Charlie Huston - A Dangerous Man

– The security, it is very strict.

I haven’t flown in the U.S. since 9/11 and Branko is worried that I left a toe clipper in my bag or something.

– There’s nothing.

– Good. You need money?

– No.

The song plays. We turn off at the airport and Branko takes us down the departures lane.

– If they pull you out of line, it is nothing. Go with them. They will open your bag and ask you to take off your shoes. In case there is a bomb.

He grunts laughter at the ridiculousness of a shoe-bomb, knowing better places to hide explosives.

– I know.

– You will fly coach. First class I would have booked, but people, they walk past you and stare at your face. The people in coach, they hate the people in first class.

– No problem.

He starts to say something else. Changes his mind and pulls the car to the curb at the United gate. He puts the car in park.

– You need money?

– No. You asked.

– Yes.

He looks past me, through the car window and the glass doors, into the nearly empty terminal. It’s just after midnight, Friday morning. A few people who were in town for midweek specials are taking a red-eye back east, but the real traffic will be coming into the airport around eight when the weekenders start to arrive.

– Branko.

He doesn’t say anything.

– What’s this about? Me in New York. That’s.

He shakes his head.

– You have somewhere else you would go? Yes? No. Go to New York. Do as you are told.

– Yeah. Sure.

He fishes a credit card out of his breast pocket and hands it to me.

– At the automatic kiosk, you zip this. The ticket will appear. In the name on your driver’s license. The card, you throw away.

– Right.

I open the door and climb out. Branko gets out as well and comes around the car to my side. He reaches into the backseat, grabs my bag and hands it to me.

He takes out his billfold and offers me a stack of cash.

– I have plenty left from the other day.

– Take it.

– Branko.

– Take the money.

– Sure. Thanks.

I take the money. He nods, puts his billfold away and walks back around the car. Before he gets in, he points at me.

– Do as you are told.

Then he gets in and drives off.

I walk through the automatic doors, find the ticket machine and swipe the card. I take my ticket to the security line and show it and my driver’s license to a polite woman in a blue blazer. I shuffle through the short line and my baggage is X-rayed. No one asks to look inside. I board the plane and find my window seat. A middle-aged man sits on the aisle and when the door is sealed without anyone having claimed the seat between us he gives me a tired half smile, tilts his seat back and falls asleep. I stare out the window, watch the ground fall away, and try to remember what it was like the first time I flew to New York. Try to remember being very young and starting something new. But I can’t. I look at the sleeping man. I could be sleeping. I could be chewing down a couple Ambiens and sleeping dreamless and long. Instead I grind my teeth and watch the bad movie with the other insomniacs who lost their shirts in Vegas.

THE PLANE BANKS and Manhattan appears outside the window.

Coming back here.

Coming back here makes me want a pill. But then again, so does breathing.

– How does it feel? Being back, how does it feel?

David’s Brighton Beach office is the living room of an apartment above the Winter Garden Restaurant, right on the boardwalk. It’s a strange corner turret. The exterior is corniced at the top, an old salmon pink building at the dead end of Brighton Street. El Marisol is spelled in black tiles outside the front door, harking back to some time before the Russian immigrants had taken over the neighborhood.

– It feels weird.

He comes over and stands next to me. He points out the window.

– You can see Coney Island.

I press my face close to the glass and look to my right. Far up the boardwalk, past the aquarium, I can see Deno’s Wonder Wheel, the red-and-white pillar of the observation spire, and, further on, the tower of the abandoned parachute drop. Coney was one of the last places I saw before I ran away from here.

David taps the glass.

– They have a baseball team now.

– I heard something.

He puts a hand on my shoulder and steers me away from the window.

– Baseball I know less than nothing about, but the park is nice. A baseball park on the beach. When my daughter is married and has children, I will take them there.

He places a hand over his heart. I long for this more than anything.

He points at the brown leather couch. I take a seat and he sits in the matching overstuffed chair to my left.

The office is crowded with furniture. The couch and chair, a coffee table, two end tables with identical ceramic lamps, a desk and office chair and two chairs facing it, a small sideboard with a selection of liquor decanters and soft drink bottles, three antique filing cabinets, a magazine rack, two floor lamps with shades wrapped in plastic, and an actual divan with a price tag still stuck on it.

– You like it?

– Sure.

He smiles and tilts his head to the side.

– You do not have to lie with me. It is tacky.

I start to say something but he holds up a hand, blocking my words before they can come out of my mouth.

– It is my wife. She does this to me. Buys these things and brings them here. She wants me to be comfortable. My guests to be comfortable. At first I tell her, Marya, no, it is too much. A desk, chairs, this is all a man needs in his office. She tells me my office must impress. So.

He holds out his arms, inviting me to look at the clutter. You see who wears the pants. -So this is fine. I do not care. I care only about these.

He points at the walls.

The walls are covered in family photos. Behind the desk is the centerpiece: a poster-size soft-focus image in a massive gilt frame. David with a short round woman wearing large Gucci glasses, and an almost pretty young woman who is obviously fighting a pitched battle with her mother’s stocky genes and her father’s flat features.

– These are my treasures. Everything is for them.

He lays a hand on my forearm.

– This you understand.

He pats my arm.

– Do not answer. It is not a question. This I know you understand. To do everything for one’s family. This is what it is to be a man. And you are a man, Henry. Of this can there be any doubt? The things you have done to prove it.

He takes his hand from my arm and touches his whiskers with his fingertips.

– And now there is more to do.

– Yeah. David…-Yes? There is something on your mind? You must speak it.

– David. I don’t even know what you want here. You want me to? What?

He laughs.

– What I want? No. Henry. It is what you have done.

– Yeah, but.

– Would I bring you to New York? No.

He clutches his head with his hands. The insanity.

– I still don’t.

– It is your national pastime. This game. You, you can explain to me.

He gets up and picks through the furniture to the magazine rack, comes back with a copy of today’s Daily News and drops it in my lap. The headline is something about someone blowing up something in the Middle East.

– I don’t.

– No, not this.

He picks up the paper, flips several pages and drops it back in my lap. I look at the page, trying to find what it is he wants me to see. He taps his finger on the Mets Notebook and a small item headlined in bold type.

– This.

Mets Top Pick Moving Up

Miguel Arenas, the Mets’ top pick and the first pick overall in the Major League draft, is already moving up. Having spent one day in rookie ball, the Mets will move Arenas to the single-A Brooklyn Cyclones. Arenas is expected to see playing time in this weekend’s season opening series against the Staten Island Yankees. The move was instigated by injuries that have plagued the Mets’ farm system this year, requiring the early advancement of several players, but it certainly won’t hurt Cyclones’ ticket sales to have the darling of last year’s Olympics playing at Keyspan Park.