Лоуренс Блок - Catch and Release

BILLY

Maybe you don’t have to.

DOROTHY

What do you mean?

BILLY

I don’t think it’s about money. Not for him. It’s about sticking it to you for dumping him, or whatever. So it’s an emotional thing and it’s easy for you to buy into it. But say it was a business thing. You’re right and he’s wrong, but it’s more trouble than it’s worth to fight it out. So what you do is settle.

DOROTHY

Settle?

BILLY

You always paid your own way, so it wouldn’t be out of the question for you to pay half the cost of the cruise, would it?

DOROTHY

No, but—

BILLY

But it was supposed to be a present, from him to you. But forget that for the time being. You could pay half.

(beat)

Still, that’s too much. What you do is offer him two thousand dollars. I have a feeling he’ll take it.

DOROTHY

God, I can’t even talk to him. How am I going to offer him anything?

BILLY

You’ll have someone else make the offer.

DOROTHY

You mean like a lawyer?

BILLY

Then you owe the lawyer. No, I was thinking I could do it.

DOROTHY

Are you serious?

BILLY

I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t. I think if I was to make the offer he’d accept it. I wouldn’t be threatening him, but there’s a way to do it so a guy feels threatened.

DOROTHY

(sizing him up)

He’d feel threatened, all right.

BILLY

I’ll have your check with me, two thousand dollars, payable to him. My guess is he’ll take it, and if he does you won’t hear any more from him on the subject of the ten grand.

DOROTHY

So I’m out of it for two thousand. And five hundred for you?

BILLY

I wouldn’t charge you anything.

DOROTHY

Why not?

BILLY

All I’d be doing is having a conversation with a guy. I don’t charge for conversations. I’m not a lawyer, I’m just a guy owns a couple of parking lots.

DOROTHY

And reads thick novels by young Indian writers.

BILLY

Oh, this? You read it?

(she shakes her head no)

It’s hard to keep the names straight, especially when you’re not sure how to pronounce them in the first place. And it’s like if you ask this guy what time it is he tells you how to make a watch. Or maybe a sun dial. But it’s pretty interesting.

DOROTHY

I never thought you’d be a reader.

BILLY

Billy Parking Lots. Guy who knows guys and can get things done. That’s probably all Tommy said about me.

DOROTHY

Just about.

BILLY

Maybe that’s all I am. Reading, well, it’s an edge I got on just about everybody I know. It opens other worlds. I don’t live in those worlds, but I get to visit them.

DOROTHY

And you just got in the habit of reading? The way you got in the habit of working out?

BILLY

(laughs)

No, reading’s something I’ve done since I was a kid. I didn’t have to go away to get in that particular habit.

DOROTHY

I was wondering about that.

BILLY

Anyway, it’s hard to read there, harder than people think. It’s noisy all the time.

DOROTHY

Really? I didn’t realize. I always figured that’s when I’d get to read War and Peace , when I got sent to prison. But if it’s noisy, then the hell with it. I’m not going.

BILLY

You’re something else.

DOROTHY

Me?

BILLY

Yeah, you. The way you look, of course, but beyond the looks. The only word I can think of is class , but that’s a word that’s mostly used by people that haven’t got any themselves. Which is probably true enough.

DOROTHY

The hell with that. After the conversation we just had? Talking me out of doing something I could have regretted all my life, and figuring out how to get that son of a bitch off my back for two thousand dollars? I’d call that class.

BILLY

Well, you’re seeing me at my best.

DOROTHY

And you’re seeing me at my worst, or close to it. Looking to hire a guy to beat up an ex-boyfriend. That’s class, all right.

BILLY

That’s not what I see.

DOROTHY

Oh?

BILLY

I see a woman who won’t let herself be pushed around. And if I can find a way that helps you get where you want to be, then I’m glad to do it. But when all’s said and done, you’re a lady. And I’m a wiseguy.

DOROTHY

I don’t know what you mean.

BILLY

Yes, you do.

DOROTHY

Yes, I guess I do.

BILLY

Drink up. I’ll run you back to the city.

DOROTHY

You don’t have to do that. I can take the PATH train.

BILLY

I’ve got to go into the city anyway. It’s not out of my way to take you wherever you’re going.

DOROTHY

If you’re sure.

BILLY

I’m sure. Or here’s another idea. We both have to eat, and I told you they serve a good steak here. Let me buy you dinner, and then I’ll run you home.

DOROTHY

Dinner.

BILLY

A shrimp cocktail, a salad, a steak, a baked potato—

DOROTHY

You’re tempting me.

BILLY

So let yourself be tempted. It’s just a meal.

DOROTHY

No. It’s more than a meal.

BILLY

It’s more than that if you want it to be. Or it’s just a meal, if that’s what you want.

DOROTHY

But you can’t know how far it might go. We’re back to that again, aren’t we? Like what you said about the gorilla, and you stop when the gorilla wants to stop.

BILLY

I guess I’m the gorilla, huh?

DOROTHY

You said the violence was the gorilla. Well, in this case it’s not violence, but it’s not you or me, either. It’s what’s going on between us, and it’s already going on, isn’t it?

BILLY

You tell me.

DOROTHY

(looks down at her hands, then up at him)

A person has to eat.

BILLY

You said it.

DOROTHY

And it’s still foggy outside.

BILLY

Like pea soup. And who knows? There’s a good chance the fog’ll lift by the time we’ve had our meal.

DOROTHY

I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. You know something? I think it’s lifting already.

CURTAIN

“At first,” Mick Ballou said, “I thought the same as everyone else in the country. I thought the fucking cable went out.”

We were at Grogan’s, the Hell’s Kitchen saloon he owns and frequents, and he was talking about the final episode of The Sopranos , which ended abruptly with the screen going blank and staying that way for ten or fifteen seconds.

“And then I thought, well, they couldn’t think of an ending. But Kristin recalled the time Tony and Bobby were talking of death, and what it would be like, and that you wouldn’t even know it when it happened to you. So that was the ending, then. Tony dies, and doesn’t even know it.”

It was late on a weekday night, and the closemouthed bartender had already shooed the last of the customers out of the place and put the chairs up on the tables, where they’d be out of the way when someone else mopped the floor in the morning. I’d been out late myself, speaking at an AA meeting in Marine Park, then stopping for coffee on the way home. Elaine met me with a message: Mick had called, and could I meet him around two?

There was a time when most of our evenings started around that time, with him drinking twelve-year-old Jameson while I kept him company with coffee or Coke or water. We’d go until dawn, and then he’d drag me down to St. Bernard’s on West 14th Street for the butchers’ mass. Nowadays our evenings started and ended earlier, and there weren’t enough butchers in the gentrified Meat Market district to fill out a mass, and anyway St. Bernard’s itself had given up the ghost, and was now Our Lady of Guadalupe.