Pete Hamill - Brooklyn Noir

They sat in silence in the windowless van, listening to the sounds of cars and trucks on the highway.

“I told her that I wasn’t interested anymore, it was me and not her, this isn’t what I wanted, you know, standard dump speech. But I kind of twisted it a little and said I didn’t like how she was always doing stuff for me, buying me things and taking me places like she just thought she was just being nice when it was actually a control thing of hers.”

“Nice touch. How’d she take it?”

“She just curled up in a ball and cried for an hour. I was in the other room watching TV when she suddenly comes out with her stuff in a bag. She’d called a car service and didn’t even look at me, she just grabbed her shit and left. I mean, I felt awful, it was a shit thing to do, but I’d rather have her angry at me than drag everything out.”

The silence hung in the air, cold and thick.

“You want to know the truth?” Brian said gently.

Sean nodded, hesitant.

“You were a pity fuck,” he spat.

Sean’s face hardened.

“She told me about you,” Brian continued. “She laughed that you were Transitional Guy, like you were a comic book character, except you didn’t know how it was supposed to end. She was supposed to end it, not you. So, yeah, it fucked her up and she had serious damage, but what can I tell you? That’s my thing, so I moved in.”

“What do you mean?” Sean said, chilled.

Brian sized him up carefully, to see if he was worth telling. “I bartend over at the Alibi by the park. This was, like, three years ago. September… a couple months after you dumped her. She came in one night with two or three other girls and I just zeroed in on her, ’cause she looked like she hadn’t been out in a while. You could tell that her friends took her out to cheer her up, so I kept making eye contact with her when I was at the other end of the bar. I gave her some quarters for the jukebox, asked her to go pick out some Tom Waits, kept her glass filled. Lot of attention, just kept looking at her and then looking away like she caught me. I’m good, right? By the end of the night, her friends are gone, the bar’s empty, and it’s just the two of us talking.

“She’s smiling and playing with her hair, looking up at me, stroking her collarbone and fiddling with her necklace, leaning forward on the bar, it’s all body language. You know the thing about showing their palm, right?”

Sean shook his head, his light brown hair falling in his eyes, making him look even younger. This was a master class, and he tried to keep up. He couldn’t believe guys like this actually existed and this was what he was up against.

“When a woman shows you the palm of her hand, she’s open,” Brian explained patiently. “It’s a major sign. It means she’s vulnerable and she’ll probably show you something else, know what I mean? So anyway, I’ve got her, I’ve totally got this chick. It’s classic… classic. Everyone has one thing they’re born knowing how to do, right? This is it. This is what I do better than anyone else.”

Brian tried to move his arms.

“Fuck, my arm’s asleep. Anyway, I know what to talk about: stories about my family, what kinda pets I’ve had, how much I like to travel, where I’ve been and where I want to go next. Always say Morocco or Thailand, by the way, just trust me. It gives her a way to size me up, decide if I’m a quality guy, right? And she’s just glowin across the bar at me. She even says I’m not like the other guys and, you know, I do the blushing thing. You know the blushing thing, right?”

Sean shook his head, confused.

“You have to do it like this,” Brian confided, as he leaned forward a bit on the box and looked down at the floor of the van. “When she gives you a compliment or you ‘confess’ something, you look down like you’re a little embarrassed or trying to hide a smile. Then you keep your face down and look up with only your eyes, like this.”

He demonstrated, his eyes peeking up shyly through his lashes. “Slays them every time, I’m telling you.”

Brian’s expression morphed seamlessly from innocent and charming to cold and hard again, and then he grinned as he leaned back against the van wall. With his black hair and sharp eyes he looked even colder. “The best part was she thought she was the one pursuing me because I was acting like I had a serious crush, like it was love at first sight and this had never happened to me before.

“We talk about artists we like, so l ask for her number like I’m real shy, say there’s this Bill Viola show she might like to see. She’s actually blushing, like she’s already thinking of how to tell our grandkids how we met. I just knew it.”

Brian was smug. “I’ve never hooked a woman so easy, so fast. Never

“So what did you do?”

“I didn’t even touch her that night, total gentleman. Called her the next day, said I couldn’t wait to talk to her, that I’d been thinking about her all day, and she’s totally charmed, right? So we made plans to see the gallery in the afternoon and I kind of kept it rolling to dinner and finally back to my place to hang out. We started talking about ecstasy and how she hadn’t done it in so long, so I said I had some at my place and we could share it, right?

“She was so wrapped up in the moment,” Brian snorted, “thinking I was so easy to talk to, that we had so much in common… Fuck, I could have gotten her to do anything… I probably could have gotten her to shoot heroin I mean, my place is kind of a dump and she’s going on about how amazing the view is and how cool the paintings are and whatever. She’s totally delusional at this point, she thinks it’s karma, like we’ve really connected.

“So we have sex and she says it’s spiritual and amazing, you know, but it’s just E-love. Sex on ecstasy just fucking bonds you, except she’s never had sex on E before so it’s new to her and she thinks this is chemistry. Yeah, it’s chemistry, it’s fucking lab chemistry. So now we’re rolling and I love this part, this is where the head-fuck gets deep

“Then it just became a question of how little could I do and still have her want me? It became a game and I stretched it out for months Little by little I pulled away, real small stuff like I stopped kissing her, wouldn’t hold her after sex, never went down on her. No foreplay, no talking, it was just fuck her and go to sleep, like when I’m done, we’re done. I wouldn’t even kiss her when she’d cry. I’d roll over with my back to her, and I swear I’d just be lying there, grinning in the dark. She’d sob for a while then finally she’d go to sleep. The next morning I wouldn’t say a thing, act like nothing happened. I know, cold, right? But you know what?”

“What?” Sean asked nervously. This is who she ended up with after him?

“She’d call me that night, want to come over, act like nothing ever happened, ” Brian said, incredulously. “And I’d always blow her off, wouldn’t call her back for like a week! I’d wait for the voicemail to pile up and she’d get panicky, thinking it was something she’d done. I’d be out with the guys and we’d brag about who has the craziest phone messages from a woman, who can string some bitch along the longest, right? And there was no question, I won. I was the king of this, I had proof right here. I’d save the messages and play like a dozen of them to everybody, and they’d start with her all sweet. ‘Hi, it’s me,’ became annoyed, like, ‘Hey, where have you been?’ and then she’d get concerned, ‘Are you okay?’ and finally, after a week, it’s, ‘I’m sorry you’re so upset at me, I miss you, please forgive me.’ She didn’t even know what she’d done to make me disappear but she was already begging me to take her back! The next time I’d see her, and I’d always wait like at least a week or two, she’d apologize to for being such a basket case, and promise it’d never happen again!”