Samaritan (29 page)

Ray assumed the fight was with Carla, the topic Freddy Martinez, himself, trouble.

Nelson resumed scowling at his sneakers.

“You did good today.” Ray forced some air into his tone. “We have to work on your catching, but you did good.” Then, “You ever do stuff like this with anyone else?” The question, he knew, was a sleazy one, his artful avoidance of any direct reference to Freddy making it feel sleazier still.

Nelson didn’t respond.

“Anybody ever teach you anything off the charts? You know, ventriloquism, carpentry, celestial navigation, midwifing . . .”

“My dad once,” Nelson muttered, shrugged.

“Your dad once what,” Ray pushed, unable to help himself.

Nelson shrugged, looked away.

“Talk to me, baby.”

“He tried to teach me to box.”

“Oh yeah?” Ray said lightly, it coming to him like the Annunciation: Just end it. “How’d that go?”

“He got mad.”

“What do you mean he got mad.”

Another shrug.

“How’d he get mad?”

“He walked away.”

They resumed their catch in the near-dark, Nelson having to chase after every ball tossed to him; flinching and turning his head each time as if Ray were flipping him a series of grenades.

The game finally came to an end when he uncorked a moonshot over Ray’s head, the ball rolling down the lawn’s embankment, plopping into the river and bobbling away on the current.

Nelson’s face turned gray with apprehension. Ray, pained to see fear rise up so quickly in a kid like that, briefly wondered where it came from, then quickly shut down that line of thought.

“Hey, it’s just a ball, Nelson,” he said easily. “That’s why God gave us two.”

Up in the apartment, Ray regarded Danielle with dispassionate eyes. “You were on the phone?”

“Yeah,” she said, packing her book bag. “I’ll pay you for the call.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” her offer just one more turn-off. Nonetheless, he couldn’t help but ask, “Everything OK?”

“My mother.” Danielle straightened up, arched her back. “She drives me nuts.”

“What. About us?”

“Among other things.” She resumed packing.

“What other things.”

“Don’t sweat it.”

“OK,” Ray thinking, I won’t, seeing her for the last time now; Nelson, too.

But then, at the door, with her son already halfway to the elevator, Danielle abruptly turned and almost violently threw her free arm around his neck, yanking him close and hissing in his ear. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

Chapter 23

White Tom—February 25

This time around, the hospital smelled like terror; a pervasively astringent reek that set up house between Ray’s eyes and made the two-month-old
Entertainment Weekly
spread-eagled between his fists flutter as if caught in a gentle breeze, Ray reading and rereading the same paragraph about Ben Affleck and his new eighty-five-pound girlfriend as if his life depended on it.

On this, his first visit back to the medical center since his release, he found himself molting in the waiting room of the outpatient physical therapy wing, surrounded by the palsied and the frozen, the stuporous and the forlorn, in-curled wrists, stroke-locked mouths, walkers, canes, wheelchairs, the only other sign of fluid life Nerese, his stick-like-glue escort these days, sitting next to him on the bench and speaking softly into her cell phone to some childhood friend of his that he had no memory of, neither face nor name.

“He’s right here, right here. Here,” she semi-whispered both to Ray and to whoever was on the line, putting the phone in Ray’s hand.

“Hello?”

“It was a fucking mitzvah and a half, what you did for Carla, you cocksucker.”

“Thanks, thank you,” Ray staring at Nerese, who nodded in encouragement, then commandeered his magazine.

“I’ll be there in ten minutes. Do not fucking move.”

Ray gave the phone back.

“Tommy Potenza. White Tom. How can you not remember him?” she said.

“Because, like I told you before, I never
knew
him.”

“Well, he knows you.”

“This is bullshit,” Ray hissed, rocking now, his stomach sprouting wings. “I have to sit here half a day to go in there for thirty minutes so they can watch me squeeze a rubber ball and do some leg lifts? No. I don’t think so.”

“Did I tell you I spoke to Danielle Martinez last night?” Nerese asked, her eyes on the magazine.

“Yeah, so,” Ray feeling one of his post-op head-stabs coming on; pawing himself for a Vicodin.

“She didn’t even say to say hello,” Nerese said, then, “My God,” her voice going high and faint with astonishment. “Look how much weight Leonardo DiCaprio put on.”

White Tom Potenza came striding into the waiting room twenty minutes later as fast as his cane-assisted gait would allow. He was roughly Ray’s age, wore a beret, shades, a charcoal turtleneck, black leather car coat, sunglasses and a broad black Pancho-style mustache.

“I’ll talk to
you
later,” he said to Nerese with mock menace, then took a seat next to Ray, embracing him at a right angle, Ray’s shoulder pressed into his chest, kissed him on the cheek and whispered, “You’re a good, good man.”

Then, holding Ray by the biceps, he leaned across him to address Nerese.

“You would not believe this dream I had. This fucking dream and a half . . .”

His face was misted with perspiration and the grip he had on Ray’s arm was tremulous.

Ray still had no idea who this was, but that “good, good man” lingered in his ear like a butterfly kiss.

“I’m sitting in a movie with my son, he’s three years old, right?” White Tom’s voice a heightened whisper. “And next to him is this big fuckin’ shvug, no offense, with an Afro out to here and I see on the elbow rest he’s pushed my son’s arm off, like,
pushed
it, and my son’s a sweetheart, he never complains but this push was so fuckin’, fuckin’
rude,
and violent that he made Maceo spill his soda. So I say, ‘Mace, change seats with Daddy,’ and so now
I’m
next to Afro-boy and I say to him, ‘You want to try that with me?’ And then I shove
his
fuckin’ arm right off the elbow rest.

“And this big mamaluke, he pulls out this fuckin’
hand
cannon, puts it right in my face, I say, ‘What are you gonna do, throw shots in here in front of a child? What kind of animal are you?’

“And because, and
only
because it’s a dream, Neesy, the guy actually, mentally,
absorbs
what I’m saying and reholsters his piece.

“I say to him, ‘Forgive me. I’m an overprotective parent. I was upset.’

“So the guy goes back to watching the movie, I’m sitting between him and my son, staring at the screen but now that this guy’s relaxed, all’s I can think is how I can nail this nigger . . . Like this?” Bisecting Ray’s Adam’s apple with the flat of his hand, Ray feeling like an asshole.

“Like this?” Resting a thumb against the corner of Ray’s eye.

“I’m like murder on a stick. And then I wake up . . .” White Tom seized his head. “And I am so ashamed of myself. I’m still with the violence. My little boy’s right there and I can’t even . . . I’m still with the violence. I even used my son to set the guy up, soften him up.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake.” Nerese waved him off. “It was a dream, Tommy.”

“It’s an ongoing issue, so fuck you,” he said without heat. “I don’t want to be that way.
Ever.
Like today, right?” He addressed Ray now. “Guy cuts me off on JFK. We pull up at the light? I didn’t even make eye contact. Now,
that
is a big first for me, but do you know why? Because I refuse to surrender to the darkness anymore. I mean what good can come of it. What possible good, can you
feel
me on this, you sonofabitch? Look at you, you still look like a kid.”

“Oh yeah?” Ray, creaming to get away, tried to catch Nerese’s eye, but she seemed to be enjoying the show.

“No, I remember you back then, chugging along . . .”

“I never chugged anywhere in my life,” Ray said awkwardly, trying to get in the spirit of whatever this was.

“Oh yeah? Well fuck you then.” Tommy kissed him on the cheek again, Ray at least distracted from the amorphous dread and interminable wait.

White Tom pulled a square of brown paper towel, public restroom towel, from inside his car coat, then turned his head away as he removed his glasses and mopped his face, Ray thinking, speed, crank, coke, looking to Nerese for an explanation but she just smiled.

“No, listen to me.” White Tom got back into it, the hand on Ray’s arm damp and shaky. “I have buried way too many friends. I have seen so many friends go down over the years I have fucking survivor’s guilt. Remember Hector Santos? Big Hector? Six-foot-five, built like Man o’ War. Fucking Hector, could crush a raw potato in his fist, make basketballs explode with his bare hands. Hector, my soul brother, dead at thirty-two, a needle in his arm, sitting in a wooden chair, no other furniture in the room except a stack of books on the floor and a picture of his nephews hanging on the wall. His
nephews,
you hear what I’m saying? So fuck the darkness, OK? God has given me so many second chances in this life, but I
know
at some point, some point sooner than later, He’s gonna lose patience with me and then the sheets go up over the mirrors and my mother’s sitting barefoot on a wooden crate. So, no. I’m not marching in that parade no more.”

“So Carla’s son. He OD’d, right?” Ray just saying it to say something.

“Who, Reggie?” White Tom wiped his forehead again. “No, he was murdered.” He then leaned across Ray’s chest to go in Nerese’s face. “He. Was. Murdered.”

Nerese just waved him off. “Coroner said OD.”

“Bullshit. That kid’s been robbing Peter to pay Paul since he was in diapers. Somebody gave him a hot shot.”

Nerese plugged a yawn with the back of her hand. “Coroner said OD.”

“You know how you get that one off her ass? Put the doughnut at the far end of the table.”

“Doughnut jokes,” Nerese muttered.

“So what are you doing when you’re not playing guardian angel.” Tom’s eyes wagged like dog tails behind his shades.

“Well, until a few weeks ago I was teaching,” Ray said stiffly.

“Teaching where . . .”

“Paulus Hook?” Then, just having to add it, “Pro bono.”

“Pro Bono, who’s that, Sonny’s brother?” the guy too jumpy to smile at his own joke.

“On the house. Volunteer.”

“You were teaching for free?” He suddenly seemed to slow down, gather focus.

“Yeah,” Ray said, encouraged. “I’m going to try to go back to it next week.”

“For free. Motherfucker. You’re the real deal, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know.” Ray fought off a smile.

“You married? Kids? What . . .”

“Divorced.”

“Fuck her, right?”

“Got a daughter, just turned thirteen.” Ray usually began to glow when Ruby came up in a conversation but for some reason this time her name pulled him down like a plumb line.

“What . . .” White Tom on it instantly.

“Nothing.”

“What’s wrong, the kid?”

“No.”

“It’s the kid. Tell me.”

Nerese was quietly listening in, her chin in her hand, a watchful tentative smile on her face. Unannounced, the Vicodin kicked in, and bookended by the two of them, by their expectant eyes, he found himself unable to keep the huskiness from his voice.

“I don’t know, she’s going through a patch right now, and, or, you know, maybe it’s just me, I’m the one, but it’s like, I don’t know how to
be
with her, you know, how to be her friend.”

“Her
friend
?” White Tom said in a way that made Ray flinch, made him want to take the word back.

“Excuse me, Ray, for stepping over the line here, but let me just remind you that you’re not her friend. You’re her father.”

“No no, I know, I know. What I meant . . .”

“Listen to me.” He gripped Ray’s wrist. “When they’re adults there’ll be plenty of time to become friends, but not now. Right now she needs guidelines. She needs yes and no. Your displeasure has to be
worth
something to her, or all is lost.”

The only thing keeping Ray from shutting out the lecture was his sense of the extraordinary effort this Tommy guy was making to slow down his racing metabolism and carefully pick his words.

A nurse came out into the waiting room and finally called his name. Ray looked to Nerese and shook his head—forget it—Nerese opened her mouth, then closed it.

“I just want to keep her talking to me,” Ray said.

“Well . . .” Wincing, White Tom slowly straightened out one leg until the outline of his kneecap disappeared. “The reality of it is, at her age she’s gonna do what she’s gonna do, they’re all like that, but she needs to know that this shit is
not
OK with you. She needs to know that just because everybody else is doing it, it still doesn’t float under your roof, and you have to make that very clear. No waffling, no politicking, no worrying about your popularity rating. I don’t tolerate it, I don’t accept it and I don’t approve of it. It is
not
OK, so don’t do it.”

“Do what,” Ray said, coming back to himself a little.

“Drugs sex alcohol whatever. Once again, forgive me for stepping over the line with you, but if you really want to be a friend to her? Then don’t be her friend. Be her father.”

Ray nodded as if in deep thought, restraining himself from reiterating that all he meant was what he had already said, that he increasingly did not know how to be with Ruby these days, and that he feared that this self-defeating self-consciousness was also self-perpetuating, driving an ever-widening wedge between him and Ruby that he felt helpless to arrest.

In their first encounter after his release from the hospital, he had been so worried about her being freaked out by his appearance, he had projected so much intense anxiety toward her, that the first words out of the kid’s mouth after taking in the damage to his face had been “
Dad. You’re
the one who got hurt. Stop
looking
at me like that.”

He restrained himself from reiterating all this now because he sensed that, given White Tom’s physical distress, the issue, the only issue in his eyes, his life, was self-destruction; and Ray just didn’t want to make the guy, or himself for that matter, feel like a fool.

Using his cane, White Tom struggled to his feet like a man trying to hoist himself out of a pool, his forehead beading with the effort; then, turning, he dropped a hand on Ray’s shoulder. “I got to book, but very soon, you and I, we’re going to sit down and break bread like human beings, because I have a business proposition for you that’s really gonna ring your bell.”

“OK,” Ray said neutrally.

White Tom continued to stand there, smiling down at him from behind his shades; Ray waited.

“Listen to me,” he said. “I want to give you something. You gave to Carla, now I’m going to give to you. I’m going to teach you a trick to defeat the darkness.”

Ray heard Nerese cough into her fist and figured she knew what was coming word for word.

“Think of it, the darkness, as a ball, small, a golfball, a Ping-Pong ball that’s like hovering in the air right in front of your face. You defeat that fucking ball by keeping your eye on it, your mind’s eye. As long as you do that? You contain it. But the minute you take your eye off it, turn your back,
indulge
in a little something? You look back, that ball just got bigger. Now it’s a baseball, a tennis ball. Take your eye off it again? Indulge in another little, somethin’-somethin’? Ho-ly shit, now it’s a softball. Next time a basketball. Drop your guard enough times it becomes one of those ten-foot-high nudist colony beach balls with the happy broads hanging on it, mow you down like a bowling pin. You don’t
ever
take your eye off the darkness, Ray. You heard of one day at a time? I’m talking one
minute
at a time. You understand me?”

Ray nodded, touched and inarticulate.

“I’m out of here.” White Tom stooped to embrace him, then straightened up. “You’re gonna be OK, brother. I know it. You’re gonna be A-OK.”

And then he was gone.

Ray sat in silence with Nerese for a long moment, wondering how to word what he wanted to say.

“So, what’s he on?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“Tommy? Tommy’s clean as a whistle.”

“He’s always like this?” Ray raised his hand, made it tremble.

“Nah,” Nerese said softly. “That was just about him being in here.”

“Here. The hospital?”

“He’s got a history, so it’s kind of hell on him, places like this.”