The Fuck Up (9 page)

I guess he interpreted her screaming as insolence instead of fear. Spontaneously an old man leapt at the fucker’s gun hand. After hearing the discharged blast, the cashier jumped at the gunman, but he kept slipping backwards. The school girl broke free and dashed out the door. The old man dropped to the ground. I jumped up thinking the situation was defused. The gunman released two more shots. I jumped away, falling through the coldcut display case, and the gunman was out the door with his bag of money.

A tray of coleslaw had spilled over me, and as I tried to rise I felt a numbness in my right arm and saw blood mixing in with watery mayonnaise. The cashier leaned over his old friend. The old man was calmly on the ground, blood was drilling up out of his belly. The cashier was holding a rag on the puncture. The lady hung up the phone after notifying the 911 people. She looked at my arm; through my jacket and shirt there was a deep cut.

“I’m okay.” I trembled with false modesty. “How’s the old guy?”

“Did you know him?” she asked solemnly. I shook my head no.

The lady wrapped a tourniquet just below my shoulder. Soon people from the street started pouring in and asking me dumb questions: “Did it
hurt? Are you all right? What happened?” In what seemed like forever, I could finally hear the wailing sirens, and then an endless flow of police started streaming in as if they were compensating for the prior lack of security. The cashier was sobbing over the dead body until one group of paramedics put it on what looked like a large tray and then covered it with the white sheet. Finally one medic, a big guy with a name tag reading “Luciano,” took a scissors and cut the jacket and shirt right off my arm. He started looking for a bullet hole.

“It was a piece of glass,” the career lady explained.

Upon hearing that I had no relations living in the city, she offered to escort me to the hospital. We spoke during the ambulance ride to Saint Vincent’s Hospital.

“What were you doing in there anyhow?” I asked her. She was attractive, articulate, well-dressed, and simply didn’t look like a Blimpie’s type.

“I work in the area.”

“As what?”

“A stock broker,” she said and then asked what I was doing there. I explained that I had just walked over the bridge.

“Didn’t you have a token?”

“The IRT isn’t as poetic as the Brooklyn Bridge.”

“Oh,” she replied with an inspired smile, “you mean not many dawns chill it from its rippling rest…”

“Very good.” I was surprised. She asked me if I knew the reference.

“What kind of bogus, never-completed-a-page, cappuccino-slurping writer would I be if I didn’t know the opening of ‘The Bridge’?” The odds that two people knew the same poem seemed rare in these illiterate days.

“Is that what you are?”

“Well,” I replied, “maybe I completed just one page.”

As the siren wailed and the ambulance precariously cut off other cars, she started loosening up and telling me about herself. Her name was Glenn, modernized from Glenda. She was a thirty-two-year-old divorcée with a fair income and her ex-hubby’s Brooklyn Heights townhouse.

At the hospital, they checked out my arm. There weren’t any bones broken, no arteries severed, nor vital organs damaged. I had spilt a bit of blood, but all in all I had plea bargained well with fate. After the bandaging, a cop kept reviewing the incident over and over. Maybe, if I revised the facts, circumstances might retroactively right themselves. The career lady correlated all the details so the cop finally left me alone. Initially the hospital wanted to keep me overnight for observation. But after I explained to the nurse with the metal clipboard that I had no insurance plan, no Blue Cross and Blue Shield and no money, my situation seemed less serious. Before Glenn left, I asked her if she would ever care to dine or something. She said that she didn’t think so.

“Well, can’t I at least speak to you again?” I appealed. “You aided me in a time of need and I feel obliged.”

“Don’t feel obliged.”

For that fearful moment in the Blimpie’s, she made me feel very protected. I asked her, “Do you have a child?”

“No, why?”

“Think of me as one,” I replied.

“Look, we can talk on the phone, but I’m involved and I wouldn’t want to give you the wrong idea.” As she said this, she took out her appointment planner and scribbled down a telephone number with an extension. She then tore out the page, handed it to me, and was gone.

I had a buck-fifty and needed to be at work in a half an hour so I started walking east. After spending hours in the gloom of that hospital, it was good
to be out and away. When I finally got to the theater, the box office lady asked if I would mind the box office a moment so that she could relieve herself. I sat on her stool and waited. After about five minutes, during which time three young bucks sporting ten gallon hats moseyed on in, I found myself deeply attracted to the cash in the till. I finally counted it. It amounted to more than I had seen in years. I finished counting before the lady returned to the box. The balance came to two hundred and fifty-six dollars. Two patrons later, Rosa resumed her place. Going into the office, I coughed through a thick cloud of marijuana smoke. There were burnt-out roaches in the ashtray. Miguel was giggling on the phone to someone. I caught the phrase “mobilization on Washington” and stopped listening. WBAI was playing ancient Siberian folk music and interlacing it with an explanation about these lost people and their futile attempt to protect their vanishing heritage. In mid-sentence Miguel looked up and noticed that the right sleeve of my jacket and shirt had been amputated. Upon seeing the iodine-stained gauze that was packed around my shoulder, he quickly concluded his conversation. “What happened?”

“I walked in on a robbery and fell through a display case.”

“No shit?”

“No shit. Someone got killed.”

“How?”

“He tried to grab the gun.”

“He was asking for it then. Were the robbers black?”

“No, it was a Puerto Rican guy.”

“I know a homeopath, like a doctor. He can look at your shoulder.”

“No, I’ve spent enough time with doctors.”

“Well, just relax. Want a medicinal joint?”

“No thanks.”

“I’ve got a case of the munchies myself. Want anything at the store?”

I didn’t. He threw on his jacket and went to the newly opened Korean fruit stand on the corner. I turned on the small TV that was on his desk. Richard Dawson was kissing a mother, and then he kissed a daughter, and then I turned off the TV Trying to appear responsible, I started clearing off the desk top. I threw away an empty Dannon’s yogurt cup and then wiped up all the granola crumbs.

Checking the register dial that showed how many people had come in since the last cash drop, I counted twenty-six and multiplied it by four. The sum came to a hundred and sixteen dollars. But I had just counted over two hundred dollars in the box office. I checked all the math again, something was wrong. Obviously I had screwed up somewhere, so I decided to just keep quiet and let him explain everything to me. I turned the TV back on and watched Richard Dawson kissing some more relatives until Miguel arrived. He put a quart of Tropicana Orange Juice on the desk and, after watching a bit more of “Family Feud,” started instructing me about the job.

“We didn’t do too well today,” he said. Out of his pocket he produced a rubber banded roll of bills. He then checked the gauge that I had checked and did the same computations I had, coming to the same conclusion.

“Yep, a hundred and sixteen bucks,” he said, and then added, “This is pretty average for a Tuesday matinee.”

He then counted the stack of bills: it amounted to the same figure.

“Let me ask you something,” I asked. “When you take a drop, you take everything but fifty bucks right?”

“Right, why?” he asked calmly.

“Just getting the facts straight.”

“Well, I just collected all the matinee, so there is now fifty bucks in the till.”

I watched him put the money in an envelope, fill out the front with the present gauge number, and calculate the sum total of the matinee. He then put the envelope into the deposit bag for the nightly deposit.

Something fishy was going on.

The night spun on as quickly as the digits on the gauge. Miguel gave me a few pointers on the porno business. He talked quickly about the illicit side of the trade, specifically the shakedowns and the pirating of porn films. But he elaborated on the nuances of location. Aside from zoning rules that dictated the locations of gay porn theaters, it was each police captain’s private policy in his individual precinct that usually dictated whether sex was permitted in the theater or not.

“For example, Ox had to sell the theater in Queens because a homophobic commander was transferred there, and he had the vice squad staking the theater out regularly,” Miguel explained.

He also mentioned that business had slackened for a couple of weeks the previous fall because the condom dispenser in the lobby was busted and the boys were afraid of contracting AIDS.

“Anybody can do what they want in here but everybody is given a safe sex pamphlet, I make sure of it,” he said proudly, “and nobody wants to die.”

We spent most of the evening drinking beer and talking. We rambled on about our pasts, and to compensate for our lack of experience due to youth, both of us were unintentionally drawn into colorful hyperbole. He told me about his semester at college in Boulder, Colorado. He lived out of a motorless van and had long wavy hair. His favorite recollection, which also seemed to be his vision of the perfect future, was the time he went to the Rainbow Gathering. This was a festival for orthodox hippies who met once a year somewhere in the undisturbed wilderness. For the duration they met, it was like being a hobbit in a carefree world, provided it didn’t rain. I didn’t care to
dredge up my drab and depressing past, so I made up a lively yet realistic background.

“I was raised in New York, but I can’t bear dealing with parents anymore.”

“Where did you meet Tanya?” he asked and for a moment my mind was a blank. Then I remembered the girl on the train.

“On a train,” I answered, almost truthfully.

We talked about other things and just when conversation was getting completely absurd, the intercom buzzed. The box office lady said that there were two people in the outer lobby waiting to see Miguel. I followed him out and met his guests. They were two punks. One was taller, appeared older than the other, and both of them had wide grins. With their mohawks and leather gear they looked like characters out of
The Road Warrior,
Wez and his motorcycle-mate. One of them was holding a pail and the other one, the taller one, had leaflets.

At first Miguel appeared flustered. He greeted them with the words, “I thought you were coming tomorrow.”

“We were out gluing up flyers for our gig and since we were passing we wondered if we could check out the sound system,” explained the smaller one.

“It’ll only take a moment,” concluded the other. I moved in closer to inspect the mohawks. They were spectrum-colored with glistening speckles. I could see that they were erected with the help of Elmer’s glue.

“Okay,” Miguel consented nervously. So they left their glue buckets and flyers in the box office and followed Miguel into the theater.

As Miguel and the taller one quietly led the way through the dark theater, I walked alongside the diminutive sidekick. He had what resembled the coastline of Asia minor shaved carefully into his bristled scalp; I could make out the Aegean fingering into the Bosphorus. In conversation with the punk,
Miguel unlocked the projection booth. The projector was on, but there was no operator present. The two punks quickly went through a checklist and at one point I overheard the head punk whisper to Miguel, “1 didn’t get you in any trouble, did I?”

“No, no,” Miguel replied calmly, “everything’s still in orbit. Only, as a rule, try calling ahead.”

Miguel then introduced us. “This is the new manager, but he’s real cool.”

We all shook hands and Miguel explained that these were two young vanguard filmmakers. Apparently Miguel had many acquaintances from both the NYU Film School and The School of Visual Arts. Since the Zeus Theater had a superb 16mm projector, Miguel rented the theater for private functions at a nominal cost.

Since Hans—the taller one—and Grett—the smaller one—were collaborative members of an important local band called Slap, and since they were able to get Miguel on the guest list of several local after-hour spots and clubs, he was going to let them view their film for free. It was going to be screened the next day, when I wasn’t working.

Miguel talked with Hans awhile, and Grett watched the dirty film. In a moment the two had concluded their business. Hans and Grett exited, but before we could retreat back down the steps, a small door whipped open and out jumped a cute young lady wielding a crow bar. It was the same girl that I had bumped into a couple of days ago when I first got the job.

“What the fuck’s going on here?” she demanded, lowering the bar.

“I’m sorry,” Miguel replied, “I should have buzzed first.”

“If it’s not asking too fucking much!” she yelled back. “I thought you were a rapist. And besides, it’s in the union contract with all theater owners, ‘the projectionist must be duly notified before entry is gained into the booth…’”

Miguel apologized profusely, but as he did, she turned her small back to him and suddenly glared at me. Trying to ease the tension, I introduced myself.

“You’re the straight one,” she said.

“What?” Miguel cried with astonishment. Turning to me, he asked, “You’re straight?”

“Of course not.”

“He specifically told me he was straight,” the projectionist replied. “I bumped into him downstairs. He grabbed my tits and all he could say was that he was straight. Then he runs off.”

“What?!” hollered Miguel.

“Wait a second,” I replied. “I bumped into you, I tried to prevent you from falling and said I was late, not straight! That’s why I was running. Why the hell would I say I was straight?”

“To show why you were molesting me is why,” she explained.