Motherless Brooklyn

But there was nothing to hear. The sounds of driving. Minna and the giant were sitting in perfect silence. Now I couldn’t believe that the man in the Zendo was the same as the giant-that garrulous, pretentious voice I’d heard couldn’t have shut up this long, it seemed to me. It was surprising enough that Minna wasn’t chattering, making fun of something, pointing out landmarks. Was he scared? Afraid to let on he was miked? Did he think we were still with him? Why did he want us with him anyway?

I didn’t know anything.

I made six oinking sounds.

We sat waiting.

More.

“That’s the way of a big Polish lug, I guess,” said Minna. “Always gotta stay within sniffing distance of a pierogi.”

Then: “Urrhhf.” Like the giant had smashed him in the stomach. “Where’s Polish?” I asked Coney, lifting away one earphone.

“Wha?”

“Where around here’s Polish? Eat me pierogi lug!”

“I dunno. It’s all Polish to me.”

“Sunnyside? Woodside? Come on, Gilbert. Work with me. He’s somewhere Polish.”

“Where’d the Pope visit?” mused Coney. It sounded like the start of a joke, but I knew Coney. He couldn’t remember jokes. “That’s Polish, right? What’s it, uh, Greenpoint?”

“Greenpoint’s Brooklyn, Gilbert,” I said, before thinking. “We’re in Queens.” Then we both turned our heads like cartoon mice spotting a cat. The Pulaski Bridge. We were a few yards from the creek separating Queens and Brooklyn, specifically Greenpoint.

It was something to do anyway. “Go,” I said.

“Keep listening,” said Coney. “We can’t just drive around Greenpoint.”

We soared across the little bridge, into the mouth of Brooklyn.

“Which way, Lionel?” said Coney, as if he thought Minna were feeding me a constant stream of instructions. I shrugged, palms up toward the roof of the Lincoln. The gesture ticcified instantly, and I repeated ieight=”0emrug, palms flapped open, grimace. Coney ignored me, scanning the streets below for a sign of the K-car, driving as slow as he could down the Brooklyn side of the Pulaski’s slope.

Then I heard something. Car doors opening, slamming, the scuff of footsteps. Minna and the giant had reached their destination. I froze in mid-tic, concentrating.

“Harry Brainum Jr.,” said Minna in his mockingest tone. “I guess we’re gonna stop in for a quick installation, huh?”

Nothing from the giant. More steps.

Who was Harry Brainum Jr.?

Meanwhile we came off the lit bridge, where the notion of a borough laid out for us, comprehensive, had been briefly indulgeable. Down instead onto McGuinness Boulevard, where at street level the dark industrial buildings were featureless and discouraging. Brooklyn is one big place, and this wasn’t our end of it.

“You know-if you can’t beat ’em, Brainum, right?” Minna went on in his needling voice. In the background I heard a car horn-they weren’t indoors yet. Just standing on the street somewhere, tantalizingly close.

Then I heard a thud, another exhalation. Minna had taken a second blow.

Then Minna again: “Hey, hey-” Some kind of struggle I couldn’t make out.

“Fucking-” said Minna, and then I heard him get hit again, lose his wind in a long, mournful sigh.

The scary thing about the giant was that he didn’t talk, didn’t even breathe heavy enough for me to hear.

“Harry Brainum Jr.,” I said to Coney. Then, afraid it sounded like a tic to him, I added, “Name mean anything to you, Gilbert?”

“Sorry?” he said slowly.

“Harry Brainum Jr.,” I repeated, furious with impatience. There were times when I felt like a bolt of static electricity communing with figures that moved through a sea of molasses.

“Sure,” he said, jerking his thumb in the direction of his window. “We just passed it.”

“What? Passed what?”

“It’s like a tool company or something. Big sign.” My breath caught. Minna was talking to us, guiding us. “Turn around.”

“What, back to Queens?”

“No, Brainum, wherever you saw that,” I said, wanting to strangle him. Or at least find his fast-forward button and push it. “They’re out of the car. Make a U-turn.”

“It’s just a block or two.”

“Well, go, then. Brain me, Junior!”/p›

Coney made the turn, and right away there it was. HARRY BRAINUM JR. INC. STEEL SHEETS., in giant circus-poster letters on the brick wall of a two-story plant that took up a whole block of McGuinness, just short of the bridge.

Seeing BRAINUM on the wall set off a whole clown parade of associations. I remembered mishearing Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus as a child. Barnamum Bailey. Like Osmium, Cardamom, Brainium, Barnamum, Where’smymom: the periodic table of elements, the heavy metals. Barnamum Bailey might also be George and Eat Me Bailey’s older brother. Or were they all the same guy? Not now, I begged my Tourette’s self. Think about it later.