CAUGHT STEALING
By
Charlie Huston
PART ONE
SEPTEMBER 22–28, 2000
Eight Regular Season
Games Remaining
My feet hurt. The nightmare still in my head, I walk across the
cold wood floor, shuffling my feet in the light grit. I’m half-drunk and I
have to pee. I’m not sure which woke me, the piss or the nightmare.
My john is just a bit smaller than the average port-o-potty. I sit on
the pot and rest my forehead against the opposite wall. I have a pee
hard-on and if I try to take a leak standing up, I’ll end up hosing the
whole can. I know this from experience. Plus my feet still hurt.
It takes a while. By the time I finish I’m just about asleep again. I
get up, flush, and shuffle back to bed. On the way, a last bit of piss
dribbles onto my thigh. I pick up a dirty sock from the floor, wipe the
urine off and toss the sock in a corner.
I crawl back under the covers and twist around a bit until I’m
arranged. I start to drift back asleep and the nightmare begins to rise
up again in my mind. I force myself fully awake to keep it from getting
back in. I think happy thoughts. I think about a dog I used to have. I
think about Yvonne. I think about baseball: long, lazy games of base
ball, plastic cups of cold beer between my thighs, peanut shells
crunching beneath my sneakers. Fly balls soaring over loping outfield
ers. The beautiful ease of the long pop fly out . . . No! Wrong! Base
ball is a mistake and the nightmare is rushing back in. I think about
home. Home does the trick and I start to ease back asleep. And only
then as I finally fall asleep do I register the blood I saw on the sock
when I wiped my leg, the blood from my piss. I sleep.
***
These things are not related: my aching feet, the nightmare, the blood.
My feet have hurt for years because of the job. The nightmare has
been going on for half my life. The blood in my piss is brand new, but
I know exactly where I got that too.
I got the bloody piss from the beating I took from a couple of guys
last night. By last night I mean a few long hours before the nightmare
woke me up. And when I say I took a beating from these guys, I really
mean they gave it to me. Free. I got lucky; they both had small hands.
Go figure, two big guys with small hands. It happens. They didn’t
want to bust up those little hands working on my face, so they gave it
to my body. It didn’t take long. They put some good ones in my gut
and ribs and I dropped. Then I took a couple boot shots in the kidneys. That’s where the blood is coming from.
The alarm goes off at 8:00 A.M.Now that the booze has worn off I
hurt everywhere, but my feet are what’s really killing me. I go to the
can, sure enough: more blood. I brush my teeth and hop in the shower.
Bruises are starting to well up all over my torso and the hot water feels
good. I leave the shower running and walk dripping to the fridge, grab
a cold beer and take it back to the shower. The water feels good, but
the beer is better. It takes the edge off my hangover, kicks up the dust
of last night’s drunk and gives it life. I take the washcloth from the
shower caddie and gently scrub my feet.
Out of the shower now, I finish the last of the beer while trimming
my toenails. I clip them very short and even and make sure there is no
grit hiding at the edges. I find a clean pair of socks with no holes and
get dressed. I head out the front door. There’s time for breakfast.
At the diner I have bacon and eggs and another beer. The first beer
was good, but the second is even better. I’m heading into the third
week of a pretty good binge and the first couple drinks of the day are
always the best. I have to ease into it with beer because my job starts
late. If I hit it too early I’ll be drooling by the time the shift begins. I
sip the beer, eat my chow, and look over the sports pages.
As a rule, the Daily News consists of equal parts violent sensationalism, feel-good human interest, celebrity gossip and advertising.
I read it every day and feel dirty all over. But it’s New York, and everybody
gets dirty sooner or later. Today it’s all election coverage and stories
about yet more dotcoms biting the dust. I flip past the photos of the
interchangeable candidates and get to the important stuff. See, the
reason I started buying this rag in the first place is because it’s the only
way to get West Coast scores in the morning. Unless you have cable. I
can’t afford cable.
Back in California, the Giants are suffering their usual late season
collapse. A week ago they were in striking distance of first place. But
after a seven-game skid, they’ve been eliminated from contention for
the division and are trailing the Mets for the wild card by four games
with eight games left in the season. Meanwhile the Dodgers are red
hot and have the division clinched after winning twelve of their last
fourteen.
I look at my watch and it’s time to go see the doctor.
I hate the Dodgers.
I’ve had this appointment for a week. I’m not here about the blood,
I’m here about my feet. I’ve tried every kind of shoe and insert I can
find and my feet are still killing me. So now, after years of bitching, I’m finally seeing a doctor. I could ask about the blood while I’m
here, but what the hell is he gonna tell me? He’s gonna tell me to go
to an emergency room and they’re gonna tell me that it’s not life-
threatening. They’re gonna charge me a few thou I don’t have to tell
me to rest a bit and not to drink alcohol or caffeine. I don’t drink caffeine. It makes me jittery. I sit in the waiting room and think about
that second beer and how good it was.
I’m not worried about the kidney. If the kidney was serious, I’d be
unconscious by now. It’s contused: my kidney is scraped and it’s
bleeding a bit. Dr. Bob comes out of his office and calls my name.
Dr. Bob is a great guy. He’s an Ivy League med school graduate who
came to the Lower East Side and opened a community practice. He’ll
take anybody as a patient insurance or no insurance, his rates are as low as they get, and you pay your bills whenever you can. All of which
suits my situation. He told me once he didn’t want to make people
healthy just to make them poor. Like I said, a great guy.
I told him about the feet a week ago and he sent me out for some
X rays. Now, in his tiny office, he turns from where the X rays are
clipped to one of those light things on the wall and sits on the stool in
front of me. He starts to look at my feet. He really takes his time, inspecting them. He holds each foot, first one and then the other, and
kneads a bit, searching for some imperfection. All the while, he directs his eyes upward, as if they might interfere with the examination:
a safecracker with his eyes shut.
—Doc?
—Shhh.
He squeezes my feet a few more times, then stands up. He’s talking
now, but I’m having trouble hearing what he’s saying. He’s gesturing
from my feet to the X rays. I’m thinking about getting out of here and
drinking my next beer. I’m thinking how I wish I were lying down right
now because I feel a little strange. He is looking at me oddly.
The roaring in my ears is not the hangover. I cannot hear over it and
it occurs to me that something must be wrong. The examining table
spins out from underneath me and I thump to the floor. I try to lift
myself up, but I can’t. I feel a warm wetness spreading over my lap
and down my legs. I can see the tops of my feet. I can see the tips of
my three-hundred-dollar sneakers that are supposed to be the most
comfortable things that money can buy but are not. And I can see
the bloody urine trickling out the cuffs of my jeans. Something is very
wrong. I sleep.
***
When I wake up, the first thing I think about is the fucking cat. I’m
looking after this guy’s cat for a couple weeks. God knows how long
I’ve been out and if the thing is even alive. Fuck! I knew this would
happen. I told the guy I wasn’t good with animals, that I can barely
take care of myself, but he was really up against it, so I took the damn
cat. Then I see I’m in the hospital and figure out I may have more important things to worry about.
A joke: Guy is born with three testicles and spends his whole life
feeling like a freak. Boys make fun of him in gym class, girls laugh at
him. Finally, he can’t take it and goes to have one of them lopped off.
The doctor takes one look and tells the guy no way, it’s too dangerous,
might kill him or something, but he sends him to a shrink who might
help out. This counselor or whatever he is tells the guy to take it easy,
he should be proud of this third ball, he’s special. I mean, how many
guys have three testicles, right? So the guy feels great after that. He
leaves the doc’s office, walks into the street, goes up to the first man
he sees and says, “Did you know, between you and me we’ve got five
balls?” This dude looks at him funny and says, “You mean you only
have one?”
First guy I see when I walk out of the hospital I go up to and start
talking.
—Did you know, between you and me we only have three kidneys?
He doesn’t say anything, just walks around me like I’m not there.
New York, baby, New York.
I’ve been in the hospital for six days: one unconscious and five conscious. The doctors removed the kidney, which had been nearly ruptured by the two big guys with four small hands and further damaged
by my negligence and massive consumption of diuretic liquids. Booze.
The kidney was at “four plus” when they took it out. At “five,” they
simply explode and kill you. I have been told that I should never again
consume alcohol in any amount for the rest of my life on pain of
death. Likewise no smoking or caffeine. I don’t smoke and, like I said,
caffeine makes me jittery.
After I blacked out, Dr. Bob called the EMTs and had them take
me to Beth Israel. He rode with me in the ambulance and when we
arrived he got me past all the emergency room crap and directly into
an operating room. He saved my life. One of the doctors told me all of
this and when Bob showed up I tried to thank him, but he waved it off
in a just-doing-my-job kind of way. Then we get to my feet.
—So, your condition is chronic and brought on by the amount of time
you spend on your feet at work.
I’m a bartender. I work a ten-hour shift five nights a week. Sometimes six or seven nights.
—You could buy a lifetime supply of Dr. Scholl’s and get your feet
massaged every night and it would not help. If you want the pain to go
away, you are going to have to get off your feet.
—What if I?—
—Off your feet. You’re like a computer worker with carpal tunnel: if
you want it to go away, you are going to have to change your work
habits forever.
—Wow.
—Yes, wow. Furthermore, the pain in your feet has been exacerbated
by poor circulation, which I would say is related to excessive alcohol
consumption.
—Wow.
—Yes. So stop drinking. Period.
—Yeah, sounds good.
And that was that. He told me good luck and was on his way out
when I asked about the bill.
—When you get a new job and you’ve paid off your bill here, we’ll talk
about money.
A great guy.
Booze and my kidney. Booze and my feet. A pattern emerging.
I called the bar and talked to Edwin, the guy who owns the place. I
apologized for the lack of notice, but Edwin was cool and just told me
not to be a stranger.
Would I have quit if it was just the booze and the kidney? If someone said, “Get away from the booze and the drinking life or you’re
gonna die,” would I have quit? I don’t know, but my feet are killing me
and that tears it.
I called my folks, made sure they knew I was OK and told them not
to come out or expect me to come home to be nursed. Mom cried a
little, but I made her laugh in the end, telling her the testicle joke.
Dad asked if I needed money and I said no. We talked about Christmas a bit and how long I’d stay when I come out and then I told them
I love them and they told me they love me and we hung up and I just
fucking stared at the ceiling for a while.
I called one of the other bartenders from work. Her name is Yvonne,
we used to see each other quite a bit, still do from time to time. So
she’s a girl I see from time to time. She’s more than that. She’s my best
friend. But I also see her from time to time. She has a key to my place,
so I told her about the cat and she promised to check on it until I got
home. She offered to come by the hospital, but I said no. I want to be
alone. I need to figure out what the hell I’m gonna do.
So now I’m out. I walk up to the stiff on the street and tell my kidney
joke, and then I’m taking a cab home. They wanted me to stay for ten days so they could keep an eye on me and take out my staples before I
left, but my lack of a) cash and b) insurance encouraged them to let
me go. I’ll have the staples out in a few days and just take it easy until
then. I have one kidney, I’m being forced to go cold turkey, I have a
hospital bill that makes the ten grand I carry in credit card debt look
like a bad joke, and I have no job. On the other hand, I pick up a paper and the Giants are on a four-game winning streak and have picked
up two on the Mets, who split a four-game stand against the Phillies. I
lean back into the cab seat and feel a sharp stab in my former kidney
and wonder what the hell was eating those guys who beat the crap out
of me.
***
Paul’s Bar closes at 4:00 A.M. On a Thursday it’s usually all regulars by
2:00 A.M. So when I’m working, that’s when I start my serious drinking. Last Thursday there were about ten regulars hanging out in the
place and I was starting to get my head on when the big guys came in.
They plop down at the far end of the bar and I wander over. These
guys are genuinely big; even sitting on the stools, they loom a little. But
big means nothing, I’m more curious about the way they’re dressed.
Both guys are wearing Nike tracksuits: one in black, one in white.
They are sporting several gold chains each, which go well with the
gold-rimmed Armani sunglasses they both have propped up on their
shaved heads. These guys are not our usual crowd. I take them for
Poles or Ukrainians left over from the old neighborhood before the
East Village went Latino and then arty and now yuppie. They order an
Amstel Light and a cosmopolitan. Each. They have Russianic accents.
And this is still far from the weirdest pair we’ve ever had in the place,
so I fix the drinks and take the cash and they say thank you.
As I walk back down the bar to get my own drink and resume my
game of movie trivia on the MegaTouch, I hear cursing behind me. I
turn and the guy in the white tracksuit is holding his cosmo like the
glass is full of vomit.
—This is shit.
He turns the glass upside down and spills it on the bar. The guy in
black tastes his and promptly spits it back up, also on the bar.
—This is also shit. I cannot drink this.
To prove his point, he takes another sip and spits it on the bar, then
he stands and walks to the trash and drops the drink, glass and all,
into the can.
I don’t like to fight. I have fought very little in my life, but what I
have noticed is that even when you win, you get hurt. I work out four
days a week and take boxing and self-defense on the weekends. I have
steel-toed boots and a Buck knife. I have an ax handle behind the bar.
None of this will help, because I don’t want to fight and these guys
clearly do. I smile. I walk down the bar to the two tracksuits, a smile
plastered on my semidrunk face, radiating joy and love. I am Martin
Luther King. I am Gandhi. I will ask these gentlemen if they would prefer another drink or their money back. I will carefully wipe their spit off the bar and all will be at peace, because I don’t want to fight.
They sit at the end of the bar, Amstels untouched, the one upturned
cosmo glass before them and, as I approach, they both slip their sunglasses over their eyes like they’ve been blinded by my smile. And that
is when I notice the small, girlish and simply beautiful hands they
both have. I am not afraid. These men are lovers, not fighters. These
men are concert pianists with graceful digits made for music, not
pugilism.
I reach the end of the bar and open my smiling mouth to offer them
a round on the house as compensation for their disappointment. They
grab me, drag me over the bar, and beat the crap out of me. Then they
leave.
I’ve been beat up before and had it hurt a lot worse. I don’t even
look that bad. But I do close the bar early and spend the next several
hours drinking and holding an ice pack to my ribs while Tim, a couple
other regulars and I tell fight stories: the high and low moments of
beating and getting beat. We have chalked up the tracksuits as psychos and, hey, what more can you say? A few hours later the blood shows up in my piss.
©Copyright 2004-2008 by Charlie Huston. All right reserved etc.
