Bucky F*cking Dent (18 page)

“No,” Marty said. “I like it. It identifies me. Like a bird's plumage.”

Then they'd go down to Benny's kiosk. Today, after the fake Boston win, no wheelchair and no cane. Marty had pep in his step. The Sox skid was over and so was Marty's.

The gray panthers might have been a tad overzealous preparing the charade. But then again, they had nothing else to do, absolutely nothing. Ted's first clue of this was the appearance of the
Times
delivery boy speeding toward them on his bike, screaming, “Fuck fuck fuck cocksucker mothersuckerfucker dickass French kiss big tits nipple whore Yankees!”

“I like this kid,” Marty said, and then to the kid, “What's wrong, squirt?”

“Sox won?” Ted asked hesitantly, by way of cueing the boy. The kid had obviously been given carte blanche by the panthers to do some experimental cursing in his role. He was quite a natural. Sounded good, real.

“Sox won! Fuuuuuuuuuckkk…” and he was off, the “fuck” trailing behind him like sonic exhaust.

Ted saw Schtikker about twenty yards away, gesticulating to the kid to bring it down a notch. The kid certainly was over the top, but enjoyable, a little like a little blue Don Knotts.

Here came another suspicious dude in a suit making way too much of a bee line for Ted and Marty.

“Goddamn Red Stockings of Boston!” he declaimed in nineteenth-century diction as he passed by. Gotta give that guy some notes, Ted thought, and update his fucking playbook. As they approached the kiosk and the gathered men, Betty leaned out her window on cue, and for the first time in her life, sounded wooden, insincere, and just plain weird. “Sixty years of waiting is over, Marty.” She looked down at something; was she looking at a piece of paper, a script? Jesus Christ.

Marty called up to her, “I'd wait another sixty for you, sweet Betty.” Betty looked at the panthers and put her hands up, like what now? Clearly she was not prepared to improvise. She seemed to panic, screamed, “Go Sox! Curse of the Babe! Damn Yankees! Bambino! Yazzz-ce-ze-stremski!” like a greatest-hits run of baseball clichés, and then slammed the window down. The panthers were laughing as they came forward to see Marty. Every moment Marty had his back turned to one of them, Ted would receive an exaggerated wink or the okay sign.

“Ivan, come here and let me check your age.”

“I thought you'd never ask,” said Ivan.

Benny, or rather a hand, reached up over the kiosk counter with Benny's voice. “Here is your paper, Marty. Your special paper. Special for you.”

“What is this, the Yiddische theater?” Ted said for the benefit of the panthers only.

“Got it, Benny. Thank you.” Ted took the paper, stopping Benny from incriminating himself with further bad acting.

Tango Sam took Marty in hand like he wanted to dance, and Marty looked like he was going to take him up on the offer.

“Marty,” Tango Sam said, “successful advertising executive and long-suffering Sox fan, you look tremendous, loan me fifty.” It was gonna be a good day.

 

39.

Something was shifting in Ted. He didn't know what it was, but he felt it was good. That was a strange feeling for him, because usually he didn't know what it was, but felt it was bad. He'd read somewhere that every six years or so, the body's cells have completely died and been reborn or something like that, turned over like a car speedometer. Meaning that every six years or so, you were literally a new man. Every scrap of you, for better or worse, head to toe, was not as it was. Ted wondered if the soul molted, too, like a snake angel. Because that's what it felt like, like his soul was shedding its skin.

One morning, about a week later, Ted overslept, and jumped out of bed. It was after nine. Shit. He ran outside to get rid of the paper. He picked it up and had it over his head to toss it, when he heard, “Ted, what are you doing?”

Marty was at the window, looking down on him. Ted was busted.

“Getting to the bottom of who's stealing your paper.”

“Who is it?”

“Well, I haven't quite gotten to the bottom of it yet.”

“But you got it today?” Ted looked at the paper in his hand.

“Yeah, I got it today.” And just then the overacting, overcursing Don Knotts kid came flying by on his bike: “Nipple-titty-pubes-fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuckkk…”

Which could mean only one thing to Marty: the Sox had won again. Sufficiently and happily distracted, Marty pumped his fist in celebration and disappeared from the window.

Ted hustled down to the kiosk to brief the boys. The Yankees were back in town, so Ted had to go to work and couldn't manipulate the outcome with the VCR. So he had decided to try a rainout. He had the panthers ready with hoses to go up on Marty's roof and try to create a realistic-enough downpour to convince Marty that the game would get canceled. Then Ted would call from the stadium, corroborate the rainout, say he had to go to a work meeting, then rush home in the Corolla immediately after the game was over. If the Sox won, then he'd say there'd been a long rain delay, but they got the game in after all, and the Sox had pulled it out. It was worth a try anyway, and the panthers were into it. Satisfied that they had some kind of plan, Ted hustled back up the block to home.

“Where the fuck were you?”

“And a good, good morning to you, too, sir.”

Once inside, it was harder to keep Marty away from the paper. Ted held on to it and pretended to read as he fixed breakfast. Marty watched him impatiently. “Can I see it now?”

“See what?”

“For god's sakes, Ted, the newspaper, can I see it?”

“Oh, the newspaper. Here, can you see it?” He held up the paper for Marty to see. “You see with your eyes, not with your hands.”

“Hardy har-har.”

Ted handed Marty the paper. “You want coffee?”

“Sure.”

As Marty was unrolling the paper, Ted lit a match for the stove, but purposefully held the match to the bottom of the
Times.
Marty didn't realize the thin newsprint had caught until the paper had burned halfway up to his hands. He tossed the flaming thing down.

“Whoa, watch it, Ted!”

“Jesus!” Ted stomped on the paper like a winemaker, and grabbed a glass of water to put it out. By the time he'd trod and drenched it, it was an unrecognizable and unreadable mess. He picked up the dripping gray-brown burnt glob and offered it to his father. Marty wouldn't touch it now. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Sorry, Dad.”

Ted stepped out of the kitchen. He returned with two baseball gloves and a softball.

“Look what I got.”

“So?”

“So let's go to Central Park and watch some softball. Like you used to play.”

“No.”

“That's your answer?”

“No. Fuck no is my answer.”

“I invited Mariana.”

“Hand me that glove.”

 

40.

Ted loaded Marty into the Corolla for the ride to Manhattan, Central Park. First they were to pick up Mariana in Spanish Harlem.

“Smell that?” Marty said, inhaling into his ruined lungs as they sped along Eighth Avenue. “Beans, coffee, plátanos, music, pussy…”

Ted was slightly appalled at the list. “You smell music?”

“Sometimes, yeah, sometimes I smell music and hear pussy.”

“Yeah? What does pussy sound like?”

“You don't know, do you?”

“No, I don't.”

“Pussy sounds like music.”

“You disgust me.”

“I don't care. We should move up here, Teddy.”

“Sure. I'll get on that.”

“It's closer to your work.”

“Well, that is true.”

Ted saw Mariana on the corner, flagging them down.

Marty smiled. “I don't know about you, buddy boy, but I hear a certain kind of music.”

“You're disgusting.”

He pulled up alongside her. “Your chariot.” Mariana got in. At the next red light, Ted hit the cassette deck. He had missed the Dead, and it was a good idea to block out any random news that might penetrate their hermetically sealed news bubble. He turned to Mariana in the backseat and said, “This is the Grateful Dead … the band … your tattoo. It's a song called ‘Box of Rain,' one of my all-time favorites.” He wanted to play music for her all day like high school kids do when they're getting to know one another trying to display their inner plumage through what they like. Marty broke in, “You got any big bands there? Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw?”

“I like this,” Mariana said. “I like this Grateful Dead. A ‘box of rain' is a nice idea. I like that.” Ted looked over at his dad to savor this tiny victory.

“Sounds like music for potheads. Like hippie narcocorridos,” Marty said.

“Exactly,” Ted said, and started to sing along, and he could tell, or he hoped he wasn't imagining, that Mariana was listening, because he was singing to her. He was thrilled to meet her eyes in the rearview mirror as he sang:

“‘It's just a box of rain, I don't know who put it there. Believe it if you need it, or leave it if you dare. But it's just a box of rain or a ribbon for your hair, such a long long time to be gone and a short time to be there.'”

They parked and entered the park at Eighty-sixth Street off Central Park West, angling for the ball fields. As they walked, Ted tossed the softball, a Clincher, up in the air as nonchalantly as he could. “I want you to teach me how to pitch a softball. You never did.”

“No.”

“C'mon, I throw peanuts professionally. I make a living with my arm. I think I can handle a little softball.”

“No. You'll embarrass yourself. You throw like a spastic, and my arm might fall right out of the fucking socket.”

“We'll just have a catch, then.” For Mariana's benefit he added, “C'mon, you're a god till October.”

There was a game on every one of the eight fields, so the three of them just sat on the grass in the Venn-diagram intersection that was the common outfield between the fields on the east and the fields on the west. Technically, they were on the playing fields, and the center fielders from three different games formed the points of a triangle around them, but this was New York, nobody owned the park, not even with a permit. Some high school kids played Frisbee and hacky sack nearby.

“You know what I used to call Central Park?” Marty asked. “The prison yard. It's like this whole congested city is a lockup and a few hours a day the prisoners get to come out and get some fresh air before they go back to their cells.”

“Yeah, I don't know,” Mariana countered, “I love the park. Without the park I think we'd all kill each other.”

Marty talked about the pitching and hitting like a pro scout, pointing at one of the pitchers. “Watch this guy, you see when he throws the curveball, he regrips the ball in his mitt, gives it away every time, like a tell in poker. Watch.” They watched. The pitcher looked to his catcher for a sign and put his hand into his mitt, rotating the ball out of view. “He's moving it,” Mariana said.

“Curveball,” Marty said, and sure enough, the next pitch was a curve. “It's a dying art, softball. When I was a kid, it was just as popular as hardball, now it's mostly for fat guys, and this co-ed stuff is bullshit. Though I think the lesbians are supposed to be the best softballers out there right now.”

Ted squinted at him, trying to figure out if he was joking, and if he should join in, and what was Mariana thinking. Mariana knew it was more than half joke. “Yeah, big sport for the dykes,” she said.

Ted jumped up. “C'mon, Dad, we're gonna play catch.” He helped a stiff Marty to his feet.

“Okay,” Marty groaned, “we're gonna have a catch. You don't say ‘play catch,' you say ‘have a catch.'”

“Okay, then let's play have a catch.” Marty grimaced, and tossed the ball to Ted. “Ow,” he said. Ted fielded the ball and threw it back. Sure enough, he was a bit spastic and ungainly, something jerky like a windup toy, but he was accurate enough to get it back to Marty.

“Throw it like a ball, like this, not like a peanut.” Marty threw it back in a fluid motion. Ted trapped the ball in his glove with his nonglove hand, the way five-year-olds do when they are first learning to catch. Not at all like a smooth lesbian.

“Isn't this great?” he said. “I'm gonna start to air it out now.” Ted wound up to put some mustard on it. Since he was so tense and gripping the ball so hard, his release point was way late, and he fired the ball straight down off his own toes. “Motherfucker! Sun in my eyes.” Not a physical possibility.

Marty would have liked this over as fast as possible. “Don't strangle the ball. You wanna learn softball pitching? Here. Try it like this.” He modeled the submarining motion of a softball pitcher and fired a strike back at Ted, who took it off the shin.

“Fuck me! Strike!” Ted shouted. “You still got it, old man, you still got it.”

“I got nothing,” Marty said. Ted tried the underhand motion, but the ball barely left the ground, rolling and bouncing back to Marty.

“We look like a coupla Jerry's Kids out here. Do what I'm doing.” He showed Ted the proper motion, the little dance. “Use your hips.”

Ted tried to mimic his father's motion, but looked terrible: what should be going right was going left and what should be going left was going right. But Ted thought it was all great. He looked over to Mariana and smiled. Marty mumbled, “Jesus.” Then louder, “Yeah, like that, almost exactly like that.” Marty tossed the ball back to Ted, who missed with his glove and took it on the chest.

Mariana helped out. “The fucking sun.”

“Yup,” said Ted. Ted practiced his new motion a few times, started nodding like, yeah, I got this, then fired wildly, diagonally, straight at Mariana's face. With the reflexes of the legendary Rangers goalie Eddie Giacomin, Mariana reached up with one hand and snagged it cleanly. Marty was impressed.