I found my old friend, Pez, sitting behind the register in a hole-in-the-wall shoe repair shop squeezed between a corner bodega and a creepy wig emporium on Amsterdam Avenue. His Uncle Carlos’s place. We used to go there to earn a buck or two polishing shoes or sweeping up when we were kids. In those days, the manikin heads next door with their fake hair and staring eyes gave me the willies. I liked the shoe shop though. One of those old leathery places with a musty smell that took you right back. The brass bell on top of the door went ring a ding, ding when I walked in.
“Wizard returns!” Pez said. He started calling me Wizard back in middle school, about the time I dubbed him the Pez-man, after the candy dispenser he used to carry his joints.
“I’m flush,” I said.
“Well, you’ve come to the right place.”
When Pez got off of his stool, he didn’t get any taller. He was a big man - a dealer with some razzle dazzle - when we were kids, but he quit growing when he hit high school. If he lost about thirty, forty pounds, and learned to ride a horse he could be a jockey. He wore his hair in a ponytail and it looked like he was trying to sprout a Fu Manchu mustache. We shook hands across the glass counter top like grown men. The case was full of dusty black and gold cans of shoe polish and laces in cardboard packs.
“Taking up the trade?” I asked.
Pez laughed. “No, man. No future in old shoes. I’m on probation. Have to have a visible means of support. I sit here making myself visible.”
He waved out the window at the world at large, like there was a cop on the second story across the street watching him with binoculars.
Pez was right about used shoes. I swear there was a pair of loafers sitting on a shelf over Pez’s shoulder that had been there in 1972.
“I’m leaving town,” I said.
I glanced out the window, looking for who knows what. Max had me spooked.
“Why?” he asked, like the idea of leaving town didn’t make a shred of sense to him. Like I was the first person who ever said those words to him in his whole life.
I didn’t want to tell him the whole story. He had problems of his own, it sounded like. “I just gotta go. I got a friend out west. He’s kind of sick.”
“You got a friend out west?” That came as a shock to him, too. “Where?”
“Spokane,” I said.
“I heard of that. It’s out there in …”
“Washington,” I told him.
We didn’t have to talk about what I was there to talk about. Pez knew me. On my walk uptown, I’d decided to splurge a little. The ounce I’d planned on buying turned into two by the time I got to the shoe shop. Spokane was a long way away and I didn’t know anybody like Pez between here and there. I showed him two fingers, like the old peace sign.
He nodded and looked at the clock on the wall behind me. “Give me an hour,” he said.
“Meet me at the Cuban-Chinese,” I said.
Pez gave me an up and down look. “You all right?”
“Sure,” I said. “I won a horse race today. Twenty-to-one.”
Pez swiveled on his stool. He fingered his fu-Manchu and gazed at the bright signs across the street. “I don’t see the Wiz for like…I don’t know…” He shrugged and squinted. “And he shows up flush with cash. Plans to skip town. Makes me think.”
“Rhymes with Rope. Mac Miller’s filly.”
“If you say so.” Pez took his ponytail in his fist and gave it tug, like he was having a tug a war with himself. He asked me, “Who was in the saddle?”
“Cordero,” I said. And right away I regretted saying it.
“Angel fucking Cordero? Twenty-to-one? Mac Miller? Who you kidding? When in the history of the world has a Mac Miller filly gone off at twenty-to-one? With Cordero in the saddle?”
I gave Pez handicapping lessons when we were pals, but I never thought he was paying attention. Only a fool or a desperate man would bet big on a twenty-to-one long shot. How could he know how desperate I was?
I said, “Today was the day. First trip on the grass. A maiden special weight.”
Pez put his hand in the air. “None of my business.”
“And my friend’s sick. In Spokane.”
“Okay. If you say so. Cuban Chinese. One hour.”
I headed down to 72nd to wrangle Robert away from the newsstand. I dug my Spaldeen out of my pocket and started bouncing. As my thoughts fell into rhythm, a plan took shape. I felt like a train would be waiting for me at Penn Station. I always thought that if I ever went anywhere, I’d go by train, like Seabiscuit and old Tom Smith.
At the newsstand, Robert hugged me hello. I whispered in his ear. “I put all my money on a twenty to one horse. She won.”
“I told you,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
I invited him to a celebration feast at La Caridad and he announced his departure to Sammy and everyone else in earshot with a lusty shout of “Pollo Frito!”
Robert got a kick out of the surly waiter. Hearing a Chinese guy speak Spanish never ceased to amaze him and the more the guy grunted and scowled the wider Robert’s smile grew. He knew dinner was on me, so he ordered all his favorites: barbecued ribs, mussels in bean sauce, avocado salad, wonton soup, the Pollo Frito, a side of fried plantains and two orange sodas, both for him. It was a good thing we were sitting at a four-top.
“I’m going on a trip,” I told him.
At first I thought he didn’t hear me, like he was deaf with his mouth full.
Then he said, “A trip?”
“Yeah. Out west. To Washington.”
He didn’t ask me why I was going. He’d believe any story I told him, but I was glad I didn’t have to lie to my brother.
“I’ll be back in a month or so.”
He drained his second soda, and said, “I have to pee.”
While he was in the back, I pulled a few hundred bucks from my pocket to cover dinner, the pot, and a going away present for Robert. Pez showed up about the time Robert came back from the john.
“Pez-man” Robert said. Pez was one of Robert’s regular customers at the newsstand. “Big Bamboo papers and wintergreen lifesavers, two and two,” Robert said.
Pez helped himself to one of Robert’s spareribs and said, “Hey, Kippy, what’s on the charts these days?”
“Endless Love. Number Two.”
Pez pulled the rib out of his mouth and pointed it at Robert. “You’re the best, man.”
“You bring your scale?” I asked.
“Oh ye, of little faith,” Pez said, as he stuffed the two baggies in the deep pocket of my jacket. He’d been saying that to his suspicious customers since we were kids. It offered little reassurance, but I gave him a wad of twenties and the deal was done. Pez held the cash between two fingers and waggled it back and forth. “Twenty-to-one, huh? If you say so, Wiz. Adios.”
On the way back to Sammy’s, I gave Robert his going away present. A hundred even; more would’ve spooked him, like Rhymes with Rope spooked Pez. At the newsstand, he hugged me goodbye with his Papa Bear arms.
He said, “Buy me a hat.”
“What hat?”
“Like Cowboy.” He reached up and put his hand about a foot over his head.
“I’ll bring you a cowboy hat,” I said.
He took me in his big arms again, and said, “Don’t worry,” like he could feel my trouble through my coat.
On the downtown IRT, I found a prime seat over the heater and, thanks to Robert, I felt like I didn’t have a worry in the world. I was rumbling downtown with a full belly and warm air coming up under my coat and I felt like I was gone already, like I’d made my escape and my worries were all two or three stations back and they could never catch me.
On the subway, I felt safe, but on Howard Street, I walked in the shadows, my shoulders hunched, my hands deep in my jacket, one hand clutching my cash, the other squeezing my Spaldeen. Max knew where I lived. He’d spread the word, like he spread his lies.
Packing took all of ten minutes, since I already lived like a refugee. Instead of a dresser, I had two laundry bags: one for clean clothes fresh from the wash and one for my dirty clothes, destined for the laundromat. The good news was that the clean bag was almost full and would serve as my suitcase. I threw the pot, my Damon Runyon, my Spaldeen, my Walkman and about ten cassettes in a day pack. I patted my coat pocket to make sure my cash was still there. It was a hefty load even after the day’s expenses.
There wasn’t a train waiting for me. I had to camp out on the hard wooden benches in Penn Station for a few hours. I felt invisible in the crowd. Who’d look for me at the train station? Did they know I had he sense to leave town?
I got antsy and decided to walk around, to keep moving. I bought some rolling papers and Rolling Stone and extra batteries at a newsstand. I found a deserted restroom way down on the dungeon level of the station and smoked some of Pez’s pot. He didn’t gyp me.
After my tokes, all I remember is sitting on the bench with my laundry bag between my legs. I studied my ticket. Way out West, I thought. And I remembered the ticket-seller lady. She had a mole on her cheek and little silver glasses. The ticket-lady explained, in a teacher-voice, that it would take five or six days at least to get to Spokane. Delays were common, she said. I told her I needed some privacy and a bed and some good food. The tickets for sleeping compartments came with dining car meals included, but they were expensive. How expensive, I wanted to know. She wouldn’t tell me at first. She shook her head and looked sort of sad and embarrassed.
“How much?” I asked, reaching into my jacket pocket.
“Are you with anybody? Because if you’re with somebody…”
“No,” I said. I turned away from the window and scanned the lobby. The people looked tiny under the tall ceiling. I leaned into the ticket window. “Just me.”
“They’re double occupancy. The compartments.”
“How much?” I said. I tried to smile at her.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m great,” I said. “I won a horse race.”
“Okay,” she said. She tried to smile. A front tooth had a silver filling around it, like a frame. I’d never seen a filling like that before. “But you’re paying for two of everything,” she said. “That’s why the price is so high.”
“How much?”
She leaned down and whispered through the window, “Eight hundred and sixty-seven dollars.”
I counted out nine C-notes and spread them on the counter for her to see. I expected her to smile and show me the silver frame around her tooth again. But the ticket-lady just narrowed her eyes to peer at me over her tiny glasses.
I pushed the money through the slot.