Not an April fools joke

 

04/11/80

 

 It came ten days too late to be an April Fool's joke, and I didn't think it funny, my fingers weaved through the spaces in the fence as I stared at my car in the dark beyond the locked gate.

 My bad luck had started hours earlier and miles away in front of a low life bar called Kimberlies when I had screeched up to its front door after a nightmare of traffic on Route 23.

 After two years wishing for this date, I wouldn't let anything like a traffic jam stop me, though when I arrived I found her tapping her foot suspiciously, as if she believed I had stood her up.

 I apologize as she climbed stepped over the coffee cups, newspapers and other memorobilia scattered over the floor of my car. The plastic and cardboard packaging from my new tape player still decorated the back seat.

 She said she understood, but sounded annoyed, adding little as we drove towards Paterson and the play that was set to start very shortly, staring out the window instead at the passing scenery. She apparently had something on her mind and wasn't saying what. It wasn't any of my business, though over the last few weeks I kept getting the feeling she wanted to talk to me about something, and this might be the reason why she finally gave in to my requests for a date. But now that we had come to it, she wasn't talking.

 "What kind of play is this?" she asked finally. "You never really said."

 "It isn't exactly a play," I said. "It's more a performance, by some ghetto kids I've been working with."

 She nodded, and lapsed back into silence.

 Maybe it had something to do with her recent breakup. She had seen her previous boyfriend for a long time, using him as primary excuse not to date me. But she didn't seem upset in that way, in fact, was too tough for that kind of scene, a barmaid who Hank and I had humorously harrassed for years. She had handled every sort of man in every sort of situation. And yet, she stayed silent as I drove down Hamburg Turnpike into Paterson, where I pulled into a building reserved for parking rather than chancing the streets. While people in Passaic left my car alone, viewing it as a junk not worth the effort of stealing, Paterson was a queer place where theft and violence came as some kind of entertainment, lacking the usual desperation and poverty.

 Then, in the same moody silence, she followed me out, then around the block to the college, her fingers brushing against mine as we walked, as if she wanted to hold my hand or wanted me to hold hers, but would not or could not take the inititive. Finally, we reached the hall in which the performance was to take place, and found our seats in the interior ampetheater, earlier than my fear had expected. Then, suddenly, she stared straight at me.

 "What do you do?" she asked sharply.

 "What do you mean?"

 "With your life."

 Her question puzzled me. I thought I had informed the whole world of my intentions.

 "I write," I said.

 She nodded, apparently remembering now.

 "What about you?" I asked.

 "You know," she said. "You've been to the bar a million times."

 "That's your job, not what you do," I said, drawing an uncomfortable side ways glance from her, her eyes looking pained.

 She stayed silent for so long I almost asked again, thinking she had not heard me. Her leg brushed mine, and her finger nail stroked my upper arm, she seeming to think about something else entirely. But if she intended to answer, the lowering lights and opening curtains prevented her.

 Since I had seen the performance many times in various stages, I watched her as she watched, trying to make out from her squint what could possibly be wrong. From time to time, she'd glance at me and smile, but I knew no more about her strange mood at the end of the performance than I did at the beginning, and we rose with the crowd and eased out of the college, downtown Paterson dark and dangerous around us.

 When we came to the parking lot, we found a gate drawn across the driveway in and out, and a closed sign hanging at its middle. I could actually see my Silver Pinto parked on the other side, a slice of street light illuminating a section of its hood.

 "What time is it?" I asked her. She consulted her watch.

 "About a 11," she said.

 The sign beside the gate said the lot closed at ten. It had not been my week. On Monday, I had lost my wallet, and now this. I shook the gate a few times in frustration, but it only sent the echo of its rattle through the lot like an alarm.

 She laughed, took my hand, and led me away, me, following behind her like a beaten dog, coming upon a host of dark characters as we made our way towards the better-lighted sections around city hall, two prostitutes giving us wolf whistles as we passed, asking if we both wanted some fun, my date laughing, telling them forget it: "He's mine, girls." Then, she suggested we see a taxi, but I had only slightly over twenty dollars, hardly enough to pay for a trip back to Wayne.

 "How about you take a cab and I'll walk home," I said, offering my money as partial payment for her trip.

 "Walk?"

 "I live in Passaic," I said. "That's not too far from here."

 "Far enough for you not to make it home," my date said, glancing around at the shadows.

 Even though I had grown up in these streets, fist-fighted my way from one end to the other since I was nine, Paterson still scared me, have changed into a world where spoiled men from places like Wayne came to drink and fuck, the local hoodlums laying traps for those too weak or weary to fight too much or run too fast.

 "I could call a friend of mine," I suggested. "He might be willing to pick us up."

 We found a phone, I dropped a dime in it, surprised that it still worked. I had to let it ring many times before Garrick's groggy voice grunted at me from the other end. I had woken him, and had to explain the situation several times before he agreed to come get us. Then, sitting on the stone bench in front of city hall, we waited, bird shit covering the walls and statues from their afternoon attack. We did not talk, but she continued to touch me, and I think, wanted me to touch her back. But I had been arrested here several times when I was younger, and knew better than to makeout with her here. The police would bust us both, me as the horny john I was, and she, mistaken as a prostitute. No one would believe our innocent intentions, that we had wanted to fuck each other since we first laid eyes on each other, yet could not, would not, because something held us back, she having seen too many men in her years as barmaid, having heard too many lines to believe mine any different, and me, because Hank had dragged me to Kimberlies, as he had to hundreds of other bars over the previous decade, to places I didn't trust, full of people who disgusted me. I wanted her to be better than the rest and wanted the passing time to prove it.

 Then, Garrick's rusted VW huffed and puffed into sight, a marked improvement from the Purple plumber's van he previously drove whose oil had changed to sludge from lack of changing. All this vehicle had was a hole in the floor and lack of heat, and the breathlessness of an asmatic. He grinned at us from under the worn brim of his NY Yankees hat and motioned for us to climb in. I hurried to the door, my date hung back.

 "What's she waiting for?" Garrick asked, "a written invitation?"

 My date did not want to climb in a vehicle so clearly unsafe, having reluctantly climbed in mine earlier, and only climbed in Garrick's when convinced it was less safe to stay in Paterson overnight, clinging to my arm the whole trip back to Wayne, and Garrick went on about the Yankees and opening day, and how drunk he'd gotten, and how he still felt woozy.

 And then, at the door of Kimberlies, she hurried out, pausing, looking back at me, her gaze suggestive, but I shook my head.

 "I don't think this will work out," I said.

 "Why not?" she asked, still hopeful.

 "Fate is against it," I said, "and I hardly ever buck fate."

 She stood a long time staring after us as Garrick pulled away, a lone figure standing on the side walk, fading into obscurity as we headed home.