CHAPTER FIVE
WILLIE BREW’S HEAD HURT.
Things hadn’t started out too badly. He’d woken feeling dehydrated, and aware that, despite the fact he hadn’t shifted position an inch in the night, he still hadn’t slept properly. Maybe I’ll get away with it, he thought. Maybe the gods are smiling on me, just this once. But by the time he reached the auto shop his head had started to pound. He was sweaty and nauseated by noon, and he knew things would go downhill from there. He just wanted the day to come to an end so that he could go home, go back to bed, and wake up the next morning with a clear head and a deep and abiding sense of regret.
It had been this way with him ever since he had given up hard liquor. In the good old, bad old days, he could have knocked back the guts of a bottle of even the worst rail booze and still been able to function properly the next morning. Now he rarely drank anything but beer, and then usually in moderation, because beer killed him in a way liquor never had. Except a man didn’t reach the big six-oh every day, and some form of celebration was not only in order, but expected by his friends. Now he was paying the price for seven hours of pretty consistent drinking. Even lunch hadn’t helped. The auto shop was located in an alley just off 75th Street between 37th and Roosevelt, close by the offices of an Indian attorney who specialized in immigration and visas, an astute choice of business address on the attorney’s part as this area had more Indians than some parts of India. Thirty-seventh Avenue itself had Italian, Afghan, and Argentinian restaurants, among others, but once you hit 74th Street it was Indian all the way. The street had even been renamed Kalpana Chawla Way, after the Indian astronaut who had been killed in the Columbia shuttle disaster in 2003, and men in Sikh turbans handed out menus throughout the day to all who passed by.
This was Willie’s patch. He had grown up here, and he hoped that he would die here. He had biked out to LaGuardia and Shea Stadium as a kid, throwing stones at the rats along the way. It had mostly been the Irish and the Jews who lived here then. Ninety-fourth Street used to be known as the Mason-Dixon line, because beyond that it was all black. Willie didn’t think he’d even seen a black face below 94th until the late sixties, although by the 1980s there were some white kids attending the mostly black school up on 98th. Funny thing was, the white kids seemed to get on pretty well with the black ones. They grew up close to them, played basketball with them, and stood alongside them when interlopers trespassed on their territory. Then, in the 1980s, things began to change, and most of the Irish left for Rockaway. The gangs came in, spreading outward from Roosevelt. Willie had stayed, and faced them down, although he’d been forced to put bars on the windows of the little apartment in which he lived not far from where the auto shop now stood. Arno, meanwhile, had always lived up on Forley Street, which was Little Mexico now, and he still didn’t speak a word of Spanish. Below 83rd it was more Colombian than Mexican, and felt like another city: guys stood on the sidewalk hawking their wares, shouting and haggling in Spanish, and the stores sold music and movies that no white person was ever going to buy. Even the movies showing at the Jackson 123 had Spanish subtitles. Through it all, Willie had survived. He’d hadn’t cut and run when times got tough, and when Louis had been forced to sell the building down by Kissena, Willie had taken the opportunity to relocate closer to home, and now he, and his business, were as much a part of the history of the place as Nate’s was. It didn’t help his hangover, though.
They’d eaten at one of the buffets, avoiding, as always, the goat curry that seemed to be a staple of the cuisine in this part of the city. “You ever even seen a goat?” Arno had once asked Willie, and he had to admit that he had not, or certainly not in Queens. He figured that any goat that found itself wandering around Seventy-fourth Street wasn’t going to live for very long anyway, given the clear demand for dishes of which it was the main ingredient. Instead they stuck to the chicken, loading up on rice and naan bread. It was Arno who had converted Willie to the joys of Indian food, goat apart, and he had found that, once you stayed away from the hot stuff and concentrated on the bread and rice, it provided pretty good soakage after a night on the tiles. Now they were back at the auto shop, and Willie was counting down the minutes until they could close up and go home. Softly, he cursed the Brooklyn Brewery and all of its works.
“A bad workman blames his tools,” said Arno.
“What?” Willie hadn’t been in the mood for Arno all day. The little Swede or Dane or whatever the hell he was had no right to be looking so spruce. After all, they’d finished the night propping up the bar together, talking about old times and departed friends. Some of those friends were even human, although most of them had four wheels and V8 engines. Arno had no qualms about drinking liquor. His only stipulation was that it had to be clear, so it was always gin or vodka for him, and Arno had matched Willie with a double vodka tonic for every beer. Yet here he was, bright and cheerful at the end of a grim day for Willie, listening in on his private conversations with the gods of brewing. Arno never seemed to get a hangover. It had to be something to do with his metabolism. He just burned it off.
Today, Willie hated Arno.
“It’s not the brewery’s fault,” continued Arno. “Nobody made you drink all that beer.”
“You made me drink all that beer,” Willie pointed out. “I wanted to go home.”
“No, you just thought you wanted to go home. You really wanted to keep celebrating. With me,”
he added, grinning like an idiot.
“I see you every day,” said Willie. “I even see you Sundays at church. You haunt me. You’re like the ghost, and I’m Mrs. Muir, except she ended up liking the ghost.”
He considered his analogy and decided there was something suspect about it, but he was too weary to withdraw it. “Why the hell did I want to celebrate with you anyway?”
“Because I’m your best friend.”
“Don’t say that. I’ll just despair.”
“You got a better friend than me?”
“No. I don’t know. Listen, you’re just supposed to work for me, and even that’s doubtful.”
“I know you don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
“Not listening.”
“Dammit, I’m serious.”