Michael Thomas - Man Gone Down

Marco’s still on the couch, but he’s awake, sitting up, rubbing his eyes. He stops and looks my way. He’s too nearsighted to see me from across the house. He waves to the sounds of the street coming through the open door.

I set off. It’s already hot outside. The air’s loaded with water. On the corner of Wyckoff and Court is a Chinese takeout booth. As I pass, someone turns on the exhaust fan and I get a blast of celery and ancient chicken in my face along with the rust tint of the fan blade and whatever greasy filth is trapped in the housing. I turn right — north — up the slight grade. I walk past the travel agent, the gourmet shop, past the coffee shop in which, ten years ago the kid at the counter checked to see if the ten I had given him was counterfeit. I walk past the realtor who never seemed to be able to find Claire and me an apartment when we first looked at the neighborhood. Past the closed Taqueria. I cross Bergen Street, looking down the hill to the F-train stop at the bottom.

A kid from the bagel store is hosing down the concrete, washing the scum left behind from last night’s trash. He stops the water so I can pass. He’s used bleach. It burns my eyes and nostrils as I walk by, but it’s failed to kill all the stink. The milky, oily water collects in the gutter because there’s a slight depression in the road. The sun will have to dry it all up.

I pass and hear him turn the spray on again. I walk past the vet and wait at the corner of Dean, where cars always make the illegal dogleg turn against the traffic on Court. They’ve finished the facade of the funeral home. Instead of stucco they used Styrofoam sheathing and epoxy paint. Down the hill is the gym I used to go to. A couple walks up past the little firehouse toward me. They’re both very tall and thin. I’ve seen them for years. They’re both graying. They walk with their squash racquets poking out from their bags. He, as always, is still wearing his safety goggles. He sees me and shoots a quick, high wave. She doesn’t. I wave back.

A neighborhood mom I recognize from the playground passes them. She jogs slowly. She’s sweaty and heavy. She wears big shorts and a tentlike T-shirt. She nears, does a double take, and waves. She looks at my tool bag and nods as though it’s answered a question for her. She passes and I recall her face — little eyes, rodentine, lidless, and her pinched nose. I turn to look at her. I’ve overheard her talking about her battles with her weight with her pals. She’s been shuffling in the early morn for a half decade now. She’s dieted, fasted. Nothing’s changed. Now, she’s just older.

There used to be a café—Roberto’s — owned by a screwball Puerto Rican who passed himself off as Italian. He made the best coffee, nice little sandwiches, too. No cell phones allowed. No laptops. He had iron lawn chairs and an oak church pew and two long plywood tables. One day he got sick of breaking even, serving the privileged stroller brigade, and left the shutter down.

It surprises some people that I go to a chain store for my coffee, but I won’t support the incompetent mom-and-pop operations that keep springing up around the neighborhood, subsidize half-wit entrepreneurial fantasies by agreeing to their criminal markups. Besides, black girls work in the Starbucks. Sometimes I even call them my girls. I don’t know if their personal stakes in the company are myth or fact, but they always brew a good strong cup and treat me well. Besides, my girls have taken over this outpost — shed the caps and shirts. Shed the greetings. I never have to order. They always slide my large black to me with six ice cubes dropped in on top so as to take the coffee out of the lawsuit temperature range.

Kelly is short and round faced, with dark chocolate skin. She waves me off when I go for my money.

“How are the babies?”

“Babies are good — good. You?”

“I’m good. It’s all good. You look tired.”

The others in line are perplexed by our exchange. Kelly takes the next order. I drop some of Marco’s change into the tip jar and leave.

Across the street the ice cream store is closed, as well as the two pubs I’ve never been to. One, Coopers, has a blackboard in the window advertising an open-mike night Wednesdays at nine. Farther down the block the church steeple rises up above the adolescent trees and low buildings. It’s newly clad with brown sheet metal, but the old copper trim and gutters are oxidized. It can’t, from the way the seams appear to be bent, be watertight. Behind the big louvered panels is the broken bell. I missed its last sounding. I figure I’ll wait until the next clang and slowly make my way to work — eight to four. Then at four I’ll call on Marta for our check, perhaps even make it up to school to plead my case for the boy’s tuition installments. If I get paid in cash, four days of work will net me a thousand. Then I’ll have two weeks till Labor Day: tuition, new apartment deposit, miscellaneous bills, the bus ticket, the Ronaldo shirt — not likely but possible.

A paddy wagon pulls up and one of the cops gets out, repeats his partner’s coffee order twice, and goes inside. Somebody yells something from the back and the cop without turning snickers, “Sorry, the AC’s broken.” He listens to another complaint and replies, “I’ll give you my badge number now.” The “brown like poop” kid’s mother power walks toward me. She’s holding little dumbbells. She sees me. I can tell she’d like to avoid me, but that would require a change of pace and a turn into the street. She readjusts her face to look happy — surprised but happy.

“You’re up early.”

“Sure.”

“What are you doing? Are you having a good summer?”

“Sure.”

“How’s everyone?”

“Great. Yours?”

“They’re great. We signed Eli up for German lessons. He loves it.”

“German, huh?”

“Well, I’m half German.”

She’s wearing a mauve sport bra and long, black tights that would seem to be suffocating in the wet August heat. The elastic bands of both are too tight. They cut into her ribs, her waist, creasing her flesh, intensifying the shapelessness of her exposed gut — one big fleshy roll on display — pink and peach and white and sweaty. I don’t want to stare at it so I look at her face. She has a little head even for a small person, but she’s tall, about five-ten. She has chestnut hair. It’s short, but she wears it pulled back, revealing her ears, which would fit the head size she should have. Her nose is large, too, and her eyes seem to cross a bit — forever inclined to follow its length. She wipes her cheek with the back of her hand.

“What’s Cecil up to?”

“He’s at the beach.”

“That’s great. Did you guys find a place?” She asks cautiously, as though she’s unsure whether our problems are common knowledge.

“Not yet.”

She shifts her right side forward. Her shoulders and arms are skinny but shapeless. Her body doesn’t start to widen until her navel — that wide ring of flesh — then it keeps expanding. She’s bottom heavy, but she tapers toward the knee. Her calves are thin. Her feet are tiny.

“I’ll keep my ears open.”

“Great. Thanks.”

“Good to see you.” She leaves but waits half a block to resume her power walk. I sip my coffee and watch her — hands high, head forward, ass out, like some poorly conceived bird, a problematic emu, lost in Brooklyn.

I feel mean as I watch her disappear down the street. I had a knack once, for a short while, of talking to her — people like her — or, at least, listening. That’s gone now, too. Before Claire left, we’d walk these streets as a family. She’d stop and talk or give a bright smile and wave, without breaking stride but slowing down and turning just enough to make the greeting seem customized and sincere.