Wind, Whiskey, and a Boy
David and the Lion’s Den, chapter 24
What took me so long?
People have asked me that question many times over the years. Why didn’t I go to my lawyer or the cops right away and clear my name? Good question. Did part of me still resist the notion of Howie as a murderer? Sure. The evidence was incontrovertible, though.
I felt sick about it. Maybe I hoped if I squeezed my eyes tight enough, I could stop seeing.
I couldn’t stand the way Hilda looked at me — so patient and compassionate. Her kindness mocked me. I knew what it was saying. I was younger than you when I fled across a hostile continent, bruised, bleeding, starving, and suffering losses you can only begin to imagine.
Her voice asked me soft questions. Would I like a cup of tea? Was I feeling well? Her eyes stared hard, urging me to pick my lazy ass off up the sofa and act.
I called Jill. Finally.
“I’m going to Kevin’s office in the morning.”
I heard her breathing pick up. Then silence for a few seconds. Finally, “You want me to come along? I will.”
“Thanks. Yeah. Maybe. I dunno.”
“Will he be there? You make an appointment?”
“Sort of. Arnold’s gonna be in early to talk to me. Kevin has court first thing, but he’ll be back later.”
“What time you wanna leave, hon?”
“Look,” I hemmed, sweat slicking the handset against my palm. “Maybe it’s not such a good idea. For you to come.”
“David, you sound awful. I don’t know if you should be alone.”
I thought about how I’d like to be drunk again. “I’ve been better.”
“Hey, my shift starts in an hour. I got the bar tonight. Come over and keep me company?”
I’d like to say I went to Cucina that night to try one last time to figure the murders out in a way that didn’t implicate Howie. Honestly? I knew Jill would feed me free Dewars.
I needed the company too.
I hadn’t stepped foot inside the restaurant since the night I got arrested. I stood outside on the windswept, rain-splattered stretch of Bleecker street and smiled despite myself as I caught sight of Jill through the plate glass. She seemed to glow in warm, yellow light as she laughed and shook a cocktail mixer.
I pulled my hood around my head and watched her for a while. While she sliced lemons, I thought about how I wouldn’t be standing there without her. She’d made Cucina my first refuge in New York, introduced me to my first real friends, introduced me to Howie.
Anger goaded me. It lashed at the exposed skin of my face in a thousand tiny needles, just like the icy rain whipping in from over the Hudson. How dare Howie take this from me? How dare he force me to stand out here in the sleet and rain, peering into what ought to be my home?
I didn’t want to go in if Alonzo was there. I’d forgotten to ask Jill if he was working. I knew he wouldn’t want me inside. He’d explained when he fired me. “It’s not personal, man. Not even my idea. Esteban said you gotta go. Bad for business. I’m sorry.”
Bad for business. No shit, huh? I laughed darkly to myself as I huddled inside my coat, the wind slicing right through the wool. I watched Jill empty the shaker into a glass to serve one of her two customers. Wednesday night. The bar was all but empty and would probably stay that way.
The longer I stood and watched, the more my anger took me. Fuck Howie! Who the fuck did he think he was, and how the hell …
A hard blow to my face and body snapped off my thoughts and sent me reeling, blinded by a sudden glare of headlights right in my eye.
I gasped from the sudden assault, drawing back my fists to defend myself. As my vision returned, I realized what had happened. A car had barreled through the rain-soaked gutter, fire-hosing my face and body.
I staggered back, gasping. “Fuck!” I screamed into the night, letting my pain and outrage find release as I all but howled at the moon. Then, with no thought or conscious decision, I strode to the heavy oak door, banged it open, and barged my way toward the bar, shaking water from my hair like a dog.
The young man pushed open Cucina’s heavy front door and strode in off the sleet-lashed street as if he owned the place. Whistling, he nodded a quick hello to the new bartender, threw his overcoat onto a hook behind the hostess station, stuck his hands casually into the pockets of his fashionable twill slacks, then hit the stairs.
He wasn’t working, he was looking for his Uncle Esteban.
He’d already tried the apartment upstairs. Empty. He checked the manager’s office, the kitchen, and the dank cave of a storeroom. Nothing.
Not important. He needed to eat, anyway, so he bounced back upstairs and slid into a bar stool. “Hey, man,” he said to the stocky, bearded guy pouring drinks. He couldn’t remember his name.
“Be right with you!” the new hire answered as he shook a cocktail mixer and filled three martini glasses with something pink and frothy. He cracked some joke the young man couldn’t quite hear, but which set the bar’s three matronly customers to cackling.
“Seen Esteban tonight?” the young man asked when the bartender looked his way.
“Nah, but he was here this afternoon.” The guy walked over, drying his hands on a white towel tucked into his apron. “Maybe two, three hours ago? He’d said he’d be back.”
“Cool. Pour me a scotch while I wait? I should probably eat too.”
“Claudia’s in the back. She can run your order down in a second.”
“Thanks,” the young man murmured as he lifted the heavy tumbler the bartender slid in front of him. He downed half the amber fluid in one swallow, eyed the remaining finger while he enjoyed the slow burn down his throat, then tossed the rest of it back with a neat flick of the wrist.
“Awesome. Just the thing for a cold night.” He pushed the glass back across the bar. “Hit me again? Cut it with soda, though, huh? All the way to the top.”
“You got it, boss.”
“Thanks, uh … Sorry. I guess I forgot your name already. My bad.”
“Howard,” the guy grinned in the middle of a generous pour. “Or Howie, actually. All my friends call me Howie.”
“Cool. Thanks, Howie.”
“The pleasure is definitely all mine,” the guy said in a voice turned suddenly husky. “You can sit at my bar anytime, handsome.”
Jesús Cristo! cursed the young man to himself. Not another maricon. Just what Cucina needs!
But the guy was laughing. “Look at you blush! Ignore me, Blanche. Everybody else does. You’re way too pretty for me, anyway. And not half hairy enough.” He shot soda water into the glass and slid it over. “I bet you beat the girls off with a stick, huh? Big strong boy like you!”
The young man glared at Howie and wished again that Esteban would base his business operations anywhere but the middle of the Village. The place was clogged with queers. It had been a long time since Carl and Jackson and all that nonsense, but his skin still crawled at some of the memories. Sometimes he jolted awake at night, sweating from dreams he couldn’t quite remember.
Just being around Howie was enough to bring certain nightmares rushing back.
Jackson haunted him. He remembered being out with Samantha one night, making out with her when something — some smell, some gesture, he didn’t know what — set off a color movie in his head. He was back on that beach on Fire Island, groaning rhythmically in pain and fear.
And that was that. He’d been no good for the rest of the night. She tried, but nothing she did got a response.
“It’s OK, honey,” she crooned. “You’re just working too hard. We can cuddle. Don’t worry about it.”
When it happened again, twice in a month, he broke up with her.
What was it Jackson had told him? He said he’d been so turned on because the boy was “so into it,” or something like that. That made him furious! But that first night that he couldn’t get it up for Samantha, he cringed… because of what really happened on that beach.
Sure he’d been in pain. Sure Jackson disgusted him. Sure, he wanted to run away. But he hadn’t, had he? He laid there and rocked as the man grunted into his ear. He felt himself hammered into the sand. He felt himself stiffen, swell, and pulse, sickened by the fierce physical pleasure he experienced and by the sticky fluids that clung to his belly as Jackson pulled out and rolled off him.
He picked up his drink and finished it in an angry gulp. Samantha deserved better than him, he knew. Jackson had been on to something. Something was rotten inside. Something was wrong with him.
Even his uncle knew.
Hadn’t Esteban taunted him about how long it took him to get away from Carl? Hadn’t he told the boy he’d been shocked that he’d stayed for almost two years?
Fuck it. He batted his empty glass away and watched it skid toward the maricon bartender. “One more!” he ordered. “And forget the soda.”
He sat and drank for an hour, fast and efficient, finally managing to go numb. Or so he thought.
He even joked around a little with Howie, forgetting it was the new bartender who’d sent his thoughts spiraling to places he needed to forget. If he’d been more reflective, he might have realized that Howie hadn’t done much of anything at all. The young man was struggling with his memories more and more every day. He was drinking more to try to forget.
By the time the bells above the front door jangled and an icy wind played through his hair, he felt totally under control. He sipped his scotch and eyed Esteban stomping in out of a freezing rain, shaking the wet from his black mane, and folding up a dark umbrella.
“Damn this weather,” the man announced to the room at large. “Damn the lousy parking too,” he muttered toward the bar. “We had to walk all the way down from 13th Street.” He started to remove his charcoal overcoat as he focused on Howie. “Get us some coffee? And brew up a new pot if it isn’t fresh. I’m freezing!”
“Sure thing, boss,” Howie smiled. “You want a pick-me-up with it? Shot a somethin’ warmer?”
“Great idea! I knew I hired you for a reason. Shot of Jameson’s, please. What about you, boy? Whiskey in your coffee? It’ll put hair on your chest.”
“I’m all set, Uncle. Thanks, I’ve been …,” the young man started, saluting with his tumbler of scotch.
Before he could even finish, another voice piped up, young and reedy. “Si, por favor!”
The young man squinted at a shadow behind Esteban, a shadow that quickly put on form and grew distinct as it — as he — stepped out from behind the man to stand shivering and dripping at his side.
For a moment, the young man sat and held his drink, speechless, emotions dammed up, staring at the boy at his uncle’s elbow — a gawking teenager not much older than he had been the first time Esteban had ushered him into Cucina.
“Uncle? What? Who?”
“What are you doing here?” demanded Esteban. “You aren’t scheduled tonight.”
“I needed to ask you something… the docks tomorrow. I couldn’t find you.”
Esteban stiffened and strode down the bar to take a stool next to his nephew. “What about the docks,” he quizzed in soft, intense Spanish. “What’s gone wrong?”
“Nothing … I mean, nothing much. I need your advice. Sanchez isn’t answering his phone and nobody knows where he is. That leaves me a man light. And I’m worried. He wouldn’t just disappear. What if he …”
The young man hated how he knew he must sound, like he didn’t have it together. He’d been whistling and confident when he arrived, just wanting a quick verbal OK on a personnel change for tomorrow’s gig. Now he was a mess, mumbling and sweating.
He was drunk, plus he kept fighting to keep his attention from jerking to the end of the bar where Howie was chattering away with that boy. Why did he feel so odd, so practically panicked to see the kid standing there? He told himself to mind his own business.
He heard his uncle snap at him and realized he hadn’t been listening.
“Fine,” Esteban snarled. “I’ll run upstairs and make some calls for you. Not like I have anything else to do! And try drinking some coffee — without the whiskey!”
The young man stared blankly as the man charged out of the bar, throwing on his coat as he opened the door into rain, sleet, and swirling wind. He thought about going upstairs to apologize.
Then a boy’s voice sounded in his ear. “He’s your uncle too?”