Screwed: A Novel (Daniel McEvoy 2)

MY DAY JUST GOT A WHOLE LOT MORE COMPLICATED AND I can’t help feeling that a large percentage of that is down to the poison chalice of friendship with Dr. Zebulon Kronski. But my own mouth has gotta shoulder some responsibility too. Every time I have a face-to-face with Mike, I find myself back talking and slinging zingers. When I get too anxious it’s like my mouth runs independently of my mind, which is shriveling like a cut of meat on a hot rock. Simon Moriarty, my sometime shrink, commented on this tendency during one of our sessions when I’d made a stab at humor to gloss over my shell shock.

“You have two problems, Sergeant McEvoy.” He told me as I stood by the window looking out over the quad.

“Only two,” I remember saying. “We are getting somewhere.”

“You see that’s one of your problems right there. All the chatter. The verbal diarrhea.”

“Verbal diarrhea gives me the shits,” my mouth said.

Simon clapped his hands. “There it is again. The technical name for this tic is denial. You use it as a coping mechanism.”

“Denial. That word is too complicated for a lowly sergeant, Doctor.”

“Once upon a time you were vaguely amusing, but now you’re wasting your own time.”

I relented. “Okay, Simon. Tell me.”

“Denial is a classic defense mechanism. It protects the ego from things that the individual cannot cope with. So the patient will basically refuse to believe that he is experiencing stress, and I imagine you crack wise in any stressful situation without even realizing it. The more dangerous the situation, the more smart-assed you get.”

I mulled this over. It was undeniably true that I often shot off my mouth and hit myself in the foot. I had thought this was bravado, something for other people to grudgingly admire.

Something occurred to me. “Hey, Doc. You said I had a second problem?”

“That’s right.”

“You planning on telling me?”

Simon scooted to the window on his office chair and lit a cheroot, blowing the smoke outside.

“Your second problem is that you’re not very funny, and the only way people are going to tolerate a smart-ass is if he’s amusing.”

This wounded me. I had always quietly thought myself reasonably witty.

Zeb is in the corridor begging Manny to hit him in the stomach.

“Come on, man, punch me,” he urges, yanking up his shirttails to reveal a stomach with about as much definition as a bag of milk. “Just do it. I’ve been working out with the Zoom Overmaster Trainer to the Stars DVDs. You couldn’t hurt me if you tried. These abs are like rocks.”

I can see Manny Booker’s brain going into meltdown. People do not usually ask to be assaulted, and yet hurting people is what he is employed to do. I put them both out of their misery by jabbing Zeb in the solar plexus on my way past. He collapses in a breathless ball and I can’t say that I don’t grin a little.

“You should ask for a refund on those DVDs, Zeb,” I say, still walking, which must look pretty cool if anyone’s filming.

I’m tempted to stop and watch Zeb writhe on the carpet, but it’s enough that I can hear him retch.

I am two blocks away before he draws level with me in his Prius. Someone told Zeb that Leonardo drives a Prius and that was it.

“What the fuck, Irish? You are testing our friendship.”

I keep walking. You can’t enter into a debate with Zeb Kronski or it will drive you demented. All the same, I can’t help thinking what I would reply.

I’m testing our friendship? Me? Because of you I’m delivering a mystery envelope to a touchy guy in SoHo. Because of you I am involved, yet again, in a life-or-death situation. The life being mine and also probably the death.

“I thought we were a team, Dan. Semper fi, bro.”

Semper fi, my Irish arse. He was a medic with the Israeli army, I was a peacekeeper for the UN. Not a Marine between us.

I stride down the block and he cruises alongside like a john.

“Is this about Mike’s old lady? Okay, I was getting in good there, man, but at a later date I was gonna bring you in to lay some emerald pipe. I was doing it for both of us.”

I grit my teeth. Really? Both of us? So how come I’ve got this envelope in my pocket and you’re off to inject Jersey housewives’ faces with cheap Chinese filler? Doesn’t seem fair.

Zeb lights a fat cigar and fills the Toyota’s interior with blue smoke. “I was thinking long term. I shoot Mike’s bitches up for a couple of years and then we’re golden. How was I to know Mrs. Madden would get herself electro-fuckin’-cuted?”

A couple more blocks, then I’m at the casino and Zeb will find himself barred from Slotz.

“I can’t believe you hit me,” says Zeb, who never could stay penitent for long. “I thought you were my bobeshi.”

I am starting to believe that Zeb comes out with these incredibly dense statements just to trick me into engaging. If it is a ploy, it works every time.

I take two rapid steps to the Prius’s window. “You can’t believe I hit you?” I shout, drawing looks from the clusters of midmorning cigarette-break employees on the sidewalk. “You were begging to be hit. You lifted up your shirt, for Christ’s sake.”

“I wasn’t begging to be hit by you,” argues Zeb. “That other guy was a jelly roll. My abs coulda taken a shot from him.”

I change tack. “And bobeshi?” I say, slapping the Toyota with my palm. “Really?”

“Hey,” says Zeb. “Take it easy on the car. Have you got something against the environment?”

“I’m a feckin’ Irish Catholic and even I know bobeshi means grandmother. I’m your grandmo

ther now?”

Zeb is unrepentant. “Patients like the Yiddish, so I throw it in every now and then. Makes me seem wise or some shit. I was just going for the family vibe, like we’re brothers. I’m more of a Hebrew guy to be honest, Dan. Is that what this whole sulk is about? I don’t know Yiddish?”

It’s a goddamn maze arguing with this guy. Like trying to hold onto an eel, if you’ll excuse me mangling my metaphors.

I rest on the car for a moment, feeling it thrumming gently through my forehead, then I straighten.

“Okay. Go home, Zeb.”

“Are we good?”

“Yeah. Golden. Whatever. Just forget it.”

Zeb flicks ash onto the asphalt. “What about my accent?”

I’m beaten now, he knows it. “Your accent?”

“You said my Irish accent was bad. I worked on that, man. I watched Far and Away twice.” He screws up his face for a Tom Cruise impersonation. “You’re a corker, Shannon,” he lilts. “What a corker you are.”

I feel like heaving on the sidewalk. I could be dead by nightfall and this dick is nursing a bruised ego.

“That’s good,” I say for peace sake. “Uncanny.”

Zeb’s eyes find the middle distance. “I coulda played the shit out of that role.”

“Maybe they’ll do a reboot,” I say.

I know this term because Zeb and I spend a lot of our free time, as two single middle-aged bucks, watching TV. How cool and edgy is that? Most of our references are pop culture and our favorites at the moment are old episodes of the egregiously canceled shows Terriers and Deadwood.

Whores get fuckin’.

Classic.

Why the hell would anyone cancel Deadwood? If that guy ever comes into my club he better have the viewing figures in his pocket.

Zeb perks up. “Reboot. Fuckin’ A.”

“Fuckin’ A,” I agree wearily.

Seeing it all ahead of him, Zeb guns the Prius and shoots off down the street at the speed of a four-year-old on roller skates, and I wonder not for the first time whether my life would be less pathetic without him in it.

Fuckin’ A.

At the raggedy end of Cloisters’ nightclub alley sits Slotz. My kingdom.