The War Against the Assholes Read online

  He ran off. Late for chemistry. I had a study hall to kill. I ambled there. Through the pious winter light. Whoever designed Saint Cyprian’s knew what he was doing. The church is big on that: reverence through architecture. High, vaulted ceilings; stone floors; and silence. Like being hit with a baseball bat made of nothing. If they came for us here, I could stand and fight. I knew the terrain. I was calm. I was surprised at how calm I was. Then again, it’s easy in school to be at peace. You know where you are supposed to be and what you are supposed to be doing. A luxury not afforded you when you leave. And if a dark bird flashed past the window I sat under in study hall, what of it? Sister Michael didn’t care. I didn’t care. I was reading Erzmund on mechanical methods for the concealment and production of cards. He called these devices hold-outs. He spoke of them not with scorn. With fondness. As you might remember the follies and weakness of your youth. In English, Sister Faith Hope announced that we would begin studying the poetry of John Keats. “One of the greatest, one of the very greatest,” she said, “English poets.” I had never heard of him. I do not come from a poetic family. “Pages four fifty-five to four fifty-nine in the anthology,” she said. I flipped through the assignment. A line leaped up: And no birds sing. Coach Madigan complimented my ferocity during gym. He had set up a crude boxing ring, blue tape outlining a square on the gym floor, and had paired us up according to “weight class,” as he called it. Proof of his essential fair-mindedness. A lesser coach and gym teacher would have made his biggest students fight his smallest ones, on the principle that the weak and frail deserve only humiliation. This is the principle governing the actual world. As even a brief glance at it will show you. I commend those who resist it without giving in to their sentimentality.

  I had been assigned to box Gilder. Boring and dispiriting. He didn’t try. He didn’t say anything to Coach Madigan. He didn’t say anything to me. He stood in the center of the blue-tape ring with his arms limp. So I shuffled around and landed a shot to his temple, his jaw. Padded in red neoprene. The mouth guard distorted his lips and made him resemble an ape. “Get those dukes up, Gilder,” said Coach Madigan. He tore gently at his own red hair. Gilder did not listen. I punched him anyway. Hob whistled when I struck him. Two fingers in his mouth. The kind of whistle you envy because you can never imitate it. “If you want to editorialize, Callahan, I’m afraid you’ll have to participate.” I hit Gilder in the ribs, thumped his sternum, dodged back, landed two more blows on his curdled, neutral face. Hob’s hands looked empty without his book. He looked naked. Exposed. I punched Gilder again and he didn’t react. His eyes bulging out and his arms limp. “You all right, Gilder,” said Coach Madigan. No reply. He wasn’t paying attention. Listening to a distant voice: his face was that slack. “Gilder,” I said under my breath, getting up close, “Gilder, listen.” An apology at the ready: possibly. I’ll never know. He lurched to life. Punched me. A solid shot. A left hook to my jaw. I stumble-stepped back, two looping hops, and regained my footing. Kids booed. Hob catcalled: “For shame.” I did not lose my temper. Coach Madigan had missed Gilder’s shot. Too bad for Gilder. He’d timed it well.

  Then again, there’s never an audience for your best acts. Your most precise blows. I was getting back into my stance and taking aim at his slow, bluish right eye when the gym doors banged open. The hair on my nape rose. The way it had when the white woman appeared in world history class. Whoever was walking in now did not pass unnoticed. Coach Madigan ran past me and said, “We’re in the middle of a bout here. What can I do for you.” He stopped. So abruptly his soles squeaked. Hob was already on his feet, darting his eyes: wall, window, wall. For an escape route, I realized. I turned to examine the door banger. It was not, as I’d feared or hoped, the white woman. It was a man, middle-aged. Short. Hob’s height.

  “A moment of your time, good sir,” he said. To whom, it was unclear. Big-bellied, slope-shouldered, an oval, sly, balding head and a neatly pointed brown beard. The dark eyes sleepy, the flesh around them fat or inflamed. He spoke with an eroded Brooklyn accent. I recognized it from my father’s voice. “You can’t come in here,” said Coach Madigan, “I don’t know who let you in but you need an escort. This is a school. Private property. Once you check in I can help you.” The fat man chuckled: soft clucks. “The peanut gallery,” he said. “What did you say your name was,” said Coach Madigan.” The other kids had gone dead silent. Gilder’s heavy breathing echoed. I think his nose had healed badly. “The grief I’m getting over what you’ve done,” said the fat man, “has put me off my feed.” “If you think,” said Hob, “if you think this is a showdown.” “You have something of mine,” said the fat man. Not to Coach Madigan. To Hob. “The fuck I do,” said Hob. “Callahan, you’re dangerously close to detention here,” said Coach Madigan. The fat man gestured with one pudgy arm: he was now holding a wand. Like Quinn’s. Lighter in color, blonder, inlaid with threads of gold and tipped with a golden point, a golden claw. He spoke a phrase, a scrap of what I thought was Greek. I caught the word dunatos, which means strong. He traced a tight, convoluted pattern in the air with the wand’s golden tip. Now blazing. Not alight or aflame. Inwardly blazing. A warm, gentle, invisible blow struck my forehead. Coach Madigan, Gilder, and all the rest of our class (except Hob) stopped speaking and moving.

  I just lost a breath or two, and my balance. Less of a blow than the one Gilder landed. “We already broke the wand,” I said after I’d recovered, “the black one.” “He speaks,” said the fat man. I spat out my mouth guard. A rope of saliva stretched and broke. I pulled off my gloves. My knuckles cracked. I removed my head protector and looked and looked. The fat man’s effort with the wooden wand had not exhausted him at all. No nosebleeds, no sweat sheening his brow, no glaze of pain in his eyes. “The black wand,” I said, “it’s done.” “You’re tougher than you look, Mr. Wood,” said the fat man, “and you’ve already met my associate. She liked you very much. Very much indeed. But she’s impolite when called upon to be so, as I’m sure your instincts informed you. Don’t interfere.” My instincts had other ideas regarding the white woman than fear. I didn’t tell the fat man that. It seemed wrong.

  “You heard him,” yelled Hob, “it’s broken, it’s destroyed. No need for repetition.” He had nowhere to go: stranded on the top seat of the bleachers. “I don’t give a good goddamn about the wand, Mr. Callahan. Or about the owl. Or my nephew. Don’t play coy. You know what you took. And you need, laddy buck, like many young people, to learn the difference between yours and mine.” I surveyed my fellow student-statues. Simon Canary: caught drawing on a boxing glove. Errol Coward: cupping his balls through his blue shorts. Errol was a veteran fondler of his balls. Coach Madigan had one justice-seeking finger extended toward the fat man. Who had now moved out of its line. I pulled off my gloves and touched Coach Madigan’s arm: warm and totally immobile. “You fat coward,” said Hob. “We’ve proceeded to the stage of tender endearments already, I see,” said the fat man. He wore a purple suit. Rich, soft-looking cloth, shining in the warm light of the gym. His shirt glare-white, his cuffs cleanly enormous, closed with gold-and-onyx links. His necktie pollen colored. His fringe of brown hair cropped and combed. A thick ring set with a hunk of agate—cat’s-eye, my mother called it—gleamed on his left ring finger. A silver chain encircled his fleshy neck, and from it hung a brilliant chip of bone. He looked like a fucking magician. I went for him anyway.

  I never got close. Two steps. Three. The fat man turned and smiled. One gold incisor. As opulent as his ring and wand. The white woman reappeared: from nowhere. A shadow moved, boiled up in the bright light of the gym; a breeze kicked my hair; and there she stood. Before I could think, I launched a punch. Aiming for her chin. To snap her head back. That’s the quickest way to knock your opponent out. My heartbeat slowed. The world seemed to slow with it. Light thickened. The white woman’s hair fluttered as if moving underwater. My fist struck her skin. It was like punching a marble carving. My hand sang. But her h
ead did rock on her long neck, and she staggered back. At least she’s real, I thought, though now you’re a shitbag who hits women. I stepped up to hit her again. She was already smiling. Already moving. Her raven took wing with a knowing shriek. Her fist struck my chest. In the hollow under the sternum. Pure white filled my eyes. Blind and blinding pain. Rushing ocean noise in my ears. My limbs and torso: stony cold. As though I were submerged in icy water. The center of the pain my solar plexus. My vision cleared. Gym ceiling and light fixtures swinging on their blackened chains. I was on my back. I could feel the waxy floor against my nape. I tried to focus. My vision blurred. Cleared. Blurred. Her pale, sharp face above me. Her cruel scar, her kind smile, and her crimson eyes. Saliva ran from my slack mouth. “Hob,” I tried to say. A dry groan all I could manage. The white woman put her finger to her lips.

  A scream: totally human. Not mine. Hob’s. He leaped—flew—from the top of the bleachers, roaring, his arms spread out. He moved so quickly I barely saw it. An undersized sparrow flickering away. Headed for a window. Pure panic. Not fast enough. The fat man lifted his ringed hand and cried out another foreign phrase while Hob was still midair. The agate glowed yellow, red, sick umber, sicker black. I comprehended nothing of what he said. Hob plummeted and hit the gym floor with a brutal, soft thud. At the top of his arc his dark head had been among the upper chains of the light fixtures. His meager shadow had crossed my face. He must have fallen twenty feet. The fat man smiled. No sweat stood out on his brow or lip. No blood dripped from his nose.

  “That’s how it works, though,” I said. Or tried to say. “That’s how it works.” “Out of the mouths of babes,” said the fat man, “so goes the proverb. Though you might consider keeping your wisdom to yourself, laddy buck.” He showed me his wand. Floating horizontally between two upraised palms. He clapped them together. The wand vanished. “Presto fucking change-o,” he said. He strode over to Hob and prodded him with his shining shoe tip. Hob mewled. Tears flowing down his face. “You people and your romanticism,” the fat man said, “it’s fatal.” All around us my unmoving classmates. Frank Santone’s hands tangled with his shoelace. Wilton Opuwei’s cavernous yawn. The human face and human body can be ridiculous propositions. They also can inspire love. He grabbed Hob by the collar of his school jacket and hoisted him off the floor as if he were hoisting a suitcase. Hob groaned. His tears hit the wood. I tried to reach for him. I could not move. Fat men often possess a mysterious strength. So do bald men and ugly men. Hob’s fingernails scraped the oiled wood as the fat man carried him out. His head hung down. His hair. “And may I compliment your performance,” the fat man said as the door mewed shut behind him. I had no idea if he meant me or the white woman who had knocked me unconscious. He could have meant both. Or Hob. He seemed like an expansive complimenter.

  The stony scent of the white woman filled my nose. She was straddling me. The small, still-clear segment of my mind was shocked at her presumption. Her right hand gently encircled my throat. Her raven was clicking and hopping next to my head. A sudden terror that the bird would jab its beak into my eyes gripped me. I lifted a hand to shield them. Or attempted to. Nothing. No movement. The white woman smiled. Her iron bracelet burning against the skin over my clavicle. She bent her face to mine and pressed her lips against mine. Her eyes closing. Her breath frigid as before. When her tongue entered my mouth I almost came. My pulse drummed against her fingers. Her breathing grew heavier, quicker. Her hand never left my throat. When she broke the kiss, the white woman licked her lips and grinned at me. She stood and her raven took wing and landed on her extended arm. Blood rushed at once into my brain and my cock. Stupidity and clarity at the same time. I closed my eyes and opened my mouth and sucked in ragged lungfuls of air.

  16

  Our school had a mascot bodega. Hello Garden 72. They would sell you cigarettes and beer. They would even let you use their bathroom, if they knew you. The main guy was called Osmondo. He wore a name tag pinned to his sweater, even though he was the only employee.

  There was an etiquette to dealing with Osmondo: You couldn’t be obvious or loud. If you wanted beer you brought it up front only when there was no one else in the store. If you wanted cigarettes you made sure you were alone before you asked. That went for the bathroom too. Using the bathroom cost a dollar. You paid up without question. I never understood why more bodegas didn’t adopt this business model.

  People also believe, before crises arrive, that they’ll know what to do. Universally. I didn’t. I wanted to tear at my own skin. Sky. That’s what I remember. I was shaking. My hands spasming. Running down Fifth Avenue. Our chapel bells rang the time: quarter till the hour. Did not know which hour. Sky harbor-gray. Or the color of cement. Crows on the branches of the bare trees and crows on parked cars. Hers. I knew it. They had to be. Surveillance drones, Hob had said. I was relieved she didn’t use pigeons. Then again, pigeons are stupid. Then again, theatrics are important. Erzmund said it and I believe to this day that it’s true. You can go through your youth and young manhood breaking noses and blacking eyes, as I did, or systematically deranging your senses with drugs or alcohol, as others did. Reality will intrude. Hob, for example. His disappearance made me ill with fear. Worse than cops marching him off. I considered my options. I could try to chase the fat man and the white woman down. Stupid: they were long gone. A wave of nausea. I fought it back. The muscles in my torso were still heaving. “That sucker-punching bitch,” I said. She had not sucker punched me, to be fair. I still wanted to fuck her. Just in a limbic-system sort of way. Nothing moral. Nothing aesthetic.

  Potash. The fat man. Had to be. He matched Hob’s description. I had no idea what Hob had taken. When I had struggled to my feet in the gym, the white woman was gone. In the hall, no trace of her, Hob, the fat man. Other than blood drops. Hob must have left these. Warm silence, the hall air smelling like dead fruit, as usual. Whatever fluid they used to clean the floors stank sweetly. My classmates and Coach Madigan statue-still in the crosswired windows of the gym doors. I assumed Potash’s handiwork was not permanent. Verner Potash. It’s always a fat man in the end. Mr. Stone had called him the de facto head of his community. Sounded archaic. Quinn Klayman. That perfectly toolish name. Potash had called him his nephew. At which point I stopped walking and muttered, “Goddamn it.” Another fact Hob had failed to inform us of. A woman pushing a stroller, in which slept a gaunt dark-haired child, stared and veered to the other lane of foot traffic. I called Alabama. It went right to voice mail. “You know the drill,” said Alabama. Then the shrill tone. “Just call me,” I said, “like now.” I fished a brown cigarette out of my bag. I had two left. I figured it would help with the pain. “And of course I don’t have a lighter,” I muttered. Before I remembered. I just cupped the tip in my hands so passersby wouldn’t see. They probably wouldn’t have noticed anyway. The smoke helped. My head cleared a bit. The cold didn’t bother me as much. I was still wearing my blue-and-white gym clothes, under my parka. Army surplus. Forest green. With paler patches indicating where insignia of rank once had been sewn. Nothing is worse than waiting for your phone to ring. Not even the smoke from the cigarette could calm me down.

  That’s when I saw. Or noticed. Or observed. Or lucked out. A rat. Grayish white. Waiting by the curb. Darting its head up to look at the sky. For crows. It froze when it saw me. When I got close, it moved. Slow. Careful. It stopped. Looked at me. I followed it another step, another two, another three. It led me. I let it. We kept up our weird pace. At moments I had to visually seek it out again: it got lost among the legs. “Good Christ, the size of that thing,” squeaked an old woman, leaning on a cane. She’d seen it. I rushed past her. When the rat turned on Seventy-Second, it sped up and darted under an access alley fence. I looked up. The HELLO GARDEN sign shone, gold and green.

  Osmondo nodded at me when I came in. There was no one else in the store except for an old man. As usual. Osmondo’s father, the rumor went, who slept in a chair all day and
all night, a newspaper tenting his lap. I wandered the aisles. I took down a can of onion soup and blew dust from the metal top. A crow perched in the naked sidewalk tree across from the bodega doorway. “How long has that crow been there,” I asked Osmondo. He shrugged. His father, or whoever the old man was, cried out in his sleep: a high whine. “Bathroom,” I said. Osmondo held out his huge, pink palm. I laid a damp dollar in it. The lore said he used to let junkies shoot up in there, during the heyday of junkies. A brown scrawl crossed the ceiling. The lore said it was blood. Whatever it was, they never cleaned it off the tiles. The bathroom, otherwise: nothing special. A mirror. A toilet. A poster of a green valley cradling a white house. A narrow door in the rear wall, inset with a brass lock, a cramped figure in yellow paint in the upper right corner. The same alien, faint smell I’d detected on every previous visit.

  My piss sang against the porcelain. I pissed for a long time. Groaning with relief. The bell by the bodega door rang. The old man rustled his paper. Osmondo said la puerta. The door. I kept pissing. My balls ached. As the toilet flushed, Osmondo mumbled more. I couldn’t even catch one word. I propped myself on the rear wall. The metal of the door cooled my forehead. I wanted to sleep. I find sleeping uncanny, as I said. To sleep and wake, and return to the simple, violent routine of my life: school, football, fights, failures with girls enlivened by the odd success. I didn’t mean the white woman. I wasn’t thinking of her. I was thinking of Maggie. How chance had intervened. I caught another draft of the Osmondo-bathroom scent. Not disgusting at all. Fragrant and dry. No one had knocked. I had time. I wanted to sleep. My eyelids slipped. The scent lulled me. The patch of door cooling my head got warm. So I shifted. The yellow mark flicked through my peripheral vision.