Pocket Kings by Ted Heller

Author:Ted Heller
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2012-09-18T04:00:00+00:00

The next morning Cynthia woke me up before she left. DOA, I saw, was in her carry-on Furla bag. As soon as she was out the door, it felt like it always did when I knew we were going to be apart for a while: as though all the warmth, goodness, and comfort had been sucked out of me in a flash and that I was living in a cold and lonely vacuum.

Second had a weird list of things he wanted to see in New York. He didn’t want to visit any museums but did want to see the no-longer-extant Belmore Cafeteria, where a scene in Taxi Driver was filmed. He didn’t want to see the Statue of Liberty but did want to see the Chelsea Hotel, where Sid killed Nancy. No Empire State Building, but the subway station where a scene in Ghost was filmed. As I’ve never seen the movie I wasn’t sure where that was, so I just took him to any old station and he fell for it.

At one point in the middle of the afternoon I went to my bank and got out $7,000 in cash. Second Gunman didn’t have to; he had brought about $20,000 (stuffed into the ripped lining of his suede jacket) with him to New York. We were going to play.

Walking along Union Square in the early evening to get a taxi to go to Big Lou’s bodega casino, I noticed there was a reading at the Barnes & Noble. The book, I saw from the window display, was a memoir called Lost and Found by Charlie L. Something. The reading would begin at eight. I looked at my watch and saw that eight was only five minutes away.

“Hey, Second,” I said. He was still in his suede jacket, even though it was in the forties out and windy, and was wearing baggy jeans and a blue chamois shirt. “Let’s go inside.”

“What a weird time to decide you wanna buy a book.”

“I don’t.”

We went inside, wove our way through and around the stacks and tables to where the reading was. Truth be told, Second and I had enjoyed a long lunch together and had drunk a bottle of wine; we’d just had dinner and another two bottles. At the end of both meals I was speaking with an unconvincing Irish brogue and an even less convincing burr. We were primed.

We took seats toward the rear. There were only about fifteen people there but one of them looked familiar, even from the back. It was Beverly Martin, I was pretty sure.

Charlie L. Something adjusted the mike to a smattering of applause and coughing, thanked us for showing up and began to read. He resembled a lesser-known president—Polk, Arthur, or Garfield— but without the wig, muttonchops, or beard. His book was about his privileged childhood and preppy adolescence, his descent into drug abuse (including siphoning off his dying father’s morphine drip) and living on the street, and subsequent recovery at the Shining Path

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