Читаем Fall and Rise полностью

“Okay. But after living so long with this jar, I don’t have the heart to stop putting found money in it or empty it out to use the money or even just to use the jar.” They stare at me. “I mean, it’s an old pickle jar with a wide neck — quart-size, so really good for storing things — so the money I’d store somewhere else, if I didn’t use both at the same time: money and jar. I knew I shouldn’t have brought up the subject of good luck.” Policeman has his back to us, talking on the phone. “But I can be compulsive about not passing up found money, though not to the point where I think it’ll bring bad luck if I don’t. That someone first had to point the coin out to me — well, that variation of finding lucky money hasn’t come up till now, so I’ll deal with it when I get home or along the way, but how can I deal with it realistically if I don’t have the coin? Anyway, coast seems clear enough,” and I reach in to get the quarter, blow off the glass bits. Try to put it into my change pocket, but this pair of pants doesn’t have one, so I feel for an empty pocket, back right one first, is none, take the comb and keys out of that pocket, which is where if I have no change pocket I put found coins, stick the keys into the less crowded left back pocket, comb into the left side pocket, quarter into the right back pocket where I’ll know where it came from if I want to drop it into the jar. My notebook and Hasenai’s book of poems in Japanese — and I tap the two side pockets to make sure they’re there. Wallet’s in the right side pocket of the pants, pen in the other. Smaller notebook — which I’m not afraid to lose since there’s nothing much in it, and its metal tip has ripped, even when I’ve wedged it under the spirals or taped it, a couple of my pants pockets or other parts of the backs of my pants — in the left back pocket, handkerchief also in the side coat pocket, so everything’s there. Subway tokens? Have none. Other coins — can’t feel or find any, unless they’re at the bottom of one of these pants or coat pockets. Nail clipper, I find, when I thought I lost it weeks ago, also in the right side pocket of the pants. “So, that was my Colorado car crash yawn and selected confessions. Call it a night, gentlemen?”

“We all do kooky things when we’re young,” shorter man says.

“Really, I’m much too cold to listen,” ponytailed man says.

“A moment. Last tale. I did with you both for more minutes than I enjoyed, and if you want I’ll stand you to a real drink after — worth the wait? So everyone sit. In the army I threw — on German land but Allied-held territory — a live grenade at my best buddy ever when I got overwhelmingly sore at him for something he did, of what I won’t waste your time with, but it was dirty. Fortunately — that it wasn’t the advancing enemy with fixed bayonets charging — it was a dud, or I’m sure, for penal reasons, I wouldn’t be here speaking to you now. Though after so long and because I was born in the Village and my family would still have been here for sixteen years — my mother the last of her kin to die and in the same apartment I still live in. The same bed, in fact — I switched to theirs after she went — and please, I don’t give a blink to what people say about extremely close mother-son relationships — I loved her! — maybe I would be speaking to you right where we’re standing and same time, give or take.”

“They also broke the mold after my mother was born,” ponytailed says, “but I never did anything as angry as you. Sure, once tossed a man overboard but knew no sharks were around and he could swim.”

“All of us Peanut Gallery émigrés,” I say. “Wound up so peaceful and, well I was going to say ‘loved our mothers,’ but you couldn’t have watched it too.”

“My baby brother did. And you can’t be too sure sharks aren’t everywhere around but in your bathtub,” to the ponytailed man. “Right from the piers over there I’ve seen them — when I fished as a kid and now just to sit and think — frequently.”

“We had safety nets to keep them out — for swimming.”

“Then if they weren’t in the swimming perimeter before you set up the nets, true.”

“So,” I say, “—great talking,” and I stick out my hand.

“Same here,” ponytailed man says, “without reservation,” and shakes.