“No.”
“Is this shit hot?”
Chris nodded. “Burning.”
“Okay. Listen, just pull over and talk to the guy. Just act like it’s nothing. Play it cool, like everything’s cool. I’m telling you, I’ve seen dudes talk their way outta way worse.”
“I’m not going down tonight,” said Chris. He was so deeply spooked, it made me remember the time I’d suggested he incorporate his time in prison into his stand-up routines and he’d told me with a grave, distant stare that there was nothing funny about being in prison.
“That’s right,” said Anthony. “You’re not going down. Now pull over and talk to this man.”
Chris pulled to the curb and turned off the radio. He reached slowly for his shoulder belt and clanked it into its buckle.
“The guy’s coming!” Mary called from in back.
I watched the cop’s cautious approach. He wielded a powerful flashlight and shined it at each of our windows, but they were so fogged up from all the bodies in the car, I doubted he could see much. He took position just behind Chris’s window and tapped on the glass with gloved fingers.
Chris lowered the window. “Hello there, sir, good evening,” he said, laying on a healthy dose of Canadian politeness.
“License and registration.” I couldn’t see the cop’s face, but he sounded young, which to me seemed like a bad thing. Seasoned cops, I’d found, were more likely to play things fast and loose; rookies went by the book.
“Here’s my license,” said Chris, passing over his New York State ID. “As far as the registration, I don’t have any. I just bought this thing yesterday at an auction in Rochester. I know I shouldn’t be driving it around till I get over to the DMV, that’s my bad.” Fat snow flakes spiraled in through his window and tumbled along the dash. “You know you ran a light back there?”
“Yes, sir. I believe I ran a stop sign just now, too. I was talking to my brother on the phone and I got distracted. That’s my bad. I’m really sorry about that.”
Chris was handling things as well as he possibly could, I thought. But once the cop checked the plates, we’d be doomed. If I bailed and ran, it occurred to me, maybe the cop would chase after me and Chris could peel away. My heart jangled, and my fingers crawled to the door handle, ready to make a move.
“You been doing any drinking tonight?” asked the cop.
“Not really, sir,” said Chris. He ejected a bark-like laugh. “Planning to, though. We’re just going up there to Freighter’s.” He hitched his thumb toward me. “Even got a designated driver.”
The cop bent his head down and poked his flashlight at me. He had dark, close-cropped hair, and was maybe in his mid-thirties. I dropped my hand from the door handle. Then he leaned through Chris’s window a shade more and played his light over our bizarre array of passengers—four generations of black folk in the backseat, and a Chinese family in the trunk. His face crinkled up in utter bafflement. Either we were human traffickers with a payload of Asians or a tour bus covering the last leg of the Underground Railroad.
I heard Mr. Liu’s daughter call out from the back, “Officer Ralston?” He ducked his head further into the Explorer. “Who’s that?”
“Mary. From the Golden Panda.”
“Oh!” said the cop. “Mary! Hey, is that your dad?”
“Yeah. Guess what? I got into Medaille College! We’re all going out to celebrate. These are our employees and some of our regulars. You might know some of them.”
“But you’re not old enough to drink.”
“Don’t tell the bouncer!” Mary giggled, playfully—even masterfully—redirecting the conversation. “I’m just gonna have a glass of wine.”
The cop said, “All right, then,” and withdrew his head from inside the truck. He handed Chris back his license. “I’ll tell you what,” he told Chris. “No more driving with your head up your—you know. Especially when the roads are this bad. You all take care.” He doused his flashlight and headed back to his cruiser.
Chris zipped his window up. “Wait for it,” he said tersely. “Wait for it.”
The cop’s flashers went dark, and a moment later his squad car swished past, hung a left at the next side street, and disappeared. Chris turned to look at all of us and broke out into relieved, maniacal laughter. “Holy shit!” he said. “What just happened? This is a magical night!”
Even as everyone began cheering and dancing around in their seats, slapping each other on the back, a cold ball pitted itself in my stomach. It was time to go see Lauren Hill.
“Fuck no, you can’t bring all these people in here,” the massive bouncer at Freighter’s told me, shouting over the music. He eased from his perch and barged forward, using his bulk to crowd us back toward the door. He pointed at Vernon. “That dude didn’t have an ID earlier. And this little fucker right here”—he jabbed Chris in the chest—“he’s eighty-sixed for life.” He took a look at Mary. “She’s underage, I’ll put money on that. Get these clowns out of my face. Try Cole’s, across the street. They’ll serve anybody.”
I said in his ear, “I’m Lauren Hill’s boyfriend. And these are my friends.”
“Darrell is Lauren Hill’s boyfriend,” said the bouncer. “Get your Rainbow Coalition the fuck outta here.”
Darrell? Who the fuck was Darrell? “Just let me go find Lauren,” I pleaded.
“Knock yourself out,” said the bouncer. “But these people got to wait outside.”
I hustled everyone back through the door, into the freezing night. “Just give me two minutes,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
I rushed in, my neck hot, blood crashing through my veins. In the three or four hours I’d been away, the Freighter’s crowd had gone from tipsy to riotously drunk. Two old bikers had their shirts off and were holding a tough-man contest, affectionately slugging each other in the gut. A pair of young punk rockers dry-humped in a booth. People were screaming along to a song on the jukebox and hooting at hockey highlights on the TVs. At a table in the middle of the room, a man in a winter coat dumped a humongous boot-shaped glass of beer over his own head. I was desperate to be that drunk.
The crowd tossed and turned me like a piece of driftwood, until finally I reached the bar and stood a few feet from Lauren Hill, staring at the back of her neck and her bare shoulders as she mixed a row of drinks at the rear counter. I felt like a vampire, dying to taste her skin. Lauren turned toward me, and the whole scene seemed to grind into slow motion and go mute. I waited for the moment of truth—the expression on her face when she saw that I was back. She set the drinks down in front of the guys next to me, and as she looked up she saw me and smiled—a jolting, radiant, zillion-watt smile. The room’s roar slammed back in and the world returned to normal speed. “There you are,” she shouted. “What do you want to drink?”
“I made some friends,” I shouted back. “Can you help me get ’em in?”
“Just tell Greg I said it was cool.”
“I think you better come with me.”
She looked around. The other bartender had left and she was now the only person serving drinks, but there seemed to be a momentary lull. “Okay,” she said. “Really quick.” She ducked under the bar and followed me through the raucous crowd to the front door.
“Come outside for a second,” I said. I blasted the door open and we spilled out onto the sidewalk, where a stocky, young white guy in a powder-blue FUBU sweatshirt and Timberland boots was talking to Chris and Mr. Liu while the rest of the crew looked on.
“All the food we want, all year long?” the guy said.
“My guests,” said Mr. Liu.
“Rock on!” The guy wrapped his arm over Chris’s shoulders, pulled him close, and rubbed his head with his knuckles. “I love you, ya little fuckhead,” he said, laughing. “You are just full of surprises.” This, I realized, had to be Chris’s older brother, Shawn. Chris scrapped his way loose and looked up at me with a magnificent gleam.
“Davy! Let’s get our drink on,” Chris holl
ered. “They gonna let us in or what?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “But wait, you guys, everyone come here, I want you meet someone. This is Lauren Hill.” The whole group gathered close, joining us in a tight little huddle. “Lauren,” I said, “these are my new friends.” I went around the circle, introducing her to each of them, and as I introduced them, they each gave her a friendly hello. “This is Mr. and Mrs. Liu, they own the Golden Panda on Fillmore Avenue. And Mary, their daughter, she just found out she got into college tonight! This is Anthony, and this is Kandy—they’re having a baby soon.” I pointed to Kandy’s stomach. “That’s little Floyd in there. And this is my Canadian friend Chris I was telling you about, a man of many talents. And, Shawn, right?”
He nodded. “That’s right. You’re Davy?”
“Yup.” I explained to Lauren that Shawn was Chris’s older brother.
“And evil boss,” said Shawn with a grin.
“But how’d you meet all these people?” Lauren said, a bit dazzled.
“Hold on.” I continued around the circle. “This is Darla Kenney. She lives over on the West Side, in Front Park. And here’s her grandfather, actually her great-grandfather, Vernon Wallace. Hey, wait a second, what time is it?”
Shawn glanced at his cell phone. “Ten to midnight.”
“In ten minutes,” I told Lauren, “it’s gonna be Vernon’s hundred-and-tenth birthday!”
“No way!” she said.
“It’s true!” said Darla.
Lauren looked at me with wide, whirling eyes, really taking me in, as beautiful a girl as I’d ever seen in my life. “You were only gone a couple hours,” she said. “This is crazy. This is awesome.” She shivered.
“Let’s go inside and have a drink,” I said.
“Let’s drink!” Chris echoed.
Lauren reached for the door, glowing. “Okay, all of you come on in, I’ll pour a round of birthday shots. Let me tell Greg what’s up.”
Then she paused, giving Chris an odd look. She seemed to recall his status on the Freighter’s blacklist. “Except you,” she said, pointing at him. “I’m sorry, but . . . you just can’t skip out on a tab. Not three or four times. Not here. Not in Buffalo.”
“I just, sometimes I leave my wallet at home,” Chris sputtered.
“I’m sorry,” said Lauren.
“Wait,” said Anthony. “What if we pay off everything he owes? Can he be forgiven then?”
Lauren thought about this. “Not forgiven. But if he pays every dollar he owes, plus a twenty-five percent tip, then he’s allowed back in.”
“Done,” said Shawn.
“All right, then,” Lauren said. She hauled open the door and grasped my hand and led me through. My heart thrummed.
For a moment she leaned close to Greg the bouncer and explained the situation. At last he nodded and Lauren waved everyone past, into the mad melee inside. She squeezed my hand as we swept across the room to the bar and whispered in my ear, so close I could feel her hot breath, “Thank you for being here.” The universe had finally, improbably—almost unbelievably—become perfectly aligned.
Our whole crew stood in a crushed knot against the bar. Lauren ducked under and popped up on the far side. “What’ll it be?” she shouted, spreading out a constellation of shot glasses.
“It’s Vernon’s night,” said Chris.
Vernon peered around, the tallest of us, soaking it all in like an ancient willow admiring an orchard of saplings. “Knob Creek!” he declared.
Lauren found the bottle and poured nine Knob Creeks, plus a shot of Dr. Pepper for Mrs. Liu, who asked for root beer instead, and, at Kandy’s request, a shot of Molson Ice. As Lauren passed them out, I saw Greg, the bouncer, waddling quickly in our direction. I had the gut-shot feeling that everything was about to go from wildly festive to ferociously violent in the next several seconds. But instead, Greg howled, “Let me get in on that!”
Lauren saw the confusion in my face. “Greg loves to be a badass,” she said, “but he’s just a big softie. He goes to those Renaissance fairs. He swings swords around and wears dresses!”
“They’re called kilts!” Greg bellowed, grumpy and happy at the same time. Lauren handed him a shot of whiskey; in his massive paw it looked the size of a thimble.
Lauren slipped under the bar again and pressed herself against me. We all raised our glasses, mashed tightly together, and looked around at one another, everyone’s face filled with a golden glow. Darla and Vernon had their arms around each other, as did Anthony and Kandy, and Chris and Shawn Hendershot, and Mr. Liu, Mrs. Liu, and Mary. I put my arm around Lauren’s waist and pulled her close.
Later in the night, much later, I ended up telling Lauren that I loved her, and she told me she loved me, too. And the next afternoon, when we woke up, hung over but in fine spirits, we went for the walk I’d fantasized about, through a city transformed by almost two feet of snow. Every tree, every bush, every fire hydrant, and every garbage can was laced with soft, gentle beauty, like we’d crossed through a portal into some distant, magic land. In a few weeks, of course, Lauren Hill was no longer with me, she was with that dude named Darrell, the other bartender at Freighter’s, and Mr. Liu’s restaurant, I learned, went out of business just a few months after that. Vernon made it to late summer, Darla told me later, then simply lay down on a park bench in Little Rock and died. But don’t you see, none of that mattered, none of that mattered, none of that mattered. Because you can take away Lauren Hill, you can take away the love we had for each other, but you can’t take away the feeling I had that night at midnight, as I squeezed her hand and looked around at my new, glorious tangle of friends, letting my eyes briefly catch their eyes and linger on each of their faces, the whiskey in each shot glass sparkling like a supernova. If there’s ever been a happier moment in my life, I can’t remember it.
“To Vernon!” someone cried out.
“To Vernon!” we shouted in chorus.
The Knob Creek went down like a furious, molten potion. I turned and looked at Lauren. She was smiling at me, sweet, soulful, and open.
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” I said.
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” she said.
And we kissed.
KAREN RUSSELL
The Blind Faith of the One-Eyed Matador
FROM GQ
I. Zaragoza, Spain—October 7, 2011
WHAT DOES THE BULL SEE as it charges the matador? What does the bull feel? This is an ancient mystery, but it seems like a safe bet that to this bull, Marques—ashy black, 5 years old, 1,100 pounds—the bullfighter is just a moving target, a shadow to catch and penetrate and rip apart. Not a man with a history, not Juan Jose Padilla, the Cyclone of Jerez, 38 years old, father of two, one of Spain’s top matadors, taking on his last bull of the afternoon here at the Feria del Pilar, a hugely anticipated date on the bullfighting calendar.
When Marques comes galloping across the sand at Padilla, the bullfighter also begins to run—not away from the animal but toward its horns. Padilla is luminously scaled in fuchsia and gold, his “suit of lights.” He lifts his arms high above his head, like a viper preparing to strike. For fangs, he has two wooden sticks with harpoonlike barbs, two banderillas, old technologies for turning a bull’s confusion into rage. Padilla and Marques are alone in the sandy pit, but a carousel of faces swirls around them. A thousand eyes beat down on Padilla, causing sweat to bead on his neck. Just before Marques can gore him, he jumps up and jabs the sticks into the bull’s furry shoulder. He brings down both sticks at once, an outrageous risk. Then he spins around so that he is facing Marques, running backward on the sand, toe to heel.
A glancing blow from Marques unsteadies Padilla; his feet get tangled. At the apex of his fall, he still has time to right himself, escape the bull. His chin tilts up: There is the wheeling sky, all blue. His last-ever binocular view. This milestone whistles past him, the whole sky flooding through the bracket of the bull’s horns, and now he’s lost it. The sun flickers on and off
. My balance—
Padilla has the bad luck, the terrible luck, of landing on his side. And now his luck gets worse.
Marques scoops his head toward Padilla’s face on the sandy floor, a move that resembles canine tenderness, as if he’s leaning down to lick him, but instead the bull drives his sharp left horn through the bullfighter’s jaw. When Marques tusks up, the horn crunches through Padilla’s skin and bone, exiting through his left eye socket. Cameras clock the instant that a glistening orb pops loose onto the matador’s cheek. A frightening silence descends on the crowd. Nobody knows the depth of the wound.
Marques gallops on, and Padilla gets towed for a few feet, pulled by his cheek. He loses a shoe. Skin stretches away from his jawbone with the fragile elasticity of taffy.
Then Padilla’s prone body is left in the bull’s dust. He springs up like a jack-in-the-box and hops around. His face is completely red. As the blood gushes down his cheek, he holds his dislodged eye in place with his pinkie. He thinks he must be dying. I can’t breathe. I can’t see.
Marques, meanwhile, has trotted a little ways down the sand. He stands there panting softly. His four legs are perfectly still. What unfolds is a scene that Beckett and Hemingway and Stephen King might have collaborated to produce, because this is real horror, the blackest gallows humor: the contrast between the bullfighter crying out “Oh, my eye! I can’t see! I can’t see!” and the cud-chewing obliviousness of the animal.
In the bullring, other bullfighters spill onto the sand and rush to Padilla’s aid. They lift him, hustle him toward the infirmary. Meanwhile, the bullfight must go on. Miguel Abellan, another matador on the bill, steps in for Padilla. He kills Marques in a trance-like state that he later swears he can’t remember. Tears run down his cheeks. He’s survived twenty-seven gorings himself, but what he sees in Zaragoza makes him consider quitting the profession.
Cornadas—gorings—are so common that every plaza is legally required to have a surgeon on site. Bullfighters now routinely survive injuries that would have killed their fathers and grandfathers. Good luck, now, excellent luck: Carlos Val-Carreres is the Zaragoza surgeon, one of the best in Spain.