Michael Thomas - Man Gone Down

“The day I was getting out I called Ma from detox. I wasn’t going to. I wasn’t even going to tell her that I’d slipped.” His voice cracks to a falsetto. “You’ve done better than you think. And forgive me, please, for saying this, but your mother never saw you go down.”

He breaks. I find his wrist and hold it. He lets me for a moment and then softly pulls away. “That may have been the most selfish thing I’ve ever said.” He exhales and tries to compose himself, but there’s still a high tremor in his voice. “So I call her and tell her that I’ve been out on a mission for the last few months, and she doesn’t say much, just, ‘Wow kid, I’m surprised you’re not dead.’ I don’t know what to say to that. So we’re silent on the line, and then she says, ‘Remember when your father called you out?’”

I turn my head to him. He looks at me and nods.

“Yeah, I don’t think I told you this one. It was just before we met. My old man had sobered up, was on good behavior — he got me Ted’s book that year. He was making some decent dough — trying to come back into our lives by spending. Anyway, he lost that job and went out on one of those jazz club benders — tears through his savings. He calls up Ma asking for money, and she tells him to go fuck himself or whatever — you know Ma. So he tells her to put me on the phone. I pick up, and he tells me that he’s coming over to teach me a lesson. I hang up, and I decide that I’m going to kill him — and I wish I had a gun. And I’m looking at my bat. Anyway, he shows up and drives up on the sidewalk and starts calling me out— ‘Come and get your beating, son!’ Just standing there, real calmly, with his hands behind his back like he was giving a lecture.”

He pauses, grins, and starts to nod.

“So I decide, you know — fuck that — I’m standing up to that fucker. So I open the window and yell out, ‘I ain’t comin’ out there, you drunk bastard!’ So we go back and forth like that — me yelling and him being cool—‘. . come and get your beating, son. .’ Ma’s pleading for me not to go — he’ll kill me. And a crowd gathers outside, but no one will do anything. So finally, he comes up to the window and he says, so just me and Ma can hear, ‘I don’t know if you’ll win or lose, but I do know that I can’t do anywhere near the damage to you that you’ll do to yourself if you don’t come out.’”

“So you went.”

“Yeah. Son of a bitch had a pandy-bat behind his back.” He shakes his head. “So I tell Ma, ‘Yeah, I remember.’ And there’s more silence on the line. Then she asks me if I’m sober, and I say’Yes.’ And then she asks me if I’m going to stay sober, and I say, ‘For today.’ Then she says, ‘You’re a good boy, Gavin — you’re a good man. I’m proud of you.’ I fuckin’ lost it.”

He forces out a chuckle, crushes his cup, and stands.

“Then she wired me some dough. I didn’t even ask.” He looks down at me. “How you doing?”

I nod and stand slowly. He slaps my back. We both look out over the avenue.

“You know,” he breathes. I try to find what it is he’s looking at but can’t pick it out. “Maybe the only thing worse than believing everything has some kind of meaning is believing that everything doesn’t.” He shrugs his shoulders. “That don’t make no sense.” He turns to me, studies my face, and then turns back to the street. “I miss you, man, it’s been too long.”

“Yeah.”

“We can’t fall out of touch like that.”

“No.”

“How do we not?”

“Stop going out on missions.”

“Oh shit! Touché. All right — stop hanging out with assholes.”

“I’m not hanging out with anyone.”

“Dinner parties with the smart set. Golf with I-bankers at the club — fuck you.”

“Marco’s okay.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well then, maybe we’ll all go out to the club when you get back.”

“I don’t know if I’m coming back.”

“Finally getting the brood out — good for you — this is no place for a family. I’ll bet you have to plan a whole day just to find a couple of blades of grass.”

I say it weakly, without thinking. “I’m a dead man, Gavin.”

“Pfft,” he spits. “Who isn’t?”

He extends his arm to the sidewalk, and then we descend. We stand facing each other for a moment. The waves of walkers part around us. Gavin bends his arm and taps at his bare wrist.

“Your ride’s here.”

I nod.

“So you’re getting on a bus?”

I shrug.

“A rolling obstreperous ass? You know, when the seats on those things warm up, the smell of every butt that ever sat in them is awakened.”

He points in the direction of Penn Station. I shake my head. He nods with mock gravity. “Ah yes — you are a true American. Nomadic. Romantic. Appearing out of nowhere to stake your claim on a place of dreams. Down the highway with you.”

I look at the clock. He doesn’t. He points over my shoulder toward the Port Authority. “You know I got here early and I got confused, so I went to the station to look for you. You’re taking a Greyhound, right?”

I nod weakly.

“Right. Well, there isn’t a 5:15. There’s a 5:33—express to Providence and Boston. Is that it?”

“Yeah.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

He taps his wrist again, then points north. “Skedaddle.” He holds out his hand as if to shake, but he’s pinching something in it — a folded bill. I hesitate. He pushes it at me.

“For your eczema.”

I look down, shuffle, reshoulder my bag.

“No, I owe you. Anyway, I’m set for a while. I’ll try and get you more later.” I take the bill and put it in my pocket without looking at it. We shake. He slaps me on the shoulder. “All right, captain. I’ll be seeing ya.” He starts to turn away.

“Hey, Gav?” I mumble.

He cocks his head to one side, smiles, and croons in a baritone. “Mmm-yess.”

“What’s the B-side of oblivion?”

“Pardon?”

“Its inverse.”

He smiles mischievously, squints. His eyes move slowly back and forth and upward behind the lids, as though watching something secretly ascend. He opens his eyes. They’re bright. He leans in and whispers.

“Heaven.” And leans back.

“Is there beer in heaven?”

He rubs his whiskers. “Mmmm-yess.”

“Can we drink it?”

He smiles wider, clasps his hands together, and croons again.

“Why, mm-yesss.” He waves, points uptown, and whispers, “Godspeed, brathir.”

Port Authority Bus Station is crowded and noisy, so I get on line without thinking. I don’t feel sick or weak, just tired. That feeling grounds me, though — my limbs and eyeballs pulsing. It keeps me, oddly enough, awake on line — mindlessly though. I don’t even think about Gavin’s money until I’m given back change for a hundred.

I have a little time, so I go to the men’s room to change. Strange: no junkies, no winos, just people going to the bathroom. I know it’s filthy and it stinks, but my senses seem to get it only in part. I lock myself into a stall, knowing that I should feel a certain terror, but I don’t. I don’t even mind letting my bare feet touch the floor when I change my socks. I wash my face and look into the polished steel mirror. Come and get your beating. Out of the wool suit I feel the chilly air. This place is conditioned for summer’s dog days, not its temperate ones. Now a shiver. I tell myself that it’s the caffeine and hunger.

I go into a strange little store — part deli, part drugstore, part newsstand — a part of the strange fluorescent mall. I don’t know what I’m getting, but then I taste my breath— gum, water. On the way to the counter I pass a bin of plastic dinosaurs. They look better than the cheap, squishy ones they usually sell in places like this — generic gestures at some sort of extinct monster type. These look to be near museum gift shop quality. I pick out a gray-green carnivore. It’s hard, heavy. ACROCANTHASAURUS is written in embossed letters on its belly. I wonder if X has ever heard of this one.