July 5
“Five at-bats,” Brian says as we lift bags of rocks off the pile. “Did I say that already? Five at-bats and I couldn’t get a hit. I mean this is the playoffs, pal. This is when I shine. Down by two, I got runners on the corners and I fly to fucking center.”
Brian’s got this kind of muscular wisdom passed down from his Irish ancestors who survived the potato famine and cursed a lot. Now combine that with a witty ability to sneak attack you with an Oscar Wilde quote, a smile that can sell dirt, and—this may be the most devastating of all—a charm that could let him fuck six different women a week and not make it seem cheap. He wears his smarts like a pair of jeans faded and frayed in all the right places to fit only him. I’ve felt off balance around him since day one. He’s so cool it pisses me off.
“You think I would’ve cut down my swing and popped one over the shortstop’s head. No I fly deep to center. End of inning, end of game.” Unlike me, Brian is never tired.
We’re on East 82nd Street. In front of us are thirty-pound bags of gravel piled five feet high on wooden flats. Our job for the moment is to move every bag from the street, through the brownstone behind us, and into its backyard. Each sack is cinched with a metal clip at the opening, so we grab them by the few inches of excess bag on top, like brown bag lunches. With one bag in each hand, me and Brian walk from the sidewalk through a side gate that lets us into the bottom floor of the brownstone. Oak and leather furniture, wood-framed paintings, and stained-glass lamps are weatherproofed against dirt and dust with plastic tarps. We go through this room, up eight more stairs, and into the courtyard where we lay the sacks on a cleared quarter acre of dirt that in a few months will be a new patio. We stand the bags upright in rows that remind me of the candles we lined the sidewalks of my old neighborhood with on Christmas Eve—spidering out from the church, lighting paths to God’s house.
The last ten days were demolition. We got rid of all the old slate and concrete except for the piece I carried home. Most of our next few weeks will be spent carrying the layers of this new patio bag by bag. The layers go like this: Gravel to level the land. Black tarp to stop plants from using the sunlight to eat, grow. Sand to level and cushion the slate. Concrete to fill the cracks between the new pieces of slate.
We go down the stairs and into the bottom floor of the brownstone. “I sat on the bench literally hiding my face,” Brian says. “I haven’t lost it on the field like that since I was young enough to crap my jock. I’m such a pansy. And I give you shit about how much moving rocks hurts.”
“Balls don’t fall where they should. It’s all so unjust.”
He looks at me with a twisted face. We climb eight stairs and into the backyard, drop off the bags. “That was pretty non-sequiturial of you, Wedgie.” (A nickname I hate.) “But since you brought it up, yeah, you’re damn right it is. For as long as anyone can remember this whole life is unjust.”
First week on this job together we broke for lunch at a deli on Lexington. At the counter, I ordered a turkey wedge, lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise and Brian said, “You from Westchester?”
Soon as I heard that word I felt like a porcupine folded inside out. I said, “What?” to stall for time. And he said, “That’s what they call heroes up there. I got cousins in Yonkers. In the City we call em heroes, up there they say wedge.”
It was all kinds of wrong. Yonkers was never a word he was supposed to say, let alone know someone from. I breathed into a closing throat, knowing I needed to work out an alternate past immediately. Before Brian mentioned Yonkers he had been helping me wipe away my grease spot of an adolescence. Our system was that we saw each other Monday through Friday and didn’t have to know anything more than what was on the daily schedule. “No, I’m from Staten Island. I told you that.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Why wouldn’t I have?”
“Fuck should I know? Then why’d you call it a wedge?”
“That’s not allowed?”
“Hey, I mean no personal disparagement about how you choose to order your lunch, but you sound like you’re from Westchester. That’s all, Wedgie boy.”
The guy behind the counter said, “Six seventy-five,” so I reached into my pocket with my dirty hand and the semantics argument was over.
But the nickname stuck.
We go back down eight stairs, into the brownstone. “Not to break your stones too hard, Wedgie, but discovering life is unjust is not an original find.”
“It’s senseless too. I mean, we’ve spent the last month hauling bags of rocks down the stairs, up the stairs, and out the back of this woman’s house, so we can build her a deck. She’s in a wheelchair, she can’t even walk on it. And by the time we finish it she’ll probably be dead. So why even build the damn thing?”
“To get a paycheck, friend.” Up eight stairs, onto the street, pick up more sacks. “Think of it like this, even if she dies before we finish—and I’m not saying she won’t, the sweet rich old bag—the broad left you part of her fortune. If you wanna know why, go ahead, figure it out. Whether you get your answer or not you’re still gonna be hungry the next day. Better question is what you’re gonna do while you’re being fed.”
Down eight stairs, into the brownstone. Up eight stairs, into the backyard, drop the bags. “You get where I’m coming from?” Brian wants to know. Down eight stairs, into the brownstone.
“Maybe,” I tell him, trying to shrug off the subject. Up eight stairs, onto the sidewalk.
A woman hot enough to make men nosedive in the street walks by us. Brian says, “Hello ma’am.” And she smiles at him. “If you’re feeling as pretty as you look the world must seem right today.” She keeps walking and smiling.
“Dude, where do you get this stuff?”
We lean against the pile of rocks. “Same place we all do. It starts here,” he points to his crotch, “and if you’ve got half a brain it goes to here,” he points to his mouth. “When you been rejected as much as I have you start to use it more freely. It’s counter-intuitive, I know, but I’m living proof.” We pick up our next round of bags. “Ninety-eight out of a hundred women on the street think I’m repulsive. The other two are willing to look through the repulsion right to the charm. Respect the odds, play the odds.”
Down eight stairs into the brownstone. “When I first got this job,” Brian says, “my father told me, ‘At least you’re not in a mine where you can get black lung, or a factory in Mexico where someone will cut your throat for forty-five cents.’ You can argue with the guy, or you can get comfortable on your side of the scale.” Up eight stairs into the backyard. “Me? I got no problem taking this rich broad’s money. It’s clean. Better than wearin a tie for some real estate company.” He motions to an empty section that has no bags. “Let’s fill that gap.” We drop the bags.
“How’s it better?”
“Cause real estate is inherently an ass-fuck business. Everyone knows it. And I’d rather not fuck people in the ass for a living.” He stands still, pulls his gloves off and wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. “My family’s owned two houses in Jackson Heights for seventy years. My grandfather and his brother built them. We don’t pay rent to no one.