Peter Spiegelman - Red Cat

He’d shrugged. “My wife’s kid brother was up in Coxsackie,” he’d said. “Jamie looked out for him.” Then J.T. had wandered off, in the direction of the deejay’s booth.

I looked up and saw him still there, smoking by an open window and sorting through stacks of CDs. I finished my drink and put the glass on the bar. There was a waitress doing nothing near the passage to the kitchen, so I went over.

Her name was Lia. She was young, not much over drinking age, and nearly my height, and her unruly, strawberry-blond mop went well enough with her freckles and blue eyes to be natural. Her mouth was wide and her chin was pointed, and I imagined her agent described her as a well-scrubbed waif. She scanned the crowd lazily as we spoke.

“I haven’t seen Jamie in, what, a couple of weeks, which is weird for him.”

“You friendly with him?”

She shrugged. “I guess.”

“He a nice guy?”

“Sure. I mean, he’s a little scary at first, but once you get to know him, what’s not to like?”

“Scary how?”

“You know, he’s all big and broody, and he doesn’t say much at first. But really he’s a teddy bear, and he looks out for all the girls.”

“Looks out for what?”

“Like, for when a customer gets too touchy, and thinks the tips buy something more than thanks.”

“That happen a lot?” Lia smiled regretfully and nodded. “What does Jamie do about it?”

Her smile broadened. “Basically he scares the piss out of them.”

“Just scares them?”

“You mean does he actually like beat them up?” I nodded and Lia thought about it. “There was one guy, a few months back, a real big guy, and a real groper- legs, asses, tits, anything he could grab or rub up against. This one night he was all over Sheri, who was brand new then, and really freaking out. She’d been avoiding him the whole shift, when finally he corners her on her way to take a piss. Now Sheri’ll blow away in a strong wind, and this guy’s like six two and double-wide, and he’s got her by the arm in the hallway when Jamie comes along.

“Sheri told me he said something in the guy’s ear- she didn’t know what- and the guy lets go of her and turns around and throws a punch at Jamie. And Jamie catches it- just like that, Sheri said.” Lia made a fist with one hand and covered it with her other. “And then she tells me the guy just starts turning red and kind of crying, and he falls down on his knees with Jamie still holding his fist.”

“And then what?”

“And then Jamie makes him apologize to Sheri, and he picks the guy up by his belt and throws him out the back door.” She grinned. “That part I saw for myself. It was cool.”

“No doubt. You know Jamie’s girlfriend?”

Lia furrowed her freckled brow. “That redhead- the one who makes indy films or something?” I nodded and Lia nodded back. “She’s been in. I heard they were a thing but I didn’t know for sure. She’s hot.”

“She in here lately?” A shrug. “They get along pretty well?”

“I don’t know; they seemed to. I don’t pay attention.” She looked at me, curious for the first time. “Why do you want to know all this stuff? Jamie’s not in trouble, is he?”

I shook my head. “I’m just trying to get in touch.”

Lia studied my face and looked worried. “Look, he’s a good guy,” she said, “and I don’t know how to reach him.” And she disappeared into the kitchen.

Lia didn’t come out again, and the bartender and the other waitresses had less to say than she did. I hung around for another half hour, and watched people troop in, in twos and threes, frosted and windblown and happy to join the lifeboat party.

It was close to eleven when I left, and the route home was straight into the wind. Even with head down and jacket zipped high, the cold was crushing. In two blocks my face went from frozen to burning numb, and in two more my limbs followed suit. By Avenue B, walking had devolved into an endless struggle with the next step, and all sense of time was lost. The wind pried at my lungs and howled around my ears as I pushed forward, and Lia’s words repeated in my head-“Look, he’s a good guy”- and echoed alongside the last thing Orlando Krug had said-“Just tell her to call me.” After a while, I wasn’t sure who had said what.

I had a hard time with the key to my building, and I stood for a while in the lobby, catching my breath while pricking pain spread across my face. I rode the elevator up and opened my apartment door and Clare was standing across the room. She was holding a towel and looking at me and at the sofa, and her expression was a mix of puzzlement and disgust. I stepped inside and the smell of vomit hit me. I looked over the back of my sofa and found the source: my brother David, spattered in puke, slumped over, and passed out.

We got his clothes off- the sopping cashmere overcoat, the sodden English shoes, the Italian suit, soaked and stained from the knees down- and cleaned him up as well as we could with a damp washcloth. I levered him into sweatpants and a T-shirt, and Clare put sheets on the sofa and covered him with a blanket. He muttered and flailed a little, and threw up once more, but I’d wrestled less cooperative drunks before.

“He showed up maybe twenty minutes ago, and I didn’t know what to do with him,” Clare whispered. She was in the kitchen, drinking tonic water and watching David sleep. “He was leaning on the buzzer and saying he was your brother, and he was covered in snow from the chest up. I couldn’t just leave him out there.”

I nodded. “You don’t have to whisper,” I said, “he’s gone. From the look of him, he must’ve walked uptown.”

“Good thing he didn’t stop to rest along the way- they’d be chipping ice off him for a month.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Besides that he was your brother, nothing that made sense. Is he like this a lot?”

“Passed out drunk, you mean?”

Clare nodded.

“This is the first I’ve seen it, but…I don’t really know what he’s like.”

Clare looked at him and looked at me and shook her head. “Jesus.”

I came awake in the middle of the night. Clare was breathing slowly beside me, and we were both sunk deep into the mattress. Beneath the wind and shaking windows, I heard a stifled cough from the living room, and the rustle of bedsheets. I got up carefully and pulled on a T-shirt and went out.

David was cross-legged on the floor. He was wrapped in a sheet and his back was to one of my bookcases. His skin was pale and his hair was damp-looking. He had a book in his lap and he was turning the pages. He looked up at me. His eyes were still confused, and his face was somehow out of focus. I closed the bedroom door.

“You should sleep,” I whispered.

“Things were spinning,” he said quietly.

“You want anything?”

“Water, maybe.”

I went to the kitchen and filled a glass. I carried it over and David took it and drank. I looked at the book he held. It was a big coffee-table volume with frayed covers and a cracked spine, a collection of BrassaД photos I hadn’t opened in years. David set the glass on the floor and turned a page, to a picture of a fog-wrapped Paris avenue. He turned again, to a picture of a woman under a streetlamp.

He laughed softly. “The first time I went to Paris, I had in my head it was somehow going to look like this. I was just out of college and, boy, was I disappointed. I was expecting fog, and hookers on every corner, and I thought it would be all smoky and romantic. Then I saw that fucking Pompidou Center. After that, I didn’t feel so bad that Mom hadn’t let me spend junior year there.” There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead, and he shivered as he spoke.