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.