“I’ll go first,” she decided. “I’ve got the window seat. I’d have to climb over you if you went first.”
“That’s very logical of you.”
She looked at herself in the mirror and took a deep breath before hopping out of the bathroom as if she had a parachute on her back.
I locked the door after her, sat on the toilet seat and buried my face in my hands. I thought about spending the rest of the flight in here, but the chemical stink would have killed me.
How many women had I tasted since “Sweet Days” hit the charts? The answer was a blur, like trying to count snowflakes in a blizzard. Unlike snowflakes, the women were all alike, except for one, the one who’d inspired the song. Sadly, she wasn’t the one I’d married.
She was the one who ran away and broke my heart. Things were getting better, though. Twenty years on, I didn’t think about her more than once or twice an hour.
A tap on the bathroom door—it was a flight attendant, asking that I please return to my seat and put my seat belt on, as the captain was anticipating turbulence.
I put my jeans on and went back to my seat. When I got there she was fast asleep with her head against the window, the airline blindfold over her eyes, a blanket tucked up under her chin.
Pretty smart. She was going to pretend it had all been a dream. She slept the rest of the way to JFK, greeting me cordially when she awoke.
Fine with me. I wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened, too. It would be easier all around.
We got off the plane and walked together down a long ramp toward the luggage carousel. She had baggage to pick up but I had nothing but my carry-on bag, so this was a perfect departure point. We stopped walking and shook hands, as if one of us had just sold life insurance to the other.
“It was really nice meeting you,” I said, well aware that the verb in that statement was a lot milder than it could have been.
She seemed to appreciate it, though. She hesitated before handing me a card.
“If you ever want to get together,” she said, leaving the sentence incomplete as she turned and headed for the carousel.
I watched her go, then looked at the card. Rosalind Pomer, Attorney at Law. Now I knew her name.
It was well past midnight in New York. I was exhausted in every way a body and soul can be exhausted. I couldn’t just show up at my parents’ house, unannounced and reeking of a sky hump. I decided to check into one of those cheap airport motels, the ones you drive past and wonder who in their right mind would stay in dumps like those.
It was only forty-eight bucks for the night, tax included. For the first time in ages I was rolling in money, plenty of money, so I paid in cash. They gave me a boxy room near the ice machine in the hallway, and between the clunking of the ice cubes and the roar of planes it wasn’t a particularly restful night.
But there was a good strong shower, and I must have stood beneath its hot spray for twenty minutes, scrubbing away paint stains, Rosalind Pomer, and, I hoped, all the sins I’d committed in the City of Angels.
CHAPTER TWO
I slept late, almost late enough to be charged for another day. It was Sunday afternoon, just past two P.M. I got dressed, packed up, and went to the front desk to check out. The pathetic rubble of a complimentary breakfast was available if I wanted it, coffee in Styrofoam cups and one solitary Entenmann’s doughnut, alone in a pile of crumbs.
I took a cup of black coffee, got some change from the desk clerk and went to the pay phone. The coffee was like battery acid but it packed the kick I needed. Two swallows and I was wide awake, ready to do what I had to do. The phone number hadn’t changed since my childhood.
“Hello?”
“Mom, it’s Mickey.”
“Oh my God, you sound so close!”
I swallowed. “I’m in New York, Mom.”
“Oh, my God! My God!!”
“Mom—”
“Are you all right? What happened? What’s wrong?”
“Why do you ask if something’s wrong?”
“You just show up out of the blue, and I’m not supposed to wonder?”
“Listen, Mom, I’m coming home for a while, okay? Would that be all right?”
She made a weird sound, the marriage of a cry and a laugh. “You don’t need permission to come home!”
“Well…thanks.”
“Where are you?”
“The airport.”
“Which one? Want your father to pick you up?”
“I’ll take a cab.”
“They’re so expensive!”
“I’m on my way, Mom.”
She had more to say but I hung up the phone, half sorry that I’d called. Now there was no turning back. My mother was waiting for me.
I hailed a yellow cab and of course the Muslim driver wasn’t delighted to be taking me to an address on the edge of Queens, knowing he probably wouldn’t get a return fare. As we got rolling I thought he was muttering about it to himself, but then I saw that he had a small cell phone clamped onto his ear and was chattering away to someone in his native language. I asked him to please hang up until the end of the ride. He nodded and did as he was asked but his eyes flashed with anger. Maybe he was a terrorist, talking about plans for another attack on the city, and I’d interrupted him. Maybe I was a hero.
I tipped him four bucks, and as he roared away I stood in front of my childhood home and stared in wonder at the little green asbestos-shingled house on Glenwood Street.
I had not been home in twenty years.
In the early days of my career I stayed at places like the Plaza Hotel whenever I came to New York (and sometimes wangled a room for my parents).
But I’d avoided the old neighborhood until now, until I had no choice.
The house seemed to have shrunk. Be it ever so humble, it was fully paid for, thanks to me. When the “Sweet Days” money rolled in I paid off the balance on my old man’s mortgage, $22,000. That was probably the only smart thing I did with my money.
So I had a right to be here, if only for that. My knees trembled as I approached the front door, climbed the three cement steps to the stoop and froze.
I didn’t know whether to walk right in, or knock on the door. How ridiculous was this? How many thousands of times had I barged in after school, dropped my books on the kitchen table, and headed straight for the chocolate milk in the refrigerator?
But that was a long, long time ago. Things had changed. Everything had changed.
Like a timid salesman I tapped on the door, almost inaudibly, but my mother heard it, all right. The door swung open and there she was, looking up at me as if I were a star in the night sky she was trying to recognize.
I’d forgotten about how short she was, barely five feet when I was in my teens, maybe four-eleven now with the shrinkage of time. But her wide-set eyes were still as I remembered them, radiant beneath a wide brow. Her short hair had gone salt and peppery but she still combed it straight back, like a duchess of discipline in a British boarding school.
“Michael,” she said, and then her arms were around me, briefly but tightly, as if she’d just pulled me in off the ledge of a skyscraper. She’s never once called me “Mickey,” hating it when the promoters decided my nickname would sell more records than my proper