DO NOT FEED PIDEONS

Edwin Balder heard the pounding on his front door but did not go to it immediately. He turned to his right side and looked at the alarm clock. It read two in the afternoon. It couldn’t be, Edwin thought. He raised his head and it still hurt a little bit. How much had he drunk the night before? Judging by what welcomed him in the kitchen earlier in the day, a lot. The Plastic jug of scotch that Edwin had bought only lasted two days where it typically lasted a week, and there were two or three beer cans strewn about, random cans found in the back of the refrigerator after crawling back into his apartment from that fall. Edwin felt the side of his left leg. It was tender. The bruise was shaped like Australia and was black with a yellow-orange center. When Edwin saw it in the mirror he vomited and then went back to bed.

Someone pounded on the door again. Edwin put his pillow over his puffy, alcohol soaked face to drown out the sound, but he knew that he could not hide forever. Edwin had to get up and get himself directly to a bookstore, to find out what it was exactly that Natalie Presley had written about their life together. That conniving tramp! Edwin thought, tossing the pillow away and slowly rising from his mattress. How could she? Had he really been that bad to her? That deceitful? That untruthful? Enough to write an entire novel about him? Plus she’d beaten Edwin to the punch. True, he’d had his notes and character sketches done up for his own “break-up” novel, and Lord knows he entertained his fantasies of writing some massive Proustian or David Foster Wallace tome to the full extent. Edwin had his delusions of grandeur of setting the literary world ablaze, and making enough money to get out of his work situation (pre-corporate asset liquidation, of course). But it had come to nothing.

The knock on the door came again, urgent. Edwin assumed that it was some faceless, soulless representative of the building management come to serve him an eviction notice for the shenanigans that had taken place during the early morning hours, so he took his time dragging his wounded leg down the hallway. Edwin reasoned that if the building management was intent on tossing him to the streets, so be it. But he would not go down without taking Molly Brown and Gerhardt with him.

Edwin opened his door and Molly Brown was standing there holding a letter. Her hair was pulled back and tied with one of those retro “scrunchies.” She had hardly a stitch of make-up on and looked as though she’d been crying. Seeing Molly’s appearance this bare and pale, Edwin noticed just how pronounced her nose was on her face. Still, he felt a rumbling in his loins. Once again, Molly was wearing that “Brooklyn Girls Do It Better,” t-shirt and a pair of jeans that did not cover her mid-drift. Obviously the outfit was a popular one with Ms. Brown, Edwin thought. Or Matthew Joyless liked seeing her dress up like a 3rd Avenue hussy with an open invitation to free and proper fornication plastered across her small chest.

“Yes,” Edwin said, formally, of course.

“Edwin can I come in?”

“Now is not the time for me to be entertaining guests.”

“Please,” Molly said. And then she began to cry.

Edwin let her into his apartment and guided her toward his couch. He had Molly sit on the end the cockroaches typically stayed away from, and went into the kitchen to get her a drink while she sobbed. Edwin looked around and noticed a bottle of Pimm’s that he hadn't gotten to in his drunken state. He’d bought it over at Astor Wines in the city when on a New Orleans kick last summer. Edwin was going to learn how to make the world’s best Pimm’s Cup, but had never gotten around to buying the other drink components. He usually ended up taking a nip on the Pimm’s when he ran out of scotch. Two Pimm’s it would be, Edwin said to himself. He opened the refrigerator and there was not an ice cube to be found. Two Pimm’s neat, Edwin re-stated, throwing a shot into two glasses that may or may not have been entirely clean.

Edwin came back into the living room. He put the drinks on the coffee table and then sat on the other end of the couch while Molly continued to cry. He had no clue what to do. Edwin hated when women cried. Their tears made him nervous. Whenever Natalie cried Edwin had to leave the room. Sometimes he had to leave the apartment. If he was the one responsible for Natalie’s tears, Edwin often got on the R Train for a couple of days of male bonding with Lawson, never fully shaking the sight of his beloved’s crying, hoping she’d get over whatever he’d done and wouldn’t tear up anew when he returned home. And now this virtual stranger, this aching sex kitten, was sobbing in his apartment, on his side of the couch, where issues of McSweeny’s were read in comfort and Hot Pockets were consumed with the careless glee of a bachelor on the prowl.

“Molly, what is it?” Edwin asked, while trying to maintain his distance. The Chinese woman’s television blared through the walls, so he had something else to focus on. Thank goodness, Edwin said to himself, while pounding on the walls. Still, once the old hag turned down the television Edwin would still be left with the crying strumpet on his couch.

She held out the letter. “Did you get one of these?”

“I haven’t gotten my mail yet,” Edwin said.

“Here.”

Edwin took the letter and read it:

Dear Residents of the CrestSeal Apartments,

There have been some on-going issues with occupants in the building. We would like to address this issues and make sure everyone is aware of the policies and the consequences for violating these policies.

First off, we have received notice from the NYC Health Department about a complaint made regarding allege an unsanitary condition and pubic nuisance caused by pideon waste existing at the building. Residents must not allow pideons to create nuisance condition on private or pubic property. There violations can result in fines ranging from $300 to $3,500 per violation. We ask that you please DO NOT FEED PIDEONS.

A major concern we have is drugs. Their have been reports of residents smoking marijuana from specific apartments. No DRUGS of any kind will be tolerated. If it continues, the police will be notified and you WILL BE EVICTED. This is a final warning regarding this matter.

Edwin folded up the letter and handed it back to Molly.

“What do you think of it?” she said.

“I think that letter was written by an absolute illiterate,” Edwin said, sipping his Pimm’s. The alcohol turned his stomach a bit. “Not only should this person not have a job, they should be paraded around the city and beaten with thick, bamboo sticks.”

“I don’t even know what a pideon is,” Molly said. Then she began crying again.

“I’m sure it’s another word for homeless or vagrant. They seem to mill about more in the later winter, early spring.” Edwin had more Pimm’s. “Nevertheless, be careful whom you share your Egg McMuffins with would be my advice.”

“But what about the drugs, Edwin?” Molly said. through tears.

“Shhhh,” Edwin said. “Do you want them to raid us right now?”

“Matt and I were smoking marijuana last night.”

“Surely I don’t want to know anything about that,” Edwin said, rubbing his thigh.

Molly shook the letter. “Someone does!”

“Do you honestly believe that someone from the building management smelled your marijuana smoke, raced home and composed this letter last night?”

“They could have.”

“True. And judging by the prose it’s quite likely that they did. But I highly doubt that some corporate shill was lurking outside your door at four in the morning.”

“How did you know that we were smoking at four in the morning?” Molly asked.

Edwin took a long pull on his Pimm’s. Molly hadn’t touched hers. “I picked a random hour.” He was silent a moment. “Plus….well…I heard you.”

“You heard us?”

“Yes.”

“Everything?”

Edwin nodded and Molly began to cry again. He moved closer and tried his best to be comforting. Edwin patted Molly on the knee but all it did was give him a slight erection. “There, there, it’s not so bad.”

“I’m so embarrassed.” Molly looked up at Edwin. Her face was red and tear-stained. She had snot coming out of her nose, and Edwin thought that he was going to be sick again. To try and quell his shaky stomach, he got up and went back into the kitchen. Edwin got a paper towel for Molly, and a generous refill on the Pimm’s for himself.

“Really, you have to allow for these small embarrassments in apartments,” Edwin said, thinking back to the old upstairs neighbor who used to pound a broom handle on Edwin’s ceiling whenever he and Natalie made love, or, later, when Edwin was drunk, alone, and loud.

“I had a fight with Matt today as soon as I saw this letter,” Molly said.

“What was it over? His PS3?”

“No.” She gave Edwin an irritated look. “It was over the pot, Edwin.”

“Of course!” Edwin had more Pimm’s. “And did you send Mr. Joyle…Joy packing as was your right?”

“Matt doesn’t smoke pot,” Molly said. “I do.”

“I’m sure we can frame him,” Edwin said. “Make it look as though he took advantage of you.”

“I don’t want to frame him. He’s mad at me because I won’t stop. I lit up a J after we….and he started yelling at me.”

“Hence the rap music on full tilt?”

“I’m so sorry about that,” Molly said.

“Well, as they say in the game, life ain’t nothin’ but bitches and money.”

Molly smiled a little and then turned sad. “He left like right after the fight. It was still dark out. That creep, Gerhardt, was in the hallway. He started yelling at Matt about the scent of marijuana and about flushing toilets. It took forever for him to go back inside his place.”

“Talk about a man I’d like to frame and send up the river,” Edwin said.

“And I haven’t heard from Matt since he left,” Molly said. She started crying again. “I don’t know if he got home safe or what.”

Edwin looked at his watch. It was nearly three in the afternoon and he hadn’t even showered or ranted in his journal. “Dear, what you must do is go back to your apartment and call this Matthew Joy.”

“Matt.”

“Yes…Matt. You need to call him and straighten this business out right now.”

“You sound like you’re trying to get rid of me,” Molly said. She stood up from Edwin’s couch.

“I’m not,” Edwin said. “After all, we have a standing date to listen to Gershwin. It’s just….it’s just that this cruel woman has written a book about me, and I must get to a bookstore and get a copy so that I can begin building my legal defense.”

“Someone wrote a book about you?” Molly said. Her face brightened. Edwin was not surprised. The young these days were easily tempted by the slightest bit of celebrity. He thought perhaps to use this to his gain, but decided against it in Molly Brown’s delicate shape.

“My ex-girlfriend.”

“Cool.”

“I highly doubt that,” Edwin said.

Molly was quiet a moment. “Can I come to the bookstore with you?”

“I…”

“Please. I’m having such a bad day, and I really could use the company.”

“I…I guess so,” Edwin said. He motioned for Molly to sit back down on the couch. She did. “You stay here. Take in the ambiance while I shower and get myself ready.”

“I have to say, you look terrible today, Edwin,” Molly said. She finally picked up her Pimm’s and had a drink.

Edwin smiled. “And I don’t see much chance for improving as the hours wane.”

“I hope you know that I was kidding.”

Edwin went over and looked at himself in the mirror. “No you weren’t dear.”

They were silent a moment and then Molly Brown leaped up off the couch. “Pigeons!”

“What?”

“That’s what they meant in the letter,” Molly said. “Pideons are Pigeons!”

“Obviously,” Edwin said. And then he went into the bathroom, closed the door, and began running the hottest shower that he could stand.

Mr. Telephone Man

Edwin Balder staggered into his bedroom, turned on the light, and fell onto the bed. What a night, he thought, before he was able to take in the cacophony of sound that surrounded him at such an ungodly hour as this. It wasn’t rap that Molly Brown had playing this time, but some kind of screeching metal music with wailing guitars and the kind of bass that might as well make it your standard hip-hop song. To make matters worse, Molly’s bedsprings began vibrating and pounding down on Edwin’s ceiling in a torrent of sound. Bounce, bounce, bounce-wacka-bounce. Bounce, bounce, bounce-wacka-bounce. He heard Molly scream and Matt Joyless moan as if someone were beating him instead of copulating with him. Edwin had no choice but to put his pillow over his head and wait for it to stop, which it did, in less than two minutes. Then the music stopped and he heard voices, the muted, banal conversation of the unsatisfied. Edwin heard Molly get out of bed and pound across her room as was her fashion. There was a brief silence and then her toilet flushed. Edwin felt as though he were going to be sick.

He managed to get back out of bed and stumble into the living room. The Chinese woman’s television was on low, so it only hummed. Edwin heard bedsprings above him again and felt as though he were being taunted by some cruel spirit, but it was only Gerhardt turning in his lonely, sexless bed. Edwin sighed. It had been quite a night, he thought a second time, as he picked his ancient, cordless phone up off its stand. He dialed Lawson Thomas’ number as he walked into the kitchen, intent on fixing himself one last scotch before it was time to retire from the horror show that had been this day.

“Hello?’ Lawson said in a muffled, exhausted voice.

“Don’t hello me, Benedict Arnold!” Edwin spat into the phone. He took a sip on his scotch and water, and hoped that he had been loud enough.

“Mom?"

“Don’t mom me. You know damned well who this is, you lousy Tory.”

“Edwin, what in the hell do you want? It’s…” Lawson was silent a moment. “It’s almost four in the morning.”

“As good as any a time to call my back stabbing ex-best friend.”

“I have to get up in an hour to jog.”

“Not my concern,” Edwin said, taking his phone and his drink into the living room. “At least you slept this evening. I just got home and I was forced to listen to wild kingdom raining down on me in my bedroom.”

“What?”

“Never you mind, Benedict. It was a pathetic display of underdeveloped machismo anyway. I hope the harlot was left unsatisfied and embarrassed in her musical choice.”

“Huh?”

“Rap would’ve been so much more preferable,” Edwin said.

“Look, man, I have no clue what you’re talking about. If you don’t get to the point I’m hanging the fuck up,” Lawson said.

Edwin stopped short. Lawson rarely swore at him. He usually kept his invective reserved for The Man. “You know exactly what I mean.”

“I assure you that I don’t.”

Edwin has more scotch. “When were you going to tell me that Natalie was back in town and working at Hunter College? The next time I stopped by for one of those cafeteria lunches that you’re always bragging about?”

Lawson sighed. Edwin could almost picture him on the other end of the phone, hunched over the side of his bed, head in his hands, and acting the role of martyr. “You’re assuming that I knew that Natalie was back.”

“She works with you, does she not? You two are colleagues.”

“Where did you come up with that?”

“I had a deep and fruitful discussion with my two new friends, Benny and Ivan, and we came to the conclusion that you’ve been holding out on me, Benedict Arnold. You’ve kept this vital information stored in that head of yours all this time.”

“You discussed this with two bar drunks,” Lawson said.

“They’ve been hurt, all right. And don’t you slander my friends that way,” Edwin said. “Explain yourself, man!”

“Can’t we talk about this tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow I’ll have forgotten your small existence.”

“Edwin.”

“Benedict.”

“Stop calling me that,” Lawson said. He was awake and probably pacing around his bedroom now, Edwin thought. Good.

“I’ll stop calling you that when you begin flapping your gums, and start spilling those beans of yours.

“I told you that I didn’t know Natalie was back.”

Edwin finished off his scotch. “But you know now.”

“Can we talk about this tomorrow, please, Edwin,” Lawson said.

“Now,” Edwin said.

“Who is that?” Edwin heard a voice say.

“It’s Edwin,” Lawson said to the voice.

“Is that Sour Bear?” Edwin asked.

“Mary’s here,” Lawson said. “You woke her up too.”

“It’s just as well. You artsy Brooklyn animals just can’t wait to get into the sack with the next so and so.”

“We’re dating. Exclusively.”

“Tell the little strumpet that playtime is over for the night.”

“That’s it I’m hanging up,” Lawson said.

“You do and it’ll be the last time we talk, sir!”

“Hold on.”

The other line went dead for a moment or so. Edwin thought that Lawson had hung up on him, and got up off his couch and began pacing his living room. Cars drove by. Buses roared up the street. Edwin looked out of his cracked, wooden blind, at the bright streetlights on 75th Street, and seriously considered moving out of New York City for the first time. There’s simply no peace here, Edwin said. To live in New York was to live with the dregs of society. Maybe it was just Brooklyn. It had to be better in Manhattan, he thought. Then Arlene came to him; beautiful Arlene with her black hair and blue eyes. Edwin suppressed the very idea of her, for it was Natalie that he still wanted. Still, it was a pity that nothing would ever happen between he and Arlene.

“Are you there, asshole?” Lawson asked.

“Well, haven’t we developed the keenest of vocabulary,” Edwin said. “Is that Sour Bear’s influence, or are you watching some urban crime thriller?”

“I was sleeping. But you want to talk, so let’s talk.”

“Fine,” Edwin said. “It’s always right down to business with you, isn’t it, Mr. Teacher?”

“You called me,” Lawson said.

“Oh did I?”

“Yes.”

Edwin was silent a moment. “If you say so. Now tell me what you know about Natalie.”

“All I know is that she moved back at the end of the summer, and that she started teaching creative writing at NYU in the fall.”

“Ah Ha! So you do work together!” Edwin shouted. But then he remembered that Lawson taught at Hunter College.

“There’s more,” Lawson said. He was silent a moment. So silent for such a moment that Edwin’s heart began to beat faster.

“Spit it out,” he demanded.

“Natalie’s written a book.”

“So? I’ve written ten books in my head.”

“Yeah, but this one’s been published. On paper,” Lawson said. “Or you can download it on an E-reader.” Edwin said nothing. He took the phone back into the kitchen and poured himself another scotch and water. He opened the fridge but there were no ice cubes left. “Edwin?”

“Well, I’m not surprised,” he finally said. “Natalie was always creative and she had quite an intellect when she wasn’t so bogged down in being a woman. If anyone other than myself was to do anything on a creative level, I expected it to be Natalie.”

“I have four books out there,” Lawson said.

“Theory books,” Edwin laughed. “On college presses.”

“Thanks.”

“So where can I get her book? The campus bookstore?”

“Mary and I downloaded it from the Sony Reader Store,” Lawson said.

“How twenty-first century of you,” Edwin said. “And was it worth it? What did she write about? The trappings of being a modern woman with infinite choices?”

“That’s the thing, Edwin.” Lawson paused. “The book is about you.”

“All flattering I assume.”

“It’s about your relationship with Natalie.”

“That’s…” Edwin stopped himself. “She wrote about that?”

“All of it,” Lawson said.

“I…”

“Look, man, I didn’t want to tell you this over the phone, not at this hour. I was going to call you tomorrow, or I was going to stop by.”

“How much of me is in there?”

“Enough, Edwin,” Lawson said.

Edwin downed his scotch and water in one gulp. Then he staggered into his bedroom and fell upon his bed a second time. He could hear the television from up in Molly Brown’s apartment, and she and Matthew Joy laughing at some stoner comedy that the networks only had the gall to play after the witching hour.

“Edwin,” Lawson said.

“Well, I’m sure I don’t know what to say right now,” Edwin said.

“Are you all right?”

“I…I just don’t know how I missed this. I mean I keep close attention to new authors. I have a standing subscription to McSweeny’s. I’m on the up and up with this sort of thing. I make it my hobby, if you will. Not only am I offended that Natalie Presley, for that’s how I’m forever refereeing to her, in the formal only, has taken to writing a tome about me, but I’m angry as an avid watcher of new literary talent, for not being first out the box in discovering her.” Edwin slumped into his pillow. “This is quite a load to carry, Lawson.”

“I know, Edwin,” Lawson said. “I’m going to come over tomorrow and we’ll talk or something. I’ll bring the E-reader if you want.”

“Don’t bother,” Edwin said. “And I mean that in the kindest of ways. You and your devil device, please spend the day with Sour Bear. I plan on being at the Barnes and Noble quite early tomorrow to pick up this slanderous piece of fiction. And then we’ll see whether or not I have a lawsuit.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Edwin said. “You are free to go about your business.”

“All right, man.”

“And to think I was going to give her a second chance.”

Lawson hung up and Edwin lay back in his bed, feeling repulsed by the very idea that Natalie Presley had written a book about their relationship. True, Edwin had often had flights of fancy where fame was concerned. He’d imagined writing a popular yet edgy novel numerous times, and seeing his name in all of the journals. In his head, Edwin has been interviewed dozens of times, and had squired and bedded so many young starlets that it would make the common man’s head spin. He’d even once imagined himself the lead singer in a famous rock and roll band or two. But these delusions, for as Edwin got older he knew that’s what they were, were always on his terms. They were not dictated by someone else. But now with this book people would know. They’d know all about him. Old friends would know more than they should. Acquaintances would be able to make assumptions. Of course strangers wouldn’t know a thing, but that wouldn’t stop Edwin from thinking that they were looking at him as he passed them on the street.

Oh how he both hated and loved Natalie Presley in that moment. Oh how he wanted to cry. But there was no time for that. From Molly Brown’s apartment the music started again. It was rap for real this time. What sort of callous little hussy played rap at four o’clock in the morning? Then the bedsprings started squeaking. Bounce, bounce, bounce-wacka-bounce. And Edwin got out of his bed determined to kill someone.

By some miracle, or by sheer alcoholic adrenaline alone, he reached the second floor of the apartment and Molly Brown’s hellish red door. The hallway smelt of marijuana smoke and you could hear the gross, sweating animalistic moans and grunts going on inside. The rap music thumped with power, and Edwin was truly surprised that he was the only neighbor in the building poised to knock on the door and create a scene. Had everyone else given up? Did no on care for the sanctity of peace and quiet? Edwin always had to go it alone with these community saving endeavors. He should just give up and let it all go to hell, he thought. He was just about ready to knock on the door when the panting, moaning, bouncing, and rap music stopped. Quickly he backed away.

“I heard youse!” Gerhardt shouted from his doorway. The old curmudgeon was already fully dressed. Gerhardt pointed at Edwin and sniffed. “Is that dope? I smelled youse smoking dope!”

“Surely, you don’t think that was me in there with that hooker?” Edwin said to his only other known enemy. “I was merely coming up here to complain.”

“You’re a drunk!” Gerhardt shouted. “A drunk and I heard youse having sex, and smelled youse smoking dope. I heard youse flushing your toilets and listening to Gershwin, and I’m going to call the landlord about all of youse!”

Edwin had no recourse but to run before someone heard Gerhardt shouting. He made it around the bend and down half a flight of stairs, before he realized that if no one heard the racket that Molly Brown was making, then no one would hear Gerhardt shouting. Unless it was reality television or some smoker’s dull soliloquy on the front stoop of the building, the denizens of this apartment were deaf to their surroundings. Edwin tried to stop running, but in his inebriated state he could not. So he tripped and rolled down the other half of a flight of stairs, landing on the very last step. For a moment he laid there. Edwin’s hip and thigh were burning. His knee on his left leg was throbbing. He wondered if this night would ever end. Then the super, Mr. Isaiah Sheppard, came by pushing a broom. He sniffed. Edwin knew that he could smell the marijuana.

“What are you doing on them steps at this hour?” Sheppard asked. “Meditating?”

Benny and Ivan Explain it All Part: 2

Edwin Balder had more of his scotch and watched the men playing darts, as Benny navigated his way around the jukebox. He wondered which one of them had slept with Benny’s lady friend. Was it the drunken mailman who always played game show theme songs, and bought everyone a round until he was dead broke? The racist carpenter who always stared down Lawson? The bus driver with either drank before or after his shift? Edwin wondered how Benny could come to this bar night after night and sit with that group of men having known what went on between them and his woman. Edwin could barely be in George Pollard Jr.’s apartment. He could hardly sit and talk with him without the blood rising in his veins. Edwin wondered if it were different for the lower classes. Maybe these men were more like dogs, and it didn’t matter whose bitch you slept with at any given time. Perhaps all you had to do was smell each other’s ass and buy the wounded party a drink to make amends. In that moment, Edwin wanted to call his parents and thank them for his Catholic education, even though the religion part never stuck.

“I don’t know, Benny,” Ivan suddenly said, when Benny returned. “I think you can still be hard up for someone after years go by.”

“No you can’t.”

“Tell me you don’t miss Mona.”

“She’s a bitch,” Benny said. “I hate her…but yeah, I miss her sometimes.”

“Just like me and Rachel,” Ivan said.

“Ah, not her again,” Benny said, sitting down carefully on his stool. He turned away from Ivan and sulked into his drink.

Ivan grabbed Edwin’s arm. “I was a hurricane of a man,” he said. “I used to work sanitation for the city, and I slept with so many broads that I can’t even remember how many.”

“Hmmmm…,” Edwin said. He signaled for another drink.

“But then I met her. Rachel. She was so smart and pretty.” Ivan gazed off toward the jukebox and then turned back. “She was goin’ta college, too. Science major or something. We had a good thing going for a coupla years.”

“And then he messed it all up,” Benny said, taking Edwin’s other arm. “Tell him how you messed it up, big boy.”

“Yeah, I did,” Ivan said. “I had the best woman in the world and I ruined it. I cheated on Rachel with some woman on my route. The woman got pregnant and before I knew it I was on my ass, and Rachel was leaving town with her bachelor’s degree.”

Edwin clasped Ivan’s arm. “Unbelievable. Who knew that you people lived actual lives outside of fop sweat, pratfalls, and beer hangovers?”

“No kiddin’,” Ivan said. “We were gonna get married and everything.”

“Hell,” Benny said, letting go of Edwin’s arm to wave Ivan off. Edwin liked how the men in the joint always waved each other off. He decided then and there to go home and practice waving people off. Once he got proficient enough he would try it with Mr. Owen Chase, for there was nothing to lose on the job now. “She wasn’t gonna marry you.”

“She was too.”

“You never would’ve been faithful to her.”

Ivan nodded. I guess not. And I don’t really have no regrets, right? I mean I love my kids, you know? Even the one in jail.”

“He should,” Benny said, taking Edwin’s shoulder again. “He has five of them with four different women.”

“So he’s a virile man?” Edwin said. He looked at Ivan. “I believe the children are our future. I was just expressing the same thing to an old friend this very night.”

Ivan shrugged. “I love my kids. But I loved Rachel.”

Edwin had more of his drink. By now he determined that he was drunk. But the great part was that he no longer felt self-conscious alone in Rooney’s. He felt as though he were part of a pack now. Sure, Benny and Ivan would probably get loaded and forget Edwin and this conversation the next day, as they often had. Edwin likened talking to them to meeting an infant, and each and every time was like the first time. If he came into Rooney’s tomorrow there would be Benny staggering at the jukebox, and there would be Ivan dancing, and neither of them would remember a moment of this conversation. They’d vaguely remember Edwin, tipping a beer toward him at best if he came in the bar. Still, Edwin was thankful for the companionship and talk on such a foreboding night as this one.

“I was a hurricane of a man back in the day,” Ivan said into his drink. “It’s funny we talk about this now, you know. I have a question for you, Eddie.”

“Fire away, chum,” Edwin said.

“You see, one of my kids has this Internets thing. He was showing me how I can look up people and whatever, so I put in her name. I put in Rachel Howard and all of this stuff came up on her.”

“Like F.B.I. files and a police record?”

“No. Like she teaches science at Hunter College right here in the city.”

“Interesting,” Edwin said. “On two accounts. One that you could get an educated woman to sleep with you, let alone be around you for successive years. And two that she teaches in that dump.” Edwin said this knowing full well that was where Lawson taught his philosophy of literature class.

Ivan had more beer. “It’s kinda like you, and your broad coming back to New York.”

“If apples and oranges were the same thing. But, okay, I’ll bite.”

“So I was thinking of maybe going down to the college and seeing her,” Ivan said. “You know, like surprise her or something.”

“Stalk her,” Edwin said nodding, and then having more scotch.

“Yeah, just go down and see how the years have been.”

Benny slammed down his scotch and leaned over Edwin, pointing at Ivan. He smelled of Chinese food from weeks gone by. “This dope thinks he’s got a chance with her. What’s it?” Benny began snapping his fingers in Edwin’s face. “You can’t repeat this past.”

“What do you mean you can’t repeat the past?” Ivan said. “Of course you can.”

That was a Bob Dylan lyric, Edwin thought to himself. If Lawson were here, he would’ve pointed it out. But to hell with Lawson Thomas; Edwin had new friends now.

“Oh sure,” Benny said. “You’re just going to waddle over to Hunter College and them guards are going to let you in because you’re nursing some ancient crush.”

“They got guards?”

“Big ones,” Edwin said, remembering a particular red-faced, thick-necked one who tried to kick him off campus for inciting a near riot while waiting for Lawson for lunch. Edwin couldn’t stand that modern college students had no gusto, that they walked around all day with their noses buried in devices, and he had told a few of them so.

“Well, maybe I can talk to them,” Ivan said. He had some beer, finishing his bottle off. He waved for the bartender who counted the number of drinks and began pouring a new round for their small group.

“Sure, ‘cause you can reason with cops these days,” Benny said. “Don’t you remember 9/11?”

“Oh, yeah.” Ivan took a pull on his new beer. “Still, I gotta do something.”

“Why not send flowers?” Edwin asked.

Ivan’s face lit up. “Yeah! Flowers!” He smacked Edwin in the back so hard that his stomach hit the gold rail of the bar, almost knocking the wind out of him. “I’ll go and buy some flowers at the Food City and bring them to Rachel.”

“That wasn’t what I had in mind, but…”

“And I won’t mess with no security guards. I’ll just stand outside her building and wait. I’ll stand there all day if I have to.”

“There’s like ten buildings on that campus,” Benny said. “What? Are you gonna stand outside of each one until you get it right?”

“You could look her up on the Internets,” Edwin said.

“Don’t encourage him, Eddie,” Benny said. “Besides, can you even find your way out of Brooklyn?”

“Maybe,” Ivan said. “For her I could.”

“Bah,” Benny said.

And then it hit Edwin what he had to do in regards to Natalie. He had to see her and explain himself in a way that he hadn’t two years ago. It didn’t matter what that cow Shannon Shorter had said about her not wanting to see him. Shannon Shorter had raised a juvenile delinquent, Edwin reasoned. What did she know? There could still be a chance for them, despite his past transgressions, numerous as they were, and what kind of a man would he be if he did not at least give it the old college try? Hell, even Ivan was willing to leave the safety of his darkened concave to give love a shot, provided he could find the R train station. And Edwin was certainly a much more advanced creature that Ivan. Edwin still believed in adding the “ing” at the end of the appropriate words, after all.

He had a good pull on his scotch as Benny and Ivan argued about this Rachel, and tried to figure out what to do. First, he had to find out where Natalie was working. Or where she was living. Brooklyn? Queens? Blessed Manhattan? He doubted that it was The Bronx or Staten Island. Natalie was a woman of principle and style, and wouldn’t be caught dead in either of those boroughs. Edwin tried to imagine Natalie on Staten Island, living amongst the Italians. The thought of that made his body shake. No, he knew that her home address would be harder to come by, so Edwin focused on the job. She had to be teaching as well but where? NYU? Their old stomping grounds. Brooklyn College? Could Natalie be having lunches with Seth Weeks and his special “someone?” She couldn’t be at Hunter. Lawson would’ve told him that Natalie was back at Hunter College. Unless….Edwin slammed down his drink and rose from his stool.

“Why that Benedict Arnold!” he shouted.

“Eddie, what’s tha matter?” Ivan asked.

“How much would it cost to get you boys to go and kill a man?” Edwin asked Benny and Ivan.

“What?”

“Or at least shake him down.”

“Eddie, you’re talkin’ crazy talk,” Benny said. “Sit down and finish your drink.”

“Benny, I can’t,” Edwin said, putting on his coat. “The night is still young.”

Benny tried to focus on his watch. “It’s like three in the morning.”

“Did Einstein sleep when genius struck him? I think not. Plus Ivan here has given me an idea.”

“What did I do?” Ivan asked.

Edwin patted him on the shoulder. “Ivan, I’m going to go after my old love. I’m going to win her back. Essentially, I’m going to succeed where you’re going to fail miserably with this poor, unfortunate Rachel. I’m going to triumph where you’ll probably be served with a temporary restraining order.”

“That’s great, Eddie,” Ivan said. He held up his beer bottle. Edwin lifted his scotch glass off the bar, and Benny hoisted his Jack. The three of them clinked glasses, and it was just as magical as Edwin thought it would be.

Benny and Ivan Explain it All: Part 1

Edwin Balder walked up the steps of the 77th Street station. He felt good. He shouldn’t be feeling so good, he reasoned. In one evening, Edwin had his dreams of a romance with Molly Brown shot down in flames, had argued with two ignorant little harlots on the train, had been forced to suffer his memories of Carroll Gardens and George Pollard Jr.’s apartment, had been forced to suffer the dull, sluggish faces from his past, found out that he’d been demoted or had never been second in command of the Insert-Big-Named-Corporate-Conglomerate-Invoicing-Company-Here, and that was going to lose his job come June. Plus, worst of all, Natalie was back.

Edwin felt in his left pocket. He stopped at 78th street and 4th Avenue, and took out Arlene’s cellular phone number to look at it under a streetlight. Her penmanship was impossible, Edwin thought. She wrote like a third grader. But, of course, Arlene was a Pollard. And while having her number was a brand new joy to him, a beacon, if you will, of better things to come; having Arlene Pollard’s phone number was akin to walking around the with digits of a Capulet. Edwin didn’t foresee her as a reality, not with the way her brother had most likely bounced Natalie around on his lap like she had hydraulics placed inside of her. Edwin crushed Arlene’s phone number in his hand, but instead of tossing it onto the cracked pavement he put it back in his pocket for safekeeping. Who knew? Perhaps with Natalie back in town this whole business could get straightened out. Maybe Pollard was the innocent that he and all of his useless friends claimed that he has been all along. Edwin doubted it. He began walking down 78th but he stopped again. Perhaps there was still a chance for him and Natalie to get back together. The past was the past. Correct?

Edwin went into Rooney’s Pub, despite his better judgment and the whole Pizza Night business that he’d used as a social guideline where the joint was concerned. The place was in rare form for so late. Many of the regulars were in the back of the bar playing darts as was their call and station in life to do so after a day of selling their souls to the company store. Benny, the group’s de fact leader, was stationed in front of the jukebox, clad, as always, in his Bermuda shorts and beach bar t-shirt with his Giants cap pulled down firmly, nearly covering his beady eyes. Benny was swaying and touching his old man’s goatee, trying to figure out which blast from the past to play next. Ivan, the barrel-chested, red-faced Russian, was dancing with himself as always. The Grateful Dead sounded throughout the bar. Truckin. Edwin listened and sat down alone at the other end of the bar. He realized that he needed to call his parents to see how they were doing. Had it been seven months already since his last call?

The bartender with his earring in the wrong ear set down Edwin’s scotch and water on the rocks. “How are we tonight?”

Edwin looked around. It was a little joke that he like to play whenever someone referred to an individual in the plural. “We are fine tonight.”

“That’s good.”

“Perhaps we’re a little less than fine.”

“Huh?”

“Girl trouble.”

The bartender laughed. “You should’ve seen the tits on the one that was just in here.”

“Tits,” Edwin said. “Yes.”

“Do you like tits?” the bartender asked.

Edwin took a pull on his drink, shoved his money closer so that the bartender would take it and go away. “Sure. What red-blooded male doesn’t like tits?”

“No kidding.”

“By the way, nice earring.”

The bartender winked at Edwin, took his money, and walked back down toward the men playing darts. Edwin scanned the bar. Benny was still at the jukebox but Ivan was nowhere to be found.

“Hey there, buddy,” Ivan said, sitting down next to Edwin. He smelled of meat and vodka, had a sweating bottle of Budweiser in his meaty grip. “How’s it goin’ tonight?”

“Swimmingly,” Edwin said, taking a strong pull on his drink. It was more like scotch water than a scotch and water. He wondered if he could have the bartender hanged for making that drink.

“Where’s your friend?” Ivan asked.

“Which one?’ Edwin said

Ivan squinted, most probably trying to recall Edwin with anyone other than Lawson Thomas. “The black one.”

“The black one?”

“Yeah.”

“Who knows? He’s most probably out stealing hubcaps or soiling some storefront with graffiti.”

“Nah,” Ivan said. He hoisted his beer and had a good pull on it. “He don’t seem the type.”

“Don’t let his trickery fool you,” Edwin said.

“Anyway you look sad,” Ivan said. “What’s the matter? We got booze, we got good music and darts. This ain’t the work day.” Ivan shook his arms. “This is dancing time.”

“Charlie don’t dance,” Edwin said.

“You really should, Chuck. It releases the tension.”

“My name is Edwin.”

“Okay, Eddie.”

Edwin sighed, finished his drink. He motioned toward the bartender for another. “If you must know, I’m conflicted.”

“Why?” Ivan asked.

“Girl trouble.”

“Oh. I feel you man.” Ivan finished his beer just as the bartender was setting Edwin’s new drink down. Ivan shook his beer and the bartender grabbed the empty from his hand, replacing it a second later with a fresh bottle of Budweiser. If nothing else, Edwin thought, this bartender was proficient with his lot in life. “You should talk to Benny."

“I don’t think…” Edwin started.

“Hey, Benny!” Ivan shouted.

Benny turned from the incredible task of trying to put one simple dollar in the jukebox. “What?”

“We need you over here!”

“Why?”

“Eddie’s havin’ girl troubles!”

Benny squinted and staggered forward a few steps. “Who in the hell is, Eddie?”

“You know,” Ivan said. “The clean looking kid who comes in here!”

“The one who brings the black with him?"

“Yeah.”

Benny staggered over to where Edwin and Ivan were sitting. He sat on the other side of Edwin, and there was no chance for an easy escape. The bartender came over and set Benny’s Jack on the bar. Then the three new friends, Benny, Eddie, and Ivan sat there for a moment. They were devoid of words until Benny burped and Ivan laughed.

“Now, what did youse want?” Benny asked.

“Tell him about your lady troubles,” Ivan said.

Benny had some Jack, waved his old pal off. “Nah, that’s old news. No one wants to hear it.”

“Sure they would. You wanna hear Benny’s story, right, Eddie?”

“More than I want to hear Gershwin right now,” Edwin said.

Benny had more Jack. “Basically there’s nothing to tell,” he said. “I’m fifty-five years old. I met this thirty-two year old, and we shacked up for a while. End of story.”

“Ah, the old shack-job,” Edwin said.

“It was nice,” Benny said. “You know me, I’m easy going. And me and her were good for a while. You know we’d come to the bar, play some music, and have a few drinks. Life was good.”

“Tell him what happened,” Ivan said.

Benny had more Jack and then stared forward for a moment. He looked down toward the group of guys playing darts. “Basically she fucked pretty much everyone in this bar behind my back.”

“Really?” Edwin said, taking a drink. Finally something good was happening, he thought.

“Yeah. Bitch lost her job and started hanging around here all day, drinking up the rent money. Pretty soon she was drunk and broke and going home with nearly anyone who would buy her a drink.”

“Why that harlot,” Edwin said. “That whore.”

“I never touched her,” Ivan said. He and Benny leaned over Edwin and clinked glasses. They smelled of desperation and Edwin wondered if he would smell that way once he was on the dole.

“Then what happened?” Edwin asked.

Benny shrugged. “I went nuts. I came in here out for blood. I tore this joint up, threw chairs and tore down pictures of her.” He pointed to Ivan. “I woulda killed someone if Ivan hadn’t stopped me.”

“He really woulda,” Ivan added.

“How exciting,” Edwin said. “And then what?”

Benny was quiet a moment. “And then I left her. I moved out to Jersey and stayed with my brother for a while. But I couldn’t let the bitch go, you know. So I came back. I begged her to let me stay in our old place, thinking that we could work it out. She let me sleep in the spare room. I slept on the floor while she brought a different guy home each and every night. Finally she met someone, and she moved out.”

“And what did you do?” Edwin asked.

“What could I do, Eddie?” Benny said. “I took her name off the lease and got on with the livin’.”

“Well, Benny, I didn’t realize we had so much in common. I thought that you were just a typical bar hoodlum, but now I’m beginning to think that you might just be somewhat human. You see, I too was made a cuckold of by my old friend.”

“A what?” Ivan said.

Edwin turned to him. “Ah, how to say this so you’ll understand? My boy banged my woman.”

“Shit. How long ago?”

“Two years.”

Benny nearly choked on his scotch. “That was two years ago? And you’re still hung up on her? My shit happened to me last month.” Edwin thought for a moment, remember a small period of time where no Grateful Dead played in the bar and Ivan had stopped dancing. “Come on, Eddie. Find a new bitch and move on.”

Edwin had some scotch. “I just found out tonight that she’s back in New York, and I don’t know how I feel about this. Do I contact her? Let bygones be bygones and the like?” He reached in his pants and pulled out Arlene’s number. “Plus I’ve met someone new.”

Benny took the number and looked at it. “Who’s Albert?”

“That’s Arlene,” Edwin said, taking back the paper. “She’s the sister of the man who ruined my life.”

“I say you forget the old girlfriend and bang this new chick.”

“That’s your advice?”

“Yeah. The past is the past, ain’t it?”

“I guess so, Benny,” Edwin said.

Then the three new friends got quiet. They all had a drink at the same time.

"Shit, now I'm depressed," Benny said. He finished off his drink and got up. "I'm going to play some fucking music."

The Party: Part 3

Edwin Balder followed his friend, Lawson Thomas, into George Pollard Jr.’s living room, a living room which used to belong to him and Natalie nearly a thousand years ago. Or it felt like a thousand years ago to Edwin. And maybe it felt as old to the other people in the room, judging by the way some of them looked; most of the people sitting on or around Pollard’s still-collegiate furniture, their faces and bodies horrendously gray and battered by life before the age of forty. Perhaps that was just Edwin’s take on them, as he'd known most when they were young and lithe, full of life and ideas, and when they hadn’t yet settled for life’s typical, daily banalities. America was such a mendacious place for having people believe that they would be forever young, Edwin thought, casting a glance around the room. But then Henry De Witt handed his drink to his wife, Mallory, another of Natalie’s friends who now hated Edwin for whatever reason that she had, and came up to shake his hand. Henry was drinking vodka and soda with a sliver of lemon. He had been doing so for at least twelve years.

“Hello, Balder,” De Witt said as he shook Edwin’s hand.

“It’s Edwin,” Edwin said, shaking De Witt’s hand back. “What is with everyone using each other’s last names at this party tonight? Have we suddenly joined a beer league?” He nodded toward Mallory who smirked and held out Henry’s drink to Edwin in a pleasant yet formal manner. It was much better than their last meeting where Mallory had told Edwin to get fucked while taking a sobbing Natalie up the stairs to the guest bedroom in their New Jersey home.

“I see you haven’t lost any of your wit,” Henry De Witt said.

“My humor spills forth like a broken nuclear reactor into the green sea.”

No one laughed at this timely yet inappropriate joke. Edwin should’ve known having been around this crowd off and on for nearly two decades. People at parties such as this did not mock world tragedies so much as sit and contemplate what they could’ve collectively done to have stopped them, as if a bunch of artsy vegans could’ve stopped the genocide in Rwanda back in 1994 with nothing but pluck, determination, and falling packages of extra-firm tofu. Ugh, Edwin hated being amongst this crowd. They made him feel old and tired. And Edwin wasn’t old, just oldish.
All the same, he didn’t like his late thirties. They were an odd kind of old. Edwin felt as though he still connected to the Molly Brown’s and Matt Joy’s of the world, when, in fact, he was becoming more and more invisible to them and their ilk by the day. Yet he certainly wasn’t ready for mahjong at the retirement home. Edwin certainly felt no connection to his peer group, this collection of has-been’s still trying to get their film projects off the ground, their music just right for popular consumption; he didn’t jell with the types who went to bars in the middle of the afternoon for mommy and baby happy hour. These people were deluding themselves, Edwin thought. He was currently standing the bastion of the deluded.

“Is that a Japan joke?” Henry asked.

“More of a dig at Three Mile Island,” Edwin said, knowing full well that there was no sea near Three Mile Island. “What can I say? It has already been confirmed this evening that I’m retro.”

“I said old,” Arlene said, coming in with Edwin’s bourbon on the rocks.

“Ah, sweet sustenance,” he said, taking the drink and having a mighty pull on it.

“Let me guess,” Henry said, “scotch and water on the rocks.”

Edwin squinted and then smiled, took his drink from his lips. He hated the informality between himself and Henry De Witt. “Actually I gave it up tonight.”

“Just tonight?”

“I am a man of whimsy, De Witt,” Edwin said. “If you cannot keep up with me, you best step aside with the other oldies in the room.”

“We didn’t have scotch,” Arlene said to Henry De Witt.

“Yes, thank you for reminding me of my unwelcome state,” Edwin said. “I’ll be sure to send my thank you card, posthaste.”

“You know I always thought that you and Natalie were going to settle down and have kids like Mallory and I did,” Henry said. Edwin cringed. Arlene cringed. Lawson Thomas cringed from where he was sitting, bookended by Mary Baldacci and Thomas Nickerson. Even Mallory cringed from her place on George Pollard Jr.’s offending couch.

“And why in God’s name would you think that?” Edwin said.

“I don’t know. You two were good together.” Edwin wondered where in the hell Henry De Witt had been for the last two years. Did he not remember that night of terror in his bland New Jersey Home?”

“We broke up….like two years ago.”

“I know.” De Witt put his hand on Edwin’s shoulder. “I was just saying.”

“Well, say something different, you soused fiend,” Edwin said, brushing De Witt’s hand off of his shoulder. “At the very least don’t wish children on me.”

“Why not? Kids are great.”

“Sure, if you have a farm to plow or a coal mine that needs to be…well…mined,” Edwin said. “Other than that, I don’t see the use for them.”

“I love my kids,” Henry said. “They fulfill me.”

“More than your paintings used to?”

“My kids are my art.”

“Good, Christ, you hoodwinked fool!” Edwin shouted. “You could put two retarded monkeys in a room together, and the chances are pretty good that they’ll conceive. But you were a painter, a damned fine painter if I say so myself.”

Arlene turned to an increasingly agitated Henry De Witt. “I’ve never seen him complement anyone.”

“Are you calling me and my wife retarded monkeys, Balder?” De Witt asked.

“There you go with the beer league speak again. Call me Edwin,” Edwin said. “And no, I was not calling you and Mallory monkeys.” He paused, took a drink on his bourbon. Oh, why not? Edwin said to himself. “I would never insult retarded monkeys in such a vile fashion.”

Henry De Witt pushed Edwin and his drink fell to the floor, just as people rose to break them up. After stumbling a little and, sadly, smacking into poor, innocent Arlene, Edwin regained his footing and laughed. Henry De Witt was so thick. He should’ve seen that joke coming from a mile away.

“Same old Edwin,” Mallory said, as she pulled her fuming husband away.

“I was joking,” Edwin said. He looked at Henry, who was now sitting on that couch, vodka and soda place firmly back in his hand. “You left yourself wide open for that one.”

“My kids are my art,” was all that Henry De Witt would say.

“I’m sure they’re a couple of Picasso paintings,” Edwin said, before Lawson Thomas grabbed his arm and pulled him over to his small cluster of friends. Arlene picked up Edwin’s drink off of the carpet but left the small bourbon stain where it was. She came over to join Edwin and company.

“You certainly have a way with people,” Arlene said.

“De Witt is a dolt,” Edwin said. “He’s been a dolt for over fifteen years. Back in the day we used to all go out for coffee, and whenever De Witt went to the restroom we would put the worst kind of things in his coffee, condiments, articles of food, chewed napkins. We did this each and every time, and each and every time poor, foolish De Witt would come back to the table and have a sip on his coffee expecting it to not be contaminated.”

“That’s gross.”

“It was funny back then. Wasn’t it, Lawson?”

Lawson laughed. “Yeah.”

Mary slapped Lawson’s arm. “I can’t believe you did that to him.”

Edwin looked at his old friend. “The old ball and chain already giving it to you, I see?”
“Shut up, Edwin,” Lawson said. He turned to Mary. “That was years ago, Sour Bear.”

“Now you’re using that as a term of affection?”

“It worked for us,” Mary said.

“Well, you have me to thank for it,” Edwin said. He turned back to Arlene. “All the same, De Witt rubs me the wrong way. All of these aging hipsters do.”

“And what are you, my man?” Lawson asked.

“Adrift. Actually I’m the assistant manager of the Insert-Massive-Conglomerate-Here invoice processing plant.”

“I’m the assistant manager, Edwin,” Mary said.

“What?” Edwin thought about it for a moment. “I thought that you were the secretary.”

“You’re the secretary.”

“Hmmm, that must be why old Chase keeps asking me if the coffee is on in the morning, and why he scours my desk for the daily mail. Who makes the coffee?"

“I do,” Mary said.

“Well, who gets the mail?”

“Yours truly.”

Edwin patted Mary on her knee without cringing or feeling sick. “You need a raise my dear.” He turned back to Arlene. “Perhaps when Ms. Baldacci here becomes manager then I can move up in the chain of command.”

“They’re closing us,” Mary said.

Edwin turned to her, aghast. “They are? Why wasn’t I told?”

“There was a memo, Edwin. A couple of people from corporate came down.”

“Where was I?” he asked.

“In the bathroom,” Mary said, “reading McSweeny’s.”

“You told her about that?” Edwin said to Lawson.

“It was obvious,” Mary said. “You keep it on your desk, and it’s always rolled up in the back of your pants.” She laughed. “I used to think it was a Playboy.”

“Now I’m offended,” Edwin said. “But are they really closing us?”

“This summer.”

“Have they no clue what the economy is like?”

“Yes,” Mary said. “That’s why they're closing us.”

“My kids are my art!” Henry De Witt screamed from across the room.

“Paint away, De Witt!” Edwin shouted back. He turned to Mary. “What ever will we do?”

“Collect unemployment?”

"I can't go on the dole," Edwin said.

“You could go back to teaching,” Lawson said.

Edwin rose. “How dare you even suggested that, you beast! How dare you even assume that I’d go back into that citadel of failure, and try to impart my knowledge upon those slobbering Philistines!”

“It was a suggestion,” Lawson said.

“Teachers disgust me.”

“I’m a teacher.”

“Consider myself disgusted with you,” Edwin said.

“Teaching is a rewarding profession,” Mary said.

“This from the assistant manager in a failing invoice processing plant,” Edwin said to Arlene. Then he looked at Thomas Nickerson, who hadn’t said a word since he’d sat down. “What do you do for a living, Cabin boy?”

“I’m a chef,” Nickerson said.

“I don’t think they call them chefs at McDonald’s,” Edwin said.

“Very funny. But, seriously, I’m a real chef.”

“Where?”

“At Hunter’s Steak and Ale house.”

“I don’t think frying up a t-bone makes one a chef.”

“We serve other things,” Nickerson said.

“Salad. Do you enjoy your work?” Edwin asked.

“Most of the time.”

“I want to kill myself when I get home,” Edwin said, which was the most honest thing he’d said to someone in a long time. It was a pity, he thought, that it had to be Thomas Nickerson of all people.

“That’s why you should listen to your friend and get back into teaching,” Arlene said, tugging on Edwin’s pants to get him to sit back down.

“Et tu, Eddie Vedder?”

“My kids are my art!” Henry De Witt shouted again. Edwin and company looked over toward the De Witt’s and saw that they were putting on their coats.

“Leaving so soon?” Edwin asked. "Or just stepping out for some coffee?"

“They’re better than any Picasso! They beat any Van Gogh!”

“I’m sure they’re regular El Grecos.”

“They’re better!” De Witt said, continuing to shout. Some of the other guests from the party crowded into the living room to watch. Edwin made special notice of the way that Charles and Shannon Shorter looked at him with contempt. Oh well, what were two more aging failures removed from his life? “My kids are like gold.”

“Your kids should be following canaries out of mines,” Edwin said. “At the very least they should be sweeping floors of a slaughterhouse.”

Henry De Witt, an ardent vegan, went for Edwin Balder a second time, but was restrained by the aging, black militant poet, Barzaillai Ray and the host and birthday boy, himself, George Pollard Jr.

“You just couldn’t behave, could you, Balder.” Pollard said.

“I yam what I yam,” Edwin said.

“Why don’t you leave, dude.”

“With pleasure.” Edwin began walking toward his hateful mob. He pictured them all with torches, for he felt like a Frankenstein monster in that moment. He felt like the only person who had any conception of the dark reality that was this long and arduous life. “Far be it from me to be anywhere that doesn’t serve scotch. Many happy returns, Pollard.”

“Go home, Edwin.”

“Nice couch,” Edwin said, as he moved through the small crowd.

“Thank you, Edwin,” Mallory shouted. “Thanks a lot for doing this to us tonight. You know the trouble we’ve had with the kids, especially Jamie.”

Edwin stopped in the archway between the living room and the bedroom of sin. A clock had once fallen on Natalie’s head in that very same spot. She had raced into the living room to tell Edwin something, something which he no longer remembered, and the pounding of her feet had unhinged the clock from the wall and it came right down on her head. “I’m sorry, Mallory. I forgot that one of your children was a juvenile delinquent.”

“She’s developmentally challenged, you asshole,” Shannon Shorter said to him.

“Whatever,” Edwin said, using the parlance of our times.

“No wonder Natalie left you.”

“Oh beat me with a dead horse why don’t you”

Shannon Shorter grew and evil smile on her face. “I'll be I know something that you don't know."

"What? That your video art is crap?"

"She’s back,” Shannon said.

“Natalie?” Edwin said, although whom else could she mean. “Back in New York?”

"There's more."

"What?"

Shannon Shorter smiled. "It's too good to tell you."

"Well, I'll just have to ask her myself."

“She doesn’t want to see you.”

“Oh.” Edwin stared once again at his collection of old friends and enemies, trying his best not to process the knowledge that Natalie Presley was back in New York, living somewhere just beyond his reach. Then he left the room.

Seth Weeks was sitting alone in the kitchen when Edwin went in there to retrieve his coat. Seth was a dumpy sort. He wore outdated glasses with thick frames and bulbous lenses. They were a good match for his receding hairline and patchy beard. Seth had always been a non-entity amongst their crowd, a silent hanger on with a high-pitched voice who never offered a comment, criticism, or judgment. He had no artistic inclinations, except a vague precludtivity toward Woody Allen films, which Edwin chalked up to Seth’s homosexual attraction toward nebbish Jews. Edwin used to like him for those very reasons but, in the moment at hand, hated Seth Weeks for his moderate disposition, and love of witty films without carrying an ounce of wit on his own person.

“Hello, Seth,” Edwin said, putting on his coat. “Seems I’m the belle of the ball once again.”

Seth did not laugh. Edwin had never seen Seth Weeks' laugh in all of the years of their forced acknowledgement of one another. “Hello, Edwin.”

“And what have you been up to?”

“Nothing.”

“Working, I presume?”

“I manage a bookstore down by Brooklyn College,” Seth Weeks said.

“Anyone special in your life?”

“I have a certain someone.”

Edwin smiled. “You know, Seth. It’s even okay to be gay in the military now.”

Seth Weeks had no reaction to this. “Natalie’s back.”

“Yes,” Edwin said. “And if you weren’t who you were, I’d be thinking that someone grew a set and was trying to get my goat.”

Edwin Balder left George Pollard Jr.’s apartment and made his way down the rickety stairs. He passed the cabbage and ass sweat smell of Isaac Cole’s apartment and made it safely outside on to the street. Edwin looked at the spot where the dog had been murdered and he started panting. He thought that he was going to pass out. Then Arlene came outside.

“Edwin,” she said. “Edwin, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Edwin said. He composed himself and turned to face her. “Tonight was par for the course for me.”

“I’m sorry about Natalie.”

“It was bound to happen. She’s like the rest of them in there,” he said, pointing up to Arlene’s brother’s apartment, “foolishly devoted to a city that has eaten her up but has yet to spit her out.”

Arlene pulled a piece of paper out of her baggy pants. “Here’s my number.”

“Why?”

“Because I like you,” she said. “I mean, I think underneath all of this mouthy business, you’re a pretty decent guy.”

“There are mounds of opinions to the contrary in that apartment behind you,” Edwin said.

“Well, Lawson likes you. And as for the rest of them…I guess I feel the way you do about them.”

“And that is?”

“Tired and old when I’m around them,” Arlene said.

Edwin smiled and took the number. “It seems you've read my mind. And I’ll be sure to call, despite your family line. Perhaps you can come by and we can have a drink and listen to Rhapsody in Blue.”

“Do you say that to all of the girls?”

“I do,” Edwin said. “I really do.”

The Party: Part 2

Edwin Balder took a deep breath and the rang George Pollard Jr.’s buzzer, secretly hoping that no one would hear it and that he could leave this wretched place. Edwin didn’t bother to look around his old corner, for behind him was where that dog had died. There was hardly a sound on Luquer Street, a far cry from the good old days of gang bangers and murderous Pit Bull’s. The only sound came from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in the near distance, the constant clatter of commuters stuck in the constant and unforgiving traffic in New York City, a traffic whose tide never abated and never quelled; a traffic who never gave one single human soul a bit of solace on their journey from home to work and back again. New York traffic was vicious and vile, Edwin thought, standing there. Of course so were Luquer Street and George Pollard.

The solid red door of the apartment building began to open after some struggle. Well, at least they haven’t improved that yet, Edwin thought. Then it opened and before him stood a beautiful brunette woman dressed in a blue flannel shirt and baggy cargo pants. Her eyes were in ice blue yet immaculately kind. “Edwin?” she said

“Hello, Guillermo,” Edwin began. “Have the girls arrived safely?”

The flannelled woman gave him an odd look. “Excuse me?”

“Ah, you would have had to have been there.”

“Okay. What are you doing here? Lawson said that you weren’t coming.”

“Well, you know…” Edwin started. He tried to remember the woman’s name but, sadly, could not. However, he was intrigued by her retro ensemble of flannel shirt and baggy pants, and wondered if perhaps Pollard’s birthday party was some sort of costumed gig. “Do we know each other?”

“Edwin, it’s me, George’s sister, Arlene.”

“That’s it,” Edwin said, snapping his fingers. “I’d forgotten that the Pollard’s had found it necessary to spawn again. Well, long time no see.”

“That’s because you don’t come around much,” Arlene said. Then she sniffed into the night air. Edwin wondered if she was sniffing for dog. “What’s that smell?”

“Depression? Car Exhaust? The pungent remnants of sour cream and cheddar potato chips with a dash of grape cola, perhaps?”

“Edwin, have you been drinking?” Arlene said.

Edwin extended his thumb and index finger. “A smidge. But only in the spirit of the night.”

Arlene smiled at him. He liked her smile and smiled back, but let it drop when he remembered that he was fraternizing with the enemy. “Let’s go inside,” she said. “It’s cold out here.”

Arlene led Edwin into the lobby of the apartment. The neighborhood may have changed, he thought, but the building had remained just as decrepit and dilapidated as that front door. The stairwell was still a cracked, wobbling lawsuit waiting to happen, and the floors were a dusty gray and white, faded Linoleum, and Isaac Cole had his assortment of ladders and buckets stacked toward the back of the hallway just as he had in Edwin and Natalie’s heyday. He never used them to fix anything back then, and Edwin supposed that he did nothing with his assorted maintenance tools now. The lobby still smelled of cabbage and ass sweat. Edwin turned up his nose to it. Some things you just never got used to.

“It’s a pleasant odor isn’t it?” Arlene said.

“I believe they developed it in Nazi Germany,” Edwin said, causing the sister of Pollard to laugh. It was something that surprised him and made him smile.

“So where have you been keeping yourself?”

“I’ve been here and there,” Edwin said.

“Still processing invoices?” Arlene asked, although not to be smart, he noticed. Edwin reasoned that she could live.

“Yes,” he said. “I hope to be the manager soon.”

“Are you up for a promotion?”

“No. But my supervisor, Mr. Chase, is an overweight buffoon. He’s bound to choke on a chicken wing or a tub of white cheddar flavored Crisco on another of his lonely Saturday nights.”

“Gross,” Arlene said.

“May I ask you the purpose for you ensemble tonight? It’s very retro, the whole flannel shirt and baggy pants get-up.” Arlene gave a slight spin on the steps, as if modeling. “I like it.”

“But it’s not retro,” she said. “Check the fashion mags, Balder. The 90’s are coming back.”

“Had they ever gone anywhere?” Edwin asked. He liked talking to Arlene. Where they flirting? He wondered.

But then the door opened from the second floor and George Pollard Jr.’s ugly goateed face peered over the railing. “Who was at the door, Arl?” he asked.

Arlene ducked, exposing Edwin. “Good evening, Pollard,” he said.

“Hey, Edwin,” Pollard said, a little too chummy for Edwin’s liking. “Lawson said that you were busy tonight.”

“Lawson Thomas is a compulsive liar. It was my every intention to come here tonight.”

Arlene and Edwin reached the top of the stairs. Pollard tried to embrace him in one of those “bro hugs,” but Edwin wasn’t having it. He settled for the handshake instead, and then they went inside. “Can I get you a beer?”

“Scotch and water on the rocks,” Edwin said handing George his coat, as he looked around his old kitchen. Pollard had kept up the yellowed blinds, and the floor was the same gray as in the lobby. The ceiling still had that brown spot from the time the neighbor’s pipes had burst, creating brown water puddles on the kitchen floor.

“I don’t know if we have any scotch,” Pollard said, tossing the jacket the kitchen table with a pile of other coats.

Edwin sighed. “Fine. Then I’ll take a beer or a brewski, or whatever it is that you call it.”

“Arl.” Arlene rolled her eyes at her brother and then went to the fridge to fetch their new guest a beer.

Edwin looked around the apartment. People were crowding the tight rooms and the apartment felt claustrophobic, which was precisely why he and Natalie had never hosted any parties. That, and according to Natalie, which she’d told Edwin at the climax of their relationship, their friends simply did not like him anymore. If only she could see him now, Edwin thought. Back in Pollard’s apartment, surrounded by the very people whose opinion helped to break them up. Edwin began picking some of the people off in his mind. Charles Shorter and his nag of a wife, Shannon. Shannon had been good friends with Natalie, and had always hated Edwin. Well, she left the both of us, didn’t she, Edwin said to himself, making slight eye contact with the couple. And there was Seth Weeks. Poor, unlucky Seth Weeks. What was he now? Thirty-six, thirty-seven? Most probably still in the closet and living with his mother, using New York City as an excuse to keep his growth stunted. Edwin told himself that he must sit down with Weeks and get the low down on his life. That would be good for a laugh in his down time, he thought.

Arlene came back with a beer, and handed it to Edwin. Mechanically, he took a drink and then cringed. The brew was American and bland, just the sort of beer George Pollard Jr. would have at an intimate gathering of friends. It was sad that his tastes had not evolved since the college days. And Pollard with a graduate degree, Edwin thought. It just went to show that education did not account for taste and knowledge. He looked around some more, at all of his old friends and associates sitting in their tight spaces, having banal conversations and still trying to dress the part of hip, city dweller, when many of them had turned gray and had begun to wrinkle under their tired eyes. Many of them had gotten fat, or were getting fat. Why the poet, Barzillai Ray, hardly looked the part of angry, black militant anymore. He looked like an old man wearing his son’s clothing. Edwin had to laugh. Arlene took a sip on her beer too, and then clinked bottles with him, as if they were co-conspirators in the pedestrian happenings of the night. Edwin felt some kind of private connection with her in doing this. Pollard just stood there looking confused.

“So, you want a tour of the place?” he asked. Edwin looked at him. “I guess you know it pretty well.”

Edwin looked into the eyes of his estranged, old friend, and felt a new, blazing hatred. “Why not? I’m sure you’ve done loads with the place since I moved.”

“Uh, okay.”

Pollard took the lead and Edwin and Arlene followed. First it was the narrow room right off of the kitchen. Edwin had put his bookshelves and computer in that room. It was to be the writing room, the place where the magic happened. Mostly it had become a staging area for any new household furniture that had to be assembled, or where Natalie wrote out their bills every Sunday morning while Edwin paced the narrow strip of the apartment, his head in his hands, moaning that they were broke, when he knew damned well that there was plenty of money in their bank account. Edwin felt the negative drama heightened his joy when Natalie rose from her seat to inform him that they were not only not broke, but had managed to save money in abundance. Pollard had left the room a blank. He had an old couch in there, and his bike was fastened to one of the walls.

Next it was the bedroom, and Pollard hesitated in walking Edwin through there at first, which just confirmed his guilt in Edwin’s mind. To be honest, Edwin did not even want to go into that room. There were too many memories held within its sliver of walls. There were too many days wasted in bed, a bottle of wine on the floor, as Natalie and he read books or made love, or listened to the classical station instead of the neighbor’s bass. When they entered, Edwin nearly passed out.

“Are you all right?” Arlene asked.

Edwin put his cold beer to his head and turned to Pollard, motioning toward his unmade bed. The bed was so big and the room so small that the three of them had to stand sideways in the room. This had also been the case for Edwin and Natalie. “So, is this where it happened?”

“Edwin, God damn it,” Pollard said. “I knew you would do this.”

“How was she, George? Level with me. Was she desperate? Could you tell it as you rode her on this vile, soiled mattress? Did you take her with reckless abandon and make it all better?”

“Christ, Balder. You know damned well where Natalie slept when she was here.”

“Yes, in your thick, hunky arms!”

“She slept on the fucking couch, man!”

“Whoa,” Arlene said, coming between Edwin and George. “What’s going on here?”

“You’re brother made a cuckold of me with my long-term girlfriend, near fiancé, if you will.”

“George?”

“He’s lying,” Pollard said, turning to his sister. “We…we were all friends. They were having problems.” He looked at Edwin. “Problems for a long time. And Natalie was fed up. Frankly I understood why. You can only take so much lunacy in your life.”

“Ha!” Edwin said.

Pollard returned his gaze to his sister. “It’s true. Natalie left him. She had nowhere else to go, so she came here for two days. Two Goddamned days, Edwin! And she slept on the couch, before taking the train up to her folks.”

“A likely story, you philandering public servant!” Edwin said. He pointed back down to Pollard’s bed. “This bed is a bed of sin!”

“It’s not even the same bed, Edwin,” Pollard said.

“Well, I’m sure the old one was of a similar make, or it was placed as such in the room.” He took a pull on his beer; felt his face flushed, burning. “You get my drift.”

It was then that Edwin’s best, black friend, Lawson Thomas, entered the tail end of the bedroom. “I thought I heard you,” he said to Edwin. “I thought you had that thing tonight.”

Edwin turned to Lawson. “That thing came home with her rock star, skater boyfriend.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, I’m sure they’re doing ollies or fakies or grinds, or whatever it is that skaters say.”

“You’re up on you skater terminology,” Arlene said.

“Just because my clothes have suddenly become retro, doesn’t mean that I am outdated,” Edwin said to her. He turned back to Lawson. “I came here tonight to confront the damage done.”

“He’s still going on about me sleeping with Natalie,” George said. He turned back to Edwin. “I don’t know what it’s going to take to convince you that I didn’t.”

“I told you two years ago what it would take,” Edwin said.

“I’m not giving you my blood and semen, and taking a lie detector test, dude.”

“Then our relationship must continue to hang in limbo.”

“Whatever,” Pollard said. He left Edwin, Lawson, and Arlene standing over the bed, going back the way that he came, toward more understanding friends back in the kitchen.

“So that’s why I haven’t seen you around,” Arlene said to Edwin.

“That and this neighborhood you live in gives me the night sweats and tremors,” Edwin said.

“I don’t live in Brooklyn.” Arlene looked at Edwin as if he’d insulted her. “I live in Manhattan.”

“You do?” Edwin turned to Arlene. His eyes nearly bugged out of his head, as it was rare to meet a person who could actually afford to live in Manhattan. It was Edwin’s deep, dark dream to live in Manhattan. “My Manhattan.”

“If you say so.”

“Edwin fancies himself a Manhattanite in training,” Lawson added.

“What part?” Edwin asked, ignoring his friend’s comment.

“East Village.”

“Ah!” Edwin clutched his chest, for it was too much to bear.

“I pegged you for an Upper East Side kind of guy,” Arlene said.

“Why?” Edwin asked. “Don’t you know it’s not correct to presume?”

“Oh yeah? Then why are you giving my brother a hard time?”

“Because I have fact and God on my side.”

“No you don’t, Edwin,” Lawson said.

“Shut up, you!” He turned to Arlene. “Your brother was attracted to my Natalie. He said as much.”

“Yeah, when we were all like twenty and no one was dating her yet,” Lawson said.

“Still.”

“Still nothing.”

“She chose you,” Lawson said.

“And look what happened,” Edwin said. He took a pull on his beer, and tried to forget the past. “I need real alcohol this evening, if I’m going to make it.”

“I think George has some bourbon,” Arlene said. “If you promise to leave him alone, I’ll go and fix you one.”

“I’ll do more than that,” Edwin said. “I’ll even be civil toward him.”

“Good. It is his birthday, after all.”

Arlene left the bedroom, and Edwin watched her as she moved. Retro and she lives in Manhattan. If only she weren’t a Pollard, he thought.

“Do you need to sit down?” Lawson asked, motioning toward the living room, where Edwin could hear Mary Baldacci flapping her gums to another small set of Edwin’s former friends.

“I believe I do,” Edwin said.

Lawson smiled and put his arm around his best, white friend. “Come on then.”

The Party: Part 1

Edwin Balder rode the subway up to George Pollard’s apartment. It was a terrible subway ride. All Edwin wanted was to be alone with his anger and his thoughts, but the two Hispanic girls who got on the R train at 69th Street had made it nearly impossible for him to do so. Edwin had made the mistake of sitting in the middle seat of a three seat bench, as he hated sitting on the corner seats, getting crushed into the metal pole when one of the many and varied obese denizens of New York City got on the train and sat next to him. If Edwin was going to be crushed by American girth, it was going to be on his own terms, he reasoned. That said, he didn’t expect two Hispanic girls to get on the subway, sit on either side of him, and begin a loud and boisterous debate about which one of them was going “get their’s” tonight by a man named Guillermo.

Edwin put up with the girls for as long as he could. He put up with their shouting and cackling, the potato chip scent of their breath, their sweat and perfume plastered flesh, and their inane conversation in the spirit of diversity. Edwin tried to focus on Molly Brown and Matthew Joy doing “whatever,” to use the parlance of our times, in her apartment. They were mostly probably fixing that God awful Italian meal, he thought, blasting rap music and dancing around the apartment, stopping only to kiss and grope in the way that young idiots had learned to do by watching their club videos and assorted PG-13 party films. Edwin couldn’t stand the thought of it. Still, the idea of kissing and groping Molly Brown made him break out in a slight sweat. Edwin closed his eyes amidst the babble of the Hispanic girls and imagined himself in Matthew Joy’s shoes. He felt his loins rise at the thought, and he grew embarrassed. Then one of the girls cackled and burped. The smell was vile, a mixture of potato chip, breath, and some kind of flavored soda. Edwin was all for diversity but this was too much. He stood up.

“You don’t even say excuse me,” he said to the offending girl.

“What?” she said, her lips pursed, her face belligerent. Edwin wanted to grab one of the girl’s large, golden earrings and rip it out of her ear. “What did you say?”

“You have no respect.”

‘Why I gotta respect you, nigga?”

“I’m not…” Edwin started. “You’re not…”

The girls laughed at him.

“Animals,” Edwin said.

“What?”

“You heard me, you deaf little minx.” Edwin decided to take a portion of his anger out on these she-beasts. “Who do you think you are, sitting on an evening train, burping and farting, and talking about ‘getting yours’ from someone named Guillermo.”

“Who am I?” the girl said. “Who are you, nigga?”

“Stop using that word,” Edwin said. “Let’s all make a conscious effort to stop using that word.”

“Fuck you.”

“Much better,” Edwin said. “I’m willing to bet that you’re tops in your class.”

“Look at you, faggot,” the girl said.

“At least I respect my elders, young lady.”

“You ain’t respectin’ her,” the other girl said.

Edwin looked at her. She was dressed head to toe in a pink velvet jumpsuit. Edwin knew that you couldn’t argue with someone dressed to the nines in pink velvet. You just couldn’t argue with those types, he thought. Of course, Edwin felt guilty for thinking that. Teasing Lawson was one thing, but entertaining a wholly stereotypical and, let’s face it, racist point of view, even for a moment, was not a road that he wanted to go down. Edwin Balder refused to be associated with discrimination in any form, even if he was in the right. So he turned and walked to the other end of the subway car, as the girls laughed at him and then forgot all about his existence, going back to Guillermo and who was going to “get it” harder that night.

Edwin transferred to the F train at 9th Street, walking the seemingly endless flight of stairs that led up to the train platform. He was happy that he was in such fitful shape. Edwin passed several people on their way up the steps, and simply assumed that many of them would die before they reached the top. One old man looked at Edwin and held out his hand, as if they were both fleeing refugees in an old war movie. Edwin didn’t know whether to help the old man, or to scold him for not keeping himself in decent enough shape to tackle this monster of a subway station. What was he? Seventy? Life Expectancy was now up to eighty-one, he thought. This old man had no excuse to reach out to a stranger for help. Shame on him! The older generation was getting to be just as bad as the younger one. No wonder young girls found it commonplace to discuss their sex lives on the subway, to burp into someone’s face, and then demand respect. Edwin shook his head. This certainly wasn’t the country our Founding Fathers had created.

He got off at the Carroll Street station. Edwin always got an eerie feeling getting off the F train at this stop, and he was glad that he and Pollard weren’t close anymore so that he didn’t have to make the trip too frequently or at all for that matter. Edwin had once lived in this neighborhood with Natalie. They lived in Carroll Gardens when it wasn’t trendy to do so. Edwin and Natalie had lived in a red-bricked railroad apartment on Luquer Street, and to really think back to those two years of hell should’ve been enough to send him running back to the F train. But Edwin was in a mood already, so he figured why not. As he walked to Pollard’s he thought about the cockroaches that used to scale the walls and cover the doors. Edwin remembered the sound of bass, from the upstairs neighbor, pounding down on him and Natalie as they tried to read or watch a movie. He thought about the super, a Mr. Isaac Cole, who was over three hundred pounds and smelled of cabbage and ass sweat. Edwin remembered the gang members on the street, this group of Hispanic kids that all dressed in red. Natalie called them the Flaming Red Dragons, so as to make them seem less scary. It worked sometimes, Edwin thought.

He thought about that last winter they’d spent in the apartment before fleeing to Bay Ridge, and a better peace of mind. Edwin remembered President’s Day weekend almost a decade ago. He remembered killing an unseasonably warm Sunday eating bagels and reading the Times, and making love in the bedroom barely big enough to hold the bed. Edwin remembered opening the first of two bottles of Muscadet, and telling Natalie how the grapes grew near the sea on the Loire Valley, which paired the wine really well with seafood. Natalie laughed and told Edwin too bad that he didn’t like seafood. He’d put on some Tom Waits, agreeing with her through smile. It was turning out to be the best day they’d ever spent in that apartment. There was nary a cockroach in sight. There was no bass raining down on them. Then the barking and squealing started.

It was deathly, Edwin thought, as he walked Court Street, passing their old bars and restaurants, a favorite pizza joint, reminding himself of the old times. It was enough of a racket that he and Natalie stopped their little game of paring wines up with cuisine. Edwin turned down the Tom Waits and looked out the window. He expected an injured child at best, the barking from an anxious and concerned dog. What he saw would stay with him for the rest of his existence, and would be the final tainted memory that ruined the apartment for good.

There was a German Sheppard, owned by this old codger, chained up across the street. The dog was a minor bother. It often barked but not enough to send Edwin and Natalie into a tizzy, as the Flaming Red Dragons playing dominoes and blasting rap music into the night were much worse. The German Sheppard was howling and crying because a Pit Bull had attached its jaws to the dog’s neck, and was pulling and tugging on the old beast. Blood was everywhere. The old codger was doing his best to beat away the Pit Bull but it was to no avail. The dog simply would not budge, its white coat pink colored from the blood pouring out of the German Sheppard. Neighbors were screaming. Street kids were crying. The Flaming Red Dragons came out of their den to see what the fuss was all about. The German Sheppard wailed and cried until it had nothing left. It fell limp and the Pit Bull tugged and pulled on the animal until it was no more. Then it simply let go of the Sheppard’s neck, and trotted off down Luquer Street as if it were nothing but another passing moment in his dog day.

Edwin and Natalie subletted that apartment to George Pollard, and were living in Bay Ridge by the middle of March. Pollard was moving back to Brooklyn after losing his librarian job in Philadelphia, and was intrigued by the idea of living on a gritty street where dogs were murdered by other dogs, and gang members played dominoes by the light of the moon. But that was George Pollard in a nutshell, Edwin thought, making the familiar right turn off of Court Street and down Luquer. Pollard was an overeducated wannabe thug. He grew up a wealthy suburban, New Jersey clam-head moron with an overactive imagination brought on by too many gangster rap albums from the early 1990s. He was a white home boy with a master’s degree and a cushy city job to boot.

Still, Edwin had to give Pollard credit for sticking it out in this neighborhood, putting up with Pit Bulls and gang members until fleets of posh hipsters came to the rescue and gentrified the living hell out of the street, out of the whole of Carroll Gardens. Now Luquer Street was brand new condos and refurbished red-bricked buildings with price tags beyond human reach. Carroll Gardens was Thai restaurants, Tapas bars, and gourmet markets with enough aristocratic cheese to clog the arteries of a whole French fleet. It was wine bars and import beer emporiums for everyone in this little corner of the world. Edwin stood in front of George Pollard’s apartment building, his and Natalie’s old apartment building, the building where they’d conspired and made a cuckold out of him, and he listened to the noise coming from that familiar second floor apartment. He was drunkish and he wanted to leave. But Edwin recognized Lawson’s voice above the cacophony of human sound, and he felt somewhat at ease. It was a beacon of friendship in an otherwise cruel and foreign land. Plus he’d come all of this way, and really needed a scotch and water on the rocks.