Moving On: Fish & Company

justice1-278x300It was noon when I came to, awoken by a clatter in the kitchen. There was a Kenzo named Jay Caufield sitting shirtless at our table. Jay was counting bills out by denomination, scribbling notes out with a pencil. I took a seat, and then whispered, “How’s it going?”

Jay Caufield neglected to respond.

I lumbered across the kitchen, crackling limbs in constant protest. I rinsed a tumbler neath the spigot, filled it up with lukewarm water.

Jay wandered over to a closet, disappeared into it briefly. He re-emerged cradling what appeared to be a suitcase. Jay emptied its contents, assembled them bare into a balance. He stood the balance on our table, pulled out a big bag of cocaine. Jay broke the bag down into nickels. He broke the balance down and placed it back into the suitcase. Jay washed his hands beneath our spigot. He stashed the suitcase in the closet, and then he hurried out of our apartment.

***

Jay Caufield spent the summers oiled and shirtless, ill-fitting T draped like a rag across his shoulder. Jay gelled his hair like vinyl grooves, and he spoke with a North Philadelphia dialect. “What the fuck?” became “Whut da fuck?” “That’s the motherfucker,” became “Dat’s da mudderfucker.” I had no idea where Jay Caufield lived, or whether Jay even had an apartment of his own. I only knew that he was bound to come around, and that he had somehow gotten permission to stash his cocaine inside our closet.

Bobbi Jean and I had been living together for three weeks at that point, and the compound strain of living and working together had already taken its toll. Bobbi Jean complained that I did not clean up after myself; that I did not chew with my mouth shut or towel off after showering. I, in turn, complained about Bobbi Jean allowing a guy who she had just started seeing to move in. That guy was Chris

That guy was Chris Pascal – one of several Two Streeters living in an apartment downstairs. Chris Pascal was a scoundrel, particularly skilled at reeling in rock-bottom prey, slow and steady, like an angler. Chris had started sleeping at our apartment come the first week in June. When Chris and his friends got evicted, he moved all of his belongings upstairs into Bobbi Jean’s room. Bobbi Jean did not consult me on this point. And for a time, I did not make a fuss. Bobbi Jean was my boss, three years my senior, responsible for securing our two-bedroom apartment, as well as brokering a deal that allowed us to pay off our rent in weekly spurts.

Bobbi Jean got Chris a job as a caramel-corn cook along the front of Surfside Pier. Chris accepted the position, then called out sick three times in the first week. A few days into the second week, Chris left an hour into his shift, complaining of nausea. I happened to be at the apartment on that evening, sitting in the kitchen with my girlfriend when Chris came walking in the door. Chris was carrying a new pair of sneakers. He was holding hands with an uber-tan blonde.

The situation was uncomfortable, rendered all the more so given that all four of us were now resigned to sitting around the kitchen table. There was no couch in our apartment. There was no love seat, or upholstered chairs. There was only my bedroom and a hidden staircase leading up to Bobbi Jean’s room, which, in turn, led to an outdoor porch along the roof. Chris did not dare take the blonde girl upstairs to Bobbi Jean’s room. And so the four of us sat and we talked until I left to walk Meghan home.I did not tell Bobbi Jean. I did not want to be involved.

***

By the time Bobbi Jean and I got home from work the final Friday in June, there were gym bags strewn about the kitchen and an unfamiliar car parked in the driveway. There was a frizzy-haired dude passed out in my bedroom, and another Two Streeter passed out shirtless across the kitchen floor. Bobbi Jean evicted Chris at the end of that weekend, citing several pieces of jewelry that had gone missing from her drawer. Forty-eight hours later, Chris Pascal was living with a mother of two in an apartment next door.

***

Come the first week in July, Chris’s friend Frannie showed up at our door, insisting that he’d left a bag of his clothes inside our apartment. When I couldn’t find the bag, Frannie became adamant that I had stolen it.

Frannie stood 6’4. He kept a news clipping in his wallet, recounting the night his golden-glove father had beaten a man to death outside a bar. On the afternoon that Frannie confronted me, he threatened to knock my teeth down my throat. “I’ll knock your teeth down your throat,” is what Frannie had said. Frannie had been standing in our driveway at the time with a contingent of his friends blocking the available exits. Frannie was staring down at me from above.

“Look, man, I don’t want anything to do with this,” I said.

“You should’ve thought about that before you stole my clothes,” Frannie said.

“I didn’t steal your clothes,” I said. “I never asked for this.”

Frannie stepped to me so close that I could see his nostril hairs.

“Leave him alone,” a voice called. That voice belonged to Julie, who was one of our neighbors. Julie was carrying a garbage bag full of clothes. She hurled that bag forward like a gunny sack. “He didn’t steal anything,” Julie shouted. She turned her back and disappeared behind a screen door.

***

I asked around for Jay Caufield’s address. I headed over to his place after I clocked out later that same evening. As it turned out, Jay lived alone back by the bay, behind a shack without a lawn. I opened the door. Jay was sitting next to a table. His eyes ran wide and weeping, like weighted bags or purple sores.

“What’s goin’ on?” I wondered. I slapped my palm against the table.

“Justice,” Jay shouted. His head popped on a spring. “Bob motherfuckin’ Justice.”

“So this is your place,” I said. I took a gander around. “Not bad. I think I like it.”

I wandered over to the spigot, grabbed a tumbler from the rack. I poured myself a cup of beer from a quarter keg inside the fridge.

“I heard you’re upset,” Jay called from behind.

“Upset?” I said.

“Huh?” Jay said.

“Nevermind,” I said. I took a seat across the table. “Who told you I was upset?”

“Who told me dat?” Jay Caufield said, first quietly, then loud. “Who told me dat?”

“Bobbi Jean?” I said.

“Bobbi Jean,” Jay said. He was nodding his head in approval.

“What else did she tell you?”

“She told me you were being a prick,” Jay said.

“Is that right?” I said. I took a long sip of my beer.

“Don’t be upset,” Jay insisted.

“Why not?” I said. “Wouldn’t you be?”

“You don’t get it,” Jay told me. His head was hanging low beneath the light. “She’s not doin’ it for me. She’s sure as fuck not doin’ it for me. I can tell ya dat.”

“OK,” I said. I wasn’t entirely sure what we were talking about. “Then who exactly is she doing it for?”

“She’s doing it for Fes,” Jay Caufield said. “That whole thing wit da closet and keepin’ all our shit at your place, that was Gerry’s idea.”

“So what?” I said, slightly taken aback. “That gives her the right to cast me in the middle of her bullshit? To treat me like some low-level employee whenever I summon the guts to confront her?”

“What about you?” Jay Caufield said. “It seems to me you can give just like you get.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.

“It means I’ve been comin’ up to dat boardwalk for close to a month now, inviting you down here to drink. It means that every fuckin’ time you blow me off like I’m some goddamn rat. Meanwhile, you’re always correctin’ my grammar like you’re my goddamn grandmother or some shit. I mean, I know you and shit so it’s cool, but I can remember way back in the day, I kind of wanted to beat your ass.”

And so I sat, considering whether Jay Caufield might’ve had a point. It dawned on me that Bob Justice – the nickname I had earned during my first summer in Wildwood – was actually a dig on my self-righteous verve.

I finished two beers, then helped Jay Caufield into bed. I made no stink about him stashing his cocaine in our apartment. There were angles worth considering, and ample muscle had its draw.

Day 245

***

(Moving On is a regular feature on IFB)

©Copyright Bob Hill