Goin’ on four months now, and the fucker still ain’t healed right. But you,” he said, “what you doin’ here?” He looked at my drink curiously.
I looked down at it with disdain, a club soda with a piece of lime, and said, “No, still not drinking. Still some things I don’t ever want to see again.”
He nodded as if he understood.
“But you look in major need of a beer,” I told him. “You look like a man with words to say.”
“I been looking for you,” he said.
“You found me.”
The bartender brought him a beer.
Fly is bad news and it’s not his fault. Seeing him gave me a little tingle of apprehension of the sort that wouldn’t exist in a world of my design. But the world is not of my design and, for better or for worse, I’m coming to accept this.
Suddenly I knew that somebody was dead.
I watched Fly drink that beer down. I knew he wasn’t here to wish me a merry Christmas. It was cold out. I felt the cold come inside the bar, come inside me and make me sad and weak, make me want to shake and make me want to cry. For his sake, I told myself, for his sake I won’t. And I won’t tell him until he tells me. I struggled to fight off the knowledge of who it was. Unsuccessfully.
“Ohhhhhhhh.” It came out of me, a long, horrible sigh. “Jimmy Roses, oh why, man, why?”
When I looked over at him, Fly was crying too. “We don’t know,” he said, not raising his head, “not any of us. He never said nothing . . . just . . . he just . . . just did it,” he managed finally. “Yesterday. With that gun.”
A picture of Jimmy Roses, a coroner’s polaroid, flitted through my mind, like a leaf on an updraft, his face almost tranquil — only the ragged edges at the side of his head, the unnatural contour of his hair suggested that the back of his skull had been blown away. But it was the second image that made me cry. It was vibrant, full of beautiful fall colors and a sweet taste of laughter and triumph. Jimmy Roses was leaning against the batting cage in Queensborough Park and announcing himself into cupped hands.
“Now batting for Caughran’s, center fielder James . . . ames . . . ames . . . Rosedale . . . dale . . . dale . . . .”
I had played second base and Jimmy Roses center field. Spine of the team, we’d been: one of the best teams in the Queens Industrial League.
I anticipate impact best. And, for that reason, remember it best. I remember Zap, our catcher, built like the stump of an oak tree, an impression you’d never lose if you’d ever slid into him at home plate, a bandy-legged hobbit with thinning hair in disarray. Rising from his crouch like smoke, like an Eastern mystic, flipping the mask away like an orange peel and firing the ball toward me; Spence, our pitcher, going to his knees as Zap rose and the ball hissed over his head. Behind me, I could feel the graceful loping stride of Jimmy Roses coming in from the outfield to back me. To my left I could hear the runner, hear Fitz coming, this remorseless beer truck, doomed from the moment he left first, wheezing like a bull, hooves thundering down the base line. My left arm was already moving toward the end of the ball’s inevitable arc before I hit Fitz, before Fitz hit me. Fitz would be out. But he’d trample me anyway, his fun.
I was trapped by the perfection of the moment, by all the grace and competence that went into a play like that, unable to extricate myself from the focal point of all those inevitable impacts. Three and you’re down.
“Where?” I asked Fly.
He pensively stroked the tired grain of the bar. “Burnett’s,” he said softly. “Tomorrow.”
I put my hand on his shoulder and left it there while we both looked at the floor, silently. And then I hugged him, because suddenly I didn’t care what anyone in the bar thought or what he thought, for that matter. He didn’t move away. We stood there for what might have been a long while and tried not to breathe too much.
When we finally stepped apart, I asked, “Anything I’m supposed to do?”
Fly shook his head. “No. They just wanted me to find you, you know. Everyone did. They want you to be there.”
“Everyone’s going to be there, huh.”
He nodded. “Burnett’s,” he said. “Around six, I think.”
I touched his shoulder again, lightly this time, and he left without our saying goodbye.
It seemed to get darker in the bar once Fly left, but it was a comforting sort of darkness. Jerry, the bartender, watched me neutrally from the corner sink where he spent the day cleaning glasses whether they needed it or not — his therapy.
“Got a half a lime, Jerry?”
He threw me one in a lethargic hook shot. I caught the dry side in my palm, for which, I’m sure, we both silently took credit, and with the one good fingernail I had I peeled it and ate the sections, saliva sluicing violently around my mouth, my cheeks hot and dry in the stuffy air of the bar, bare of tears.
Big enough bad news is like being hit with a hammer. You walk around dazed for a while, bumping into things. You decide it isn’t true. But it comes back and hits you again and you know it is. It’s like being drunk: it fragments you, breaks up reality into nine different shards of a funhouse mirror. You keep trying to pick the right one and keep missing.
Jimmy Roses was dead.
I filled the evening, night, and most of the next morning with bad television and Wheat Thins, surrounding myself, on the bed, with crumbs and fruit and cheese rinds, softening my mind with old half-hour sitcoms at two in the morning, an Errol Flynn movie at three, finally going to sleep when the sun came up and they began to talk about who was at war with whom this morning and who would be at war by noon.
When I woke up it was almost four and my only hangover was a parched throat. The water tray on my radiator had cooked dry again, and it had to be eighty degrees. I miss hangovers; they make you feel so legitimately rotten. Such beautiful penance, such perfect pain.
I haven’t had coffee in a year and a half. But Remy remembers how I used to order it.
“Hey, Milk-Two-Sugars,” he boomed when I walked in. But at the sight of my suit, his voice faded to a soft, reverent “Hey,” and he clucked his tongue.
“Big OJ?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Whole-wheat toast, dry,” he said, half over his shoulder. I shook my head no. “On the house,” he said. “You should eat a little.” He filled a glass from the orange-juice dispenser on the counter and loaded a tray with toast for me.
“Hey, Milk-Two-Sugars,” he said, taking money for the orange juice. “You know . . . ah!” His attempt at consolation embarrassed him. “You know . . .”
I nodded. I drank the juice slowly and wrapped the toast in a napkin and put it in my pocket.
I crossed Broadway to John’s Park, a mall, a little oasis of cement and dirt in the middle of traffic, right near the medical center. Slivers of brown beer-bottle glass grow relentlessly there.
I sat on John’s bench, both his first and last piece of property; he didn’t look at me for a while.
“Was hungry for some medicine this morning,” he said. “Bones need it. Too cold. Too old. Too long. Yeah.” He nodded. “Yeah. Think I don’t know. Think I don’t know? Think I don’t know who you are?” He looked at me then, took in the suit.
“Get fired?” he asked, laughing until he wheezed, coughed, and spat.
I didn’t look to see if it was blood. I was terribly afraid that it was.
I shook my head no. We sat in silence for a few moments. A bus passed by, drowning us in sound, bathing us in sweet, warm diesel. I gave John the napkin-wrapped toast from my pocket.
“Hungry for some medicine today,” he said again.
“Medicine’ll kill you, John,” I said, squeezing his shoulder as I left.
“Something will,” he mumbled.
I got on one of the new subway cars, going downtown, like a flashback from another time. But the N train is still the same, clacking and rattling its way under the East River.
When I began to think about where I was going, and why, I began to think about the rules, or what they should be. The only sort of murder that should be allowed is murder by strangulation; the only suicide, slitting your wrists. They take time. You really have to want to kill someone to hold on to their throat that long, to feel life stuttering, writhing, and ebbing beneath your hands. You really have to want to die to watch your blood flow steadily into a white porcelain sink as you grow cold and light. A gun is too easy. A gun is cheating. A gun is a lie. And the lie is in the moment. You can love anyone in the flash of an orgasm, hate everyone in the shadow of a glance. You can kill yourself with the tickle of a trigger, but it’s wrong.
When I got to Burnett’s, Ghani and Akshah were standing outside, looking elegant and a little awkward. They wore blue pin-striped suits, double-breasted, accenting their foreignness. When they caught sight of me, they shrugged, bit their lips, looked down, then embraced me, both of them at once, as if we were a football team. I was glad to see them.
They had been part of a team we had played against in the Industrial League, an extended family that owned a Pakistani restaurant. When our team had first played them, I’d been unable to tell them apart. They were all small and young and wearing white. I had told Spence not to pitch low to them. I’d had a picture in my mind; they reminded me of a cricket team I’d seen once. He didn’t listen: we were doing so well that season it seemed unlikely that anyone could beat us. They were affable people, golfing ball after ball over the right-field fence. They smiled. They applauded softly. They clapped each other on the back and said, “Good show,” joining their sari-clad wives to sip spiced tea in the bleachers. They ran the bases with small steps, fast when necessary. They didn’t slide. They beat us terribly.
I don’t think Spence ever forgave them. But I’d thought it funny, maybe even something we’d needed. And there was an appealing quality to the Pakistanis, an admirable esprit, a demonstrated ability to assimilate pieces of other cultures without completely submerging their own, to compromise without being compromised — that, and I liked their food.
“We are sorry,” Ghani murmured.
“Not what I expected to bring me back here,” I said.
As we walked inside, I asked about their wives. Akshah told me he had a new son. So the first thing Zap saw, when I ran into him, was that I was smiling. He was little changed, if somewhat harder. He wore a dark suit and hadn’t taken off his overcoat. Something swayed beneath it like weaponry, as if he had an alleysweeper, a twenty-gauge, double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun on a leather thong hanging in his left armpit. Had I entered in tears he would not have been satisfied. But my smile only confirmed his lowest expectations.
“You made it.”
Ghani and Akshah nodded to Zap and walked off to pay their respects to Mrs. Rosedale. Fly appeared from a side room, at the entrance to which there was a black felt bulletin board on which the name “James Rosedale” was inscribed in white plastic letters.
He nodded to me, rubbed his nose, and shook his head. “So now we’re all here,” he said.
“Now we’re all here,” Zap echoed heavily.
Fly looked back and forth between Zap and me, confused, sensing Zap’s hostility toward me.
“Didn’t you know this was going to happen?” Zap asked me. My nostrils flared, but I remained still. Fly turned toward Zap, anger and disbelief on his face.
“Don’t do this here,” he said softly.
“Oh, not just you,” Zap amended, “all of us. But you know why,” he added. “Right? I mean you know everything.” He nodded angrily. “Quite a burden, that. A lot to ask of your friends, too. A lot.” He took a step toward me. “And maybe some of them couldn’t take it.”
“Are you trying to upset me?” I asked neutrally.
“Am I about to succeed?”
“It may not be as much fun as you remember.”
“It never was.”
Fly was more angry than I’d ever seen him. His right hand clenched the collar of Zap’s overcoat.
“Not here,” he said, hoarsely and forcefully. “Not now.”
Zap removed the hand gently and walked away.
“I’m sorry,” Fly said. “I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what his problem is.” He shook his head and paced in front of me. “He’s a narc now.”
He continued to pace, shaking both of his hands as if to rid them of ants.
“It’s about old stuff,” I said. “It’s about hitting the river.”
Fly stopped in front of me and lowered his voice.
“It isn’t anybody’s fault,” he said.
“Maybe.”
“It isn’t,” he said emphatically, shaking his head. “It can’t be.”
Mrs. Rosedale approached me and I kissed her. She looked surprisingly strong.
“I’d like you to say a few words,” she said.
I noticed Mr. Rosedale standing behind her.
“Instead of a rabbi,” he said, half to me, half to himself, not entirely in approval.
“Someone who knew him,” Mrs. Rosedale said fiercely. “I’ll be damned —” and her voice cracked. “I’ll be damned if someone who didn’t know him is going to give a form-letter eulogy.” She nodded to emphasize her conviction.
Fly got me some paper and a pen and sat me down in one of the lounges.
Jimmy Roses was a good softball player, fluid, unselfconscious. The year we won the league championship, he was hitting strong, but he was bothered by hecklers when he was at bat — which is as much a part of the game as getting drunk afterward. I started a rumor. I let it be known that, after being heckled one day, Jimmy Roses had put a ball into the middle of the East River. It got so quiet when he came up to bat, you would have thought he was a surgeon at work. Even members of our own team, who had to know the rumor wasn’t true, came to talk about it as if it were.
The night we won the championship I had to take Jimmy Roses home; he was almost too drunk to walk. We had outplayed everyone else in the league, save that disastrous game with the Pakistanis, and Jimmy Roses had been named the league’s best hitter. Yet all he said on that long, weaving trip home was that he had never hit the river.
“Never have hit the river, never will hit the river, never could hit the river, never wanted to hit the river. Never. But people believed you,” he said, leaning against his door. “I almost believed you. Almost.” He drew himself upright, looking less drunk than ghastly ill, tapped my chest, and said, “If you say it, it’s supposed to be true. It’s supposed to be true! And I couldn’t make it true for you, though I tried, I really tried.”
When I was finished writing, I entered the room with the casket for the first time. There were relatives and friends; weepers and stoics; people I knew well and people I’d never seen. The casket was closed. Mrs. Rosedale announced that we were going to start and gestured me to the front. People sat down.
At the front of the room, there was something that looked like a little wooden music stand in front of the casket. I stood behind it and looked out over the people assembled. I looked at the piece of paper in my hand. I took a deep breath.
“James was . . .” I stopped. It was wrong, so formal, so hollow. Everything I had written, from the first word, was about someone else. My fingers, cold, insensate marble, lost their grip on the sheet of paper. It fell to my left, wafting gently to the floor, while clicking back and forth on an invisible column of hot, stale air that came from a heat register near my shoe. I looked over at Mrs. Rosedale apologetically.
I surveyed the people in the audience again, row by row, face by face: Zap, against the back wall, overcoat still on, florid, angry; Fly, in the front row, suit wrinkled, fingers woven and twisted together, crying; Mrs. Rosedale, between Fly and her husband, eyes fixed at a point just above the casket, glassy but not crying, shaking her head slowly back and forth.
“I loved Jimmy Roses,” I said, in a voice softer than I had expected. “That’s why I’m here. I guess that’s why we all are.”
This story appeared previously in Quarto.
— Ed.
