We shuffled out of the temple and said our good-byes. Nora lived in Jersey and asked if any of us needed a ride to the Upper West Side. Mark lived there, so he hopped into her Lexus SUV and off they rode. Jennifer and I walked up Lexington; I toward the subway, she toward her apartment on Ninety-eighth Street. That worked out quite nicely for me. She was cute, American, and didn't strike me as a trouser thief. I was curious.

"So, what did you think of the cla.s.s?" I asked.

"It was different from what I expected." She smiled. "I mean it was really casual. 'Rabbi Stan'? I'm Orthodox, so anything in temple for me is a lot more formal."

Orthodox? I looked at her. She was fairly stylish, I would have never guessed. Well, she was rocking that signature long jean skirt, but it wasn't ankle-length or anything. "Yeah, I've never met any first-name rabbis either," I said. We waited at the corner as the light was just changing in our favor. "So, I guess your friends aren't Orthodox, right?"

She laughed and pushed her curls out of her face. "Oh, no way. They are total hippies. The wedding is going to be in Rhinebeck on a horse farm, and they're roasting a pig! You know, a big one on a spit with an apple in its mouth? It's not going to be Jewish at all. I know that stuff anyway."

We walked some more and I decided to keep going past the first subway entrance at Eighty-sixth Street to the one at Ninety-sixth. We traded stories, b.i.t.c.hed about the city a little. I told her about Stacey and Eric, and found out that Jennifer was in med school as well, not a resident yet but on her way. She asked me what I did, and I sort of panicked and told her I was an a.s.sistant producer. It wasn't a huge lie, just a one-word lie. I was an a.s.sistant, after all.

Jennifer also happened to have a great can, which I hadn't noticed in the temple. Yep, overall the whole thing she had there was a tight little package. I considered asking her if she wanted to get a drink as we were walking past bar after bar, but the Orthodox thing threw me. So when we hit the next subway, I gave her a pat on the shoulder and said my good-bye.

"Hey, next week after our cla.s.s, there's a med school party if you want to check it out. You can bring whoever you want, if you want to come," she said, the breeze blowing her sweater tight against her body. She was confident, I liked that. She wasn't posturing.

"Definitely. That sounds fun," I said, halfway down the stairs. "I'll bring Rabbi Stan."

She laughed, turned, and continued on her way. I cruised into the subway and through the turnstiles. I could hear the train arriving, so I raced down the pockmarked concrete stairs two at a time and slipped into the car just as the doors closed. Huffing, I flopped into an empty seat. The train hiccupped and then shuddered down the tracks, and I wondered if religious girls were good kissers.

11.

It was almost midnight by the time I got downtown. I walked west on Eleventh Street, away from the hubbub of Union Square, where the train dropped me. I whistled "G.o.d Save the Queen" as I crossed Seventh Avenue. It was always amazing to me how once you crossed Seventh, the din of the city died down and, just like that, you were alone on a peaceful street lined with beautiful old townhouses. Uma Thurman lived somewhere on this block, and I looked into the oversized windows as I walked past, hoping for a glimpse of her or any other wealthy, naked woman who might care to put on a show for the have-lesses. Nothing doing, though. Empty rooms and fancy chandeliers were all that was on display. I kept moving through the light and shadows, looking this way and that, soaking it in. I was in no rush. I turned the corner and sidestepped two men kissing against a mailbox, taking up a good chunk of sidewalk. The air felt delicious and nutritious, even though I was a bit anxious about this wedding thing. I'd put some work into that soon, I told myself. Maybe this weekend.

I opened the door to that good old eyesore, 99 Perry, and went in. I walked over to the mailboxes; I hadn't checked mine earlier. They were located underneath and behind the staircase in a little area I liked to call the "Rats' Nest." I opened mine up, just coupons, a postcard for some band I didn't remember hearing, and a cell-phone bill. Suddenly I felt something on my back and I spun around.

"Oh, did I scare you?" asked a skinny, scraggly-a.s.s white guy. He was wearing a blue T-shirt and ripped jeans, his short brown hair a mess. You could play connect-the-dots with his acne and probably draw The Last Supper The Last Supper. "Sorry, sir." He realized he was looming over me and backed up a step.

"Who are you?" I asked, trying to seem casual. It was cramped back there. Something felt weird and I didn't like it.

"I'm a friend of Robert's," he said. "I've been waiting for him, but it was cold out so I just came in. The front door wasn't locked."

It was true, the lock on the door sucked. I edged past him toward the stairs. This was definitely one of those guys I had seen out my apartment window that day with Patty. "Yeah, well if he's not here, you should probably wait outside, know what I mean? Robert doesn't like people waiting inside the building." I was bluffing but figured Robert would be with me on that.

"I know, but it's getting cold, man," he said, scratching his scalp vigorously. "I think he's up there, just sleeping is all. Could you knock on his door for me, sir? I'll wait down here, I don't want to intrude. I just think he may be sleeping." No, I didn't like this sketchy motherf.u.c.ker who called me "sir" at all.

"No," I said firmly. "He must be out, the buzzer is really loud. C'mon, you gotta go. Robert will be p.i.s.sed." I moved toward the stairs. I figured if I had to, I could outrun this junkie up to my apartment.

He took a small step toward me. His voice was pleading and getting louder. "Please, sir. Just knock on his door. Two-A. Pleaseeee! I really need to see him!"

"No, it's late, man. Go wait outside or I'm calling the cops. Come on, don't make me be an a.s.shole." I pulled my phone out of my pocket. The guy looked more than a little jittery. I had seen Trainspotting Trainspotting ten million times on cable; I wasn't taking any chances that this guy was Francis f.u.c.king Begbie. ten million times on cable; I wasn't taking any chances that this guy was Francis f.u.c.king Begbie.

His voice rose. He spit his words at me. "Why would you call the cops? I'm his friend, sir." He stared me dead in the eyes. I could feel a bit of perspiration beading up on my forehead. Why did everyone want to fight me lately?

I fingered the "9" b.u.t.ton on my phone, then gestured with the phone toward the door. "He's not home, I'm telling you, man."

"Bulls.h.i.t, man man!" he erupted. "I know he's there, I can see in his window from outside. I saw him!"

The front door opened and in walked Patty. She looked up at me and then at the ragged crackhead. "Walter, what are you doing in here?" she said, staring at him.

"Nothing. I was cold and..."

"I told you never to come in here." Her voice was like a drill sergeant's. "Get out before I get the cops, and if the cops come...Robert. Will. Kill. You. Let's go. Out out out." She grabbed his arm and showed him to the door. "Wait outside, we don't care. In here, we care. Good-bye." And away he shuffled, like a teenager dressed down by a tough mom.

"You," I said, smiling as she turned back to face me, "are no joke. He wasn't going to listen to me, but you took care of him like that."

"Well, he knows I know Robert. But it's all in the tone of voice. It's the same with dogs. You have to talk to them like you're their master, that's the key. You don't ask them to sit-you tell them." She leaned against the banister. "What are you up to? Going in or out?"

"I was just on my way in," I said, still shaking off the scene. "How about you, calling it a night?"

"I was," said Patty. "But if you're up for it, I'd pop across the road for a quick one at the White Horse," she said, raising her eyebrows.

I was kind of wide-awake now. "Okay. But you have to escort me home after so Walter doesn't beat me up."

"Oh, hush," she said, walking to the door and holding it open for me.

The White Horse was pretty crowded, so we grabbed two pints and found some s.p.a.ce to stand in the corner near the jukebox. Patty held up her gla.s.s. "To the successful completion of our mission and the defeat of our enemies." I wasn't sure what that meant but I clinked her gla.s.s all the same and let the cold Harp numb my tongue. I flipped through the jukebox's offerings. Van Morrison was playing, furthering my belief that the White Horse did not have one of the more up-to-date jukeboxes in the city. Evidence: Huey Lewis was still present. I tried to picture the human who might put on "I Want a New Drug" without irony. It could only be one of the News.

Patty excused herself to go to the bathroom and I chipped away at my beer. I wondered if people might think I was out boozing with my mom. I kicked myself in the a.s.s for the thought the second it zipped through my consciousness; I hated when I became a cynical b.a.s.t.a.r.d like that. There were a million of those in this city, it was a pretty unoriginal style. Not many people here could say a positive thing without adding a "but." They'd seen it all before, and even if they hadn't, they'd pretend they had. A s.p.a.ceship could land and people would be like, "Oh, you're from Mars? That's so expected. I was hoping for Saturn." Any sincere thoughts were immediately roughed up and taken advantage of, like rubes stepping off the all-night bus from Iowa. People laughed out loud a little less here, they were guarded. They didn't want to show they'd been surprised or something.

I looked around the bar. It seemed there was some kind of office softball team that must've come by after their game, as well as the usual mix of law students and neighborhood types. No one to wake Lil' Petey up. I did some small circles with my shoulders and rolled my neck around; I had a touch of a headache and the beer wasn't really helping matters yet.

I saw Patty squeezing her way back toward me through the crowd. She was carefully holding four shots in front of her as if they were hydrogen bombs she didn't dare drop lest civilization endeth.

"I didn't know it was going to be that kind of night," I said, genuinely surprised at the offering. I wasn't really thinking about getting s.h.i.tfaced.

Patty smiled. "No one ever does until it happens." She balanced the shots on top of the jukebox. "This is sort of a sampler. I didn't know what you drank. I'm embarra.s.sed, I should know what kind of poison my neighbor prefers. There's Jack, Bushmill's, Southern Comfort, and tequila. Your choice."

I picked up one of the brown ones I thought was the Jack, shaking off a twinge of foreboding. "You had to get four shots, huh?" I said, grinning.

"Tequila for me," she said, holding the gla.s.s up. "Please make the toast, neighbor."

I raised mine. "Okay, well, here's to you then, Patty. When you hear me retching later, please be kind and don't yell at me to shut up."

Mouths opened, hands tilted, and liquid was swallowed. I could feel the trail of fire go from the back of my tongue down through my pipes until it hit bottom and spread wildly in the dry gra.s.s of my stomach. I chased it with the bottom of my beer. "Blech," I said, eyes tearing.

Patty was already holding up her next shot. I lived next to the female Bukowski, it seemed. She handed me the SoCo. "C'mon, take your medicine," she laughed. "The faster you do it the less it hurts." She tipped her head back and sucked the shot from the gla.s.s like the cowboys in the Westerns do when they've rolled into a saloon after a long day on the trail.

I downed mine as well, although my form was closer to that of a freshman girl at a sorority mixer, eyes screwed closed and a look of disgust on my face. I wasn't an amateur when it came to shots, but sometimes when you haven't properly girded yourself, they can be a quite a shock to the system. Like jumping into a really cold pond.

I went to the bar with watery eyes and fetched us two more beers, wondering how long it was going to be until the two doses of evil got into my bloodstream and reached my brain. Any moment now, any moment now.

We drank those beers and then started on two more that a waitress friend of Patty's brought by on the house. Above the clamor of the bar, Patty was going on about what it had been like to live around here years ago, during the riots at the Stonewall. "Let me tell you something," she said, leaning toward me, "the gay guys weren't all muscled out like they are today. They were more effeminate back then. But they were still stylish as h.e.l.l. And the cops, the cops were all these fat, out-of-shape guys in their polyester uniforms. Everyone down here was rooting for the gays. Less firepower but so much more panache." She poked me on the shoulder. "How you feeling, soldier? Am I losing you?"

"No, I was listening," I said, momentarily a bit unsteady. "Just getting my sea legs."

"Hey, do you want to go somewhere else?" She held her almost-full beer up to mine. "I mean, after these?"

"Sure. I mean, maybe." What time was it?

"Think about it. I know a fun spot. But first, the ladies' room." Patty strode off.

I was fading a little but game. Why not? All I had to do tomorrow was man the phones a bit, and remember to breathe. I could kill a lot of brain cells and still perform adequately, what a joke. Patty must've had an easy day in store as well. I had seen grown-ups drink before, but generally it was at weddings and things and they were wearing suits or pearls. Patty was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt with STUYVESANT STUYVESANT written in all caps on the front, with jeans and the sandals. If those sandals could talk. I guessed they'd probably say something like "Look out for that dog s.h.i.t!" or something. Yeah, sandals didn't seem like they'd have much of a personality. Those high boots girls wore, now those you'd want to sit next to at a party. They knew the secrets of the back of the knee. written in all caps on the front, with jeans and the sandals. If those sandals could talk. I guessed they'd probably say something like "Look out for that dog s.h.i.t!" or something. Yeah, sandals didn't seem like they'd have much of a personality. Those high boots girls wore, now those you'd want to sit next to at a party. They knew the secrets of the back of the knee.

Patty returned and then I went to the bathroom. I carefully used my foot to lift the toilet seat. I did my thing and then used my foot again to flush. I was like Daniel Day-Lewis when it came to using public toilets without touching them with my hands. If only I could manipulate my foot to turn restroom doork.n.o.bs, I could live without any fear of bathroom germs. Maybe someday.

I found Patty in our spot near the jukebox. The crowd had thinned somewhat since we'd arrived. I still wondered what time it was, but then I thought maybe I'd better not find out. Grabbing my beer and bravely taking a big gulp, I asked Patty, "So, what were you thinking about next?"

"Well, neighbor, I'm thinking we should leave here, and go to this private bar I know on Sixth Avenue near Twentieth Street. I think you'll like it."

"What's its name?" I asked.

"I don't know, actually. I don't think it has a name. It's in an apartment." She proceeded to tell me it was an after-hours joint, a place that was open after the legal limit of four a.m. I had actually never been to one, but I knew Tina had had some f.u.c.kedup nights where she ended up at places like that. Patty explained that a lot of bartenders and waiters who worked the late-night shifts only got off at four, when no legal places were still open. These bars filled that need.

We drained our beers and walked outside. Patty immediately lit up a cigarette. I could almost see our apartment building from where we stood, and I was thinking of calling an audible. She took a long drag and let out a smoke ring. I watched as it curled up toward the streetlight and hung there, slowly dispersing and becoming part of the sky. It sucked that you could never see stars in the city, too much light leak. Patty yelled "Taxi!" and a cab pulled up beside us. She stamped on the b.u.t.t and opened the door, and in we slid. She gave the driver an address and our heads snapped back with the G-force of acceleration.

I was feeling a bit like Jell-O as the cabdriver managed to hit every single pothole on his way up Hudson. Riding in the backs of cabs drunk sometimes made me a bit nauseated; all the grease and license stickers on the Plexiglas part.i.tion made it nearly impossible to look out the front windshield to see where you were going. I stared out the side window and watched stores and pavement and graffiti pa.s.s.

Patty let out a mighty cough as we crossed Fifteenth Street. One hand covered her mouth, the other braced against the part.i.tion, fingers flexed, white on the tips from the pressure. Her eyes were shut tight and a vein on the side of her forehead stuck out like a major thoroughfare on a map. She rolled down the window and spat. "Uggh," she grunted.

"You okay?" I asked, as the car rolled to a stop at a light.

"Yep. No big thing." Patty smoothed her hair. Her breathing returned to normal.

The cabdriver leaned his head back. He was a very dark-skinned black man, I guessed probably from Ghana-there were a lot of drivers from there, who knew why? He gave us the once-over, eyeballing us nastily; he was worried about having someone yak in the back of his cab. He shook his head and then punched the gas. He was a cla.s.sic two-foot driver, one on the gas, one on the brake. I was sure that style had led to at least one vomit scene for him before, you'd think he would've figured it out.

We turned on Nineteenth and traversed the two avenues in silence. Patty stared out the window and I started to get tired again. But suddenly the taxi screeched to the curb and we were there. She pulled five dollars out from somewhere and we were standing on the empty avenue.

"You know," she said, looking around, "some cabdrivers are very nice. The others just hate humans, they deal with them all day and are sick of them. Those guys are just dogs eating garbage, in my book." She put her arm around me. "This way, neighbor."

We walked up to the buzzer of a low-rise building and Patty punched the third-floor b.u.t.ton. After a pause, the door buzzed open and in we went to the fluorescent-lit lobby. Patty pushed the b.u.t.ton for the elevator. Immediately the door opened. Inside was a big-in-every-way man wearing an oversized T-shirt and sungla.s.ses and holding a walkie-talkie.

Patty smiled at him. "Hi, I'm a friend of Gus's. We're just going up to his place."

Gigantor didn't miss a beat. "Five each." I gave him a ten and the doors closed, the gears whirred, gravity was defied, and twenty seconds later we reached our destination. The Stones' "Country Honk" was playing as we stepped from the bright elevator directly into a dark room. It did look much like it was someone's apartment. We pa.s.sed a few old sofas bordering a coffee table where some silhouettes sat laughing. It didn't seem very crowded; there were maybe thirty people in a room that could have easily held a hundred. Patty led me into the kitchen, where a bald man in a white T-shirt in his early fifties was filling the fridge with Bud bottles from a cardboard case. I guessed this was the bar.

Patty got a Bud and I got a Jack and c.o.ke, hoping the c.o.ke would wake me up a bit. At this point in a late, late night, trying to wake up was among the stupidest things I could choose to do. Also, a quarter-gla.s.s of cola was not going to undo any sort of damage. That would take drugs. And I could probably get drugs here. I shook the evil thought from my head, took a sip, waded through a few people, and sank into an easy chair against the wall. Patty pulled up a stool next to me and we drank, surveying the scene. People were generally older than I would've expected; only a few folks looked like they were in their twenties, the rest spanning that hard-to-pinpoint age of above thirty and under forty-five.

"A lot of the people here work at St. Vincent's Hospital; they get off their shifts and need a place to go. A lot of city workers on the eight-to-five shift as well," Patty said. "Sometimes there'll be sanitation workers; you'll smell those, and also a lot of the guys who deliver flowers to the flower district. It's early for most of them, though."

I straightened up and reached into my pocket, wondering exactly what time it was. My cell phone read 4:27. Pow, right in the liver. There was no turning back now. I took a big swig of my drink. I was on the moving walkway to Shametown. I promised myself that, before I shut my eyes later, I would drink an entire Gatorade. A friend had once told me that the best hangover prevention was Pedialyte, the medicine designed to keep infants from becoming dehydrated. I made a mental note to buy a case. Then I smelled something. Something warm and familiar. It wasn't fresh-baked bread.

Patty was exhaling a cloud of pot smoke from a Rasta-style cone-shaped joint. "I finally got some of my own," she smiled, pa.s.sing it to me. "Do you want a little, or have you had enough?"

I took it and sucked in the sweet smoke. I tried not to think of her cold or allergies or whatever it was. "I want more than enough," I coughed with a bad British accent. Out came the smoke. "What movie?"

"I don't know," said Patty, taking the joint and putting it to her lips. "Apocalypse Now?"

"Arthur," I said. It was one of my favorites. Dudley Moore played a drunk amazingly well. My second-favorite movie with a drunk in it was My Favorite Year My Favorite Year, starring my pseudonym, O'Toole.

Patty pa.s.sed the joint back to me. "Dudley Moore, it was so sad what happened to him. Watching him degenerate like that, it made me cry. You know he was a fabulous piano player, but after he got sick he couldn't even do that. I saw him on Sixty Minutes Sixty Minutes before he pa.s.sed, poor thing." She coughed and I heard the sea inside her shift. before he pa.s.sed, poor thing." She coughed and I heard the sea inside her shift.

I took a small pull on the bone and gave it back to Patty. "I'm done, thanks." My mind started speeding along and I found myself humming the sappy Christopher Cross tune from Arthur Arthur, "When you get stuck between the moon and New York Ci...ty..." I was thinking about Dudley, maybe he brought it on himself, maybe he flew too close to the sun by marrying Susan Anton, she was like a six-foot-two internationally credentialed piece of a.s.s and he was like five-nothing and jowly. Then I felt bad. You shouldn't joke about others' misfortune. But others' misfortune was often the best thing to joke about. Some comedians made entire careers out of it. Cartoons too. Look at Tom and Jerry Tom and Jerry. I f.u.c.king hated that Jerry. a.s.shole mouse. The best way to kill him, I thought, would be to feed him a fistful of Alka-Seltzers and a quart of tomato juice, then duct-tape closed all his orifices and wait for the big bang. Or was it his orifi? I took a sip of the Jack and c.o.ke and breathed. My synapses were at DEFCON 5.

Patty was staring off over her shoulder, giggling. I figured she must have been as big a mess as me. I was a huge mess. I was a toilet. I was at the bottom of the landfill where all the toilets went, soiled and shivering but dancing gamely like a Rockette. "What are you giggling about, huh?"

Patty turned and pushed her hair behind her ears. "Oh, nothing. I just had deja vu. I was thinking for a second that we were the same age. Because that's how I feel, especially when I'm tipsy, and when I look at you and see your little line-free face, I forget that I'm a lot older. This could be any night for me from twenty or thirty years ago, you know?" She smiled. "Anyway, I was thinking about this one guy I used to run with, Douglas, and how we used to always smoke pot in bars, kinda like this. Back then, I'd get so nervous and paranoid when I was high. I always thought some stranger on their way to the bathroom was going to narc on us. I was really silly about a lot of things, you know? Well, you don't know, but you will. But then again you kind of won't I guess, because I kind of don't. I'm still silly about so many things. Maybe it's because I never settled down or had kids, but I think my brain is in arrested development or something like that. Or maybe I'm just drunk." She laughed, took a long swallow of her Bud, and sank back into her seat. "But I'm happy with it all, you know? I did pretty good," she said quietly.

People had been arriving at the apartment, and little by little, it had filled up. I reached into my gla.s.s, took out an ice cube, and sucked on it, finally crunching it up between my molars. The time had come. "What do you think, Patty? Should we split before the sun rises?"

Patty stood up and stretched. "Yeah, let's go."

We got into the elevator with the big fellow and went back down to the lobby. It was that time when it's almost light but it's not but it is. We walked to the curb to hail a cab as a jogger bounded past. We looked at each other and cracked up.

It happened in the cab as we were speeding toward home. A bad wave of exhaustion and nausea. "Suddenly feeling grim," I said through tight teeth as I rolled down the window. Stupid f.u.c.king child-safety window only went down partway. Great, I was going to have to thread the needle. With vomit. But f.u.c.k them all, I didn't care if I puked in my shirt and had to wear it all day in the hot sun at a beach volleyball tournament.

"Keep it together, Jason," Patty said, rubbing my neck. "We are so close."

I bit my lip and focused out the window on the blur of the awakening city. The wind blew through my hair but I still felt like s.h.i.t. We finally pulled up at the corner and I jumped out of the cab and started racewalking toward our building. Heel toe heel toe. Patty caught up with me a second later. "Let's get you upstairs, partner."

I never noticed it before, but the sun rose really quickly once it got itself started. Everything was turning yellow and the f.u.c.king birds were squawking. Patty opened the door and we hurried inside. Bad sweat drenched my brow. I took the stairs two at a time, keys already in hand. I wasn't going to make it. I reached our landing and made a desperate attempt at the lock, but it was too late. Krakatoa erupted deep within me and I covered the bottom of my door with what Jesse Jackson might've called a multicolored mosaic. Sucking for air, I tried to remember what I had eaten, my face inches above the mess. The smell hit me and I retched again. This was the worst, the f.u.c.king worst. I was on my knees waiting for the next wave. I wiped my mouth with my forearm, tears in my eyes, nose running. "I'm going to f.u.c.king die," I groaned. I let fly again. Less colors, more liquid.

Patty kneeled beside me and put her hand on my back. "No, you're not," she said.

I retched again, inverting my stomach like a reversible raincoat, but nothing came out. "Ugh, Christ! How do you know?" I cried, and spat into the puddle.

"Because it takes one to know one."

I looked over at her, a string of saliva hanging from my mouth.

"Lung cancer," she said.

I contemplated the tight little smile and the eyes that didn't wink to say, "Just kidding."

"I've got lung cancer," she repeated, her voice steady, her expression stone.

I turned back to the dirty floor. The taste of bile rolled over my tongue. Gravity took it from there.