God Hates Us All (17 page)

Rounding out the dinner is a late arrival, one Henry Head, accompanied by a Mrs. Head. The private investigator takes me aside shortly after the second glass of wine.

“I’ve been trying to get in touch with you,” says Head. “But that phone number you gave me doesn’t work no more.” The Motorola. “No skin off my knee,” he continues. “I just had some news for you, is all. I was at this garage sale with Lorna.” He gestures toward Mrs. Head. “I found this old phone book. They were trying to sell an old phone book, can you believe it? What good is an old phone book?”

“You tell me.”

“A lot of good, as it turns out. I remembered that name
you gave me, Peter Robichaux. You ever read any James Lee Burke? He’s got a detective named Dave Robicheaux. From New Orleeeens.”

I shake my head no. Daphne, hearing her father’s name spoken aloud, joins us to hear the rest.

“Anyway, would you believe the bastard, pardon my French, was in the book? Emphasis on ‘was,’ because like I said, old phone book. But I took a drive out there anyway, just to see.”

“You found him?”

“No. Moved out years ago. But the current resident said he still got mail from Kings Park. You know, the state cuckoo facility? My guess is he was a resident there for a while.” I sneak a glance at Daphne, looking for some reaction to the idea that she and her father share the same institutional alma mater, but her face reveals nothing.

“Anyway,” Head continues, “I did some checking. He did some time at Bellevue, schizophrenia and all that, in the early eighties. Until Reagan came in and kicked ’em all out onto the curb. I’m afraid that’s where the path gets cold.”

“You check for a rap sheet?” asks Marvin, who has snuck up on the conversation unnoticed.

“Check,” replies the detective. “But no dice.”

“Huh,” Marvin says.

Daphne doesn’t seem interested in pursuing it further, but as we drive home from the seder, I figure it’s worth double-checking.

“We could hire a different detective,” I suggest. “Maybe one with half a brain.”

“Maybe I’m not supposed to find him,” she says, without apparent emotion. “Things happen for a reason, you know?”

So we return to our lives. I work plenty of shifts at the restaurant; she finds a job at a record store. While I would never have pegged either of us for homebodies, we’re happy in our new roles. We shop for groceries, share the yardwork and bills, hold hands when we go to the movies. When Uncle Marvin calls, a week later, to tell me that he’s found him, I have to ask who.

“Robichaux,” says Marvin. “Who the fuck else would I be talking about?”

EASTER SUNDAY—THE DAY WE’VE chosen for our voyage—could be a commercial for springtime: There’s blue sky and sunshine to spare. We pile into my mom’s car, compromising on the Rolling Stones for a sound track as we rumble down the 495.

In the weeks that followed my mother’s death, I tended to associate any thoughts of the city with a gnawing, reptilian sense of dread. But today, my lady riding shotgun and a mystery almost solved, I feel energized. Some of this, admittedly, might have to do with the clouds of fragrant smoke emanating from Uncle Marvin in the backseat. Both Daphne and I decline his offers to share, me for safety reasons, her because, she says brightly, “I want to be sober for this.”

Following the conversation at Passover, Uncle Marvin, claming that “Henry Head couldn’t find a Jew in the Bronx,”
had taken it upon himself to make a few inquiries. He struck paydirt when he ran Peter Robichaux’s name past an old friend in the city’s Fifth Precinct, an area extending from Chinatown and Little Italy to the East River. After some more digging, Marvin’s friend turned up the arrest, one year earlier, of a local vagrant named “Peter Robishow.” The charge was misdemeanor assault, but the crime itself—spitting on a police officer—wasn’t quite heinous enough to impress the judge, who ordered him released without a trial.

“Robishow” had no address. Marvin’s buddy hooked us up with Reuben Brown, a homeless rights advocate in the area. Uncle Marvin cannot say “homeless rights advocate” without visible scorn. “They don’t have jobs or responsibilities and we feed ’em all the cheese they can eat,” Marvin says. “What the hell more rights do they want?” We decide that it’s best for me to call Reuben.

I tell Reuben that Robichaux—whom he calls “Robes”—might be in line for an inheritance. Reuben doesn’t look convinced by my story, but agrees to meet us in a spot underneath the Brooklyn Bridge on the condition that we help him distribute a few dozen loaves of day-old bread to the people who live there.

“I just want to remind you,” says Reuben, a light-skinned black man with red hair, “that most of these folks ain’t right in the head. Don’t get your hopes too high, is all I’m saying.”

“Understood!” says Daphne. Reuben nods slowly, taken aback by her enthusiasm to blast full throttle into the make-shift village in front of us, a collection of cardboard boxes,
shopping carts, and rancid blankets. Despite the loaves of bread, most of their occupants hide when they see us coming. The ones brave enough to look us in the eye do so with suspicion.

“He lives in a box?” Daphne asks Reuben, saying “box” as if it could have been “brownstone” or “Dutch Colonial.”

“Robes? No, Robes lives
down under
.”

“Great,” Marvin says. “A goddamn Mole Man.”

“What’s a Mole Man?” I ask.

“It’s an urban myth,” says Reuben. “A lot of these men and women, they’ve got no choice but underground. An old subway tunnel is a hell of a lot warmer than a refrigerator box. Somehow the story got started that they got their own society, with rules and laws and such. Their own civilization, if you will. But I’ll tell you from experience, it ain’t so. Ain’t nothing civilized about living in a subway tunnel.”

Still, it’s hard not to imagine, descending into the darkness of a tunnel, that we’re entering a lost kingdom. We’re definitely being watched—more than once I catch a glimpse of white eyes against the gloomy pitch. I find Daphne’s hand, figuring she could use the reassurance, but she seems calm and happy. We could be going on a picnic. I chalk it up to effective medication.

“Is it much farther?” asks Daphne.

“Just around the bend,” Reuben replies. He’s carrying a giant aluminum flashlight, waving it at the rats that cross our path. A sudden rumbling sound shakes the walls and straightens
the hairs on the back of my neck. It turns out to be a passing subway train.

“Hey, Robes, you in there?” says Reuben, aiming the flashlight’s beam through a separation in the wall. “It’s me, Reuben.” There’s a reply, a cross between a grunt and a wail, that encourages Reuben to continue. “I got some friends with me. Friends of
yours
, they say.”

My eyes accustom to the room’s low light, and I can make out what looks like a human figure crumpled against the wall. Daphne approaches him slowly, one hand raised as if to touch him. “Dad,” she says. “It’s me. Daphne.”

“Dad?!” Reuben exclaims. “You didn’t tell me nothing about that.”

“Shush,” says Marvin, who’s sparking up a joint. Reuben refuses his offer to share.

I rest a hand on Daphne’s shoulder. She brushes it away, moving toward the figure on the floor. “Dad,” she repeats. The figure twitches, struggling to face her. It’s impossible to read the expression on his face, if there is one: Reuben is careful not to shine his light directly into the man’s eyes.

“Dad,” she says. “Is that you?”

The figure whispers something unintelligible. Daphne continues to edge closer. I can sense Reuben stirring uneasily behind me.

Daphne’s bringing her hand to the figure’s face. “Be careful, Daph,” I warn, without any comprehension whatsoever of what the risks might be. Daphne removes something shiny
from her pocket and squeezes it, creating a vaguely familiar noise, like a beer can being crushed. When Reuben swings the flashlight toward them, I see that Daphne’s holding the bottle of lighter fluid I use to maintain my Zippo.

“What the fuck?!” says Reuben. Now Daphne’s holding a book of matches, flinging one at the crumpled mess on the floor. The pile erupts in flames.

I grab at her from behind. Her arms flail wildly. Uncle Marvin takes a more direct approach, stamping out the fire. Daphne rewards him for his heroism with a sharp kick to the testicles, or what might have been testicles if Uncle Marvin still had them. Instead there’s a pop as she connects with Marvin’s colostomy bag, which explodes like a piñata.

The figure on the floor, still smoldering, rises and runs away. The flames spread quickly through the room. “We gotta get out of here,” says Marvin, struggling to his feet. He hobbles back the way we’d entered. Reuben and I drag Daphne after him.

It’s too dark to see the smoke pouring through the tunnels, but we’re choking on it. “Keep moving,” yells Marvin. I follow Reuben’s lead, helping to drag Daphne toward a pinpoint of light in the distance. The light gets brighter as we reach the entrance.

The scene outside is mayhem. Dozens of people, faces blackened by soot, follow the smoke out of the subway tunnel into the makeshift village. Reuben is struggling with Daphne, assaulting her with a flurry of profanities that continues long
after I’ve shoved a few twenties into his hand. Daphne curls into a fetal ball on the ground. Marvin stands nearby tending to his ruined groin.

I scan the chaos for some sign of Robes. But all I can see is an army of charred zombies, coated in soot, grime, piss, and blood, blinking their eyes against the bright sun.

DAPHNE REMAINS NEARLY COMATOSE for the entire drive home. After we drop Marvin off, I drag her into the shower, do my best to scrub her clean, and tuck her into bed.

“What about the farewell drugs?” are her only words to me, a line from
Sid and Nancy
. Then she falls asleep, so deeply she snores.

I spend most of the night sitting in a chair next to the bed, watching her. I doze off at some point during the early hours of the morning. When I wake, the bed is empty and the Buick is gone from the driveway. There’s a note pinned to the refrigerator: “Sorry.”

The call from Kings Park arrives later that afternoon.
Miss Robichaux has decided to check herself back in
, says a bored administrator whose greatest concern is that I pick the Buick up from the parking lot.

The next morning, another spectacularly sunny day, my father drops me off at the institution. Daphne shuffles out into the visiting area, looking very much like she did the first time I saw her there. She speaks slowly. They’ve clearly upped her dosage.

“So,” she asks. “How do you like me now?”

“Same as it ever was,” I say. “You look like the woman I love.”

She smiles weakly. “You know why love stories have happy endings?” I shake my head. “Because they end too early,” she continues. “They always end right at the kiss. You never have to see all the bullshit that comes later. You know,
life
.”

“Lady, this love story is just beginning. Rest up, because when you’re feeling better …” I pause, because I don’t know exactly what to say next.

“What?” she asks. “We go back to the suburbs? We get married? That’s us, right? Two and a half kids and a white picket fence.”

“Fuck all that. We can move back into the Chelsea. I’ll even pick you up in a big yellow taxi.” It’s a reference to the end of
Sid and Nancy
that I hope will cheer her up.

“You’re not Sid,” she says, shuffling back to her room.

Daphne’s words sting at first, mostly because she’s right. All of the bourgeois bullshit that we used to make fun of—stupid jobs and suburban values—has somehow become my life. I’m beginning to understand her urge to set fire to the world.

But I’m not Sid Vicious. Despite the world being a fuckedup
place, well past fixing, I don’t have any desire to wreck the joint.

Maybe it’s just the sunshine that socks me in the face when I walk out the door, but I’m just not ready to go home and get ready for work. I could start fresh. Find a job in a better restaurant. Quit food service altogether.

I don’t even have to stay in New York. K. said that traveling was lonely, but I’ve never even been to California, where the sun’s supposed to shine like this every day of the year.

I pop a cassette into the Buick’s stereo. It’s the Ramones. I turn the volume up high and roll down the windows. The highway air tastes of fumes, but it still feels goddamn good to breathe.

This book never would have existed without my follicularly challenged agent Charlie Runkle, the best in the business. Thanks also to his foxy wife Marcy, for everything she does to keep him that way. I also owe a huge debt of gratitude to my editor, Cara Bedick, whose quiet persistence saved you, dear reader, from many a cliché (although maybe not this one).

To Tom K., for believing in me before anybody else did. Thanks also, in no particular order, to Alex Cox, Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen (and Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb), the very helpful staff at Kings Park, Johnny’s Deli and their life-sustaining egg sandwiches, Randy Runkle, the Ramones, and Judy Blume, who taught me everything I think I know about women.

Finally, I am grateful to my family: my father, for observing early (and often) that I wasn’t cut out for doing honest work; my sisters, whose laughter at the dinner table still keeps me going; and my mother, to whom I owe, literally and metaphorically, absolutely everything.