Chapter Four: Broken Frames

In the short jaunt from the bums to Boston, I fell into a road trance that only big rig truckers and taxi drivers are familiar with. The highway signs all blended together into one forever present reflective green stripe, guiding me mile after miles into the tentative arms of my waiting and distant amigo. I fell into Boston and slowly picked my way through the confusing mess of roadwork, winding roads and blaring horns with a practiced anxiety I had learned from my mother. Around every corner awaited some horrid screaming metal demon, ready to spirit me far away from this terrestrial snafu and straight into the waiting arms of a God I didn’t believe in. I drove in a white knuckled state, sweat pouring from my underarms and my adrenal gland pumping out pure survival for what seemed like an impossible stretch of time. I laughed quietly at my fear of death, as it had been something I had been so ready to receive less than a day before. Sobriety had, quite thoroughly, restored my love for life, or at least my love for not being dead.
I found Ada’s butcher shop apartment nestled between a decrepit tavern and a small diner with dirty brown windows and a man in a white apron out front on a set of cement steps. He was smoking a black cigarette and picking at a brown scab that hung off his forehead. He caught me staring at him and he shot me the evil eye. I and flipped him off. He smiled to himself, flicked his smoke onto the ground and calmly walked back to serve whatever delicacies were offered.
I drove my truck down the small cramped alley between the butcher and the tavern, and parked it behind a small, gray Volvo sedan. I recognized it as Ada’s. She had had the same damn car since our sophomore year in high school, and it looked like it was on its last legs. Ada once told me that she believed the car was charmed; that it would protect her from any screaming bulldozer fate threw her way, from any sharp turn in the road, from any smooth talking sociopath with a license. She was wrong though, and several years after our adventure through Boston, she was struck by a drunk going fifty in a baby blue pickup. The Volvo’s broken engine came screaming out of the hood and landed straight in her lap. She broke both femurs and fractured her pelvis in two places. She survived, but spent months in physical therapy while the bastard in the pickup walked away with a sprained wrist. She moved out to Eugene, Oregon a year after the accident and I made a trip up from my flat in Mount Shasta to help her move in. When I got there she gave me a hug and led me to the moving van she had rented. After a day of heaving lifting, sweating and swearing we sat down on the floor of her new apartment, opened the bottle of wine I had brought with me and toasted our beginnings. After two glasses she showed me the great white scar that ran from her knee to her hip. She walked her fingers up and down that ragged white road, following every twisted bend and climbing over every fleshy hill. I made a joke and pretended not to notice when she began to cry.
I grabbed my pack and jar of money, locked my truck and slipped out of the alley. It was late in the afternoon and painfully humid, so I stepped into the butchers shop looking for a breath of cool air. The sign on the door let me know I was entering Florsheim’s Delicatessen. The walls were an off white, and the air smelled like spoiled milk. There was a large fan in the corner, blowing quietly into the center of the room. The counter was polished well and the glass covering the various bits of meat was yellowed with age. Behind the counter was a thick necked man with a broad nose and beady eyes. He was arranging the cow tongue when he saw me. A smile crept across his face, and in a heavy Boston accent he asked me if there was anything he could get me. On a whim I bought a half pound of pastrami, and as he sliced and weighed, I closed my eyes and escaped back into a faint memory of Jewish matzah balls, fried latke’s and Caroline. I paid him and slipped back outside into the summer heat. I looked up towards Ada’s apartment and saw a thin white arm dangling out of an open window. I smiled and felt a familiar sense of mischief settle in my brain. I crept back to the side alley, and with a series of carefully planned leaps and twists, I found my way up onto the overhanging fire escape. As quiet as I could be, I crept up the clanking rusty steps, muscled open a window and slipped inside. I was standing in a bedroom next to a small bed with tangled sheets and a copy of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. I took a deep breath and smelled the pot Ada was smoking by the window in the next room. I smiled and thought back to our crazy burners across the dirt roads of Johnsville and thanked god for Ada Murphy.
On the nightstand I noticed an iconic picture of our friends, taken our freshman year of high school before the world became terribly real, and before we were anything other than a ragged band of gypsies. I tiptoed over to the picture and scooped it up. I found myself, kneeling with a quiet grin next to my childhood friend Sylvia Beauchemin. I saw Caroline on my right, smiling with the toothy innocence I had fallen in love with. I saw Ray Cassidy, his gaze directed downward at Theo whose smile was that of pure joy. I saw Ada, Joan, Shirley, Moira and all the others, clustered together and looking like nothing could ever go wrong. I stared at the picture until my eyes slipped out of focus and I was lost. I never heard Ada get up. I never heard her crush her joint on the windowsill. I never heard her cough and move towards the bedroom to replace her finished copy of Kaddish for Howl. I never heard her scream; I only felt her fist collide with the back of my head. I dropped the picture to the floor and the frame snapped in half. My face collided with the nightstand and I felt warm blood seep down from a small gash above my left eyebrow. I landed on the floor with a solid thud, my weight grinding the broken picture frame deep into the hardwood. I clutched at my eye and the moaned quietly. Ada was standing above me, her breath coming out in quick gasps and her hair hanging wild with sweat and fear. She kicked me in the back and I screamed out her name and looked up. She kicked me once more and then realization swept over her face. Her hand flew to her mouth and she fell to her knees. She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed.
“Jack you motherfucker. Use the door like a normal person.”
We sat there on the floor for awhile, my face bleeding and her heart pounding. The picture lay next to us, bits of broken glass mingling amongst our young faces. She helped me off the ground and led me to her bathroom clean up my face. She found some band aids and I was doing my best to make them stick.
“I took work off today so I could be here when you showed up. If you showed up.”
“I brought pastrami.”
“Good, because lord knows I’m not feeding you after that bullshit.”
I looked away from the mirror and into her cold blue eyes.
“Don’t you look at me, look at yourself. Fix yourself up, you’re bleeding all over the fucking place.”
I turned back to my surgery and she disappeared. She came back smoking a menthol and handed me a mug full of sour whiskey.
“I love you, Ada,”
She grabbed me again and kissed me on the cheek. “Shut up asshole.”
Like I said, thank God for Ada Murphy