Howard Shrier - Buffalo jump

The worst thing about being laid off-worse than the drop in income or the blow to whatever self-esteem had accrued to him during a relatively unaccomplished life-had been the loss of his dental, health and prescription drug benefits. As a municipal employee, he’d had a good plan that covered Amy as well. Now they were shopping for a plan they could afford and having no luck at all.

Barry switched on his headlights and set the wipers to high as he drove toward Elmwood. Humps of snow were still visible on some lawns, so black with soot they looked like magma. Not even noon but almost dark, wind blowing the rain hard against the windshield. Remind me again why I live in Buffalo, Barry thought.

’Cause you got no fucking choice.

He had been born in Buffalo fifty-five years ago, the only child of a surgeon and a homemaker, his mom dying of breast cancer when he was fourteen. He had never lived anywhere else. Where could he and Amy go at their age? How would they find someone like Kevin in another town?

His dad had moved to Buffalo from Brooklyn after med school to take up residency at Roswell Park and had genuinely loved the town. Loved its history, its architecture, its smallness and slower pace. Well, you’d really love it now, Dad, Barry thought. It’s smaller than ever, fewer than 300,000 people, maybe half the population of its heyday. When his mom and dad had arrived in 1949, Buffalo had been a Great Lakes port thriving on shipping, steelmaking and manufacturing. With those industries now in decline, and little to replace them, it was just another Rust Belt relic closing in on itself, best known for lake-effect storms that dumped snow three feet at a time and a football team that went 0-for-4 in Super Bowls.

Some Buffalo Bills player, he forgot who, once said after leaving for warmer climes: “Buffalo isn’t the end of the world. But you can see it from there.”

Barry could feel the tightness in his hip spreading up his back and under his right shoulder blade, the one that’d been going into spasm lately. God, getting old sucked. It wasn’t just the hip, the leg, the back. Everything was starting to go. His eyesight: two new prescriptions in the last three years. His hearing, especially the right ear. Waking up mornings stiff all over, from his neck to his ankles.

Stiff everywhere but where it counted.

Barry had always pictured himself staying fit and virile into old age. He knew he still looked good enough. He had all his hair and wore it stylishly long. He thought he could pass for forty-five in the right light. He still had a couple of guitars around the house and could play passable rhythm if called upon. He wore hand-tooled cowboy boots and faded genuine Levis. No pre-washed designer crap; he had denim cred, goddammit. None of it changed the fact that he was closer to the end of his life than to the beginning. The vertical lines on his face were practically furrows. His jowls were beginning to sag. A wattle was forming under his chin. His feathered hair was greying. His body was betraying him at every opportunity, especially in the bedroom. Amy was still a gamer, up for pretty much anything, but lately even her most attentive ministrations had been for naught.

It could be worse, Barry told himself. You could be Larry Foti, who dropped dead of a heart attack before his fiftieth birthday. Or the guy who had worked next to him for six years at the housing authority, Marc Ormond. He had a cerebral hemmorhage in his sleep. His wife found him in the morning cold as ice, blood coming out of his ears and nose. People his age, his peers, his co-workers and old school chums, were dying of natural causes. Heart attacks, strokes and all kinds of cancer: the breast, the prostate, the blood, the brain, for God’s sake.

He stopped at a red light. Through rain-blurred windows he could see the people on the sidewalks were mostly black or Hispanic. One kid with a bandana under a tilted ball cap pushed off the wall and ambled toward Barry’s car.

Turn green, he implored the light. He felt like an idiot, carrying so much cash in his wallet. If he got mugged, that’s the first thing they’d grab. A real pro would have thought of something better-like putting the money in a crumpled drive-thru bag under the seat. Sure, now I think of it, he berated himself. Why when it’s always too late?

Barry had nothing against black people. He was just scared shitless of them. He believed it was a class thing more than a race thing. A black doctor wouldn’t scare him. Or a black lawyer or actor or accountant. But the guys outside his car now were clearly not members of the professions, with their combative stares, baggy pants, untied runners, caps turned this way, that way, any way but straight. Barry was sure the one coming toward the car could see right through the car window, through the leather jacket and into his wallet stuffed with cash. Turn fucking green, he pleaded silently. Maybe he could outrun these guys if he had to. How fast could they run with their pants down around their thighs and their running shoes unlaced?

Who was he kidding? He could barely run anymore. An old lady in a walker could probably chase him down, and slap him silly too.

The light turned green and Barry lurched through the intersection fast enough to make his back end skid on the wet pavement.

Why did Kevin have to live on the west side? More to the point, why had he been made the new middleman? Everything had been fine the way it was before Kevin Masilek had been introduced as the new supplier. Prices had gone up, of course, to make up for this new layer of management, but not enough to warrant going elsewhere. The supply was safe and steady. Like it or not, this was the new regime, they’d been told. Barry figured, Why rock the boat when you can just keep sailing.

He started to weigh the pros and cons of smoking the other half of his joint.

Con: The car will stink, especially with the windows closed. Your eyes will turn redder. You could fuck up the transaction with Kevin. You could get so paranoid you’d turn around and go home to Amy empty-handed.

Pro: You know you want to.

The pro clearly outweighing the cons, he got the doob out of his silver case and lit up. He cracked the driver’s side window just enough to let the smoke out. Everyone else’s car windows were closed so who was going to smell it? Don’t worry so much, he chided himself. Just inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

Aaaah.

Barry didn’t want any toke burns in the upholstery so he powered down the window and chucked the roach even though it had a little mileage left. Then he turned onto the street where Kevin lived in a tall semi-detached frame house. He pulled up at the curb and parked, kept the wipers going as he glanced up and down the street, looking for potential assailants. There were none he could see. Maybe the rain was keeping everyone indoors. Feeling a rare moment of affection for Buffalo weather, he got out of the car and locked it. Dashed up the three concrete steps to Kevin’s door and rang. Waited and rang again. Waited some more.

Shit. It was eleven-fifty and he had told Kevin he’d be by between eleven-thirty and noon. Hadn’t he? He briefly regretted smoking the second half of his joint, confused now-had he somehow got the time wrong? The day?

No. Even in his buzzed state he remembered the call: he had clearly said today between eleven-thirty and noon. Barry rang again. Knocked. Fished a quarter out of his jeans and rapped it on a square glass pane in the centre of the wooden door. Still no answer. The nerves behind his sternum started to slither over each other like snakes. What if Kevin had forgotten? Christ, what if he’d been arrested? Where would that leave Barry and Amy?

Okay, he said to himself. Breathe. Breathe and think. Which he did until he remembered the cellphone clipped to his belt. He dialled Kevin’s number and listened to it ring. Three times, four times, five, and then the voice mail kicked in. Barry disconnected without leaving a message. Maybe Kevin was having a shower, he told himself. Maybe he was on the can and unable to get to the phone. Barry pressed his ear to the glass pane in the door. He could hear music playing at the back of the house where the kitchen was, a raw bluesy sound that took him one second to recognize: the Allman Brothers Band, the classic 1971 concert at Fillmore East, before Duane died, before Berry Oakley died, before Gregg started dating celebrities and falling face-first into his pasta.