Steve Kistulentz - Panorama

He had seen every random event a big city had to offer—a trio of street fights, a bank robbery, a hit-and-run car wreck—and had learned to be attuned to the city’s mild ejaculations of violence, the fender benders between cabdrivers screaming heavily accented profanities that morphed into comical shoving matches (the Hindustani man he’d seen pounding on a stoned Rastaman, shouting, I am looking pissed! ), bicycle messengers who serpentined the wrong way through traffic, the occasional liquor-store robbery or purse snatcher who tore down Eighteenth Street in the midafternoon rush of the luncheon crowd. He’d even witnessed the beginning of a riot, a lifetime ago, watched it start in the streets and then watched the rest of it on Eyewitness News at 6 and again on Eyewitness News at 11 .

But he was not prepared for what greeted him on New Year’s morning, the streets of his sometimes overly festive neighborhood littered with broken beer bottles and empty plastic cups, all smothering in a stench he could not place until he stepped over a huge pile of curbside vomit baking in the lukewarm January sun, and the correlation came to him: New Orleans, the French Quarter in the false dawn light of a Sunday, just as foul and deserted. He headed down his small street, then right on Eighteenth and south a block to the corner of Florida Avenue. He was waiting to hail a taxi when he wandered into another of these random scenes, a drunk staggering out of the corner bodega, followed by the white-aproned owner, wielding a straw broom.

That’s when the drunk excused himself from the scene, setting down an unopened pint of Velikov, the cheapest available vodka, and raised his hands, wiping them on his pants, Pilate erasing his troubles, and backed away in surrender. This drunk still had enough firepower for his addled mind to know that somehow four-dollar vodka just wasn’t worth all this trouble, getting beaten for it here and probably again at the mission dinner on Fourteenth Street and again later as he shuffled through the line of the shelter at Third and D Streets.

The drunk said only, “Fuck you, Chico,” before the owner headed back into the store, then reemerged carrying an abruptly shortened Louisville Slugger. He removed his apron, taking the time to fold it in quarters before picking up the bat and waving it around, shouting, “It’s on, it’s on!”

The drunk disappeared into the alley behind a long-abandoned auto-parts store, and the bodega owner pulled his apron overhead, tied it neatly back into place, and swiped his hands together as if brushing off dried mud. He picked up the broom again and waved as Richard climbed into the only cab around.

AFTER JUST five hours of a spasmodic, champagne-addled sleep, Mary Beth’s optimism for the New Year was a remnant of the night before, replaced by the usual morning-after remorse. The empty feeling had to be a result of the drinks, the drinks her excuse for getting carried away in the imperfect moment of that midnight kiss. Her first waking thought of the New Year: Go home.

She stretched in the tub, then tried to work the kinks out of her neck. She moved back to the bedroom and reached for the light nearest her bedside table, and as Mike shielded his forehead with a spare pillow, Mary Beth found herself making a quick phone call to check on Gabriel.

The answer came after five rings, a muffled and bleary, “Hello?”

“Sarah? It’s me. Just calling to say happy New Year.”

“MB?” Sarah’s voice sounded scratchy, heavy with sleep. “Yeah, you too. Happy New Year. Fuck. What time is it?”

“About ten o’clock your time. How’s Gabriel? Did he behave last night?” Mary Beth pictured Sarah padding down the long hallway nearest Mike’s bedroom, headed for the guest room to check on Gabriel.

“The kid was most excellent. Seriously, he’s been great. We threw a junior version of a New Year’s Eve party, complete with pizza and sparkling cider. Then we watched some movie about a boy who builds a robot dog. In bed by ten o’clock. At least, he was. Wish I could say the same.”

“That movie has been in heavy rotation for a while. Sorry about that.”

Sarah yawned. “It’s fine. I had a few people over. We dug it. It makes sense on so many levels, like there’s something there for the kids and for the parents too. Though it probably would be better if you were high.”

Mary Beth found Sarah’s laughter alarming. This sense of responsibility revealed itself in surprising ways; since Gabriel’s birth, Mary Beth had come to realize that it had been there all along. Her feelings were inconsistent, since she’d sat through Fantasia and Fantastic Voyage and even 101 Dalmatians under the influence, but that was years ago, when she was a high school student worried about getting caught. She hadn’t even seen weed in fifteen years, knew that Sarah and her friends probably didn’t even call it weed anymore. She wasn’t clued in on the vocabulary, and she took pride in that. She was as aware of the changes in her attitudes as she was of the changes in her body, even though she noticed them slowly, as if she were translating secrets from some ancient text.

“MB? Do you want to talk to Gabe?” Sarah asked.

“Sorry. I kind of drifted there for a minute. It’s always Gabriel. Never Gabe. But don’t bother him. Just say that I love him and that I’ll be home tonight.”

“Are you going to need someone to meet you at the airport?”

Mary Beth gripped a ballpoint pen, tapping it on the notepad next to the phone. “I’ll grab a cab. You’ve already done enough.”

With the phone safely back in its cradle, Mary Beth thought it might have been a mistake not to tell Sarah of her early arrival. She’d already made the decision to march in there straight from the airport. She couldn’t help but fear that her child had been neglected, hadn’t been properly supervised, all weekend; from the moment she awoke in the hotel bathtub, she’d found herself morose and sluggish, the stink of cigarettes still in her hair and the accumulation of last night’s alcohol muddying her thoughts, but the pictures of Gabriel she conjured were crystal clear: her child playing with matches in Mike’s kitchen, her child being coaxed into a waiting van, her child—unwashed, no shirt—sitting amid a pile of broken glass.

Irrational, she knew. But she was changing her plans for her son, and she did not expect Mike Renfro or Sarah or anyone who did not have a child of their own to understand her need to hurry home. Gabriel would be happy, or happier, and that was all that was important. She pictured him on the floor of Mike’s den, enthralled with his Christmas toys; he had the typical six-year-old’s fascination with all forms of motorized transportation—passenger cars, over-the-road trucks, construction equipment, jumbo-jet aircraft. Gabriel collected these vehicles in miniature, carrying them from Mary Beth’s apartment to Mike Renfro’s house and all destinations in between in a blue plastic case he referred to, aping Mike, as his attaché.

Mary Beth hoped she might have time to fetch Gabriel a souvenir on the way home, another model plane or even a miniature Utah license plate that spelled out his first name. He owned seventeen of the fifty states now.

Mike raised himself to his elbows and asked, “How are things at the old homestead?”

“She was still in bed, dammit. Who knows what that kid is getting into. He hasn’t slept past seven a.m. in his life. Could have burned the house down by now.”

Mike reached for Mary Beth’s nearest shoulder before he said, “He’s probably sitting in the game room watching Bugs Bunny. ”

“I don’t know. I clearly woke her up.”