Motherless Brooklyn

Danny came out of the back, stubbing a cigarette in the countertop ashtray as he passed. He always dressed the prettiest of us Minna Men, but his lean black suit suddenly looked like it had been worn too many days in a row. He reminded me of an out-of-work mortician. He glanced at me and Loomis and pursed his lips but didn’t speak, and I couldn’t really get anything out of his eyes. I felt I didn’t know him with Minna gone. Danny and I functioned as expressions of two opposed ends of Frank Minna’s impulses: him a tall, silent body that attracted women and intimidated men, me a flapping inane mouth that covered the world in names and descriptions. Average us and you might have Frank Minna back, sort of. Now, without Minna for a conduit between us, Danny and I had to begin again grasping one another as entities, as though we were suddenly fourteen years old again and occupying our opposite niches at St. Vincent’s Home for Boys.

In fact, I had a sudden yearning that Danny should be holding a basketball, so that I could say “Good shot!” or exhort him to dunk it. Instead we stared at one another.

“ ’Scuse me,” said Loomis, scooting past me and waving his hand at Danny. “Gotta use your toilet.” He disappeared into the back.

“Where’s Tony?” I said.

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

“Well, I don’t know. I hope he’s doing better than Gilbert. I just left him in the lockup at the Sixth.” I realized it sounded as if I’d actually seen him, but I let the implication stand. Loomis wouldn’t call me on it, even if he heard from the bathroom.

Danny didn’t look all that surprised. The shock of Minna’s death made this new turn unimpressive by comparison, I supposed. “What’s he in for?”

“Ullmanslaughter!-the guy Tony sent Gilbert to find, he turned up dead. They pinned it on Gilbert.”

Danny only scratched at the end of his nose thoughtfully.

“So where were you?” I said. “I thought you were minding the store.”

“Went for a bite.”

“I was here for forty-five minutes.” A lie-I doubted it was more than fifteen, but I felt like pushing him. “Guess we missed each other.”

“Any calls? See that homosapien, homogenize, genocide, can’tdecide, candyeyes, homicide cop?”

He shook his head. He was holding something back-but then it occurred to me that I was too.

Danny and I stooensively regarding each other, waiting for the next question to form. I felt a vibration deep inside, profounder tics lurking in me, gathering strength. Or perhaps I was only feeling my hunger at last.

Loomis popped out of the back. “Jesus, you guys look bad. What a day, huh?”

We stared at him.

“Well, I think we owe Frank a moment of silence, don’t you guys?”

I wanted to point out that what Loomis had interrupted was a moment of silence, but I let it go.

“Little something in the way of remembrance? Bow your heads, you turkeys. The guy was like your father. Don’t end the day arguing with each other, for crying out loud.”

Loomis had a point, or enough of one anyway, to shame me and Danny into letting him have his way. So we stood in silence, and when I saw that Danny and Loomis had each closed their eyes I closed mine too. Together we made up some lopped-off, inadequate version of the Agency-Danny standing for himself and Tony, I for myself, and Loomis, I suppose, for Gilbert. But I was moved anyway, for a second.

Then Loomis ruined it with a clearly audible fart, which he coughed to cover, unsuccessfully. “Okay,” he said suddenly. “How’s about that ride home, Lionel?”

“Walk,” I said.

Humbled by his own body, the garbage cop didn’t argue, but headed for the door.

Danny volunteered to sit by the L &L phone. He already had a pot of coffee brewing, he pointed out, and I could see he was in a pacing mood, that he wanted the space of the office to himself. It suited me well enough to leave him there. I went upstairs, without our exchanging more than a few sentences.

Upstairs I lit a candle and stuck it in the center of my table, beside Minna’s beeper and watch. Loomis’s clumsy pass at ritual haunted me. I needed one of my own. But I was also hungry. I poured out the diluted drink and made myself a fresh one, set it out on the table too. Then I unwrapped the sandwich from Zeod’s. I considered for a moment, fighting the urge just to sink my teeth into it, then went to the cabinet and brought back a serrated knife and small plate. I cut the sandwich into six equal pieces, taking unexpectedly deep pleasure in the texture of the kaiser roll’s resistance to the knife’s dull teeth, and arranged the pieces so they were equidistant on the plate. I returned the knife to my counter, then centered plate, candle and drink on the table in a way that soothed my grieving Tourette’s. If I didn’t stem my syndrome’s needs I would never clear a space in which my own sorrow could dwell.

Then I went to my boom box and put on the saddest song in my CD collection, Prince’s “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore.”