I Just Want My Pants Back (18 page)

“Well, remember how I told you I was dying?” Patty said, wiping her hands on her PJ bottoms.

“Yeah.”

“I am. But just in the way that all human beings are slowly aging and dying. In terms of the lung cancer, well, I might have overstated the case.” She smiled. “My doctor thinks I should be able to lick this, no problem. They caught it late, but luckily it’s not too aggressive. Sorry about the scare, but what can I say?” She twirled around rather nimbly and did a variation on jazz hands. “I do have a flair for the dramatic!”

I exhaled with relief. “Well, thank God you’re okay. I was definitely nervous last week, especially because we didn’t run into each other. But then, you know, the thought did cross my mind about knocking down the wall between our places so I could expand in. I was trying to be a glass-half-full kind of guy.” I smiled, to make sure she didn’t miss the joke.

The kettle whistled and Patty took it off the stove. “Now you sound like a real New Yorker, Jason.” She poured the hot water into our mugs and dropped in the tea bags. I doctored mine with honey; she took hers straight. “But listen, little lamb, I’m not totally okay. I have to go through all this damn chemo and stuff. And it’s going to make me really weak some days. So, if I need a hand getting groceries or something, do you think maybe you can help me out?”

“Of course,” I said, blowing on my tea to cool it. “I’ll give you my cell number and you can call me any time you need me. Seriously, any time.” I meant it.

“Thanks,” she said, touching my arm. “And I promise not to abuse it and call you if I’m just feeling lazy or hung over!” She took a sip of her tea and then wiped a drop of it off the counter with her thumb. “Getting old, Jason. It isn’t for sissies.”

We moved back into the living room and sat down in our respective seats. “Anyway, I’ll definitely be around if you need me. I got laid off this morning.” I tried to smile. It took a fair bit of effort.

“Ooh, that’s too bad,” Patty said.

“Yeah. It was kind of a surprise.”

“Well,” she said, shifting in her seat, “on the bright side, it’s not like you loved that job, right?”

“No, but the money was helpful.” I stood up. “I mean shit, I’m kinda screwed a little now, you know?”

“I know,” said Patty softly.

“Sorry, sorry.” I sat back down and blew my nose in the paper towel the teacup had been resting on. I was getting a little misty, for fuck’s sake. “It’ll all be okay. I’m just having a world-class-crappy twenty-four hours. Last night this girl I sort of liked slept over, and then at five in the morning she snuck out as if she suddenly realized I was Satan.” I folded the paper towel in my hand. “Well, okay, okay, it’s come to my attention that she may have been a virgin.” I shook my head. “No, she wasn’t, she wasn’t, but somehow I traumatized her. And then this morning, bam, I got canned. Jesus fucking Christ.”

Patty slid over next to me and gently rested her hand on my shoulder. “Maybe if you didn’t blaspheme so much,” she said, cracking a grin.

I blew my nose again and chuckled. “Sorry,” I said, looking up to the sky.

“You should have just stayed home today.” She raised her mug to her mouth, then put it back down in her lap without taking a sip. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them. “Oh, I just got a wave of exhaustion.”

She shook her head, like a dog trying to get its bearings. “I was saying, you should have stayed home. You have to learn to read the signs, Jason. Things tend to come in streaks, you ever notice that? It just takes one solidly good or bad thing to get one rolling, and it keeps on going until, well, until it’s done. That’s where the whole ‘find a penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck’ thing came from. Of course, there’s good streaks and bad streaks, and they start with a good or bad sign.” She patted my head. “And my dear, a virgin running from you is historically not a good sign.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And she was an Orthodox Jew, which probably makes it an even worse sign.”

“Oh, yeah, you’re fucked.” She waved her hands. “I’m joking, I’m joking. Your streak might already be over, enough bad stuff has happened. Maybe it was a twenty-four-hour streak. Like a little virus.”

I put the paper-towel tissue in my pocket. I suddenly felt like an idiot looking to Patty for compassion. “Yeah, I hope so. It’s just a job, who cares, right?” She had cancer, for chrissakes, and look at me, whining. I made Narcissus look selfless.

“Right. Positive thinking. You know what also might help?” Her lips curled into a grin. “Medical marijuana.”

“No shit! You have a prescription?”

“Nah, not really, but I do have some pot. Oh, wait, you had some of this the other night, actually. It’s good, right?” She walked over to a dark wooden end table and pulled a bag out of the drawer. “Just a little, and then we’ll both go get some sleep.”

She rolled a nice fat joint and we smoked a bit of it. Just half. I was a little afraid I would have a massive bout of The Fear; the joblessness thing was just starting to seep into my consciousness. We said good night and I shuffled back across the hall. I was really glad Patty was okay. Beyond that it had been a shit-eating day and I just wanted to brush my fucking teeth. I worked the bathroom, hit the lights, and crawled under the covers. Maybe I’d find a kick-ass job now. Maybe Jennifer would somehow get my number and call tomorrow. Lying there, I definitely felt buzzed. Maybe I could just stay plastered and ride out the whole bad streak. Maybe soon I’d find a penny on Perry Street.

15

A month and a half later I lay in bed, and I still had the fucking bad-luck virus. Turned out it wasn’t a twenty-four-hour bug, but more like an Epstein-Barr kind of thing. I willed myself to sit up. I had grown to hate mornings; when you had nothing to do all day there wasn’t any reason to hop up and get started. It wasn’t all “Good day, sunshine!” and shit.

I was living on dollar slices and free Happy Hour food. I understood why the poor were fat. I was one of them, and soon I too would have a gut. Not that it would matter, really, as once again my bedroom had become a ghost town. I had never heard from Jennifer, and I was in no position to track her down now. That double-dating idea of Tina’s was long gone. Hell, I couldn’t remember the last time I so much as talked to a girl. It was as if we were two like magnets, girls and I; as I got closer they were repelled. They could smell the stink of failure on me.

I hadn’t worked since that last day at JB’s. It was pretty hard to believe. I was all over Craigslist and the
Times
employment listings, but I was having trouble even knowing what to look for. I’d take any sort of job at this point, but I was still hoping there might be something at least semi-interesting. I had found one exciting possibility, an opening for an assistant at a record label, Erasable Records. Hell, it was perfect for me—I knew a lot about music, and about being an assistant. I had a bitchin’ phone manner, everyone said so. So I was pretty psyched when I scored an interview. I shaved, put on a skinny tie and a blazer, and tried to look very first-day-of-work, Ric Ocasek for them. But when I got to their loft with the poured-concrete floors and the framed gold albums, I found out that I had to take a typing test, which I subsequently failed. I typed with two fingers, I always had. I was slow but accurate, I tried to explain. No dice. Typing tests at a fucking record label? Not too rock-’n’-roll. I went home and sulked and illegally downloaded some music to spite them.

The first week out of work, honestly, was almost fun. I reveled in being flung from the workforce. I listened to a bunch of old albums and drank beer in the middle of the afternoon and occasionally hopped on IM to bug Tina.

But pretty soon I was sick of my couch and being inside my tiny apartment. I didn’t worry about the ceremony, I didn’t work on writing any record reviews. I just didn’t. Sitting there, atrophying, I was feeling like the dullest man in town. And one of the sweatiest. It had been ninety degrees and humid as hell and I didn’t own an AC. Anarchy, motherfucker.

I was also pretty damn close to broke. I’d been living paycheck-to-paycheck, and then I stopped getting paychecks. The day I found out I didn’t qualify for unemployment wasn’t a banner one, either. I was going to have to figure out something quick, though, because I wanted to attempt to pay the rent—and by “attempt,” I meant send in some kind of minimum payment.

That’s when I did it. I had no choice, really. I sent the SOS e-mail out to the Midwest to ask my folks for a check. Fucking shameful. I didn’t tell them that their son was unemployed. Instead, I just wrote that I needed a new bed, that mine was “like lying on a chain-link fence,” and I didn’t have enough cash to cover it. Two days later a FedEx envelope arrived with a check for seven hundred dollars and a note from my dad:

Hey kiddo,

Hopefully this is enough for a fancy New York City bed. Your mom and I miss you, hope everything is fine and dandy. What do you think about spending Labor Day with us in St. Louis? It will be horribly hot and sticky but I checked the airfares and they’re dirt-cheap. Probably because it will be horribly hot and sticky! Let us know and we’ll get the ticket, our treat.

Love you,
Dad

I was pretty emotional at the time; AT&T commercials were making me teary. So as I read my dad’s note and fingered the check, I was sniveling like a nine-year-old girl who just saw Bambi’s mom eat it. They were such fucking rocks, my parents.

But seven hundred dollars wasn’t even close to what I needed. I had sent a few hundred to the landlord the first month and a few hundred the next month, and now I was operating on fumes. I was finding it surprisingly rough without money. I mean, I thought I lived quite simply; I wasn’t any kind of shopaholic or gourmand. But the truth was, the city was almost impossible to move through without hemorrhaging cash. Gum. A bottle of water. Beer. A subway ride. Fuck. I was never more than ten paces from someone who wanted the few bits of green paper I had left. And I was doing a lot of walking. Manhattan was such a terribly boring place to be broke, too. It wasn’t like you could chill and enjoy nature for free. Movies were fucking $10. Most places wouldn’t even let you use a bathroom unless you bought something.

I was so desperate I had even begun looking for bartender jobs, but everything seemed to be filled up by NYU grad students who stayed in town during the summer break. Patty tried to get me in at the White Horse, but they had no need. She and I had been hanging out a lot lately. Like me, she had pretty much all day free. She was doing okay for someone with lung cancer, which she said was in remission. “Like my bank balance,” I’d joke. She did have some bad days when she was frighteningly weak, though. Days when she would call me and, in a small voice, ask if I could just pick up some toilet paper or orange juice, some little thing. Even then, she’d still tell me she was getting better every day in every way. My “How are you feeling?” inquiries had become a running joke, always met by the same answer.

“Like a rhinestone cowboy,” she’d sing, smiling.

I stopped by daily. Popping in to Patty’s had become part of my new little routine. Wake up around ten. Drink some deliciously free tap water for breakfast. Go online, see if the world was still intact. If yes, check the job listings. E-mail the one or two of them that seemed like decent possibilities. Go buy a $1.50 slice from Joe’s for
almuerzo
. Swing by Patty’s, bullshit bullshit bullshit, go for a walk together or play backgammon or listen to records or just hang out. Go back home before the day was over, call a temp agency. Masturbate on the couch to the cutest girl I’d seen that day. Nap. It wasn’t like I was sitting around feeling sorry for myself, watching TV all day. I couldn’t. I had put a hold on my cable service.

However, I had been smoking a lot of Patty’s “medical marijuana.” More than I should have. I told myself I was only allowed to get high at night, but on days with no new job leads, I had been slipping. It was something to do, and it was free. On the occasions when Patty didn’t want to play, I’d break out the iPod and go for long stoned walks in neighborhoods I didn’t know that well, like Chinatown and even Wall Street. It was amazing down there, I’d just find a place in the shade to sit or lean and I’d flip through songs, watching the well-dressed world scurry by, thousands and thousands of people. There were plenty of janitors and bike messengers and even tourists, but the vast majority was a whirlwind of gray suits and side parts and buttoned collars, and what stamina, I mean no one was wilting or ruffled, even in the heat. I started to tire of my music collection and walked into a CD store and spent money I didn’t have on a couple of random discs. I used to do shit like that all the time, go into a store, gamble on a few things that looked promising, go home hopeful that I had found a gem and would soon be e-mailing friends with the subject line, “just found your favorite new band.” I wondered why I had stopped doing that. I walked out of the store and into the heat. Maybe I liked the guy I used to be more than the one I was becoming.

But mostly Patty did want to hang out. One afternoon, stoned to the gills, she tried to get me to shave my head in solidarity with her. But I didn’t think it would help with any potential interviews, or ladies. Plus, she had lost very little, if any, hair. She was just fucking with me, it seemed to be a new hobby for her. I didn’t mind playing the sidekick one bit. Sometimes we’d walk around the neighborhood together; she’d need to go to the dry cleaners, drop off some mail, whatever. All the shopkeepers knew her. She introduced me to them as “Jason, my assistant.” It was about the only reference she ever made to my employment situation and I appreciated it.

The truth was, Patty was pretty much the only one around for me to hang out with. Stacey, Eric, and Tina were always busy. Stacey and Eric were focused on the upcoming wedding, and Tina was living in Love Country. She and Brett were officially a couple and they spent all of their time together in what I imagined was a never-ending hug on the couch. Of course, I did see them occasionally. But whenever I did, it was inevitably all about fixing me. Two nights ago I had gone with Tina for burgers at Great Jones.

“Okay, now seriously, Jason, just hear me out. Maybe you should go back to school.”

“I really don’t want to get into this again, Tina. Don’t make me throw my drink at you.”

“I would kill you in a heartbeat,” she said.

“With your breath,” I countered.

“C’mon. Let’s talk about journalism school for two secs.”

“Let’s not and say we did.” I took a bite of my burger. It had American cheese on it, which was such a better choice than cheddar, because cheap American cheese melted neatly over a burger, like a tightly pulled sheet on an army private’s cot. “Otherwise I am going to have to avoid you. Not that I see you much these days anyway,” I added under my breath.

“I’m not trying to be a bummer, I just was thinking j-school could be a cool option,” she persisted. “Look at Scott Langford.”

“That doesn’t even make any sense,” I said, unable to hide my annoyance any longer. “First off, I’m broke. Second off, I’d be applying for next year—one year from now, so it solves nothing.” I threw back some of my Bass.

“Well, how about just writing some of those reviews, then, and sending them to him?”

“I’m working on it.”

Tina looked me over. “You, my friend, are so not working on it.”

“I’m working on working on it. Fuck.” I finished off the Bass. “Maybe I don’t want to be a music writer.”

“How would you even know that, if you haven’t…” She saw the look on my face and stopped. She held up her hands. “Okay, okay, sorry.”

“No, don’t be.” I forced a smile. “You’re only trying to help the less fortunate.”

“Shut up,” she said, leaning in and stealing a couple of my fries. Well, not stealing, since she was going to pay for them. “What did you mean, by the way, you don’t see me much?”

“I meant I miss being normal and not always talking about my job bullshit,” I said, avoiding eye contact. “I’m glad you and Brett are hitting it off, and I know when people start dating they hang out by themselves a lot. But I still want to go out and have fun and debate whether the people around us are jerks or dorks.”

“I miss that too,” Tina said. “But friends talk about what’s going on in each other’s lives, and you being unemployed is bigger—just by a hair—than playing jerk-or-dork.” She took another fry and chewed on it. “I didn’t think I was soooo unavailable. I guess right now Brett’s so busy being young Marty Scorsese that when we finally do get to hang out, we want to just chill and be together. You know, less drinking and pills, more DVDs. It’s kinda nice. You’ll see, as soon as you decide to get a girlfriend.”

She excused herself to the bathroom. I sat there and chewed on a cold fry. “Decide to get a girlfriend.” Oh, I just had to decide, how easy. The old Tina might have punched the new Tina right in the ovary for saying shit like that.

And then there was Stacey and Eric. A week ago they had bought me another in our series of dinners, ostensibly to go over wedding stuff. The wedding was coming up shortly, and I had the distinct feeling that they were starting to have second thoughts about the whole thing. The whole thing of Jason as rabbi, that is. I had been avoiding telling them exactly what I was going to say, since I hadn’t even started writing it yet.

And obviously, I had no excuse. All I had was free time, but I just wasn’t feeling the muse. As if I needed a muse—I just needed to sit my ass down and write it. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to do a good job, or even just get this thing off my back and done already, but for some reason I just couldn’t get it up to get it finished. I had sat down and opened up my notebook a number of times—well, definitely twice—but before I could accomplish anything, I’d always find something to distract me. A stray M&M. A shiny piece of metal. Nothing ever got done.