Humpty Dumpty by Scott Taylor

I was busy wiping the sweat from my brow when Oliver came over.

“It’s still down,” he said.

“I know that, but is it going any lower,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

I went into the bathroom and splashed water on my face.  My heart was pounding too hard again and I was out of the meds, I hadn’t had time to get to the drugstore and get more.  I was going to have a heart attack before thirty-five, it was obscene, it was beyond all reason.

Back on the floor the idiots were still scurrying around.  Lydia flew through with her little skirt waving in the breeze, the one I’d been chasing for over a year now.  Bitch would not give out, no matter what you did.  It made one seethe.  What else were secretaries for, anyway.  It was practically in the job description.

“John, take a look at this,” Oliver said as I approached the terminal again.  I took a look at that, and tried not to blanch any further.

“That’s not going lower, that’s a fuckin’ nosedive.  What do we do?  Do we call David?”

“No,” I said.  I’d ripped my tie off hours before and my collar was wide open but it still felt like I needed to free something else up, like my breathing was still somehow constricted.  “No,” I said.  “Do not call David.”

I left, I left the building.  I went outside onto the street and walked around, I looked at the pizzerias, the coffee shops, the bodegas.  I went into none of them, I didn’t want anything.  I just walked around and looked.

The cell phone was going off continuously, it just would not stop.  There were people relying on me, lots of them, people who were waiting for me to come and make it right.  There was no making it right, it was over, I was finished.  We all were.  The doom and gloom crowd had been calling for this for years now and no one had been paying attention (including me) and now the shit had hit the fan and there was no going back.  Broken, sunk, kaput.  The whole kit and caboodle.

I went to Zachary’s and sat down and ordered a martini.  I waited with bated breath to see if the card still worked and thankfully it did.  I had a backup visa I never used but wasn’t even sure if it was still functional or not, the damn thing was probably expired.  The delinquency notices had been pouring in and all I’d done was put them in a little pile on the edge of the desk, I was in trouble whether this shit happened or not.  Car payments, mortgage payments, payments on the boat, property taxes.  Alimony soon, if Bridget followed through on her threats.  Not to mention the prep school crap when Noah started school next year.

One martini turned into three.  The phone would not stop ringing, buzzing away in my pants, text messages too about all the hell that was breaking loose.  It buzzed one time too many and I turned it off and put it back.  Oliver found me, he’d tracked me down, he knew my tactics.

“John, what in the holy hell are you doing?  Do you know how bad it is back there?”

“Oliver, sit down, have a drink.”

“John – look, we’re a few hours away from total disaster.  It’s end of quarter and things were bad enough as it was.  You know David’s calling for everyone’s heads already, yours more than anyone’s.”

“If he’s not careful, I’ll take his first.  Old bastard can go hang himself.”

Or jump out the thirtieth floor window, like back in ’29.  We could all jump together, a gang of fancy suits all fluttering to the ground like some parachuting troupe in formation.  As far as I was concerned we might as well just get it over with.

“So what, you’re just going to sit here and drink?”

“As good a thing to do as any.”

He snorted and left.  Another bridge burned, fine with me.  Never liked that guy either, he could jump with the rest.  Patrice came over.  “Another martini, Mr. Halsey?” he asked.

“Please, Patrice,” I said.

Nightfall.  I assumed I was fired and didn’t want to check, I went down the street in search of nothing in particular.  A bum came up asking for change as I was crossing Church Street and I actually shoved him, he tripped on the curb and went down.  I wasn’t drunk but I was in that state of near-inebriation which, when in a good mood, can lead to euphoria, but when in a bad one usually leads to an acceleration of bad decision-making.  I suppose the writing was on the wall right from the start.  I’d been going that way anyway, for some time now.  Perhaps it was destiny.  I wandered further, I found myself in Chinatown, then Little Italy.  The light in the sky had disappeared and it was getting cold, and I didn’t have a coat on.  It didn’t seem to matter at the time.

I was practically in the Bowery when I turned the phone back on to check the messages, just for shits and giggles.  A ton of them, and one from Bridget, ‘That’s it, I’m divorcing you,’ it said.  Someone had undoubtedly tipped her off; the straw of all straws with which to break the old camel’s back, for sure.  She rarely mentioned money in spite of the fact that it ruled her world with a grasp so vice-like the thought of losing any more of it sent her into paroxysms of panic that occasionally landed her in the ER.  Her own supply of meds was even bigger than mine.  I scanned the list for anything from David but strangely enough there wasn’t anything there.  Head-scratcher, that one.  Perhaps he wanted to do it in person.

Second Avenue, First Avenue, the East Village.  Another bar, why not, why not indeed.  Another fake Irish pub among thousands; the whole city was busy pretending to be Irish, when it wasn’t pretending to be Italian, that is.  I had an aunt who’d married into an Irish family but apart from that I was English, through and through.  I ordered a beer this time and sat sullenly with it.  There was a football game on the TV and I was fighting the urge to tell it to go fuck itself.  No one else was watching so the place had that going for it, at least.  I pulled a few things up on my phone, it was all over the news, the sky is falling again and all that, not quite 2008 but big enough to make some serious waves.  Too Big To Fail my ass, what a joke that one had been.  Fair play until we lose, and then screw the rules and start over.  The whole house of cards had collapsed right there and then, as desperately as they wanted to continue struggling along with appearances.  No one was even paying attention anymore.

The beers multiplied, it got later, darker out.  Eva, yeah, hadn’t seen her in a while.  She was always up for a little action, and man did I need it.  Anything to get my mind off this shit for an hour or two, at least.  She was a good little screw too, even better than Bridget had been back at the beginning, before her ass and her tits and everything else had started to sag and she’d developed that permanent case of resting-bitch-face she could no longer dispense with even if her life depended on it, even if you put a gun to her head and told her to smile.  Armies of villainous mannequins overrunning the world, sometimes it felt like that’s all there was.  In your office, in your bed, in the recesses of your head.  In the mirror if you looked long enough.

Enough of that morbid shit, text Eva.  ‘Eva, what are you doing tonite?  I want to come over,’ I texted, then waited.  Nothing came back.  Little minx was out gallivanting, out shaking her tight little ass.  Was always on about the sugar daddies, that one, had it on the brain.  The free rides abounded, just hop aboard.  ‘Come on baby, I’m hot for it tonite,’ I followed up.  Still nothing.  Another fifteen minutes and I got tired of waiting and ordered another beer and drank it down fast this time.  The guys in blue had won the game, the little helmets were bobbing up and down in celebration.  Hmmm, supposing I pay her a little surprise visit, don’t think she’d mind – maybe sneak in thru the fire escape and slip it in from behind while she’s getting out of the shower or something.  Probably not even there, but worth a try.  Might as well go and see.

Her apartment was on the Upper East Side, but just barely.  She’d insisted on the location just so that she could tell people she lived there.  Fucking New York, right.  The cab ride took about five minutes, I was too tired to walk anymore.  I picked up a fifth of bourbon along the way and found I’d drank about half of it down by the time I reached the building.

The door was locked, there was no doorman.  It was an older building.  I waited in the cold beginning to shiver and eventually a young girl came and let me in, ‘Sorry forgot my key,’ I said with a wry smile.  That’s all it took; a well-dressed man could get away with almost anything.  Helped to not be too bad-looking either.

Her apartment was on the fourth floor.  It was a walk-up and so I walked up.  Like I said, on the edge of the neighborhood, an old brownstone, not exactly top notch.  Eva was a climber but hadn’t made it that high yet.  She had a great ass, though, you had to see this thing, especially in a slinky dress.  I was proud of that ass, proud that I’d nailed it.  It was an ass that could get you through a whole lotta things.

I knocked on the door, heard noises within, voices, both male and female.  Well well, what do we have here.  When the cat’s away.  I took a nip from the bottle as I waited.  I was tired of waiting, I wanted some compliance, I knocked again, harder this time.  Eva opened the door, she was wearing evening attire and her hair was all tousled.

“John!  I didn’t expect you tonight.”

“I texted you, a coupla times.”

“I’m kind of busy right now.”

“Come on, let’s have a drink.”

She hesitated there at the threshold, she didn’t want me in but didn’t have the balls to tell me to go blow.  I peeked around her and saw some large male shape in the living room, in the vicinity of the sofa.  I could almost smell his presence.  I pushed past her and went inside and she didn’t object, at least not audibly.

I went to confront the male shape, or at least lay eyes on him.  The lights were down low and the music was playing, the little love den was purring along.  Romance was in the air.

“Hi, I’m John,” I said.  The guy grunted.  “Drink?” I asked, offering him a nip.  He shook me off.  He was dressed in his own suit and like me had his tie off and his collar undone; he looked impatient, frustrated, I’d interrupted him at a rather inconvenient moment.

“Hear about the market today?” I asked.

“Yep,” he said.

“Lose yer shirt?”

He didn’t answer, his glare intensified.  Eva shifted uncomfortably behind me.

“Listen, John, it really isn’t a good time, maybe I can call you tomorrow – “

“She’s a good little lay, isn’t she?  One of the best in town,” I said, leaning over to rest my elbows on the chair in front of me.  “Just give ‘er a little sugar every now and then and she’ll be fine.”

He got up, flaring his arms out in menacing fashion, his nostrils flaring as well.  “Look motherfucker, I don’t know who the hell you think you are but the lady just asked you to leave, so why don’t you get your ass out of here.”

I tried to sneer and stumbled a bit, my equilibrium was definitely off.  I swerved around the chair to meet him in the middle of the floor and he obliged, and there we faced off, two rutting apes about to clash over the grand prize.  His nostrils were still flaring and his face was turning red and his breathing had become rather labored.  He wasn’t a fighter but he wasn’t a pussy either, I could tell that kind of thing right away.  He was a fighter not a flighter but he lacked the quiet confidence of a dude who really knew what he was doing.  Me, I hadn’t had a fight since college, but the thought was ever on my mind.  I was in a constant state of wanting to beat the shit out of the whole world and that would never change.

“Wanna dance?” he breathed, too softly, too dramatically.  Wine on his breath, no hard stuff, at least none that I could detect.

“Eva babe, can this guy even get it up?” I said, looking over my shoulder.  “He’s a bit insecure, I bet he can’t even get it up, can he.  What’s his name anyway – “

The guy shoved me and I went over backwards, over the coffee table and down onto the sofa.  He pounced on me clawing away and I heard the crash of the coffee table as it shattered into a million pieces, in stereo with the sound of Eva starting to shriek.  I pushed my hands into his face catching him in the eye with a thumb and he grunted yet again and turned away, giving me the opportunity to slip sideways from his simian embrace.

“John, please, stop,” Eva was saying.

He spun around holding his eye and got up, reaching for something on the end table.  I took the wine bottle and smashed him over the head with it, doing it without thinking, without passion, just sort of matter-of-factly.  It had to be done.

The guy lay there, he wasn’t moving.  He had a large gash on his forehead and the cream-colored carpet was beginning to change hue.  Eva wasn’t shrieking anymore, she was just staring, unable to proceed further in any direction.  Like she’d been switched off.  I wished I could switch off.  I wished she’d been alone that night, things would have gone much better.  I went to the window and looked out, looked down, watched the cars go up and back.  A leap from the fourth floor was likely to kill you but it wasn’t a sure thing, you probably had a good chance of just crippling yourself and being paralyzed for the rest of your life.  Although who knew, I wasn’t an expert on such things.  I kept watching the night, it looked so peaceful from up there, behind the sound-proofed windows, removed from the action by only a few stories.  It almost looked like a place you could live in.

I tried the window and found it locked.  I slipped past Eva’s frozen form and into the hallway and back down the stairs and out into the night.  I remembered how there had once been things to look forward to and the thought gave me no pause whatsoever.  I paused not for a second, I continued on.  What was the point in thought.  Look where it led.  I made it to a park and sat down and looked at the river for a while, at the little island with the lighthouse on it.  The skies fell but the rivers remained.  The ephemeral nature of our existences occasionally provided a certain measure of comfort.

Scott Taylor

Image: A black and white image of the stock market graph from Pixabay.com