They did not reply.
Finally Bennie came out. He looked trim. He looked fit. He wore black trousers and a white shirt buttoned at the neck but no tie. I understood something for the very first time when I looked at that shirt: I understood that expensive shirts looked better than cheap shirts. The fabric wasn’t shiny, no—shiny would be cheap. But it glowed, like there was light coming through from the inside. It was a fucking beautiful shirt, is what I’m saying.
“Scotty, man, how goes it?” Bennie said, patting me warmly on the back as we shook hands. “Sorry to keep you waiting. Hope Sasha took good care of you.” He gestured at the girl I’d been dealing with, whose carefree smile could be roughly translated as: He’s officially not my problem anymore. I gave her a wink whose exact translation was: Don’t be so sure, darling.
“Here, c’mon back to my office,” Bennie said. He had his arm around my shoulders and was steering me toward a hallway.
“Hey wait—I forgot!” I cried, and ran back to get the fish. As I slung the bag from the coffee table into my hands a little fish juice flew from one corner, and the corporate types both jumped to their feet as if it were nuclear runoff. I looked over at “Sasha,” expecting to find her cowering, but she was watching it all with a look I would have to call amused.
Bennie waited for me by the hall. I noticed, with satisfaction, that his skin had gotten more brown since high school. I’d read about this: your skin gradually darkens from all those cumulative years of sunlight, and Bennie’s had done so to a point where calling him Caucasian was a stretch.
“Shopping?” he asked, eyeing my bundle.
“Fishing,” I told him.
Bennie’s office was awesome, and I don’t mean that in the male teenage skateboarding sense—I mean it in the old-fashioned literal sense. The desk was a giant jet black oval with a wet-looking surface like the most expensive pianos have. It reminded me of a black ice-skating rink. Behind the desk was nothing but view—the whole city flung out in front of us the way street vendors fling out their towels packed with cheap, glittery watches and belts. That’s how New York looked: like a gorgeous, easy thing to have, even for me. I stood just inside the door, holding my fish. Bennie went around to the other side of the wet black oval of his desk. It looked frictionless, like you could slide a coin over the surface and it would float to the edge and drop to the floor. “Have a seat, Scotty,” he said.
“Wait,” I said. “This is for you.” I came forward and gently set the fish on his desk. I felt like I was leaving an offering at a Shinto shrine on top of the tallest mountain in Japan. The view was tripping me out.
“You’re giving me a fish?” Bennie said. “That’s a fish?”
“Striped bass. I caught it in the East River this morning.”
Bennie looked at me like he was waiting for a cue to laugh.
“It’s not as polluted as people think,” I said, sitting down on a small black chair, one of two facing Bennie’s desk.
He stood, picked up the fish, came around his desk, and handed it back to me. “Thanks, Scotty,” he said. “I appreciate the thought, I really do. But a fish is bound to go to waste, here at my office.”
“Take it home and eat it!” I said.
Bennie smiled his peaceful smile, but he made no move to retrieve the fish. Fine, I thought, I’ll eat it myself.
My black chair had looked uncomfortable—I’d thought, lowering myself onto it, This is going to be one of those hellish chairs that makes your ass ache and then go numb. But it was without question the most comfortable chair I had ever sat in, even more comfortable than the leather couch in the waiting room. The couch had put me to sleep—this chair was making me levitate.
“Talk to me, Scotty,” Bennie said. “You have a demo tape you want me to hear? You’ve got an album, a band? Songs you’re looking to have produced? What’s on your mind.”
He was leaning against the front of the black lozenge, ankles crossed—one of those poses that appears to be very relaxed but is actually very tense. As I looked up at him, I experienced several realizations, all in a sort of cascade: (1) Bennie and I weren’t friends anymore, and we never would be. (2) He was looking to get rid of me as quickly as possible with the least amount of hassle. (3) I already knew that would happen. I’d known it before I arrived. (4) It was the reason I had come to see him.
“Scotty? You still there?”
“So,” I said. “You’re a big shot now, and everyone wants something from you.”
Bennie went back around to his desk chair and sat there facing me with arms folded in a pose that looked less relaxed than the first one, but was actually more so. “Come on, Scotty,” he said. “You write me a letter out of nowhere, now you show up at my office—I’m guessing you didn’t come here just to bring me a fish.”
“No, that was a gift,” I said. “I came for this reason: I want to know what happened between A and B.”
Bennie seemed to be waiting for more.
“A is when we were both in the band, chasing the same girl. B is now.”
I knew instantly that it had been the right move to bring up Alice. I’d said something literally, yes, but underneath that I’d said something else: we were both a couple of asswipes, and now only I’m an asswipe; why? And underneath that, something else: once an asswipe, always an asswipe. And deepest of all: You were the one chasing. But she picked me.
“I’ve busted my balls,” Bennie said. “That’s what happened.”
“Ditto.”
We looked at each other across the black desk, the seat of Bennie’s power. There was a long, strange pause, and in that pause I felt myself pulling Bennie back—or maybe it was him pulling me—back to San Francisco, where we were two out of four Flaming Dildos, Bennie one of the lousier bass players you were likely to hear, a kid with brownish skin and hair on his hands, and my best friend. I felt a kick of anger so violent it made me dizzy. I closed my eyes and imagined coming at Bennie across that desk and ripping off his head, yanking it from the neck of that beautiful white shirt like a knobby weed with long tangled roots. I pictured carrying it into his swank waiting room by his bushy hair and dropping it on Sasha’s desk.
I rose from my chair, but at that same moment, Bennie got up, too—sprang up, I should say, because when I looked at him, he was already standing.
“Mind if I look out your window?” I asked.
“Not at all.” He didn’t sound afraid, but I smelled that he was. Vinegar: that’s what fear smells like.
I went to the window. I pretended to look at the view, but my eyes were closed.
After a while, I sensed that Bennie had moved closer to me. “You still doing any music, Scotty?” he asked gently.
“I try,” I said. “Mostly by myself, just to keep loose.” I was able to open my eyes, but not to look at him.
“You were amazing on that guitar,” he said. Then he asked, “Are you married?”
“Divorced. From Alice.”
“I know,” he said. “I meant remarried.”
“It lasted four years.”
“I’m sorry, buddy.”
“All for the best,” I said. Then I turned to look at Bennie. He was standing with his back to the window, and I wondered if he ever bothered to look out, if having so much beauty at close range meant anything at all to him. “What about you?” I asked.
“Married. Three-month-old son.” He smiled, then—a waffly, embarrassed smile at the thought of his baby boy, like he knew he didn’t deserve that much. And behind Bennie’s smile the fear was still there: that I’d tracked him down to snatch away these gifts life had shoveled upon him, wipe them out in a few emphatic seconds. This made me want to scream with laughter: Hey “buddy,” don’t you get it? There’s nothing you have that I don’t have! It’s all just X’s and O’s, and you can come by those a million different ways. But two thoughts distracted me as I stood there, smelling Bennie’s fear: (1) I didn’t have what Bennie had. (2) He was right.
Instea
d, I thought of Alice. This was something I almost never let myself do—just think of her, as opposed to think about not thinking about her, which I did almost constantly. The thought of Alice broke open in me, and I let it fan out until I saw her hair in the sun—gold, her hair was gold—and I smelled those oils she used to dab on her wrists with a dropper. Patchouli? Musk? I couldn’t remember the names. I saw her face with all the love still in it, no anger, no fear—none of the sorry things I learned to make her feel. Come inside, her face said, and I did. For a minute, I came inside.
I looked down at the city. Its extravagance felt wasteful, like gushing oil or some other precious thing Bennie was hoarding for himself, using it up so no one else could get any. I thought: If I had a view like this to look down on every day, I would have the energy and inspiration to conquer the world. The trouble is, when you most need such a view, no one gives it to you.
I took a long inhale and turned to Bennie. “Health and happiness to you, brother,” I said, and I smiled at him for the first and only time: I let my lips open and stretch back, something I very rarely do because I’m missing most of my teeth on both sides. The teeth I have are big and white, so those black gaps come as a real surprise. I saw the shock in Bennie’s face when he saw. And all at once I felt strong, as if some balance had tipped in the room and all of Bennie’s power—the desk, the view, the levitating chair—suddenly belonged to me. Bennie felt it too. Power is like that; everyone feels it at once.
I turned and walked toward the door, still grinning. I felt light, as if I were wearing Bennie’s white shirt and light was pouring out from inside it.
“Hey, Scotty, hold on,” Bennie said, sounding shaken. He veered back toward his desk, but I kept walking, my grin leading the way into the hall and back toward the reception area where Sasha sat, my shoes whispering on the carpet with each slow, dignified step. Bennie caught up with me and handed me a business card: sumptuous paper with embossed print. It felt precious. I held it very carefully. “President,” I read.
“Don’t be a stranger, Scotty,” Bennie said. He sounded bewildered, as if he’d forgotten how I had come to be there; as if he’d invited me himself and I were leaving prematurely. “You ever have any music you want me to hear, send it on.”
I couldn’t resist one last look at Sasha. Her eyes were serious, almost sad, but she was still flying the flag of her pretty smile. “Take care, Scotty,” she said.
Outside the building, I walked directly to the box where I had mailed my letter to Bennie a few days earlier. I bent my neck and squinted up at the tower of green glass, trying to count the floors to forty-five. And only then did I notice that my hands were empty—I’d left my fish in Bennie’s office! This struck me as hilarious, and I laughed out loud, imagining the corporate types seating themselves in the levitating chairs in front of Bennie’s desk, one of them lifting the wet, heavy bag from the floor and then recognizing it—Oh, Christ, it’s that guy’s fish—dropping it, revolted. And what would Bennie do? I wondered, as I walked slowly toward the subway. Would he dispose of the fish forever then and there, or would he put it in the office refrigerator and take it home that night to his wife and baby son, and tell them about my visit? And if he got that far, was it possible that he might open up the bag and take a look, just for the hell of it?
I hoped so. I knew he’d be amazed. It was a shiny, beautiful fish.
I wasn’t good for much the rest of that day. I get a lot of headaches from eye damage I had as a kid, and the pain is so intense that it throws off bright, excruciating pictures. That afternoon, I lay on my bed and closed my eyes and saw a burning heart suspended in darkness, shooting off light in every direction. It wasn’t a dream, because nothing happened. The heart just hung there.
Having gone to bed in the late afternoon, I was up and out of my apartment and under the Williamsburg Bridge with my line in the East River well before sunrise. Sammy and Dave showed up soon after. Dave didn’t actually care about fish—he was there to watch the East Village females on their early morning jogs, before they went to school at NYU or to work at a boutique or whatever East Village girls do with their days. Dave complained about their jog bras, which didn’t allow enough bounce for his satisfaction. Sammy and I barely listened.
That morning when Dave started up, I felt an inclination to speak. “You know, Dave,” I said, “I think that’s the point.”
“What’s the point?”
“That their breasts don’t bounce,” I said. “It hurts them. That’s why they wear jog bras in the first place.”
He gave me a wary look. “Since when are you the expert?”
“My wife used to jog,” I said.
“Used to? You mean she quit?”
“She quit being my wife. She probably still jogs.”
It was a quiet morning. I heard the slow pop, pop of tennis balls on the courts behind the Williamsburg Bridge. Aside from the joggers and tennis players, there were usually a few junkies out by the river in the early mornings. I always looked for one particular couple, a male and female in thigh-length leather jackets, with skinny legs and ruined faces. They had to be musicians. I’d been out of the game a long time, but I could spot a musician anywhere.
The sun rose, big and shiny and round, like an angel lifting her head. I’d never seen it so brilliant out there. Silver poured over the water. I wanted to jump in and swim. Pollution? I thought. Give me some more. And then I noticed the girl. I spotted her peripherally because she was small and ran with a high, leaping gait that was different from the others. She had light brown hair, and when the sunlight touched it, something happened that you couldn’t miss. Rumpelstiltskin, I thought. Dave was gaping at her, and even Sammy turned to look, but I kept my eyes on the river, watching my line for a tug. I saw the girl without having to look.
“Hey Scotty,” Dave said, “I think your wife just ran by.”
“I’m divorced,” I said.
“Well, that was her.”
“No,” I said. “She lives in San Francisco.”
“Maybe she’s your next wife,” Sammy suggested.
“She’s my next wife,” Dave said. “And you know the first thing I’m gonna teach her? Don’t clamp them down. Let them bounce.”
I looked at my line flicking in the sun. My luck was gone; I knew I wouldn’t catch anything. Soon I had to be at work. I reeled in my line and began walking north along the river. The girl was already a long way ahead, her hair shaking with every step. I followed her, but at such a distance that I wasn’t following her, really. I was just walking in the same direction. My eyes held her so tightly that I didn’t even notice the junkie couple in my path until they’d almost passed me. They were huddled up against each other, looking haggard and sexy the way young people can for a little while, until they just look haggard. “Hey,” I said, stepping in their way.
We must’ve seen each other twenty times on that river, but the guy aimed his sunglasses at me like he’d never seen me before, and the girl didn’t look at me at all. “Are you musicians?” I asked.
The guy turned away, shaking me off. But the girl looked up. Her eyes seemed raw, peeled away, and I wondered if the sun hurt them, and why her boyfriend or husband or whatever he was didn’t give her his glasses. “He’s awesome,” she said, using the word in the male teenage skateboarding sense. Or maybe not, I thought. Maybe she meant it literally.
“I believe you,” I said. “I believe he’s an awesome musician.”
I reached into my shirt pocket and took out Bennie’s card. I’d used a piece of Kleenex to remove it from yesterday’s jacket and place it in today’s shirt, making sure not to bend or fold or smudge it. Its embossed letters reminded me of a Roman coin. “Call this man,” I said. “He runs a record label. Tell him Scotty sent you.”
They both looked at the card, squinting in the angled sunlight.
“Call him,” I said. “He’s my buddy.”
“Sure,” the guy said, without conviction.
“
I really hope you will,” I said, but I felt helpless. I could do this only once; I would never have that card again.
While the guy studied the card, the girl looked at me. “He’ll call,” she said, and then she smiled: small orderly teeth, the kind you only get from wearing braces. “I’ll make him.”
I nodded and turned, leaving the junkies behind. I walked north, forcing my eyes to see as far as they could see. But the jogger had vanished while I looked away.
“Hey,” I heard behind me, two ragged voices. When I turned, they called out, “Thanks,” both at the same time.
It had been a long time since anyone had thanked me for something. “Thanks,” I said, to myself. I said it again and again, wanting to hold in my mind the exact sound of their voices, to feel again the kick of surprise in my chest.
Is there some quality of warm spring air that causes birds to sing more loudly? I asked myself that question as I took the overpass across the FDR onto East Sixth Street. Flowers were just coming open in the trees. I trotted underneath them, smelling their powdery pollen as I hurried toward my apartment. I wanted to drop off my jacket at the dry cleaner on my way to work—I’d been looking forward to it since yesterday. I’d left the jacket crumpled on the floor beside my bed, and I would bring it in like that, all used up. I’d toss it on the counter oh so casually, daring the gal to challenge me. But how could she?
I’ve been somewhere, and I need my jacket cleaned, I would say, like anyone else. And she would make it new again.
B
7
A to B
I
Stephanie and Bennie had lived in Crandale a year before they were invited to a party. It wasn’t a place that warmed easily to strangers. They’d known that going in and hadn’t cared—they had their own friends. But it wore on Stephanie more than she’d expected, dropping off Chris for kindergarten, waving or smiling at some blond mother releasing blond progeny from her SUV or Hummer, and getting back a pinched, quizzical smile whose translation seemed to be: Who are you again? How could they not know, after months of daily mutual sightings? They were snobs or idiots or both, Stephanie told herself, yet she was inexplicably crushed by their coldness.