Ambient 06 - Going, Going, Gone

You don’t think so?«
    »Broom swept clean, down in those parts,« I said. »The records were dumped along with everything else. Never known a racer to show up south of the Ohio River.«
    He nodded. »Closing time,« he said. »Glad you came in. This pays half the rent.«
    »Jim,« I said, »you ever want to go out for drink? Something?«
    His face brightened, then dimmed slightly. Even so it was plain as the nose on his face that he’d have jumped over five fences to go out with anybody. »I don’t drink,« he said. »Not anymore.«
    »Never touch the stuff myself,« I said. »Soda pop, then. And talking records. Let’s say Saturday?«
    »Sounds good.« But somehow he looked as if it sounded bad.
     
    Maybe it was just events catching up with me, but I went all Blakey on the way back home. Sometimes when it’s late enough, and I’m bored enough, or stoned enough, I hit the bricks and turn on my own personal Wayback Machine. Try it sometime: make sure it’s after two in the morning, go to the right neighbourhood and then let your eyes unfocus – you’ll see what I mean. It’s one of the best things about New York, being able to live in past and present at the same time. Walk anywhere in the Thirties west of Eighth, and it’s still 1941. Head down Ludlow or Orchard if you want 1894. Stroll along Fifth, in the Fifties, and you’ll be right back in 1936. Keep your eyes above the cars, of course.
    That evening I had a different kind of vision. It wasn’t late, and I wasn’t on anything; one second I was bouncing down Broadway with my new old discs, and then the next everyone and everything looked different. The usual Balkan gang assimilated; their clothes and hairdos got fancier, their faces took on the look of strangers. Pint-size cars and gigantic pickup trucks with cabins on the back rolled bumper to bumper down both sides of the boulevard. The bars were gone, the cafeterias, the dress stores, the Commie French cheese shop; I couldn’t even guess what half the stores I saw sold… I nearly spun out, my brothers; but when I closed my eyes and then reopened, all was again as it should have been.
    What was strangest was that I knew the scene I’d lightfooted into so casually wasn’t in the gone world, or in the world of tomorrow, but in the now world; and whoever’s now it was, it wasn’t mine, at least not yet. Maybe my ghosts, or my gals, were having some kind of lasting effect on me; having had enough of Fortean phenomena for one evening, I snagged a cab and headed back to my castle doubletime.
     

FIVE
    Man’s walk tells you if he’s buck, bull, or baby. Mine’s a limber stride, when I set out I imagine that my legs roll in my hipjoints like they were fit with ball bearings. A walk like that lets the nosy parkers know no matter what shit comes down, it’s not going to bug you. Jim Kennedy’s walk told me that he was pretty much prepared for and expecting anything. His tightrope stroll along the sidewalk made me think of Frankenstein, or the Greek statues the Greeks sculpted before they learned how to sculpt. He kept his knees locked like they had pins inside, kept his arms glued to his sides, his fists clenched as if trying to figure out who to hit next. Jim moved like he knew in a place deeper than his bones that if he didn’t always hew to the straight and narrow he wouldn’t last longer than the time it took him to fall.
    A bar called Shaugnessy’s became our regular hangout. Place was your standard Irish dive, stuck between a cafeteria and a dry cleaners on Broadway, just north of 83 rd before you got to Loew’s. We’d keelhaul a booth, I’d order bourbon, he’d signal for the first of an endless series of seltzers. (His bicarb tab must have been frightening; he drank so much fizzeroo that I’m surprised he never blew up.) »Down the hatch,« I’d crow and we’d down our respective poisons. The old traditional lost weekend isn’t my favoured format but I’d learned how to drink when I needed to. Back in ’63, during the Panama crisis, I earned my bones not only with Martin but with his bossmen, ingratiating myself as directed with a gang of commies in the Village. Half were Russian-born, and half of those were on the wagon, so I had to learn how to tie on the bag around sots and de-sotted alike if I was going to keep the wheels nice and greasy. During the first round of chuckle juice I’d act like I was guzzling a king-size snort, but I’d really only sip, and splash out