Bronx Noir

“There’s a bakery round the corner.” Not unfriendly, not inviting. His voice carried a trace still of his mother’s Ireland. He had spent summers there, I recalled, his ma’s folks’ Donegal place. This bar was his now, I took it, had been his father’s, but he must be dead, ancient as he’d been back then. They all must be gone.

“I see a pot there.”

“That’s tar.”

“Ah. Club soda, then. With cranberry.”

He gave me a wary nod, assessing me for hipsterdom or worse, sobriety. But my clothes, though clean, were downmarket and decades-old, my demeanor humble. Please, warden. He scooped some ice into a glass, squirted soda onto it, and added a pink splash from a plastic jug. He tossed a cardboard coaster before me, nestled the glass on the word Patsy’s swashed across its center, plunked a swizzle stick between the cubes, and tapped the bar with his knuckles. On him.

“Thanks.” I gently lay a couple of surviving bucks down. I had nothing, really. My sister’s regretful wad, folded into that recrimination I didn’t read when I’d reclaimed my belongings, had disappeared quickly. Train fare, subway fare, fare. I was down to tips. And maybe that key.

He turned again to the TV. “The church?” He spoke over his shoulder, but shifted his position so his back wasn’t to me. I remembered. People did come to see it, St. Nick’s. The local landmark. Basilica of the Bronx, sans basilica, sans historical interest, really, but passing tragic for me.

“My mother.”

“The Oxford, then?” Where most of the remaining Irish lived, the well-tended, tired apartments in the shadow of the church, in the clutches of it, off Devoe Park.

“I’ve been away.”

“You do look sorta familiar.” My hair was thinner, my sallow face held penitential hollows. I had the bearing of forbearance, which is to say I looked beaten down. He eyed me, his brow furrowing. “What’s her name? Your ma?”

“Doyle. Agnes Doyle. My sister Bella lives with her.”

“And you’re Davey. You must be. I remember Bella. I still see her at church every now and again.” Danny had folded his arms across his chest, the bar rag draping over his left shoulder. I couldn’t read his expression. It was, if anything, neutral. “You must be out.”

“Must be. Yesterday.”

“So. A new life then.”

“I hope so.”

“At mass, were you?”

“Yeah. Don’t believe much, now, but it couldn’t hurt.”

“No. But.”

He meant the memories. Even in a changing neighborhood, some things are remembered. The scene of the crime. It had actually been part of a long scene, that had begun at the check-cashing place where my sister once worked.

The lump of a drunk down the bar turned from his drink and looked over at me, sensing something. I assumed my prison face, and he shifted his glassy eyes down again. I’d spent several unremembered years here, in various stages of blackout and fury, seething over something petty, something my brother said, something my mother did, something my sister wanted.

“So you’re off the sauce.”

“Yeah. Best thing for me. Ruined my life.”

“It can.”

“You must see a lot of that.”

“Sometimes. But it’s an old crowd here.”

“So…how’s business?”

“We manage.”

“And your ma?”

“Back over. For a while now, with her sister, near Ards. Rural ass of backwards. It’d drive me batty. We manage here.”

“We.”

“My wife’s a lawyer now. You remember Sheila. Sheila Corrigan, from seventh grade?”

“Of course.” Bouncy and becurled and just a little shiftyeyed. I was surprised she’d made it through the LSATs, let alone passed the bar. “That’s great. Good for you.”

“We live over in Riverdale, near her mom now, but we own this building, so it’s an investment. I’m a landlord now too.”

“And it’s all starting to come back.”

“We were lucky.”

“Location.”

“It’s coming back. Near the church is good. And the church isn’t going anywhere. So then. So.”

His unasked question: my plans. Practice for me for Ma, perhaps, and for Danny something to tell later to wee Sheila, as we used to call her, the cute curly-haired little minx. Jimmy had a thing for her back then. Before we were old enough to fail, which wasn’t too old at all.

“Weighing options. Such as they are. Open to suggestions.”

Danny nodded.

“I taught a bit up there, English to some of the cons, reading too, and the library. I worked there. Maybe, I don’t know. Something. I don’t know.” They don’t hire cons in the school system. And I’d never seriously considered it anyway. “Social work, maybe.” A lot of us end up there, facing what we laughingly called our demons. “I see White Castle is hiring.”

“You’ll find something. You always were the smart one,” Danny said. “Good you’re on track again.” Such forgiveness. Well, we hadn’t hurt him. At least, not that time, not directly. God knows I’d been thrown out of Patsy’s enough before that night.