Pete Hamill - Brooklyn Noir

Curious, I asked, “And these guys, they’re not bringing me to the authorities, are they?”

“You’re wasting time, get moving.”

Click.

I’ve poured a Bush, opened a beer, and am going to have a boilermaker. The Sig is in my lap and I have that song playing, here comes my favorite riff: “Fade…”

Fort Greene

I met her at this party on Clinton Street. When I’d see her around the neighborhood I’d just stare at her, like she was unreal. I saw her in the deli, talking on her cell-phone, so I followed her around the store just to listen to her talk. She just seemed, I don’t know, special, you know? I guess I had a crush on her. One night we both end up at this party, we started talking and I was just blown away. We talked about everything and I kept bringing her drinks just to have something to do. She was smiling and laughing like she thought I was funny, and I think I’m doing really good here, so I’m not going home any time soon. We stayed really late and the sun was coming up and a couple of people were passed out on the couch, so we just crashed on the floor with some blankets and stuff. I’m lying there with my hand on her thinking maybe I’ve got a shot. I didn’t think it would become anything, I thought she was messing with me, you know?”

Brian just listened as Sean spoke. The light cast stark, flickering shadows on his face as the cargo van rocked slightly. They’d been on the road for a few hours or more and they still had no idea where they were going.

“Anyway, so she comes over the next night, and then she wants to see me three, four nights a week, and I didn’t know how to handle it, or, like, handle her , you know? I guess I was just… afraid of her. I mean, why was she dating me? It’s like you dream about something for so long… a girl, a car, a new job, whatever. Then if you get it, you still don’t think you deserve it. It’s a mistake, or someone’s playing a trick on you like that movie Carrie when they dump pig’s blood on her head and it’s all a joke.

“She just… wasn’t like anyone I’d ever dated before. The girls I usually dated worked at indie labels or were somebody’s assistant or read manuscripts and fucking hated their jobs, and we’d go out for pizza and see some special effects movie where stuff blew up, you know? We’d get drunk and they’d wake up at my place, hung over and ugly, and maybe we’d see each other again, maybe we wouldn’t. I had a system and she didn’t fit the system. At all.”

Sean sighed, silenced for a moment by the memory of her. He seemed to forget he was sitting in the back of a van, his wrists and ankles bound in gaff tape, arms tied behind him to the van’s wall bars, with two other guys he didn’t know.

“I mean, I do ad sales and I do okay, but she made a lot more money than me, you know? I didn’t know where to take her. We’d go out to dinner and she’d order stuff I couldn’t pronounce much less pay for. Dating her was like dating a movie — she’d show up at my place in a black town car, wearing a trench coat with nothing but black lace panties underneath, and dare me to fuck her in the car. I mean, she wanted to go down on me in a taxi as we were going across the Brooklyn Bridge, like she thought it would be a huge turn-on, and I… I just couldn’t do it.”

“A woman wants to blow you in the back of a cab and you flinch? ” Brian spat.

“I know, I know, but the only thing I could think of was, what if the driver saw? What if other people saw?”

“Who the fuck cares?” Brian really didn’t like him now. Besides, he was short, and short guys were usually weird, like they needed to compensate.

“I cared! It was… I guess I just chickened out.” Sean was flustered now. “Come on, she knew all kinds of stuff, everywhere we went she had a story about something cool that happened there, and she’d run into people she knew wherever we went. On Sundays I’d wake up and she’d be sitting on my couch reading the New York Times Magazine. I didn’t know girls like that. Then there’s the morning I wake up and she’s laughing her ass off.”

“About what?”

“She looked at my bookshelf, and she saw a whole row of paperbacks on the shelf facing backwards so you couldn’t read the titles. So she started turning them around and burst out laughing.”

“What were they, porn?” Brian snorted.

“Nah. Worse,” Sean muttered to the floor, glum.

“What’s worse than porn?”

Star Trek novels.”

“Dude…” Brian exhaled a long, pitying sigh.

“I know, I know. Whatever. I like them,” he pleaded.

“So why’d you turn them around on your shelf then?” Brian leaned as far forward as he could.

“Because it’s embarrassing . I didn’t want people to know that’s what I read. Anyway, I knew it wasn’t going to last. At first, it was like Christmas every day. I mean, I’d had my eye on her for months, and I’d have fantasies about her when I’d jack off in the shower. The first time I fucked her in that shower I nearly passed out. Come on, she’s beautiful, she’s smart, she’s up for anything, and she wants to be with all the time. I’m thinking, you’re kidding, right? After a week or two, I was like, how do I do this? I don’t know how to order off a menu with her, much less make conversation, she’s going to get bored of me fast. I knew that! Shit, even my friends were like, ‘She’s so out of your league, enjoy it while it lasts, pal.’ So I did what any guy would do to keep a woman hooked on him.”

“What, spent all your money on her?” Brian rolled his eyes and leaned against the van wall. They’d spent a long time trying to figure out what they had in common — he couldn’t believe it was a woman.

“Uh uh, I went down on her every chance I had. I knew her pussy better than her gynecologist. ” Sean grinned, sitting back. “I’d look up at her and there would be nail polish streaks on the wall over the headboard. Fucking streaks the wall I’d work on her for like twenty minutes and she’d come so hard she’d push my head away and just twitch like she was electrocuted…”

Brian thought he saw him wink. God, this guy was such a tool. He wished the blond guy passed out in the corner would wake the fuck up.

“… Then I’d start all over again. I’d make her come three or four times and she’d be pulling me to her, begging me to fuck her. Now she needed me for something, now I had something she wanted really bad…”

Brian chuckled softly and smirked at Sean, knowing he couldn’t possibly have anything she wanted. Brian slid his feet as far forward as he could to stretch his legs. He tried to figure out how long they’d been in this van. They had to have been sitting here talking for two hours, another hour or two on top of that when they were passed out. So, three… four hours, maybe? When he tried to rub his wrists together he realized his watch was gone. They took his fucking watch.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

“… Sure, I’d fuck her occasionally,” Sean said, carried away by the memory. He could smell her now, feel the curve of her waist. “Really slow, so she’d be moaning for it. I’d get her really worked up and then sometimes I wouldn’t finish her off. It was like a control thing, totally passive aggressive, you know?”

Brian was bored. This kid was such a fucking amateur. “Cut to the chase.”

Sean had thought about it a lot, he just never said it out loud.

“After two or three months, we went out to dinner and I had it all planned out. It was going to be farewell sex, like a last meal before an execution, you know? In the morning, I just bit the bullet and as soon as she woke up, I told her we needed to talk, and she wrapped herself around me in bed. She got nervous like animals do when they know they’re going to be killed, you know? The worst part was she held my hand while I told her all this, like she thought I couldn’t be cruel to her if she was holding my hand.”