Step-Cousins

I'd known about Rusty's girlfriend and the landlord for a couple of weeks.

Kelderman told me while laughing his har-har pirate laugh. He wasn't laughing at Rusty, I'm sure, but at people in general, cheating one another: the surprise double-cross, the pretended innocence, the hypocritical revenge that may follow. All this gave the hopeless old drunk sudden, wheezy fits of laughter.

Kelderman was pretending to be crazy , but eventually he'd be crazy for sure. He wore a brace and used forearm crutches to walk and to smash things in his tiny apartment. I never asked how he was hurt but I knew he was a war vet. He'd been a lawyer and disappeared from his wife and kids long ago, according to one of his buddies. At the end of each month we had to support him until his government check arrived. Then he'd shower us with cash.

When Rusty found out that November day, I tried to listen to him, but the pale gloom of my apartment gave me this familiar feeling that we'd all made our fateful mistakes long ago. The present, to me, was misshapen and like a bad dream.

Drugs, endlessly baffling miscommunications with people, broken relationships and resentments...all of it made me feel marooned and there were times I thought I could understand how the stroked out and brain-injured adapted themselves to their crumbling interior.

But Rusty had always been more or less responsible, compared to me and most of the rest of my friends. His politics weren't ostentatiously insane, like a get-up. He volunteered for the Democratic Party, and went to a mainstream church. He rejected Bohemianism, and easily remained oblivious to it.
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He said it was like wax melting inside. Internal bleeding in that area where you imagine your soul exists, just beneath the rib cage. There are nerve endings inside you, you forget exist.
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"I went back after work just now to see if her car was still there. On the way, I realized that a part of me wanted it to still be there, parked in his drive. I don't know why. I know the word for it. Don't say it. "

Later he tried again: "It's like a barrel of thick paint inside me being stirred with an oar."

After sharing, he seemed all the more stunned for awhile, staring at the floor with his mouth open. I imagined that since his noon-time discovery he'd been shrinking inside, but now after telling someone, this was his time to slowly come to a stop and reverse himself.

I thought that was what was happening, anyway, as we sat in my one bedroom apartment, this cold, rotting fall day.

There had been one dusting of snow the week before and now the sun wouldn't come out.

I could have said, "He has the drugs. He has the money. It's not about needs, it's about wanting."

Instead I popped open a can of warm beer and set it foaming on the coffee table in front of him. He didn't touch it. I went to the kitchen cabinet and brought out a half pint of Congress Vodka, more to be humorous than hospitable. I set it down too.

Did you know about this, he asked, chewing on his thumbnail. No, I said. It makes me sick.

"I wouldn't be angry with her really, except when I see her again she'll know that I know. And I think she'll flip out and go on the attack. That will be the worst part. Her yelling at me. That I'm a worm or something."

"Screw her! Has she said that to you before, I suppose?"

"No."

"Someone has, then. Or you wouldn't imagine it."

He sat forward and rested his elbows on his knees, giving me an grim, amused smile now.

"Room temperature beer. I like warm beer. I'm used to it here. I'll drink this while you bring me another."

"No, no! I want you to have it, old chum. I've got plenty more. And I want you to stay here awhile. Ten, fifteen minutes, hell."

"I'm homeless. I'll be camping here for a week or two. It's a lucky break for you. I'll get groceries, beer, smokes."

I wouldn't mind some bacon and eggs in the morning. Any company was good after losing my last bookstore job. I depended on people depending on me for my car or for shelter. I had three or four friends who seemed to get in trouble in a rotation. I lived alone but hardly knew it.

Now after drinking some beer he was enlivened but serious again. "I'm enslaved. She's all I care about."

I argued. "It can hurt for years if you find the right girl, but you were weren't enslaved. You were... enshrewed." I knew it was all right to start insulting her now.

"I need to get my stuff out of there while she's at work tonight. Any confrontation, she'll turn on me. She'll claw my face."
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After the 5:30 news with Frank Reynolds, we put on our jackets and stepped out into the cold. Mine was the only apartment in this fancy building with its own entrance. There was a large, bright and beautiful grocery store across the street, and I loved it at this time of the evening with so many commuters shopping.

I locked the door behind us. The season's first thin layer of snow crunched under our feet on the way to the apartment garage. It was 19 degrees. Under the blue haloed street lights the snow crystals were like an eclipse.

Rusty walked ahead of me with the car keys. He'd wrapped a green hand-knit scarf around his neck and it looked eight feet long. He wore his usual Andy Capp cap.

At night the skies would clear. With the street lights and the heavy traffic and their car lights on Ingersol, all the vapors and smoke caught the light and then floated into into the invisible night.
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He talked still.

At all these temp jobs, his aim was to be hired full-time. Everyday after work he'd bring my car back and drink with me and tell me his stories of the day.

Everything was a clue to Rusty, and for clues he never had anything more than crumbs. Nothing ever happened, ever. And he'd still have big news. Clues for great expectations or clues for frightening set-backs.

The secretaries shushed when he came into the break-room (that meant they were talking about him, he said, sometimes optimistically, more often he found it suspicious). Or his boss didn't say hello, which meant some job Rusty was promised wasn't going to come through after all.

Except Sherri. She happened along. I don't think she was a very affectionate girl-friend. Someone said that, actually, and their idle observation stuck with me: why, yes. A chief attribute on the plus side would be that your girl be affectionate.

She was an L.P.N. too. I'd been hopeful for awhile when I first learned that.
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Rusty was a tiresome character but his peculiarities didn't help.

I wasn't a very good friend. At the bars I'd watch while people caught on that he was off, depending on how drunk he was. But it made no difference how drunk they were.

There was one blue-collar place where one of his brothers' friends greeted him warmly. We called it the "cop bar" because there were always some off-duty men drinking there, and Rusty liked to think this made me even more nervous than usual.

He was at home and sometimes he'd offer his hand and bring a rural, obviously alcoholic woman onto the dance floor for a nice slow dance.

We never shared a table with strangers there. I'd sit in a booth and he'd bring a pitcher and pour himself a glass and then return to the bar and stand talking to people for a long time. If I were there to eavesdrop it was disappointing, though I admired his gift for gab here. At my bars he just wasn't right, and sometimes appeared even shy and withdrawn. These friendly people were so down to earth I couldn't open my mouth without them realizing I was 'high hat' or something.
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In Florida he'd been a newspaper columnist and a supporter of the governor. He blamed the breakup of his first marriage on 'political henchmen'. I knew he wrote regular columns, he'd shown them all to me, with his picture there (always the odd barbershop haircut, so when his hair grew long it grew upwards).

He'd dropped out of college, so having a column was a wonderful achievement. But five years had passed, and Florida was far away. I didn't ask if it was a paying job because I was afraid he would lie and then feel bad.

Still, all in all, we were friendly enough so I could tell him to shut up without him holding it against me. Of course he wouldn't shut up either. I'd have to plead with him at times.
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We got into my 13 year old, gold Le Sabre and as usual when he turned the key nothing happened. It would always start eventually, he said, but we had to be calm and confident. "Relax now, " he'd say. It always sparked up so I began to believe him almost.

"That's a baby," I'd say.
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"Let's drive by. I want to see again," he said as we waited for the big garage door to open.

"What a terrible feeling," I said.

He drove over to her landlord's house south of Grant Boulevard, into the monied district with the close trees, curving streets and rising and falling hills. We arrived and pulled into a drive-way two doors down. There was her little beat-up car still, with the landlord's badly damaged Fiat parked behind it.

"Maybe she's not going to work. Maybe she doesn't have to work at all anymore." He took the little bottle of vodka out of his coat pocket, and drank almost half in four gulps. Then he opened the door and threw the bottle so it smashed on the cement between her front and rear tires.

"God-dammit, Rusty. I'm on probation! You can go to jail. But me, I don't go to jail! I go to prison, god damn it."

He laughed, "You're paranoid. Now, can we go get some more vodka?" Rusty's jokes were rarely clever or surprising.

He pulled out and drove away slow and innocent. I got hold of my temper after a couple of stop signs and a left turn, when we could see the traffic light of the boulevard far away but straight ahead.

The heater was working now and I opened a beer. Three sips and I thought how comfortable. "Cold wears me out. My muscles tense until I'm warm again."
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Rusty had been staying at Sherri's apartment for two months. She was five foot tall at best, a little plump with long, light brown hair framing her round face and falling softly over her bosom. She was surprisingly bright when she wasn't drunk, but this was only when she was provoked. She leaped at contradictions and told funny but mean little stories about her neighbors and co-workers.

He called her his dumpling behind her back, and liked to boast that she wore him out in bed.
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The studio apartment was in a three story slum, two blocks from my hermitage. I'd lived there for a few months and left, realizing this was my bleak future and I'd arrived too soon.

Up and down the halls people left their doors open and roamed from one party to another. Every room with a bed had four people sleeping on the floor. The mixed up smell of home cooking was close and personal, at once confusingly reminiscent and revolting. Rusty knew everyone but ignored their calling his name as we passed on our way to Sherri's apartment.

He had his key ready but discovered the door was unlocked. I followed him into the darkness and he felt around the wall for the light switch. We had to adjust our eyes, slowly realizing the little studio had been sacked.

It was vandalized, completely sacked by someone furious. Rusty stepped quickly around the corner to the kitchen, and called back, "They turned the oven up all the way."

Heavy bags of garbage were torn open and dumped. A bag of flour had been swung 360 degrees, over everything. The refrigerator door was open and everything inside was opened and slopped on the walls and floors. Large forgotten Tupperware was opened and dumped on the bed.

I peeked into the bathroom and her tall wicker shelf of beauty products was pushed over, resting on the wall behind the toilet. There was writing on the mirror. Whore, slut, bitch, helter skeltor.

Was it lipstick? I touched and it smeared. It was blue.

"You know what?" he called. "I was the last to leave. I forgot to lock the door."

Kelderman had seen us and followed. Now he stood in the door with his two metal forearm crutches. He stared, open-mouthed, struck sober. His black framed glasses were crooked on his face but he balanced himself and pushed them back on his nose with his wrist. He licked his lips and hobbled in closer, blood-shot eyes wide open.

"Jesus Christ, it's hot in here."

I pulled another beer from my winter coat pocket. It popped and foamed. My heart was pounding and I chugged as if I were quenching a thirst, instead of settling my nerves.

"They wouldn't have made much noise except for the toppled shelves in the bathroom and all those little bottles falling." I said.

Kelderman said, "The TV is still there. VCR..."

Rusty kicked around some blankets, looking for something. He found his back-pack. His suits and an attache case in the closet were left untouched.

"Wait. What the fuck do I do now? She's going to think I did this."

"Why would you do this?"

"She's screwing the landlord."

Kelderman said, "You finally told him, did you."

"This looks like woman's work to me," I said.

Kelderman's eyes looked damp. Sometimes an emotional drunk.

"I know you were gone all day, Rusty. I've had my door open and I'd have seen you. Maybe he has another girl on the side. Or maybe she did this herself, who knows? Though if she did I doubt she's coming back."

"Look. They left my JFK and Lincoln Brigade pictures alone. My back-pack, my briefcase. "

Kelderman's low growling laugh came back. "What, do you feel left out?"

There was a half a minutes silence. Then Rusty said, "Yes. Completely."
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Some sickly looking speed freaks and metal heads started collecting at the door, looking over Kelderman's shoulder and exclaiming obscenities. A short young black woman's face appeared for a moment. Her mouth went ajar and she pulled back away just as a smile came over her face, like she was going to go tell her friends and have a belly laugh. Kelderman turned around and swung one of his canes. "Get the fuck away from here!" They all obeyed. Then he used his stick to slam the door closed.

He used one of his canes to remove a soiled chair cushion and sat himself painfully down. I sat on the floor. I was sorry I only had one other beer left and Kelderman was going to ask me for it and I was going to say no.

But then he told me to go down to his room and bring a couple from the freezer.

Rusty couldn't sit, though.

"Get your stuff and let's beat it," I said. "We can figure this out back at my place. I've been out too long. "

"I feel like cleaning all this up. Like I did this. Like I'd better. Now she'll come in and see I've moved out and what will she think?"

"Forget it." Kelderman said he wanted to go to the Savoy. This was a hotel downtown with golden hand-rails and a glittery bar The bar-maids were ex-strippers but they had class appeal for the traveling business man.

But what really interested him---he often said after a newspaper article had appeared--- was that Tiny Tim lived there. He said that he wanted to compare how long and dirty their fingernails were.

Now he showed me all the hundred dollar bills in his wallet and offered me one. "Let's go and forget this. Rusty, you're going forever. To the Savoy! To forget!!"

The hundred dollar bill wasn't even tempting, somehow. Anyway I knew Rusty had money. "We'll go tomorrow. Maybe. No promises."

Rusty swung his backpack over his shoulder and picked up his suitcase. "Huh. You know, coming over here I was planning to do something like this. I was going to break a window, maybe."

"No you wouldn't," Kelderman laughed. Outfoxed by the Fates, I thought.

I draped his suits over my arm and he asked me to get his two prize pictures. "Don't break the glass in the frames."

"Why don't we smash the JFK? You wouldn't look as guilty then. And you need to get over your mourning anyway. It's been thirty years."

"I've had that since I was nine."

Rusty was like me in some ways, only he'd never learned to drink as much, which seemed to me to be part of the problem. He didn't read anything worthwhile either, in my drunken, burn-out opinion. Also he was the only person I knew who had no interest in music. It meant nothing to him except on the dance floor when he was drunk and bravely trolling.

Out in the brighter light of the hallway I took a closer look at him. He looked over my shoulder, sighed and rolled his eyes. He locked the door, then slid it under the door. "So long, Ramona. Or Edna or whatever your name is."

That sad, closed mouth smile of his as we started back to the car.
___
Rusty didn't snore. I was watching TV until dawn and looked behind me. He was wide awake. The phone had rang three times this night, but she hung up on the machine. Or, it might have been someone for me. The last call was twenty minutes after the bars closed. Now another hour had passed.

My private entrance directly to the outdoors made me feel vulnerable. The darkness helped.
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In another universe she'd come over here and somehow explain everything.
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It was 3 a.m. I sat up drinking beer and watching Turner Movies. I was caught up in this horrible vortex of "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf" because I was waiting for "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" to come on, at four.

If he could sleep through a drunken Elizabeth Taylor screaming her head off, wait until Ethel Merman came on as the ultimate hectoring, howling, slugging mother-in-law. Her greatest role.

He spoke, then, as friends do in the dark. I muted the hysterical screaming argument on the Tv. I didn't mind him speaking now.

"I'm finished with Commtron. The boss takes my ideas and passes them off as his own. He had an unscheduled meeting with his boss right after we talked once and then a week later I was reassigned and they took my suggestions.

"And everyone is careless. They don't give a crap because their jobs are safe. They resent me. I admit I'm a little meticulous, and that takes extra time, but in the big picture, you know. It's best. When I go into the break room the women all shut up. I make them nervous."

"I thought you said it was a good sign, they all get quiet."

"How can I tell?" He sounded a note of urgent helplessness, which surprised the hell out of me. Like someone might finally divulge a secret he hadn't been let in on.

"Well that's just it, " I said. "You can't tell but you rush to conclusions."

"I'm going to take a few days off and have the agency reassign me. It'll upset my step-mom if she finds out though. And my step-dad."

"Huh?"

"What?" he asked.

"Oh. I forgot. So many steps."

His parents had both died by the time he was ten. His mother first, and then his dad re-married. Then after he was gone, his step-mother also remarried--Rusty was 12 or 13--- and that good man became Rusty's step-father.

Two steps-parents. Then they divorced when he went to college.

"If I don't call him often enough, he'll look for me. Once he spent two hours driving around town, business to business, so he could take me out to lunch. He's worried I'm working below my potential. He wanted to lecture me. Then I wouldn't let him pay the check. 'No, this is on me', I said"

"I hope you said thanks for the advice."

"My step-mom wants me back in local politics. Maybe if we elect Bilgey.

"Did I tell you about Thanksgiving? Almost her whole family. Big, chaotic family now. Double-wide cousins. My brothers, two of my sisters and their kids. One of my nephews is is 19 now and he was giving me some shit. 'Rusty, everyone knows you're a loser.'

"Jesus."

"My sister was embarrassed but instead of defending me she tried to justify herself. 'Why don't you have a car yet, or a phone? Don't you know how to save?'

"Oh well, it serves me right. I was tipsy, trying to persuade my nephew's girlfriend to fix me up with her sister. Actually I think his girlfriend admired how I sat back and took the abuse---my other sister and my brothers joined in and I just sat back, you know, taking it. I think she admired that. She smiled at me with her eyes."

He laughed. "She knows I've got something up my sleeve, man. She knows." He meant he would hit the big time someday, in some way.

"I need to get my good shoes fixed. There's a shoe repair shop on University, across from where the Galaxy used to be. Next to where the Town and Country restaurant was, do you remember that place? On the other side is the lamp shade store."

In all my 34 years I'd never heard of anyone getting their shoes repaired. Yet I'd seen the place, it'd been in business all my days and I always wondered who patronized it. I guessed my late grandfather may have. It was there close to the pharmacy where he drank his daily bromo-seltzer after work.

When Rusty was broke he never asked his family for help, so he had to be frugal. This deeply frightened me: like a glimpse of the end of my road. Scratching out a living was not for me, I'd have to cheat or something. Marry rich. The world seemed cruel to Rusty. And my other impoverished friends were crazy and by this time, starting to get government checks.

"You can take my car, just don't go looking for trouble."

"I'm innocent. She'll just have to take my word for it. She has an enemy and she'll know who it was. "

"Say. That's right," I said, a little surprised. It was like a knot coming undone just by pulling it. I was buzzed and slow on the uptake. It made sense. "Probably served her right, too."

"No. That shouldn't happen to anyone."

I let that go, feeling tricked.
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Tomorrow the sun would be out at last, was the forecast. Warm through the windows, and an end to a month of Sundays.

Rusty would have groceries and I'd be able to start on a new beer buzz. He'd take the car to get his shoes cobbeled, and maybe in the evening we'd get Kelderman into the car and take him to the Savoy and run into the down and out Tiny Tim.

Sherri would be forgotten already, even by Rusty, if we went to the Savoy.

Or, then again, all hell could break loose. Maybe Sherri and her landlord lover would hunt us down.
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Life as a drunken spectator would never lose it's appeal to me. This couldn't last though. The world couldn't remain as cockeyed as all this.
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Now at last Virginia Woolfe gave way to It's A Mad, Mad World, but I was unlucky and couldn't keep my eyes open anymore. Rusty slept and when I went to bed I was pleased he'd be out there in the morning.