George Martin - Aces High

Unbidden, her image filled his mind. Barbara in the gown, her blond hair behind the veil, her face uplifted. "I do." And next to her, Steve Bruder. Tall, dark, very fit. If anything, the sonofabitch was better-looking now than he had been in high school. He was a raquetball fanatic, Tom knew. With a boyish smile and a fashionable Tom Selleck mustache. He'd look wonderful in his tux. Together, they'd make a dynamite couple.

And their child would be a stunner.

He should go. So what if he hadn't replied to the invitation, they'd still let him in. Dump the shell in the junkyard, dump the shell in the fucking river for all it mattered, pick up his car, and he could be there in no time at all. Dance with the bride, and smile at her, and wish her happiness, all the happiness in the world. And shake the hand of the lucky groom. Shake Bruder's hand. Yeah.

Bruder had a great handshake. He was in real estate now, in Weehawken and Hoboken mostly; he'd bought early and been perfectly positioned when all the yuppies in Manhattan woke up one morning and discovered that New Jersey was just across the Hudson. Making a bloody fortune, going to be a millionaire by forty-five. He'd told Tom himself, that hideous night when Barbara had gotten them both to dinner. Handsome and self-assured, with that jaunty boyish grin, and going to be a millionaire too, but his life wasn't all roses, his big screen TV was giving him a little trouble and maybe Tom could take a look at it, eh? For old times' sake.

In grade school, they'd shaken hands once and Steve had squeezed so hard that Tom had gone to his knees, crying, unable to break loose. Even now, Steve Bruder's sophisticated grown-up handshake was still a lot firmer than it needed to be. He liked to see the other guy wince.

I'd like the Turtle to shake his fucking hand, Tom thought savagely. Grab the hand with his mind and give a little friendly squeeze, until the hand began to crimp and twist, until that smooth tanned skin ripped and the fingers snapped like broken red chopsticks, bones sticking through the flesh. The Turtle could pump his fucking arm up and down until it came right out of its socket, and then he could pull off the fingers one by one. She loves me she loves me not she loves me she loves me not she loves ME.

Tom's throat was dry, and he felt sick and dizzy. He opened the refrigerator and got out a beer. It tasted good. The shell was moving above the sleaze of Times Square. His eyes went restlessly from screen to screen. Peep shows and porn theaters, adult bookstores, live sex on stage, neon signs that screamed GIRLS GIRLS NAKED GIRLS and HOTTEST SHOW IN TOWN and NUDE TEENAGE MODELS, male hustlers in denim and cowboy hats, pimps in long mink coats with razors in their pockets, hard-faced hookers in fishnet stockings and slit leather skirts. He could pick up a whore, Tom thought suddenly. Literally. Yank her twenty feet off the ground, make her show him what she was selling, make her take it off right there in the center of Times Square, give the fucking tourists a real show. Or take it off for her, rip it off piece by piece and let it float to the ground. He could do that, yeah. Let Bruder have his wedding night with Barbara, the Turtle could have a wedding night of his own.

He swallowed another slug of beer.

Or maybe he should just clean out this filth. Everyone was always bitching about what a pesthole Times Square had become, but no one ever did anything about it. Fuck it, he'd do it for them. He'd show them how to clean out a bad neighborhood, if that's what they wanted. Pull down those marquees one by one, herd the fucking whores and pimps and hustlers into the river, drive a few pimpmobiles through the windows of those third-floor photographic studios with the nude teenage models, rip up the goddamned sidewalks if he'd a mind to. It was about time somebody did it. Look at this place, just look at it, and barely spitting distance from Port Authority, so it was the first thing a kid would see after getting of the bus.

Tom drained the beer. He chucked the can onto the floor, swiveled, and searched for another, but there was nothing left in his six-pack but the plastic holder. "Fuck it," he said. Suddenly he was furious. He turned on his microphone, twisted the volume all the way. "FUCK IT," he shouted, and the voice of the Turtle thundered over 42nd Street, distorted and amplified into a red roar. People stopped dead on the sidewalk, and eyes craned up at him. Tom smiled. He had their attention, it seemed. "FUCK IT ALL," he said. "FUCK EVERY ONE OF YOU."

He paused, and was about to expand on that topic, when a police dispatcher's voice, crackling over his monitor, caught his attention. She was repeating the code for an officer in trouble, repeating it over and over again.

Tom left them gaping, while he listened carefully for details. Part of him felt sorry for the poor asshole who was about to get his head handed to him.

His shell rose straight up, high above the streets and buildings, and shot south toward the Village.

"I figured you were just slow," Barbara said, when she had composed herself. "It always took you time to work up to anything. I don't understand, Tom."

He couldn't look into her eyes. He looked around her living room, his hands in his pockets. Over her desk she'd hung her diploma and teaching certificate. Around them were arrayed the photographs: pictures of Barbara grimacing as she changed the diaper on her four-month-old niece, pictures of Barbara and her three sisters, pictures of Barbara showing her class how to cut black witches and orange pumpkins out of posterboard for Halloween, supervising six dancing presidents for a school play, loading a projector to run cartoons. And reading a story. That was his favorite picture. Barbara with a tiny little black girl on her lap and another dozen kids ranged all around her, staring at her with rapt faces while she read aloud from The Wind in the Willows. Tom had taken that photograph himself.

"There's nothing to understand," he'd snapped when he looked away from the pictures. "It's over, that's all. Let's break it off clean, okay?"

"Is there someone else?" she said.

It might have been kinder to lie to her, but he was a poor liar. "No," he said.

"Then, why?"

She was baffled and hurt, but her face had never been lovelier, Tom thought. He couldn't face her. "It's just best," he said, turning to look out her window. "We don't want the same things, Barbara. You want to get married, right? Not me. Forget it, no way. You're terrific, its not you, it's.. fuck it, it just isn't working. Kids; every time I turn around there's a mob of kids. How many does your sister have, three? Four? I'm tired of pretending. I hate kids." His voice went up. "I despise kids, you understand?"

"You can't mean that, Tommy. I've seen you with the kids in my class. You took them to your house and showed them you comic collection. You helped jenny build that model of Jetboy's plane. You like kids."

Tom laughed. "Oh, fuck it, how naive can you get? I was just trying to impress you. I wanted to get into your pants. I don't-" His voice broke. "Damn it," he said. "If I like kids so fucking much, then how come I had a vasectomy? How come, huh? Tell me that?"

When he turned, her face was as red as if he had hit her.

The playground was surrounded by police cruisers, six of them, flashers strobing red and blue in the gathering dusk. Cops were crouched behind the cars with guns drawn. Beyond the high chain-link fence, two dark shapes sprawled under the basketball net, and a third was draped over one of the barrels. Someone was whimpering in pain.

Tom spotted a detective he knew, holding the collar of a skinny young joker whose face was as soft and white as tapioca pudding, shaking him so hard his jowls bounced. The boy wore Demon Prince colors, Tom saw on a close-up shot. He drifted lower. "HEADS UP," he boomed. "WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?"