William Kennedy - Billy Phelan's Greatest Game

“Your lady friend Angie called again, Billy,” Red Tom said, as he slid Billy a new, tall, free one. “She says it’s urgent.”

“I know her urgent.”

“And she says it’s not what you think. Important, she says.”

“Important.”

“She sounded like she meant it.”

“I’ll check her out, Tommy. Have one on me.”

“Save your money, Billy. Winter’s coming.”

“Billy knows where the heat is.”

“Up in Angie’s room?”

“Some there, yeah. Definitely some up there.”

I’ll screw you as long as my equipment lasts, Billy once told Angie, but I won’t marry you. She repeated the line for Billy after he rolled off her. He sat up, lit a cigarette, and then fixed a scotch with tap water. He put on his white boxer shorts, hiding the ragged scar on the left cheek of his behind. He got that when he was ten, sliding into a second base made from a flattened tin oil can. Almost made him half-assed. But Doc Lennon sewed it up after he poured two bottles of iodine into the slice, which still gives Billy the screaming meemies when he thinks about it. Then Billy’s mother bathed the wound and fussed at it for weeks, and the teamwork let Billy grow up with a complete tail.

“Why you bringing that up now?” Billy asked. “You thinking about marriage again?”

“I’m always thinking about marriage, with you.”

“Drop it, Ange. I’ll never be any good in that husband racket.”

“And you couldn’t, wouldn’t marry a divorcee.”

“The hell with that stuff.”

“I’m only teasing, Billy I love to tease you.”

Angie stood up and slipped back into her nightgown, sheer white silk with white lace trim where her cleavage would’ve been if she had any. She was a long, lean, dark-haired Latinesque girl of twenty-five who looked thirty when she talked because she was smart but who grew wispy with a turn of emotion and fled into the look of adolescence. She read sad poetry and went to sad movies in order to cry, for crying at trouble, she told Billy, was almost as good as weeping with love. There was so little love in the world, she said, that people needed substitutes. It’s why lonely old people keep pets, she said. Billy was Angie’s pet. I can’t imagine anyone who didn’t sometime want to do away with themselves because of love, she once said to Billy, for chrissake. Billy, she said, stroking him, tickling the back of his neck, if you ever died I’d make sure they put flowers on your grave forever, just like they do for Valentino. This, of course, is just what Billy needs.

But Angie was part of his life now, and had been since her husband slapped her around in the Clubhouse at Saratoga. Billy was watching from the bar when they started their screaming over the car keys. Give ’em to me, you bitch, he said. I haven’t got ’em, Angie said. You got ’em, he said. You just wanna hang around here makin’ moon eyes at all the studs. Billy was her only stud then, and when her husband was around, she never even gave Billy a nod. So she walked away from the son of a bitch when he said that, and he spun her around by the arm and slapped her twice. Billy wanted to hit him till his teeth fell out, but all he could do was watch. Angie took the whipping and didn’t say a word, which beat the bastard. He slammed out of the Clubhouse and left their car in the lot and walked back to the hotel. And found the car keys in his own coat pocket when he was halfway there. Billy bought Angie a drink and smooched her on the cheek where she’d been hit and put her in a taxi and bet twenty on a horse named Smacker in the last race and it showed eight dollars.

Angie came to Albany every other month after that, for a weekend at least and sometimes a week. She’d call Billy and he’d see her and once in a while she’d give him money, which made him feel like a gigolo, but of course that wasn’t what Billy was. He only took it when he needed it. Angie called Billy her little wheel of excitement. When I was a kid I used to sit on the stoop and wait for it to roll down the street to me, she said. But it never showed up till I met you.

Why’d ya marry that bum? Billy asked her once, and she said, Because he was like my father and I loved my father, but you’re right, he is a bum, he’s not like my father at all. He’s a bum, he’s a bum, and he’s got his women, too. He came home one night with the smell of oral sex on his face. Angie never called him on it. She just packed a bag and came to Albany. But he was good in bed, Angie said, he was very good. Angie never told Billy he was very good in bed, but then he didn’t hear any complaints out of her either. What got Billy about Angie was the way she was alone so much. Billy was almost never alone. I can stand being alone, Angie told him. Being with him is like being alone. It won’t kill you.

Billy looked down on the lights of Pearl Street. No traffic.

“You got aspirin?” he asked Angie. “I got a headache.”

“The closet shelf on the left, a small bag,” she said. “Why have you got a headache? You never get headaches.”

“Whataya mean I never get headaches? Everybody gets headaches. How the hell do you know I never get headaches?”

“All right, you get headaches,” Angie said, and she fell back into bed and crossed her feet.

In the closet, Billy looked at her picture hat, black with two white flowers. Billy snatched the hat off the shelf and waved it at her. “When you got a face like you got, you don’t need any flowers on your hat.” He put the hat back on the shelf and felt for the aspirin and found them. Then he saw her black linen suit with the plaid scarf, and the gray wool suit with the darker gray silk lapels. Goddamn Angie knew how to dress. Like a model. Too goddamn smart. A college dame. Thinks like a man.

“You’re too goddamn smart,” he said, as he went to the sink.

“What does that mean?”

“The hell with it.”

“Billy, come here. Come and sit down.”

“Gimme a rest.”

“Not that. Just come and sit.”

Billy washed his aspirin down and went and sat. She stroked his face and then dropped her hand and eyes and said, “I’ve got something sad to tell you.”

“Your cat got run over.”

“Something like that. I had an abortion.”

“Yeah?”

“It was ours.”

Billy smoked a little and then looked at her. Her eyes were on him now.

“When?”

“About three weeks ago.”

“Why didn’t you ring me in on it?”

“What would you have done?”

“I don’t know. Helped you.”

“Helped get it done? A good Catholic boy like you?”

“I mean with your head. It must’ve been lousy for you.”

“You never want to know things like that. Anything that involves you. You really didn’t want to know, did you?”

“Half of it’s my kid.”

“Not a kid, a fetus. And it’s gone. Nobody’s now.”

“Goddamn it, I had a right to know.”

“You had a right ?”

“You bet your ass. What the hell, I don’t have a say in my own son?”

“Of course it was a boy. You’re really classic, Billy.”

“Whatever the hell it was.”

Billy looked at his hand and saw the cigarette shaking. Goddamn ton of goddamn bricks. He’d wanted to talk about the Berman business and about his father being back in town. Angie had good sense. He wanted to ask her about money, maybe borrow some, but they got into the sack too fast. You can’t ask for money after you’ve been in the sack with a woman. Now, with this business, he couldn’t ask her anything. How do so many things happen all of a sudden? He thought of making nineteen straight passes at Slicky Joyce’s in Mechanicville. Almost broke the Greek bankrolling the game. How do nineteen straight passes happen? He stubbed out his cigarette and walked across the room to put on his pants.