By Phil Sandick
On a job last year, a client in Ridgewood told me I was a true human being. He said that while some people pack heat, I bring warmth. I was fixing his furnace, so it was a joke, but he was serious about me being a decent guy. Usually I try to be good to people, and it meant something that this random stranger X-rayed me and decided I was made of mostly okay stuff.
The managers at Coffee Donut know something about warmth too; they like to pump this place full of hot steam in the winter. All through my face, I feel the heat of the brewing coffee, drip-by-drip, as the carafes fill to the brim. I touch my tongue to the roof of my mouth and my head feels so light for a second. The door opens, bells jingle, another few people crowd in, and I get a quick whiff of lo mein from next door.
When my phone buzzes, it makes me jump: the anticipated call from the dispatcher.
“Lady’s heat’s gone out,” she says. “Ancient furnace. Your turn. Over in Bayside.”
I rub my thigh, bending one finger at a time. Years of doing repairs have left my joints stiff.
“That’s fine,” I say as I finish my coffee. “Refill and refuel.” I step off the swiveling captain’s chair, brace for the cold, and step into the bright, noisy street. Utility man, I say to myself. I like it as long as that’s what I am.
I exit the Clearview, curving around houses, apartments, Christmas lights, and a school playground. Amazingly, I keep to the route, even though Raffi has a way of scattering my thoughts. I’m planning to meet him at the Roosevelt Field mall later tonight. Raffi: he was one of my oldest friends, my bookie who ran with me on some of the biggest streaks he’d ever seen. These days we’re not exactly close. The last few times I spoke to him, he mentioned Vincent Van Dough, and ever since, the name’s been rattling around in my head. It’s the name of Raffi’s eccentric enforcer whose existence he’s been hinting at for months, a bad clown scary type of guy who will try and force me to—well, I don’t know what. Make me talk, make me his employee, make me disappear, make me run around in circles, make of me what he will.
I pull up to the house that has the furnace problem. It’s one of those new constructions that makes like it was built brick-by-brick, even though it’s only a look, a façade you can select at Lowe’s. My chin is twitching, as it’s done on and off for the last three years, and the ice on my nose hair is thick, like shards of pottery my wife, Bobbi, would buy at a yard sale. The other day in Betto’s room, I found my father-in-law’s old baseball card collection. They must be worth a few grand or more. On every job, I’ve had the cards in the car, just in case Van Dough starts paying me visits, asking me about my ears.
“Apologies for the inconvenience, ma’am,” I say, coming into the foyer and wiping my shoes.
“Eternal oil,” she says. She tucks strands of brown hair under a purple head wrap, then snatches the arm of her little son. “Not quite. It’s Hanukkah, you know? I was in the middle of making my latke dinner. I’ll have to throw out the first batch. We’re all freezing.”
It’s not all that bad in here, but I let it go. “It’s cold and it’s your holiday and there’s no heat coming through. Of course you’re upset.”
In the garage, I check the electrodes, the nozzle and the air tube. My hands are stiff and nervous. Moving like they’re second-guessing themselves. The dark corner near the garage door keeps catching my eye. As if even the anonymous shadow in a stranger’s house might be a special menace. I try restarting the system, but that doesn’t work; it’s all mucked up.
I bring the couple the gasket and the pump strainer and explain how the piece is bent, causing the sludge. “It’s made it so your oil ain’t oil. And oil’s the name of the game.” I break the news that they’ll need a new pump strainer and a new filter. The spare parts, I explain, are not in my vehicle. I’ll need to go to our warehouse out on the Island.
The man nods and smiles in a way that shows his teeth. “It’s treacherous weather, with the ice and everything.”
“I’ve been at this a long time, I can drive in whatever.” Funny how some people think I have a choice in doing the repair.
“We’ll write a letter to your boss,” says the lady, now bouncing the boy on her hip, “assuming all goes well.”
“All right,” I tell them. “I wouldn’t argue with you if you do that.”
My chin starts twitching again as I return down the walk to the car. I spent too much time talking. I’m going to be late meeting Raffi. Recently he’s become the kind of person who yells at me if I’m late. A few weeks back, I met him where he was parked on Underhill Avenue, trying to give driving lessons to unsuspecting chumps. It was only five minutes past three, but he stared me down, calling me his two-month toothache.
Two months. Almost three months now. It was early October when the trouble started. Each week I’d pick the Seahawks. I had this strong premonition that the Seahawks were about to turn it on. Then when they started to cover, I began betting against them. It’s not their fault, it wasn’t personal, though sometimes it feels that way; like they were toying with me. Often I dream of silver birds flying at me, aiming, through the grid of my mask, for my eyes.
* * *
At the distribution center, I hurry over to Steve at the parts desk. Steve’s a friendly guy at heart, though he’s been in something of an agitated state since his wife left him sixteen years ago.
“I’m not doing business with you, Agosto,” Steve shouts when he sees me. “With Van Dough after you? Get the hell out of here. I’m not associated. If anyone’s listening, I’m not associated.”
“No one’s after me,” I say with as much calm as I can manage, though my whole body has gone rigid and scared, like my joints have fused together. Raffi has been here, snooping around where I work. “I barely owe anything,” I say. “Don’t worry about me.”
“Who said anything about you? It’s my own pretty face I’m worried about. Not your ugly kisser.”
“This family’s got a problem with their OilPlus furnace,” I say, talking over him. “Least I can do is replace the gaskets, pump strainer, pump cover, a few back-up filters, and a corrosion inhibitor.”
“Screw you and screw the family.”
“You know,” I say, “if I didn’t see you for another century or so, I’d be happy.”
But I must have uttered the magic words because he disappears into the back room, and when he comes out, he has my parts. He drops them onto the counter without looking at me and punches the transaction into the system.
“Vincent goes for the ear,” Steve says.
I laugh and say, “What do you know about the repo man? You got gangsters on your tail too?”
“Be careful, Agosto.”
My blood pressure jumps and I feel tightness in my chest, near where I keep my pens. I hold my middle and look up at the slew of plastic hinges and metal screws. It reminds me of our bedroom; my wife’s assorted keepsakes creeping up the walls.
“What happened to our lives, Steve?” I finally get around to asking him.
I sign the transaction form and take my stuff. Steve’s there at the counter looking around, among all those replacement parts, like a man waking up in a foreign country, or an operating room, unsure of how he got there.
Part Two
The snow’s solid and crunching under my feet. Once I’m in the vestibule near the entrance to the hair salon, I dial the latke family.
“I’m sorry,” I tell the lady, “it’s taking longer than I thought. And I got caught in this storm.”
“Oh boy. Black ice.”
“I haven’t run off on you is what I’m saying. I’m on it.”
If this is the last anyone hears of me, I tell myself as I replace the receiver, at least there will be the trace of this phone call, somewhere.
In Raffi’s barbershop, the doors are open, lights are dimmed, and all the chairs are empty. A radio voice radiates from the back room. An array of nudie magazines sits on a chair. I smell pomade, and then there’s Raffi in front of a mirror, styling his wavy black hair.
“Still know how to get here,” Raffi says. “I’m amazed.”
“I’m here, right?”
“Agosto,” he says—I’m no longer Aggie now that I’ve given him problems—“tell me what you have today.”
“Check this out. I got some good luck. Pretty excited. I found this binder.” I hand it over. “It’s the entire 1986 Mets, with autographs for Dr. K, El Sid, Ronnie, HoJo, everybody.” He opens the binder, leafs through the thick laminated pages. “I got more memorabilia in the car,” I say.
“These are baseball cards.”
“The best.”
“You think I know anything about baseball cards? Get it appraised if you want. Sell them and bring me the cash.”
“It’s a start,” I say. “I’m trying to bring the price down little by little. Installments.”
“The price is fifty-eight grand. You applied for that loan yet? The one I told you about?” On my pad, I write down the number. 58.
“No, no loans, bunch of crooks,” I say. “And anyway, my boy’s college fund is already gone.”
“Make him pay his own way. Make him work for it.”
“Bobbi.”
“You still haven’t told her.”
“Can you front me ten more grand?” I ask, jumbling the syllables. “I need to have money to make money so I can pay you back. Right?”
“I’ve told you, I’m not money. I’m the odds.”
My chin starts twitching. “You know what I remember? We were out in Elmhurst. I took you to a Blimpie’s that had lost its license. Place was packed even though the shop had no name anymore, only a blank sign. Dollar seventy-five for a footlong. I thought to myself as we were sitting there, if I win, I can buy everyone in this place a sub and still have six thousand left. By the end of the weekend, I’d made sixty-four hundred. That was my first big win. It seems like yesterday. If I bet on Seattle and they win this week, I’d take a huge chunk out of what I owe.”
Exhausted, I collapse into one of the chairs. Raffi wipes his brow with his forearm. He takes one of the combs out of the jar of alcohol and rinses it off in the sink. “Here’s what Van Dough looks like,” he says. “He’s tall. And he’s lanky. Body like a windmill. He likes to bounce a racquetball. He’s into black leather jackets. He wears sweatpants. Got big feet. Big ass sneakers.”
“How does he get the money? He steals my stuff? I have nothing much to begin with.”
Raffi combs his thinning hair across his upper forehead in lines. “For starters, no more hiding it from your wife.”
“Will he hurt my family? He’s going to hurt me, right?”
“I don’t know, man. I can’t say he won’t. Yeah, he most likely will.” Raffi sniffs his wannabe tough guy sniff, wipes his nose. “He’s what you got to worry about, not Blimpie’s, not the Seahawks, not baseball cards.” He’s about to jet, but I leave first. In moments like that, I use silence as my sendoff.
The latke family won’t notice if I take a little longer, so I go to the pharmacy, which is in the most ramshackle part of the otherwise upscale mall. I grab some cards and pick out a roll of green paper with tiny Christmas elves singing, arms around each other.
I’m about to pay when I notice this whole aisle in the back devoted exclusively to fabric, and three old ladies are standing there, running their hands over the merchandise. It’s strange. One lady holds up fat piles of yarn: the pink yarn looks like a wedge of watermelon, the yellow looks like a heavy-duty banana. She compares one pile against the other, imagining a blanket or maybe a pair of mittens. The next lady wears a scarf decorated with red roses atop a purple muumuu. She opens packets of lanyard ever so gently. The third lady looks at a box of iridescent rubber bands. They all wear plastic bags around their necks, maybe as protection from the snow, and the florescent lights reflecting off the plastic makes it seem like there’s a layer of celestial stuff around them. They remind me of something out of a fairy tale, like they’ve stepped through time and might be willing to take me with them.
“So much material,” I say to the women. “They all seem so good.”
One of the women smiles then goes back to the fabric. I’m about to say more. I want to tell them about my wife, about her hobbies, about how she’s lived in the same apartment all her life and loves nothing more than filling it with things like this—yarn and other knickknacks. Then I notice a man near the bathrooms. His slinking figure emerges from around the side of the fabric stand. He’s wearing navy sweatpants and yellow sneakers that squeak on the faded floor. I drop the wrapping paper at a closed cashier counter and start walking. I look back and he cocks his head at me in a way that gives him a double chin.
The mall is quiet, even with the night staff out in full force. A gal with a toucan hairdo mops around the fountain while a bearded technician plays with the escalator controls. As I jog past the food court, I smell the burnt crisps of French fries. I enter Macy’s, rushing past all the displays and even a spritz of perfume—like a farewell—and into the snow.
Part Three
Cars move gingerly on the soft road, sliding behind me. I pass exit signs I’ve seen my whole life, green rectangles with crisp white lettering. This exit leads to Alberto’s, the sports bar where I placed my last bets; if only I could only go back and talk to myself—the me at the bar, waiting for my take-out order—I would tell myself to look beyond the Seahawks. Choose another team, man.
The family greets me with a batch of potato latkes they cooked at their neighbors’. The kid is wrapped up in blankets. “After what you’ve been through,” the lady says, “eat first, fix after. A latke for the man who promises miracles.” In a daze, I dip one latke in applesauce, one in sour cream, and for the third I ask for hot sauce, but they don’t have any and laugh at me for asking. I’m terrified, my chin’s going crazy, but I keep eating until my plate is empty.
I replace the furnace parts and tighten the new pump strainer. By the time I return to the living room, the system has reset. They can feel the heat through the vents, and they put more latkes into the oven. They’re singing this song, diyanu, and they’re ecstatic to discover everything working. They even test the broiler.
“What’s that song about there?” I ask. I don’t want to leave, don’t want to be alone outside of the house. I can picture Van Dough, leaning against the side of my car, his long arms relaxed at his sides.
“Diyanu means sufficient,” the man says, “it means we have enough. We have what we need now, thanks to you.” A drop of applesauce hits his blue jacket.
“You can’t always get what you want,” I say, “but sometimes you get what you get.” They laugh. “Me, for instance. I’ve placed a lot of wagers in my life. I’ve lost a lot.”
“Everybody loses,” the man says. “And no one hands you a map with your life and tells you where to go. No one did for me, at least. You make your way.”
My chin twitches. They can only watch me. I’m trying to keep it together.
“Hanukkah’s the ultimate long shot, right?” the woman says. The little boy claws at her and she rocks him until he shuts his eyes and his face softens into pure satisfaction.
When I leave, they give me a tip. It’s a big tip, thirty clams. They also hand me a double plastic shopping bag with food, tied tight at the top. I remind them about that letter to my boss, and they give me a look like “yeah, we got you.”
The car clock reads 2:14, twenty minutes ahead of the actual time. No one was waiting at my car. No one lurks in the icy parking lot outside my unit. I’m feeling so good that the hum of a thought comes into my head: Van Dough is a crazy-brained invention of Raffi’s; Van Dough is as real as a fire-breathing giant, a sunglasses-wearing squid.
Bobbi is asleep, but Betto is up. I throw my steno pad onto the couch next to piles of old newspapers and Tupperware. My son and I eat the latkes and watch college basketball highlights. I tell Betto to get the sour cream and find the hot sauce, and I eat until my stomach burns.
The snow keeps coming down hard. Betto falls asleep on the couch, and I coax him into his bedroom, holding my palm over his bowl cut brown hair. Maybe I’ll buy Betto a Wii for Christmas. Maybe I’ll fill the whole car up with Wii’s.
As I’m shuffling forward to turn off the television, there’s a knock at the door. “Who goes there?” I ask, but I’m not really frightened because it’s probably Mrs. Barrow from down the hall. She likes to walk her dog when she can’t sleep. I look through the peephole. Only blurry darkness. The soft whistle of snow falling. Then, the percussive tapping that reminds me of the sound slippers make on a linoleum floor: springy, rubbery.
I check again, and this time there’s a man looking back, the veins in his eyes crisscrossing into infinity until he blinks and everything vanishes. He’s breathing heavily in the cold air, an alarming, vicious grunt.
Minutes go by. I open the door a crack with the chain still locked in place.
“I’m a friend of a friend. Can I come in?” The man pronounces each word softly. I notice his feet, like anchors. This isn’t the guy from the pharmacy. This is a monster.
Part Four
Have you ever heard of out-of-body experiences? I have one now. My soul has zipped to the ceiling while my hand reaches out and unlocks the door. And goddamn it if I’m not friendly to Van Dough, standing aside with a kneejerk “won’t you come in?” My movements are automatic, like buckling my seatbelt when I get in my car.
“Dough” must be for his face: porous, fat, pale, and drooping. The snow melts off of his Reeboks, slushing up the carpeting. He reaches into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulls out a racquetball, which he squeezes at his hip. I taste the hot sauce at the back of my throat. I feel the burning in my ears.
“You owe people some money,” he says.
I nod.
“We’re going to take a walk tonight.” He bounces the ball, and I’m terrified he’ll wake Bobbi. She can’t be involved. That’s all I care about now. She’s a deep sleeper, thank goodness, working double shifts at MTA midtown. “You got a lot of stuff in your house,” Van Dough says.
“My wife…” I start to say. “I have these baseball cards…”
And then she’s here, emerging out of the bedroom, tying a blue velour robe at her waist. I want to shout at her to turn around. But I can’t. My chin is shaking too much.
“Aggie, who is that?”
“Our neighbor,” I say. “Go back to bed.”
But I’ll be damned if she’s ever taken an order from me in her life. She walks into the living room, hair frizzed out, one cheek pink from the pillow. Unlike Betto and me, she can move through the apartment without tripping.
“Is that—Darryl?” She’s looking right at Van Dough, perhaps still in a dream.
“I’m Vincent, lady. Stay back. I’m taking this heat man here for a walk.” He’s managed to get an arm around me, and he’s inching me toward the door, jabbing my elbow.
“You’re not Vincent,” Bobbi says, like it’s some sort of joke.
“Bobbi, I’ve got to speak with this man, okay? Lock the door after I go.”
“You’re Darryl,” Bobbi says, her voice rising with amusement. “At least when I knew you, you were Darryl. Your sister, Candice. She was my best friend. You haven’t changed one bit. Now you tell me what business you have with my husband. I’m sure you don’t need to be walking this late.”
Van Dough grips his racquetball. His moon face slackens another inch.
“Don’t go anywhere,” she says. She hauls herself up onto an earthy mustard chair and reaches for a shoebox with a collage of family photos pasted on its sides.
“Look,” she says. She’s forcing a stack of photographs at Van Dough’s face. She wobbles in the chair as she talks. “That’s us. The zoo. 1974. Don’t tell me you don’t remember.” She eases down to the carpeting.
Van Dough grabs the photographs. He has let go of my elbow. I can see the swampy mess in the background, I can see them on camel rides, I can see my wife as a little girl, I can see Van Dough before he got his name. My wife. For many years, she has guarded all of these things as if they were useful. Prior to this moment I hadn’t believed her.
“How’s Candice these days?” she says.
Van Dough is silent. He looks down at the photos; he’s hunched over like someone examining a precious rock at a museum. Then finally, “I don’t see much of her.”
“Well, you have this then,” she says. “You have all of these.” She hands him the stack.
I see Darryl out the door as if he and I were old chums too. I turn the two locks and attach the chain. Bobbi and I follow the thunder of his footsteps as he walks slowly down the stairs. I peek between the blinds of the dining room window as he walks pigeon-toed all the way to the corner. He keeps on going.
I want to hug Bobbi, but I’m frozen where I stand.
“You saved my ass,” I tell her. “You saved our lives.”
“You idiot,” she says. She stays right where she is.
“You and your Laurelton pals. Back in the day. I’m blessed.”
“Idiot,” she says. “Raffi told me the trouble you’re in. Good thing Darryl’s been around here almost as long as I have.” She’s shaking her head. When I start talking again, telling her about the Seahawks and the premonitions and the letter I’ll get from the latke family, she covers her face, and I say, “Okay, Bobbi, I’ll give you a second.” It’s good. I need a second to get myself together too.
I go to the kitchen to wash my hands. There’s a bad smell coming up from the drain. It’s slow to empty, so I snake it and pull out the sludge.