Vince came to the door of the condo this afternoon. I should say, he assaulted it. He leaned on the doorbell like some angry trick-or-treating kid who figures the residents are blowing him off.
“Sorry,” he said, apparently about going rabid with the doorbell, “but this is getting rather heavy.”
In his arms he cradled a long rectangular package wrapped in layers of tinfoil. Given his surprise visit, I was in no hurry to relieve his burden.
When the doorbell began to ring I was working for the first time with Roscoe on the concepts of voting and elections. It wasn’t going well. Whenever possible I try to spell out abstract concepts for Roscoe, but often, as in this case, one abstraction leads to another. We talked about candidates, political parties, even taxes, and a woman’s right to choose.
Finally, after digesting as much of this as he could, Roscoe asked, “Who should I vote for, Charlie?”
“You can’t vote, Roscoe, you’re not a citizen.” So there was another concept that I had trouble explaining.
Roscoe made a series of angry caws. He does this when he’s exasperated with me, as if to say, if you’re going to be like that with all your words and contradictory theories, I’ll just revert to being a bird. He cawed three times purposely and then spoke very slowly, to underscore my dimness, “So, Charlie, who can be a citizen and who can’t?”
That’s when the doorbell began driving me crazy.
The last time I saw Vince, only a few months ago, he was propped against a wall in the Tenderloin, looking like a man who’d been clobbered in the head, awaiting his next beating. Now he appeared put-together, almost preppy despite pushing seventy, in a blue seersucker suit and fancy beige loafers with tassels. His denim face mask was made to look like a monkey’s mouth and had stitched lettering that spelled out: Regards. I have to admit I found the mask witty.
I’ve known Vince for years, from the time he bought a condo in the complex after his second or third divorce. He was looking for a friend, back then, and I got a kick out of him—an emergency room doctor who talked incessantly about everything from political theory to medical abnormalities. He also offered pedantic teachings on the lives of poets and jazz musicians.
As an observer by nature, I tend to enjoy Type A narcissistic characters as long as I’m not emotionally involved with them. My tolerance may be selfish in part, because in the company of creatures like Vince I think: I’m sure as heck glad I’m not like him. In any case, I always found it fascinating to notice the disappointment and sadness behind Vince’s pronouncements and bluster, something akin to watching a bittersweet performance in which it’s clear that the clown is actually suffering. I might feel the same about Trump if he hadn’t killed tens of thousands of us, and wrecked our country.
Vince and I played on a trivia team together on Tuesday nights at Murphy’s Irish Pub. Neither of us was particularly sharp with trivia. One night on our way back from the pub, after our team finished last, and Vince again failed in his attempt to pick up a much younger woman, he went on a rant: “You know why we lose, you know why we lose, Charlie, because the fucking questions are designed for Philistines. It’s all moronic pop culture bullshit. The only way to train for this—I mean the idea repulses me—is to sit and watch hours of sit-coms. That’s the only way. Where are the questions about poets and poetry? Why not a token query here and there about America’s only true art form, jazz. And Heidi and Janet, tell me what they know, tell me what they actually know.”
Vince often disparaged our teammates, primarily, I suspect, because neither Heidi nor Janet was drawn to him. If it weren’t for their combined knowledge of TV shows and celebrities our team would hardly compete. The women routinely teased Vince and me for our lack of knowledge about sports. Janet, a local real estate maven with a Brooklyn brogue, really provoked Vince’s ire the time she said, “What’s the matta wit you guys? Are you even too intellectual for baseball?”
A year or so after Vince got the place up here—he also had a house in the city where he primarily lived—he told me about his new girlfriend Pina, and I invited them over for a steak dinner. I remember being impressed with Pina and surprised that Vince was able to find a woman so intelligent and lovely. The effect she had on Vince was remarkable. It was as if he mellowed overnight. He deferred to her like a wild horse that had been broken, and Pina appeared to have a regal ease in the saddle. After she moved into the San Francisco house with Vince, I saw him rarely.
“So what do you have there?” I asked.
“It’s a fifteen pound Chinook salmon that I brought for you and Pina. I just took it out of the fridge. Caught it yesterday on a charter out near the Farallon Islands. I have too much time on my hands, Charlie, and I keep doing crazy ass things I’ve never done before. It was rugged fucking seas out there. I’m not ashamed to say I upchucked, any first-timer would have. Other than that it was quite an adventure. Pricey though, when you figure in the cost of the charter, the fishing license, and all the damn lures I lost. I was the only one of the six of us to land a salmon. Beginner’s luck, I guess.”
It all sounded to me like a fish story, the kind normally told by a guy who didn’t catch the fish. “Why don’t you keep the salmon for yourself, Vince?”
“What am I going to do with a fifteen-pound Chinook? Thought you and Pina could poach it, or some damn thing, and have a party with all your friends.”
Vince was taunting me a bit with that since he knows I pretty much keep to myself. “The only people having parties these days are Republicans, and I don’t happen to know any, Vince. So, Pina tells me that you’re intending to spend some time in Sonoma.”
“Yeah, yeah. I checked the air quality index and the forecast was green for a couple of days. Thought I’d come up and have a look-see.”
“I’d tell Pina you were here. She’s in the middle of a Zoom meeting with a client.”
“Zooming it, huh? That’s my girl.”
I wanted to tell the prick that Pina was no longer his girl and to shove his fifteen-pound Chinook up his ass, but I remembered my manners, held out my hands and said, “Thanks for the fish, Vince.”
“What are we supposed to do with the fucking thing?” Pina said, when I told her about Vince’s visit and the salmon. “Why didn’t you tell him to take his damn fish and go to hell?”
“I thought of it, as a matter of fact, but I didn’t want to start a war.”
Pina stood in the middle of the room with her hands on her hips, looking genuinely angry. I’d rarely seen her so angry. I sat on the sofa with my legs outstretched and reminded myself that it wasn’t me she was angry at.
“It’s not a gift,” she said. “Why would Vince give us a gift? It’s his way of taunting us, like Luca Brasi putting the horse head in Jack Woltz’s bed.”
The comparison seemed a bit much, but I was glad to flash on that scene from “The Godfather.”
“The fish is probably rotten, too.” Pina said, and then surprised me by shaking her head and laughing. “The fucker brings us a fifteen pound fish. A couple of weeks ago he tries to pawn off his leftover meat. What next?”
“I’m thinking some form of fowl.”
“Or a ninety pound pumpkin.”
“Maybe he’s just trying to make amends,” I suggested.
“That’s as likely as Trump making amends.”
Funny, I thought, that Vince has a way of reminding us both of Trump. “Speaking of which, are we still going to celebrate tonight?”
“Of course.” Pina flashed me a mischievous smile and sidled next to me on the sofa. “I put a bottle of Veuve Clicquot in the fridge.”
“Yes, I saw it, it’s next to the Chinook.”
Pina narrowed her eyes on me in a faux glare. “Don’t, Charlie.”
“It so happens that everything in the fridge is now next to the Chinook, it’s so damn big.”
We had decided this morning to celebrate Trump’s COVID diagnosis with a bottle of champagne and a couple of dozen oysters tonight. “After that,” Pina said, “we jump in the sack. You can be my main course tonight, Charlie.”
I had a five o’clock appointment with Bobby Sabbatini at the duck pond, and decided to get there early so I could choose a pair of benches from which we could safely distance. Sabbatini was already there with his wife, Blossom, who’d dyed her hair the color of over-ripe cantaloupe. Usually I’m repelled by these florid hair colors, but on Blossom it somehow looked witty. The couple was seated on one of my favorite benches. Blossom wore a facemask that read: FREE and, to her left, Bobby’s read: VERSE. It was Blossom who spoke first.
“Golly, what a sight for sore eyes you are, Charlie. Look, Bobby, he’s in love. Don’t you see that twinkle he has? I’m right, aren’t I, Charlie?”
I nodded. “You’re right.”
“See.”
I stood in front of their bench and greeted them both. Sabbatini had yet to offer a word, although he wore a wide smile, and an oversized iPad sat on his lap.
“Bobby’s shy at first.”
“You weren’t shy on the phone last week.”
“It’s the in-person thing that gets him.”
Bobby shrugged.
Blossom, deftly deflecting attention from Sabbatini, asked: “So how’s your daughter doing? I’ve forgotten her name.”
“Sally.”
“Yes, Sally. I remember when she was a little kid and got up on the pulpit and recited a Shel Silverstein poem. That was très cool. So how’s she doing?”
“Fine, fine. She just moved to Sonoma. Has her own apartment. I guess you could say she’s in reinvention mode.”
Sabbatini smiled at that, which one might expect from a guy who transformed himself from a police detective into a poetry priest.
“Shall we find a place where we can sit together safely?” I asked.
“Sure,” Blossom agreed. “How about on the grass?” She rose in a flash and led us to an ample patch of lawn. I watched how nimbly both Sabbatini and Blossom sat on the grass, like a pair of teenagers, while I, a newly minted fifty-nine-year- old, with the stiffness of a centurion, was obliged to deliberately squat and then tumble, as slowly as I could manage, onto my butt.
Sabbatini laughed soundlessly and, for the first time, typed on his iPad. A few seconds later a rusty, speakerphone version of his voice crackled: “That’s the way I talk, tak ing lit tle hops as soon as I go mul ti syl lab ic.”
“Wait till I have to get up.”
Sabbatini went back to typing. The crackly voice said: “Have you got a poem for us, Char lie?”
“I’m working on a new one from Louise Gluck who, as you know, just won the Nobel Prize in Literature. I can give you the last couple of lines from her poem “Nostos”:
As one expects of a lyric poet
We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.
Sabbatini smiled and the three of us sat quiet for a moment in the glow of free verse. He tapped out another sentence and pushed the device broadcasting his disembodied voice toward me. “See what you can do with this, Char lie.”
I glanced at him and Blossom before pulling a small bottle of disinfectant out of my pocket.
”Good idea,” said Blossom.
But before taking hold of the iPad and spraying the screen, I said, “Look, Bobby, I could fart around with this thing for awhile and get nowhere. You really need to go back to the developers to get at the source. I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
Sabbatini nodded his head, clearly disappointed.
“I have an idea, though. Your voice comes across just fine when you use single syllable words. You should consider speaking only with them. It will be like learning a new poetic discipline. Retrain your brain to converse monosyllabically.”
Sabbatini typed and the device blurted: “That’s ease for you to say.”
“See you’ve got it. Cut off the parts of words that are understood. You’ll come off as a hipster. It’s not, How are you doing? It’s, How do? Hemingway understood the power of the simple sentence. You can do the same for the sole syl. You once were a detective, now you’re a dick.”
Blossom exploded with a horselaugh.
Sabbatini typed. “But I can’t call you by your name, Char lie.”
“Call me Chuck. My ex-wife did.”
“Did you like it when she did?”
“No, but I will when you do.”
Blossom grinned at me. “It’s a great plan, Chuck.”
Sabbatini went moon-eyed as he gazed at his wife and typed: “What should I call you?”
“Oh, Bob, how I love you. Babe, why don’t you call me Um.”
After I struggled to get to my feet, I suggested that Bob and Um come by the condo. I told them I couldn’t invite them in because we were being very vigilant due to Pina’s asthma. Nonetheless, I had something for them.”
Um pronounced Pina’s name with relish.
“That’s Peen to you,” I said.
“Can we meet Peen from a dist?” Um asked.
“She’s in San Fran now,” I lied.
At the condo, I ascended the stairs quickly. “Back in a flash.”
I handed the old dick the tin-wrapped pack. “It’s a King Sam. Pulled from the sea.”
Bob tapped on his pad. “Thanks, Chuck. Um and I will have some peep come by and I’ll grill it.”