David Gates - The Wonders of the Invisible World

My-y house is o-okay

O-okay

O-okay

My-y house is o-okay

Fiddle fiddle fiddle all day

I thought, Now, before you go crazy on this, remember this is basically a happy little girl. Maybe her house is okay. I guess I have an attitude because the mother comes in with her chopped-off hair and her power suits (so you wonder what weirdness causes her to make her daughter look just the opposite), and the father is this long-haired narcissist in a leather jacket that must have cost eight hundred dollars. He picks her up like once a month, and I have yet to see him drop her off in the morning.

Anyhow. Trying not to be a bitch about being in this actually kind of scrimy little bar instead of home in the tub. And trying not to get started on quality-of-life stuff in general: e.g., coming in the door just now, I had to get around this babbling homeless man thrusting a shopping bag at me, God knows why. I thought I knew most of them who hang around the neighborhood, but this one seems to be a new acquisition. Though of course with Tobias the last thing you want to do is complain about what a drag the homeless are.

“Heave-ho,” Tobias says, by way of toasting me, and drains off half the glass. He was here when I got here, and already long gone inside himself. I mean he’s still talking and everything, but I could be anybody, you can just feel it.

“See, this is the thing that kills me,” he’s saying. “Everybody saw the Times, right? And so they all assume, I mean I assume they assume, that this is the way it went down. I don’t know, everything is like that movie anymore. You know. Oh, fuck. Famous Jap movie. Rosh Hashanah, Rosh Hashanah Mon Amour. ”

This is one of Tobias’s things. Not a joke, exactly. But like the way he calls a yarmulke a Yamaha, or he’ll say, “Whatta we got in the Norhay?” meaning our refrigerator. That one took me weeks.

“See, I was there,” he’s saying. “I mean, not that I was any more there than the Times guy. But he came with his agenda, which we all do. You know, me the same as anybody.” He takes a smaller sip, like he’s already home free and anything he drinks now is just for the luxury. “But what I saw,” he says, “what I saw, was a bunch of cops just zeroing in on this one black guy and absolutely hammering the living fuck out of him. It was fucking Rodney Two, man.” Back when Rodney King happened, Tobias taped it off the news and for days he’d be playing it over and over, saying, Unbelievable, unbelievable.

“You mean using their sticks?” I say.

“You better believe using their sticks. You know, okay, I can see it, he was yelling shit, all right? But Jesus Christ. I’ll tell you something, it took my breath away.” Sip. “And the fucking Times reports it ‘marred only by minor disturbances.’ ”

“Maybe the Times person just missed it,” I say. “If you’re one reporter, you can’t be everywhere.”

“Yeah, right. Maybe. Possibly. But I also kept checking News 88 and WINS. And they also had jack shit.”

“The Post didn’t have it this morning?” I said. “Sounds like right up their alley.”

“You know I won’t buy the Post, ” he says. “Look. Doesn’t matter. The New York Times is what people read who have the power to get anything done.” Sip. “What I’m saying is, all the information about this is being very, very adroitly fucking managed.” Sip. “Fuck it, what are we even talking about it for?” He waves his glass for the bartender.

“It’s just extremely obvious,” he says, “that the word was put out, high up. I call the police guy I’ve been dealing with all week, okay? And suddenly, ‘We have no record of that.’ Imagine this shit? I call the guy in the mayor’s office — and I don’t assume he’s a total asshole just because he works for Giuliani — and it’s like, ‘Well, the police say they have no record.’ And so now this becomes the truth. It’s like There is no war with Oceania. We have never been at war with Oceania. And of course the way they sell it to the media, Now we certainly don’t want to have another situation like L.A. on our hands here, DO WE, GENTLEMEN? So word goes out, everybody gets with the program and everybody’s happy except some nigger who was asking for it anyway.”

“Could you keep your voice down?” I say. I sneak a look around, but there’s nobody black, thank God.

“If anybody had a camcorder yesterday,” he says, “that tape got bought for major, major bucks. You ’ll sure as shit never see it.” Another glass of whisky arrives, the old glass goes. “Well, hey, not to worry. Bernie’s on the case. Going to blow their whole game wide open. He thinks. Anyhow, he was there when I left last night, working on his letter to the Times. Bernie Adler, the Undefeated. Faxed it to them and everything so they’d be sure to get it in. Oh, yes, Mr. Adler, certainly. Another little thing you’re never going to see. Gee, we had to hold it for space reasons, or it’s like Our computer must’ve eaten it. ” Sip. “Fuck it. What I’m going to do, I’m going to get stinko.”

No kidding, I want to say.

When I can finally get Tobias out of the Little Finland, I take him around the corner to Biagio’s, where I keep passing him the bread before our food arrives on the stupid theory that bread soaks up alcohol. (He really doesn’t do this very often.) He tells me about five times that we have to eat in a hurry because I have to get him home in time for the news at ten. It’s now like eight o’clock.

But instead of going straight home, he says we have to walk past where he parked the car, all the way over between York and East End, to make sure it’s okay. It’s like, what more could happen to it? Last week we found the driver’s-side door handle wrenched up halfway out of the door and papers from the dash all over the front seat. This pathetic ’81 Honda Civic. Maybe it would be better not to keep locking the thing; this was about the eighty-fifth time. So now the key won’t open Tobias’s side anymore and his window goes down only partway. Which is especially a drag because one thing he used to actually enjoy was driving in the summertime with his elbow out the window. This is one of the ways you know Tobias isn’t really a New Yorker at heart despite what a New Yorker he is. He always says he’d never have an air-conditioned car for just this reason. (I can see it, right? Tobias Baker, man of principle, turning down the Lexus somebody’s trying to give him because you can only hang your arm out the window of a shitbox car like we have.) Anyhow, there’s Old Betsy up ahead, between a Cherokee (which I personally would love to have) and a something else.

“Looks much the same,” I say. Chain holding down the hood so they don’t get the battery again, and the red thing on the steering wheel — not The Club but this thing Tobias says is just as good as The Club. “Actually, I sort of feel sorry in a way for somebody that would pick this car to break into.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t,” he says. “You know, a lot of the time lately? I visualize coming down the street and I see some son of a bitch fucking around with the car and I would pound their fucking head into the pavement and kick their balls in. I am really fucking sick of fucking crime.”

“I know, I’m sick of it, too,” I say. “What I guess I meant, it’s like it would be somebody so beaten down that they wouldn’t even presume to break into a Grand Cherokee or something.”