Touchy and Feely Read online

  He pushed his way through the door and out into the wind. He had been right about the snow: it was starting to tumble across the highway thicker and faster. Halfway back to his car, he looked back. The cashier was still standing at the window, staring at him with such beady-eyed hostility that he couldn’t help smiling in private triumph. Silence, that’s the answer. Don’t give the bastards a chance to talk back.

  It was then that he was hit in the right side of the forehead with a .308 bullet traveling at more than 2,500 feet per second. His brains geysered out of his brown wooly hat and he was thrown sideways and backward, hitting his left shoulder against the concrete. His legs and his right arm flew up into the air and then he lay still.

  There was a very long silence. The snow prickled onto his coat, and immediately melted. His blood, made more gelid by the cold, crept along the cracks between the concrete forms, southward, and then began to slide westward.

  The Explorer’s passenger door opened, and Sylvia screamed out, ‘Howard! Howard!’

  Feely Heads North

  Feely had only $21.76 left which meant that his options were now limited to three.

  1) Buy a bus ticket home.

  2) Buy something to eat and try to hitch a ride home.

  3) Save his money and stand on this corner until he froze into a municipal statue.

  It was snowing so furiously that he could hardly see the other side of the street. He was sheltering under the awning of Billy Bean’s Diner in his thin brown windbreaker, his hands thrust deep into his pockets. It was 3:47 in the afternoon but it could just as well have been the middle of the night. Snow-covered automobiles rolled past like traveling igloos.

  Feely was three days past his nineteenth birthday—a thin, sallow-skinned boy with the big liquid eyes of a Latin romeo, with lashes to match, and a broken nose. His curly black hair was covered by a purple knitted cap, with ear-flaps, the kind worn by Peruvian peasants. He had no travel-bag with him, only a battered green cardboard folder tucked under his arm, and no gloves.

  Without him hearing it, a police car drew into the slush-filled gutter beside him. As soon as he saw it, he did a little defensive dance sideways. But the police car’s window came down and he heard a penetrating whistle.

  ‘Hey, you! Yes, you! Baron von Richthofen!’

  Feely looked around but of course there was nobody else standing outside the diner, only him.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘C’mere, kid.’

  Feely approached the squad car and bent down, shivering. He could feel the warmth pouring out of the window. In the passenger seat sat a bulky police sergeant with prickly white hair and a bright pink face like a canned ham. Next to him, the driver looked creepy and boggle-eyed and smirky, a distant cousin of the Addams family.

  ‘What you doing, kid?’ the sergeant demanded.

  ‘I was, like, reading the menu.’

  ‘No, you weren’t, kid. Not unless you have eyes in the back of that stupid hat.’

  ‘What I mean is I read it already, and I was cogitating.’

  ‘Cogitating, huh? You hear that, Dean? He was cogitating. Didn’t you know that cogitating in public is a misdemeanor here, in Danbury?’

  ‘No, sir, I wasn’t aware of that.’ Feely knew better than to get smart with cops.

  ‘Let me see some ID.’

  Feely reached into the back pocket of his jeans and produced his library card. The sergeant took it and turned it over and even, for some reason, sniffed it, as if it might have traces of cocaine on it.

  ‘This all the ID you got?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Thirteen-thirteen, East 111th Street, New York City. You’re a long way from home, kid.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Mind telling me what you’re doing here?’

  Feely’s eyes darted from side to side. The sergeant had asked him a legitimate question, no doubt about that, but he couldn’t immediately think of an answer that wouldn’t sound either insolent or weird. He was here because it was anyplace but home, but he could just as easily have taken the bus to Jersey, or upstate New York, so there was no easy response, and he didn’t want to say anything provocative like ‘serendipity.’ So he shrugged, and sniffed, and said, ‘I guess I’m chilling out, that’s all.’

  ‘Got any money?’ the sergeant asked him.

  Feely reached into his pocket and pulled out three crumpled fives and change. The sergeant counted it with his eyes and then looked up at Feely with an expression that was part pity and part irritation.

  ‘Seeing how it’s Christmas, and I’m full of seasonal bonhommy, I’m going to let you go about your business. But if I see you hanging around here again, I’m going to haul you in on suspicion of being a waste of space.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And quit that cogitating.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The sergeant closed his window and the police car drove off. Feely was left on the sidewalk feeling even more isolated than ever. He wondered what Captain Lingo would have replied. ‘A waste of space? Space, my friend, is a limitless extent and therefore cannot by definition be wasted.’ But Captain Lingo would have come out with it there and then, right to the sergeant’s ham-pink face, not when the squad car was two-and-a-half blocks away, and its brake lights were barely visible through the snow.

  All the same, the sergeant had made a decision for him. He couldn’t stay out on the sidewalk without being collared, so he would have to go inside; and if he went inside, he would have to order something to eat.

  Hold the Beans

  Feely pushed his way in through the door of Billy Bean’s Diner. It was warm inside, paneled with light-varnished oak, and the tables were covered with red-and-white checkered cloths. He sat down at a table in the corner, by the coat-rack, the most inconspicuous seat he could find, and picked up the plastic-laminated menu. The ceiling was hung with twinkling fairy-lights and a tape was playing ‘Santa Claus is Coming To Town.’

  A middle-aged waitress came bustling up to him. She had frizzy black hair knotted in a red gingham ribbon, and a large brown mole on her upper lip, although she must have been reasonably cute in another life. ‘How are you doing, sugar?’

  ‘I’m glacified.’

  ‘You’re what?’

  Feely pointed to the menu. ‘I’ll have a cup of hot chocolate, please. And a cheeseburger.’

  ‘Well, I can do you Billy Bean’s Beanfeast Burger for seven seventy-five. That includes two quarter-pound burger patties, with cheese, bacon, tomato and beans as well as a double portion of freedom fries and unlimited relish.’

  ‘OK, that sounds like a shrewd choice. But can you hold the beans, please.’

  She blinked at him. ‘It’s Billy Bean’s Beanfeast Burger, honey. It comes with beans.’

  Feely didn’t know what to say. He had always suspected that there was a conspiracy against him—that everybody was working together to confuse him, and to make him feel that he was unhinged. But he hadn’t realized that the conspiracy had reached as far as Connecticut.

  You ask for something. They tempt you with a better deal, like Billy Bean’s Beanfeast Burger at only $7.75. But that’s how they trick you into accepting something that you seriously don’t want, and Feely seriously didn’t want beans.

  Feely seriously didn’t want beans because beans reminded him of his older brother Jesus, in the weeks before he OD’d. Jesus had lived off nothing but beans and smack, and every time he shot up he puked fountains of beans all over the apartment. Fountains. Two months after Jesus’s funeral, they were still finding dried beans down the back of the couch-cushions.

  ‘I’ll just have the cheeseburger, thanks.’

  ‘You know that comes with complimentary beans?’

  While he was eating, the waitress came up to him and asked if he wanted another cup of hot chocolate. He swallowed before he was ready, and he had to smack his chest before he could speak.

  ‘It’s our winter special,’ she encouraged him.
‘Buy one hot chocolate, you get a second hot chocolate free.’

  ‘OK, then. Thanks.’

  Instead of bringing it, though, she stood by his table watching him, and after a while she said, ‘You’re running away, aren’t you?’

  ‘Me? No, ma’am.’

  ‘You don’t have any bags with you, do you? And your coat’s so thin.’

  Feely wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I’m running, yes. You’ve assessed that correctly. But I’m not like running away from anything. I’m like running toward something, you know? I’m trying to catch up with my future.’

  The waitress smiled sympathetically but it was obvious that she didn’t understand; or that she simply didn’t want to.

  Feely used his finger to describe an endless circle on the tablecloth. ‘I was like trapped in orbit. I was circling around and around and I was never getting anyplace. I broke free, that’s all. I managed to reach escape velocity.’

  ‘You ran away.’

  Feely didn’t try to correct her a second time. People who were involved in the conspiracy often tried to rationalize his behavior, and it wasn’t worth the effort of contradicting them. They accused him of using complicated words to hide his real feelings, but that wasn’t true either. He was seeking ways to express himself more precisely, so that he would have power over other people.

  Language is power, that’s what Father Arcimboldo had told him, in the sixth grade. Forget about fists. The right word can stop a man in his tracks. The right sentence can bring him down to his knees. What do you think has changed the world more, Fidelio? The atomic bomb, or the Bible?

  And poor young bullied Feely, with his nose still bleeding and tears still drying on his cheeks, had nodded, and understood, and the following day he had stolen a dictionary from Book Mart and the day after that he had gone back and liberated a thesaurus.

  Feely stayed in Billy Bean’s Diner until the waitress came over and said, ‘Kenny says you have to buy at least a muffin or else you’ll have to leave.’

  It was six minutes past five. Feely knew that he didn’t have enough money to stay here any longer, buying muffins.

  ‘Listen, there’s the Dorothy Day Hospitality House on Main Street, if you really have noplace to go. They’ll give you a bed for the night.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ said Feely. ‘I appreciate your concern but I mustn’t lose my momentum.’

  ‘No,’ the waitress agreed. She studied him dubiously, as if she expected to see his momentum hanging around his neck on a string.

  ‘How much do I owe you?’

  The waitress glanced behind her, toward the counter, and then gave him a quick shake of her head.

  ‘I have money,’ said Feely. ‘I don’t expect charity.’

  ‘It’s Christmas. Well, it’s nearly Christmas. One cheeseburger won’t make Kenny go bankrupt.’

  Feely stood up, and zipped up his windbreaker. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I hope one day that I can repay your abundant generosity a hundredfold.’

  Unexpectedly, the waitress leaned over and kissed his cheek. ‘Just onefold will do, sugar. Good luck.’

  Tender is the North

  Twenty-five minutes later he was standing out on Route 6, at the intersection with Tamarack Avenue, with his right thumb extended and his left hand lifted to shield his face from the wind. Behind him, the Wooster Cemetery was covered in whirling snow, so that the dead were buried even deeper, and the angels stood around in bizarre white party hats.

  He felt warmer and a little more together for having eaten, and he believed that his encounter with the waitress had been a sign that he was doing the right thing, even though she had tried to cajole him into ordering beans. He still had his $21.76, and his destiny lay northward, although he didn’t really know why. Bright and fierce and fickle is the South. Dark and true and tender is the North.

  Trucks and SUVs sped past him, their headlights gleaming dimly through the snow, but none of them stopped. Maybe they couldn’t see him, but he couldn’t stand too close to the highway because every vehicle was spurting out filthy gray slush and he was soaked already. His flappy hat was sodden and there was melted snow leaking down the back of his neck. He tried his best to protect his folder but even that was getting buckled.

  Mind telling me what you’re doing here, kid? he asked himself. You could be back home, where at least it’s warm.

  But he could see the second-story apartment on 111th Street as clearly as if he had a miniature TV set in his head. The Christmas tree would be propped up, wrecked, in one corner, where his stepfather Bruno had pushed his mother into it. Bruno would be sprawled in his tilted three-legged armchair, already drunk, his greasy gray pompadour sticking up like a spavined cockatoo. His mother Rita would be lying in bed sobbing and praying and nursing her broken ribs, so there wouldn’t be anything to eat, and the kitchen sink would be heaped with estofada-encrusted dishes from two days ago. There wouldn’t be any sign of his younger brother Michael except for a dirty unmade bed with a sheet like the Indian rope-trick: Michael would be out with his crackhead friends in some derelict building smoking anything that could be made to smolder and drinking stolen tequila. His sister Rosa would be lying on her bed with one heavy leg raised in the air so that her crimson satin crotch was exposed, polishing her toenails purple and complaining loudly about her boyfriend Carlos he’s such a dumb vomiticious dumbass. Rosa only knew three adjectives: dumb, vomiticious, and cool. Feely knew four thousand, seven hundred and eighty-three adjectives.

  You didn’t need travel-bags when you knew four thousand, seven hundred and eighty-three adjectives. But a warm pair of gloves would have been welcome.

  Another semi bellowed past, with Coca-Cola emblazoned on the side of it, like the TV ads. Happy Christmas, thought Feely. What had happened to Santa and the shiny lights and the rosy-cheeked children? The snow was falling so furiously now that he couldn’t see more than thirty yards down the highway.

  Feely’s favorite adjective was ‘gregarious.’ It brought to mind friendly people clustering around to give each other cheer. He said ‘gregarious,’ over and over, and out here on Route 6 it made him feel as if he wasn’t entirely alone.

  A Warning From Beyond

  Trevor stepped into the hallway and sniffed twice. ‘You’ve been smoking!’

  ‘Have I?’ said Sissy, in mock surprise. ‘I can’t smell anything.’

  ‘Momma . . . really. I brought you some Chase’s Cherry Mashes, too.’

  ‘What? As a reward? I’m not a dog, Trevor, and if I want to smoke, I will.’

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t. You know darn well you shouldn’t.’ He handed her the bag of Cherry Mashes and took off his coat.

  Sissy peered into the bag. ‘These are just as bad for me as cigarettes. You should bring me fresh fruit if you’re worried about my heart.’

  Trevor followed her into the living room. He looked so much like his father, sloping-shouldered and plumpish, with chipmunk cheeks, but for some reason he hadn’t inherited his father’s geniality. When Gerry walked into a room, people used to smile, even before he had said hallo. But Trevor had a way of blinking at people that immediately made them feel uneasy, as if they had a fleck of spinach on their front tooth, or there was a drip swinging from the end of their nose.

  He had never dressed as smartly as his father, either. Today he was wearing a sagging Hershey-brown cardigan with wooden buttons, and baggy tan corduroy pants. Gerry would have told him that he looked like a feedbag.

  ‘How about some tea?’ asked Sissy.

  Trevor was blinking at the cards on the coffee table. ‘You’ve been telling fortunes, too.’

  ‘Don’t worry, darling. You can’t be affected by passive soothsaying.’

  ‘All the same, Momma, it’s not healthy, is it? Living out here all on your own, smoking and fortune-telling and having conversations with dead people.’

  Sissy gave a dismissive pfff! ‘My cards are my friends. They talk to me, they tell me what’s goi
ng to happen to me next. They’re very comforting. Well, most of the time, anyway. At the moment, they’re—’ She paused. ‘Well, I’m sure you’re not at all interested. How’s little Jake?’

  ‘Jake? He’s great. You’d hardly recognize him. He’s cut two new teeth. Top ones.’

  ‘I can’t wait to see him again.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Trevor. He stood over the coffee table, looking down at the cards. ‘As a matter of fact, that’s the reason I’ve come up here to see you. I, ah—that is, Jean and me—we were wondering if you’d like to spend the holidays with us.’

  ‘In New York, darling? I really don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, no, not New York. We’ve rented a house in Florida, just outside of St. Pete. It has three bedrooms, so there’s plenty of space; and a pool, of course. The warm weather would do you so much good . . . and you could get to know Jake so much better.’

  ‘You mean I could babysit, free of charge.’

  Trevor vehemently shook his head. ‘That’s not it, Momma. I mean, of course you could babysit, if you wanted to. We’d pay you, for Christ’s sake. But that’s not the point. It’s so frigging cold up here during the winter, and you’re not getting any younger, and we worry about you.’

  Sissy went through to the kitchen and lit the gas under the kettle. Trevor followed her and stood in the doorway, watching her.

  ‘What?’ said Sissy. ‘I’ve celebrated Christmas in this house every year since 1969. And your father would have sent you to your room, if he had heard you say frigging.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Momma, but you have to admit that you can’t really manage any more. I mean, look at this place.’

  ‘It’s a little dusty, I’ll admit. But what’s a little dust?’

  ‘Momma, it looks like nine-eleven.’

  Sissy pursed her lips. ‘Would you like some tea, or are you afraid that I might not have washed my cups properly?’