Dead Cat Bounce

S
toney leaned against the end of the bar and watched the bartender fix his drink. Ice in a tall glass, seltzer water, squeeze the lime, goddammit, don't just throw it in there. The guy put it down in front of him without comment, picked up the five-dollar bill lying there, and went to make change. It had been eight months since Stoney had touched alcohol, and somewhat to his surprise, Seagram's had not gone out of business, nor had Budweiser, Miller, Bushmill's, or any of the rest. The bartender brought back his change, turned away without asking him if he was sure he didn't want a chaser, how about a Dewar's on the side, nothing. There were a half dozen other people in the place, and not one of them, as far as he could tell, cared what he was drinking.

Benny would care. Stoney could hear the guy's voice in his head. “Keep playing on the tracks, kid, don't be surprised when you get hit by the train.” Stoney figured that Benny would be right about that, Benny was right about most things that had to do with not drinking, and with living your life like you gave a shit. Stoney glanced at his watch. Another twenty minutes until it was time to meet his daughter. Stoney did not know why he was standing in this bar in the bowels of New York City's Grand Central Station. Wait upstairs, asshole, he told
himself. What is wrong with you? You really think you need something to fortify yourself? She's just a kid, for chrissake. He left the seltzer and the change on the bar and walked out.

Grand Central Station's main waiting room is a vast open space, it's the kind of vaulted stone hall that no one builds anymore, a cathedral to all that railroads had once been. Stoney was there because his daughter, Marisa, had left a voice mail on his cell phone. “Meet me under the clock in Grand Central,” she'd said, gave him the date and time and nothing else. Surprised the hell out of him, he didn't even know how she'd found his number. She must have gotten it off one of the old bills, back when they were still sending them to the house. Back before his wife, Donna, had thrown him out.

There was nothing for him to do but stand there, Marisa hadn't told him what train she'd be on. He tried to figure it out from the schedule but he gave up on that pretty quickly. He found that he did not know enough about his daughter to be able to do more than guess. How old is she? he asked himself. Do you even know? He came up with an answer to that, though, because he'd driven to the hospital to pick up Donna and the new baby in the Buick Grand National he'd bought in '86. He'd smacked up the car a year later, so Marisa had to be around sixteen. Seventeen. Something like that. Jesus.

She came striding across the floor of that enormous room, longish brown hair, brown eyes, tall but not too tall, thin, but not out of the ordinary, pretty, but not a knockout. Physically, she put him in mind of Donna, his wife, but he could see from the look in her eyes that she was her father's daughter. She's not gonna be easy to deal with, he thought.

He had spent most of the previous evening talking to Benny about this meeting. Stoney might have been a while without
a drink, but his head was still all fucked up. Benny supplied him with perspective, judgment, purpose. Benny told him which AA meetings to attend. “Go to Liberty Street tonight,” he would say. “Get there around eight and help them put the chairs out.” Stoney followed the instructions. Sometimes he'd see Benny there, sometimes he wouldn't. Stoney had quit trying to make sense of it. Just do what the little bastard tells you, he told himself. Working so far, isn't it?

“So let her come meet you,” Benny had told him. “Just try not to overreact. She might be coming to tell you she hates your guts and never wants to see you again, or she might want to tell you she misses you. Either way, you gotta take it, you owe her that.”

“What about this business of making amends?” Stoney asked him. “Don't I have to say something about that when I see her?”

“You ain't up to that part yet,” Benny told him. “No jumping ahead. Look, just go meet her, okay? Don't chase her away by running after her. And try not to act like an asshole. Call me after.”

She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that came several inches short of meeting at her waist. The part of the jeans that would have held belt loops was missing, torn off, leaving a ragged fringe. She had a diamond tennis bracelet on one thin wrist. Stoney could sense the men passing by regarding his daughter as a sexual being, and that primal father thing started up in his head. He couldn't help himself.

She stopped about six feet away and looked at him without expression. “Where's the rest of your pants?” he asked her, but he almost smiled when he said it, and that saved him.

She gave him a look. “That's the way they make them
now,” she told him. He could tell that she was trying to suck in her stomach the way females do, but she didn't really have one.

“You hungry? You feel like something to eat?”

She shook her head. “Show me where you live,” she said.

He wondered if Donna had put her up to this, if she wanted to know where he lived so she could serve papers on him or some shit, but he immediately felt bad for thinking that. Donna was not that underhanded, her mind did not work that way. And even if it did, so what? There was no way he could win, either way. “Come on,” he said, nodding his head at the doors to the street. “Let's take a cab.”

“All right.” She crossed the space between them and they headed for the exit. She hooked her arm around his elbow. He wondered if she did it out of habit, or did she feel something? She didn't say anything, but that was all right. He concentrated on the sensation of her arm on his. Live in the moment, that was one of the things Benny kept telling him. Take what life gives you.

She belted herself in when they got into the cab. Stoney gave the driver his address, leaned back in the seat as the guy took off. He noticed her staring at him.

“What?”

“You don't wear seat belts?”

“This country is becoming a nation of sheep,” he told her. “Government tells you you gotta fasten your seat belt, so you all do it.”

She shook her head, looked out the window.

“How is everybody,” he asked her.

“Pissed off,” she said. “Dennis, especially. He thinks
you're a real shit. He's only thirteen, though. He doesn't know anything.”

“How about your mom?”

She glanced at him, looked away. “She doesn't cry as much anymore, but she's still pretty mad. She had to start looking for a job last week, and that didn't help. She says you hid all the money.” She was looking at him, her brow furrowed. “Is that true?”

“Well, I didn't leave it in the desk drawer, for chrissake.” He shook his head. Donna had never concerned herself much with finances, not in all the years they had been married. “Why didn't she call me? I would have told her what to do.”

“Maybe she was waiting for you to call her.” He could hear the resentment in Marisa's voice.

“She didn't want me to. She made that pretty clear.”

“Is that what she told you?”

“Oh yeah.” He started to elaborate, thought better of it. “You better believe it.”

“Women change their minds sometimes, haven't you heard that?”

“That right?” He considered it. “Okay,” he said. “I'll try calling her.” He could hear the doubt in his own voice.

Marisa exhaled, as though she'd been holding in more air than she should have. “Fine. Don't wait around too long, though. Mr. Prior told her she should go see a lawyer.”

“Who's he?”

She pursed her lips in distaste. “He's a jerk.” She stared out the window for about a block, then turned back to him, shaking her head. “He's just this guy. I think he's from her support group.”

“Oh.” She sleeping with him yet? He was aching to ask the
question, but he knew it would be a terrible mistake. “What's his first name?”

“Look, just pretend I didn't tell you, okay?” The resentment was back in her voice. “Don't even say anything. I shouldn't have told you about him. Mom says you'll kill him.”

He thought about that. Let it go, he told himself. At least for now. But all his regrets came back to him in a flood, all the things he needed to make up for, all the rotten, joyless years. He had been hoping that things would still work out somehow, that Donna would still take him back, or at least that she'd give him another shot. He didn't understand how it could be that she still owned him so completely.

Marisa had been watching him intently. “All right,” he told her, trying to keep the dismay out of his voice. “I never heard of the guy. Fair enough?”

She was still watching him, gauging his reactions. “You still care about her, don't you.”

He nodded. “Always did.”

She sat back and looked out the window. “Mr. Prior says you're a common criminal.”

He laughed at that, a short, staccato burst of sound. “You tell Mr. Prior,” he said, “there ain't nothing common about me.”

“I already did,” she said. “Where the hell are we going?”

“East Village,” he told her.

“Oh,” she said. “Charles. His name is Charles David Prior.” She wrinkled her face in distaste. “He uses all three names. But don't forget, you promised.”

“I won't forget.”

The building vestibule, where the mailboxes were, smelled like vomit, but that receded once you got inside and got the door
closed behind you. The place was on Twelfth Street, between Avenues B and C. It had once been a tenement, but the residents had gotten together, bought the place, and fixed it up. The rest of the block, though, still looked like shit. They climbed the stairs to the fourth floor in silence. Stoney unlocked the door to his apartment, held it open for Marisa to precede him inside.

“Good grief,” she said, looking around the living room. There was an antique Bokhara on the floor, Oriental prints on the walls, shoji screens blocking off the small kitchen.

“What?” he said. “You thought I was sleeping in the backseat of an abandoned car?”

“There's an idea,” she said. “Actually, I thought you'd be living with Fat Tommy.”

“Tried that for a few weeks. Me and Tommy, we been partners forever, but we couldn't coexist in the same space. We got different schedules, you know what I mean? Tommy has to get his nine, ten hours every night, and I hardly sleep at all. I like it quiet, he has to have the goddamn radio or the television on all the time. Besides, I think I was cramping his style.”

She smiled, thinking of Tommy. She's just like all the rest of them, Stoney thought. It was irritating, how the females always seemed to like Fat Tommy, aka Tommy Bagadonuts, aka Thomas Rosselli. She looked up at her father and her smile went away. “So how'd you find this place?”

“Belongs to a friend of Tommy's. She doesn't use it much anymore, so she's letting me stay here for a while.”

“She's got good taste,” Marisa said, and she went over to sit by a window. “You still going to AA?” She didn't look at him.

“Yeah. You want something to drink? Soda, coffee, tea?”

“You have seltzer?”

“I got everything. Except, you knowâ¦”

“I didn't think you'd offer me a beer.”

“No. Maybe not.”

“How many meetings you go to?”

He went around behind the screens and into the kitchen to get her water. He filled a tall glass with ice cubes, took the glass and the bottle of seltzer back out into the main room. She took them from him. “How many meetings?”

“One a day,” he said. “What do you know about it?”

“I had a boyfriend in NA,” she said.

“Had?”

“Last I heard, he was back in a long-term rehab.” She scowled at him. “You got a sponsor?”

“Yeah. Guy name of Benny.”

“You gonna make it? The counselor at school says the odds are something like thirty to one against.”

“Yeah, I heard that. Benny says the odds are bullshit. He says if I do what he tells me, I'll be okay.”

“I hope he's right,” she said, and then turned away. “You have any idea what it was like, living with you?”

“I got the feeling you're gonna tell me.”

“You remember those people down the street, used to have that Doberman?” Her voice was getting louder and angrier. “I couldn't understand why anyone would keep a dog like that. He was so mean, he hated everyone.”

He went and sat on the couch across the room from her. “Maybe he didn't hate everybody. Maybe he was afraid.” He watched her thinking about it. “Look, I'm sorry, but I can't go back and change the past. It is what it is.”

She sighed. “What happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“With you and Mom? What happened? What did you do?”

He looked her in the eye. “What did I do. I'm an addict,” he said. “Do you know what that means?”

“I know what it looks like,” she said, staring back. “Maybe I don't really know what it means.”

“It means I did what I had to do to get what I needed. You were standing in the way, I bulldozed you. I'm not making any excuses for it. But when I finally stopped using and drinking, I thought we'd get better. You, me, her, Dennisâ¦All of us. Didn't work out that way. I didn't expect any medals, okay, but I didn't know things were going to fall apart. I don't exactly know what to do next.”

“How about apologizing? You gonna tell Mom you're sorry?”

“Talk is cheap,” he said. “Your boyfriend, the one back in long-term rehab. How many times he apologize to you? How many times he promise you he'd never touch it again?”

She snorted, a humorless noise freighted with derision and resignation.

“So you really want to hear him say it again?”

“No,” she said. “But you could start by just calling her up. You could help her out with the money.”

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