Burke.Word

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9

my favorite, grilled cheese and ketchup

Whenever Jersey got a certain kind of worked up, he told the story. He was already pretty agitated, Amanda had taken care of that, and now here he was out having to make a point to some citizen who didn’t seem to understand his job, the one simple thing they were asking him to do. The guys he brought with him, Artie and Saul, they had seen Jersey worked up before, and they had heard the story before. Truth be known, they could have told the story themselves, if it came down to it. The man sitting in the chair in the middle of the little jewelry store, three guys standing right over him, hadn’t heard it, though. He just thought Jersey was crazy. Worse than that, he knew, he hadn’t done what he had been paid to do. So they’d sent this crazy guy and now here he was, listening to some deranged family saga while he waited for the bad news to come.

—Me and my dad, right? You know how we used to be. There was this one place, we’d always go whenever he was in the whole father and son mood.  I knew it was pretty much a load, but it was easy to get into it with him, like we both knew we were pretending but it felt enough like the real thing that what the hell, just enjoy it. Dan’s Diner was the name of the place, but we always called it Dee Dee’s. It wasn’t until years later I found out no one else called it Dee Dee’s, just me and my dad. In the end it was just one more thing I hated him for. So this one time we’re there for lunch, I must have been thirteen or fourteen, sitting at the counter right by the register like we always do, and my dad begins talking to this guy, never seen him before, but in about a minute it’s like they’re best friends, old buddies from some war or something. My dad could do that, I never understood how. Turns out, the guy’s a stunt car driver, works the movies mostly for studios out on the west coast, but he’s back in the city to film a couple of scenes in Manhattan and around. I’m sitting there thinking can’t we just get back to what we were doing, lunchtime at Dee Dee’s with my favorite, grilled cheese and ketchup, soda and fries, just me and my old man even if it was pretty fake and we both knew it. The driver—don’t ask me his name, it’s taken me this long to erase it from my mind forever—was tall, short choppy black hair, old beat up long leather jacket and jeans, real heavy Southern accent, couldn’t keep his hands still when he talked. Everything was palmsup this and airpunch that, let me handchop tell you about the chase scene where I rolled the lead car by accident and just kept on going, best fingerstab take fingerstab of the day. I couldn’t believe how sick I was of the guy after about three minutes, but my dad couldn’t get enough of it, like this wired-up cracker hot rodder from North Carolina or wherever was some kind of celebrity. And before I know what’s what, we’re walking out of Dee Dee’s, I’m walking behind him and my dad and it’s like I’m not even there. I’m not really sure what’s going on it’s all happening so fast. We turn down the next street at the corner and there we are at the guy’s car, it feels like it’s out of some movie about the future or something. The thing is a metallic blue like. Like I don’t know, I’ve never seen anything like it. I swear it was glowing. We get in, me first scrambling into the back, my dad and him in the front and now he’s really wound up. Will not stop talking.

Jersey’s guys shared a look.

—We’re in one of only fifty 350 IROC-Zs made that year, supposedly for testing and engineering only, but he knows a guy out at Van Nuys Assembly who was able to get one off the line for him, even put in a 5-speed stick when all the others were automatic only, he says, and we’re good at 200, fingersnap but don’t worry I’ll show you just a little something that won’t take us a hair over 90, swear to God. So now I know the deal, he’s actually going to pull some crazy stunt to impress my dad and I’m ready to jump out of the back and walk home but we’re already moving down McGuinness, headed out past Calyer Street toward Pulaski Bridge. He’s still talking like he’s making money by the syllable but now his hands, out of control just like his mouth was before, are absolutely calm on the wheel, feathering and shuffling through the turns like he’s got his wrists right on the axle. I can tell the guy is good but it doesn’t help because I’m scared out of my mind, never been in a car going faster than 70 and he’s talking about we’ll be ok at 200? You get what I mean? I was only thirteen, what do you want. Every now and then I look into the front, but other than the two idiots I’ve been listening to, there’s not much to see—no a/c, no radio, in fact the dashboard is pretty much completely bare except for some extra dials I have no idea what they’re for. We’re moving on McGuinness so fast already that the sound of the cars going in the other direction is a low whump…whump whump, we pass Greenpoint Electrical and Casanova’s and I can see people on the sidewalk, their heads whipping around as we pass, but then we’re gone, past the auto parts place and the pool hall, Pepe’s with the stacks of radials across the front and the guys all in their same grey t-shirts, and then we pass Huron Street and I know for sure we’re going over the bridge. The whole time him and my dad talking like we’re just out riding for grins and I’m in the back where nobody’s talking to me or looking at me or anything. So we hit the bridge still shifting in and out of lanes, cars inches from us every time I look out the window, until we approach the end of the bridge on the other side, the concrete median so close out of the left side of the car that I could reach out and touch it if we weren’t going about 80 miles an hour and I was too scared to move let alone stick my hand out of the window. We come to the end of the bridge just before where the highway crosses, still a cozy thrill-ride inch from the median, then we’re at the foot of the bridge, past the median, when this hillbilly cuts his speed in half, pulls the emergency brake, shuffles the wheel a quarter turn to the left and sends us into a fishtail toward the traffic just getting onto the bridge from the other side. Are you hearing me here? I think you’re drifting off. Are you? Drifting?  Let me help you focus. Artie, give me the Tongchi.

Artie handed over the 12-inch Tongchi carbon steel wrench. Saul moved at the same time behind the jeweler, held him in place in the chair.

—There. That’s better. So, soon as we’re ninety degrees to the oncoming traffic, here’s where I’m actually screaming, holding on to the back of the seat in front of me, both hands wrapped around it like the world’s most desperate hug, at that moment he releases the brake, throws it into gear, hits the gas and straightens the wheel, and just like that we’re accelerating along with the traffic going the other way back over the bridge in the direction we just came from. I remember him saying, in that ridiculous accent, okay, kid, you can stop screaming now, the last word now taking at least three syllables as I realize we’re doing about thirty miles an hour, just out for a drive, no one in the traffic by this time really sure what had just happened but no one at the same time paying much attention to us at all. No crash, no accident, and they’re both laughing like madmen in the front as we head back. I didn’t remember much else from that drive except when Mr. Stunt there mentions where he’s staying—what do you know, I hear that loud and clear. And here’s the part I really like. As soon as I hear that, all of a sudden I calm down, I get real calm, because I know what’s going to happen. What’s going to happen, my jewelling friend, is that me and a couple of my buddies, not these guys here but a couple pretty much like them in the What-do-you-need-Jersey-just-say-the-word department, me and my buddies we go out later to Mr. Stunt’s home away from home and. Well. What we do, and believe it or not we are only thirteen years old the three of us, we wait a day, then go and find this place where Mr. Stuntman parks his car from the future, and after we run out of things to do to it with the tire irons we brought, I stick a rag in the gas tank.

Jersey swept the wrench in a smooth backhand past the jeweler’s face and brought it down on top of the display case to his left. A spectacular burst of glass and noise.

—And I set.

He swung the wrench back the other way, right past the guy’s face again, and snapped it into the center of the case on the other side. Shards again everywhere, falling into the display of rings, watches, bracelets, the noise stupendous. The man sat rigid against Saul’s arms, his head turning wildly from side to side.

—That hot rod.

When the wrench came back again, Jersey held it lightly by his side, never took his eyes off the guy.

—On fire.

Jersey handed the wrench back to Artie.

—Now do what you’re paid to do and I won’t have to do what I’m paid to do.

They walked out of the shop, the small chime in the door ringing for a moment in the air after they left.

*          *         *

—Jersey. Dude. That was the long version, even for you. I’m beginning to forget if any of it is true, or if it is, which parts.

Jersey glanced back across the street at the front of the jeweler’s shop, nothing out of place, looked like business as usual.

—Yeah, well, I’ll tell you, it’s pretty much all lies, except for the one thing.

He opened to door to his car and looked over the roof at Saul.

—I definitely hate my father.

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Losing the Bronze is Copyright ©2009-10 Nigel Hinshelwood