Finest Hour

Sally Boy is drinking scotch. Two hours and seven minutes from now, it will be one year since he made his bones (five-inch blade, twenty-six holes in the man’s back), but nobody except Sally Boy remembers this anniversary. No, right now, he’s upstairs at Louis’ Restaurant with the guys, laughing, having a ball. They’re alone up there in the dim candlelight, smoking Cubans, ashing out the window onto unsuspecting passersby, telling bull stories about women. Somebody starts laughing. The Big Guy leaning against the wall. He’s laughed at his own joke. The Skinny Guy with the too tight slacks, the one beside the Big Guy, he laughs too a moment later. The others join—the sorry fuck missing an ear, the one who whispers everything he doesn’t hear to him, the old lawyer, and the other one who there’s nothing notable about whatsoever. And Sally Boy, yes, Sally Boy is laughing.

Is he paying attention though? His gaze shifts to the wall. There’s a cockroach climbing up it, just by the crown of the Big Guy’s plugs. A fat fucker, probably having gorged itself on olives and ziti for ten years. Lord knows this place never gets a health inspection. Is Sally Boy repulsed by this cockroach, perhaps frightened? No, that’s not it. The expression on his face isn’t right. His lips, those big, chapped lips, they’re curled down around his cigar, almost in a frown, but it’s not quite a frown of dismay. It’s different, more thoughtful. Maybe it’s his mother. It’s usually his mother. In fact, I’d argue we can conclude definitively that it is about his mother. She was a card. Used to kill cockroaches with a knife, big one, meat cleaver, really. Less efficient than a shoe or periodical, but she enjoyed it. This woman relished killing the little fuckers. Chopping them up into ten thousand tiny pieces. It was her hobby, in that linoleum kitchen lined with empty beer cans and ash. No, the ash was later, when the place burned, this is neither here nor there.

Sally Boy though, he took after his mother. In every way. Looked like her too. Those eyes—women liked him for those eyes. Angry yet vaguely sensitive. It was those flecks of green with the brown. Or brown with the green. Who can remember? He never much went for women though. Anyway, he got the cockroach thing from his mother. He cut one up himself once, as a child, a young one, eight or nine, the age where a boy discovers the capacity to kill things but before he discovers the capacity to create. He cut up the roach, but the legs wouldn’t stop moving. That’s a thing, the legs—they still move. So, he taped them down on the floor with scotch tape, each and every of its six legs, and he stared at each one till it stopped moving. And Sally Boy had killed his first roach. His mother was so proud.

The Big Guy misinterprets Sally Boy’s staring at the wall. The Big Guy says to him, You got expensive taste, don’t you? Sally Boy blinks twice and sips his scotch. Chivas Regal, of course, it was good enough for Ol’ Blue Eyes. He tries to wake himself up. The Big Guy clarifies, I saw you looking, he says, tapping on his timepiece. The Big Guy was leaning against the wall with his hand, revealing that gorgeous watch on his wrist: a Rolex Oyster Perpetual with a Tiffany dial, a stunning coalescence of turquoise and silver with an automatic movement. A piece to be passed down to one’s son—Sally Boy never knew his father—yet also worn to the Ball & Chain Club or The Mutiny. A watch that announced your money, that you knew how to spend it like a man of taste. This watch would keep ticking long after the Big Guy’s death. It’s still ticking, last I heard, his son really did wear it. He died, too, recently. Who knows where it’ll go next. His son had no son.

Sally Boy wants to describe the watch as gorgeous but knows better. He says, That’s one hell of a piece. The Big Guy smiles at this and puffs his cigar. I got a guy, he says. Sally Boy nods and instinctively looks down at his own watch: a gold Tissot PRX Powermatic. It cost him a half of a half of what the Big Guy would have paid retail. Sally Boy did pay retail. He was always quite taken by that watch, used to stare at it in a shop window down on Ocean Drive when he was young. Maybe his mother said his father had one like that. Or maybe he just watched a lot of television. They always had Tissot ads on television in those days.

Now that the topic’s been brought up—all these men have beautiful timepieces. It’s strange. These men would have expensive watches, yes, that’s no surprise, but they’re all so tasteful. These are men who you’d expect to buy a watch to get them laid—to flash money and power in lieu of sexual prowess. And yet they each have rather unique pieces, collectors’ pieces, really. A vintage Cartier Santos-Dumont. A rare Omega tank with a black dial and sweeping movement. The Skinny Guy is wearing a Patek Philippe Nautilus with the—no, it can’t be, it’s preposterous, no, perhaps it is!—an Iranian flag on its dial. There was an auction recently, up by 122nd and Flagler, where they were advertising a Patek Philippe Nautilus gifted by the former Shah of Iran to one of his advisors. How on Earth did the Skinny Guy manage that? He’s a good earner to be sure, the Big Guy likes him, but that’s a Patek Philippe gifted by the fucking Shah of Iran. This man was born in South Jersey for God’s sake.

Sally Boy’s noticing this too now. He’s glancing around at all the watches with wide eyes, and before he can say something, it’s as though the Big Guy reads his mind. The Big Guy snaps his fingers, and the waiter appears out of nowhere with a pen and paper. The Big Guy scribbles an address on the back of a yellow copy of a bill for another table. They ordered a bottle of Tomasetti, the mussels, and the Tuscan chicken. Idiots. To order chicken—chicken!—at a place like this, for fuck’s sake. You can make chicken at home.

The address makes its way to Sally Boy, and the Big Guy wags his fat finger at him and says, Go tonight, now, pick out anything you like. Sally Boy tries to protest this unexpected generosity, but the Big Guy says, Oh! There’s a mythic power to this turn of phrase. It implies, Get the fuck out of here or God bless you or All life is suffering, depending upon the intonation. Here, the Big Guy’s delivery indicates the former. He adds, It’s a warehouse, and it’s—he pauses for a dramatic sip of his Johnnie Walker Double Black, neat—being liquidated tomorrow.

Sally Boy can’t resist. He’s a fan of horology, a sincere one. Beyond the Tissot on his wrist, he owns a vintage Hamilton that was worn by an American soldier during the Battle of the Bulge, a Bulova Tank (the closest Cartier imitation he can afford), and even a manual Helbros. So he leaves the restaurant and goes down to his car—a convertible, the kind you hear about the brats of rich parents getting decapitated in while driving drunk. The guys watch him from the window as he leaves. They watch him in silence. In the kitchen, the chefs stop turning the meatballs in the sauce, stop chopping the eggplant with the mandoline and the garlic with a razor blade, and turn their heads in the direction of Sally Boy. The waiters taking their breaks in the alley, smoking their stale cigarettes and counting their tips, automatically turn their heads in the direction of Sally Boy’s car as he starts up that spitfire engine. In the neighboring buildings, lovers have stopped fucking just before finishing, bored elderly folks have bolted upright in their beds, lonely immigrants trying to learn English by watching American sitcoms have gone to the window, all to see Sally Boy. I can’t say for sure—who can?—but perhaps all across this stupid city, everyone is turning their eyes this evening to the poor fuck.

God help him as he drives into this dark, dark night, turning right on Riviera and left on Prado till he makes it to 42nd and guns it, feeling the Chivas, feeling the humid night air, feeling every part of his skin against the embossed leather steering wheel. As he gets onto 95, he breaks the car into a gallop. The city unfolds before him in all its drunken splendor. High rises bankrolled by drug money. Other high rises, also bankrolled by drug money. Billboards depicting sex and cars and, wouldn’t you know, watches. (Slums below the highway that Sally Boy can’t see.) Beyond the glittering cityscape is the sea, choppy tonight, the waves thrashing in advance of an approaching storm. There’s thunder in the distance too, but Sally Boy doesn’t hear this. No, he hears the roar of his engine and Hėctor Lavoe on the radio, and strangely enough, the ticking of that cheap Tissot on his wrist. He can’t normally hear it, yet now, for some reason, he hears it above all else. This watch ticks for thee, Sally Boy.

He parks outside of the warehouse. It’s in the middle of nowhere, a place for industrial exports and turtles. The latter come from that grimy canal by the side of the road. They tend to crawl across the road and get mowed down by the eighteen wheelers moving steel and oil and drugs. It’s like they want to die, these turtles. They just keep popping out of that goddamn canal and trying to get across the road. One of them made it across not long ago, an old female turtle, probably a mother. Got picked up by a couple of kids and thrown back onto the road and then—Sally Boy used to know a great suit place around here. He had to pick up a few suits for the Skinny Guy: three-piece things, right out of a 1950s Woolworths catalog. Silk ties, too. Canali, the good ones, gold and red.

He gets out of the car and drops his cigar on the ground. He grinds it out with his shoe, careful not to fuck up the sole. These are brand new Florsheims. He can’t afford to replace them. He’s not earning like the others yet. He will, he believes, in time, but it’s not his time yet. Until then, he gets perks like this—what awaits him? A Rolex like the Big Guy’s? A Patek? A Piaget? He’d even settle for one of those idiotic IWC things. This is free, after all. As free as free can be in this life.

He goes to the door of the warehouse and hesitates, his warm hand on the cold handle. He should hesitate, after all. He should savor the lick of the air on his neck, the hum of the cars speeding on the road beside him, the kaleidoscope of headlights dancing into the night. He should turn and run. But he won’t. The watch is ticking, sending a spasm into this poor fuck’s mind, and he’s making a decision just as the rain begins to fall. And he’s turning the handle. What a shame—he forgot to put the top up on the convertible.

His eyes take a moment to adjust to the darkness of the warehouse, and when they do, they find only more darkness. He rummages around his pocket for his lighter. The gesture is all the more dramatic because of the crucifix—not a cross but an honest to God bleeding golden Christ—affixed to the lighter’s handle. It used to belong to a religious man, a true believer, the kind who gave a fiver when the plate came around and saw that plate every week, making friends with it, getting one of those pretentious little envelopes that said his name on it, Mr. Whatever His Name Was, to make a special point to the priest that he wasn’t a cheap fuck. Maybe he had those envelopes on him when he went. Maybe they’re down in the canal somewhere. Maybe that’s what the turtles keep running from—his pretentious donation envelopes and belief that there is good beyond all this down here. There is something. But good? Well, for fuck’s sake.

Something’s dripping from the ceiling onto Sally Boy’s head. He looks up, and it drips down between his eyes, right in the spot between his eyebrows that he used to shave when he cared about little things like that, when he used to go to clubs and such and pretend to be interested in women and such. He moves quickly away from this mysterious dripping, praying (not actually, he’s not one of those like Mr. Whatever His Name Was) that it’s only water. But judging by its viscosity, the heaviness of it, it’s something else. Smells vaguely like olive oil. Olive oil does not drip from ceilings, which means it’s something entirely foreign and, likely, repulsive.

Somewhere in the distance, Sally Boy hears a clicking sound, followed by a low rumble. It sounds like machinery, perhaps. He seriously considers turning back, even does a little half-turn, a real confused John Travolta number. Sally Boy is no fool. He could have gone to college, really. He had an affinity for the work of Yeats. Sally Boy is an enigma, really. He is wary of a hit. This is the perfect way to set one up—middle of nowhere, deserted . . . If someone wanted Sally Boy gone, they’d scarcely even have to haul the body far. If they waited long enough into the night, they could drag him right across the road. Any unlikely passing motorist wouldn’t bat an eye. This is a nice town. People know what they didn’t see, and they know not to have seen it.

But this can’t possibly be a hit. Sally Boy’s not big time. There’s no need for anything quite so elaborate. Sally Boy could get popped getting out of bed. He’s got a one-bedroom shitshack off Seventh Ave. You can see the bedroom from the street. Anybody with the inclination could kill Sally Boy. He’s never been interesting enough to merit being killed. He doesn’t have the hubris to believe in his own assassination, only the lingering feeling that there is indeed some relativity at hand. Is that the line? From Yeats? It doesn’t sound quite right.

Sally Boy’s hit a door: a silver, circular door, with grooves around its edges. Almost like a bank vault. This too seems odd to Sally Boy, but once more he hears that clicking sound followed by a low roar and, well, what else is there for him to do? At just the slightest push, the door eases open with a gentle, loving slide. All his life, Sally Boy’s been pushing, and at last, he’s been let in. Either that, or he’s gone too far with the Chivas. Or puffed that Cuban too fast. That could not possibly have been a Cuban, the flavor was too mouth-forward with pepper and cloves—the Skinny Guy would pull a thing like that, calling a Dominican a Cuban. He’s always been a slippery fuck.

Sally Boy steps forward and finds the ground damp, no, wet, the fine leather of his Florsheims now licked by an inch and a half of water—saltwater, by the smell. He curses himself for not having brought galoshes. Someday he’ll swap these Florsheims for Cole Haan and always make sure to bring the requisite protection. Until then, one pair of shoes is worth sacrificing for a good watch. Already, Sally Boy can see what he’s sought. In the center of the room resides what must be a ten-foot-long display case of watches, illuminated from within by bright fluorescents. The Big Guy did say this place was being liquidated. Little is left, it seems. Sally Boy splashes through the water, drawing some of it up to the hem of his slacks. He makes it to the display case and nearly falls, studying each watch with a true horologist’s eye.

And yet, Sally Boy finds himself at a loss. Each watch’s logo has been removed from its face: a baffling destruction of their value. Even in a black market, who wants a Rolex stripped of its branding? Despite his great knowledge of watches, Sally Boy suddenly finds himself unable to recognize any of these models. He feels a blindness of the horological soul, made all the more severe by the recurrence of that stupid click and roar in the distance, ricocheting across the metal walls. He composes himself, chooses a model right at the center of the display case, staring up at him with begging bezels. A vintage piece with a dial blacker than the night and Roman numerals more gold than what Mr. Whatever His Name Was envisioned there being in heaven. He must have it.

Sally Boy lifts the glass—it gives to him, just like that, the hinges giving a delightful squeal—and plucks it from the display case. Without thinking, he slides off his Tissot, that shoddy thing, and slides on his new timepiece, feeling the weight of time on his body. This is not a watch worn by men—this is a watch around which men grow. Sally Boy can feel its glory with each tick of its seconds hand.

All at once, a beam of golden light appears, then just as suddenly—disappears. As Sally Boy wonders if he imagined it, he sees it once again, the beam cast now several feet farther along the floor. When the light disappears once more, Sally Boy looks upward in search of the source of this illumination, and only then does he notice that the ceiling is a complex array of gears and wheels, each revolving slowly, light occasionally filtering through the gaps in their interlocking teeth, sending the beam flickering across the floor. As Sally Boy tries to follow the light’s path, he fails to read the lettering written across the gears. Perhaps it makes no difference. Perhaps it would have merely read Swiss Made or some such vague moniker. This watchmaker is not one given to explanation.

Sally Boy’s eyes follow the light until it lands upon something he’d not seen before: another door. A door covered in red leather, like the backroom of a nightclub. He can even hear a bit of music spilling out from it, just a bit, a song he can’t place. And Sally Boy, oh Sally Boy, this poor fucker possessed by a mad, mad light, he’s walking to the door. He’s walking to the music. And he’s placing his hand on the brass handle and turning.

He steps into the other room, finding it even darker than the ones before. The floor is dry and carpeted, a small luxury. As the door swings shut, the golden light slips away, and Sally Boy is left fumbling once more to get his lighter running. Yet Jesus or the fuel reservoir has failed him. The thing won’t light. He’s left stumbling against the wall, feeling around for a light switch. At last, his hand finds a cold metal switch with angles cut so sharply that it draws a bit of blood from the tip of Sally Boy’s finger as he flicks it up. At once, Sally Boy is blinded in a white agony. We may be inclined to consider this a kind of divine sensory fuckery, yet Sally Boy soon finds his eyes adjusting to the spectacularly harsh overhead industrial lights. The divine part resides below, on the ground, just before Sally Boy, now illuminated for his consideration.

There are twenty-six chairs arranged in thirteen rows of two in this narrow, almost corridor-like room. Wooden armchairs, whose wood is scratched and beaten in all the proper places—where one would rest their oily elbows and shift their ass—the kind of chair made comfortable through steady acclimation by its occupant to its specific brand of discomfort. Sally Boy recognizes these chairs. And he recognizes their sleeping occupants.

All at once, Sally Boy wishes to run. This is a natural reaction. Who among us can fault Sally Boy? To see the dead alive, to see their chests rising and falling in bright light, to see resurrection before you is, in itself, a blinding experience. For all its rather dramatic descriptions in the course of human history, of all the words expended upon this desire to bring back the departed, it’s often lost that the consequence of this returning is a simple one in the human mind: total terror. And Sally Boy is terrified.

Yet tragically for Sally Boy—less so for us, his morbid admirers—the door is gone. Vanished. Sally Boy is trapped here with the dead. He’s trapped here with this one dead man split into twenty-six versions. While it will take Sally Boy another moment to notice this—we can presume his thoughts are rather frenzied—each chair carries with it a brass plate, upon which is carved a number. An age, to be precise. For the deceased, we have here a representative of each age of his development from one-year-old to twenty-six, his age at the time of his cessation of living as a result of twenty-six stab wounds to his thoracic and lumbar regions. Sally Boy, even from just seeing the baby in that first chair, knew it was Aldo. A photo of him in that same pale green onesie had been affixed to his mother’s refrigerator. Their mothers had been quite close, having given birth to sons a mere seven days apart.

Sally Boy begins to hear the music. Had it stopped and resumed? Or perhaps he’d forgotten about it altogether? Nonetheless, we can surmise by the expression on his face, the slight tilting of his ear in search of an unseen orchestra that he’s come to recognize this waltz. And from the searching of his eyes to the sixth row, to the twelve-year-old boy dressed in an awkwardly oversized suit and tie, hand-me-downs, worn ones, at that, we can conclude that Sally Boy has recognized this song. It was always the same song. Each Tuesday, their mothers shoved them into one or the other’s car and dumped them off at the country club they could never afford (nor be accepted into) for an act of community charity by the city’s upper crust: cotillion class. And it was there, between sips of tepid soda and flatfooted dancing, that Sally Boy fell in love.

Love came for Sally Boy like it came for most, fast then slow. A yanking of his soul—if we are to believe in such hackneyed things, like Mr. Whatever His Name Was—towards that of another, until the two grew so tangled together that any attempt at extricating oneself only yielded an agonizing pulling of one’s insides. And each Tuesday evening, as they danced across the room with proper partners, as they twirled and dipped and foxtrotted, their eyes spoke to one another. A symphony parlayed over two cans and a string. But that was long ago for Sally Boy. Between then and now, life had come for Sally Boy.

Just as Sally Boy begins to creep to the sixth row, curious to see how closely his memory’s image of this person comports with its actual truth, that clicking sound returns, and all at once, every single version of Sally Boy’s lost love rises in perfect synchronization with this dark waltz, does a little twirl despite the lack of a partner, and, once more, sits down, eyes closed and faces solemn. And this is to Sally Boy, we can guess from the tears in his eyes and clasp of his hands together in a pseudo-prayer, the most beautiful and frightening sight of his life.

Sally Boy makes his way back to the last row, the thirteenth row, his eyes lingering on each year of Aldo’s life, the gaunt figure of his late teens, the muscle provided in his early twenties from his time inside, the hair, once unruly, slicked back into tight, uniform coils. As Sally Boy arrives at that final chair, that final Aldo, clad in the suit in which he was buried, a navy pinstripe double-breasted creation that seemed to fuse with Aldo’s skin, we can presume that Sally Boy is looking past that suit, that he is perhaps—by the power of his subconscious or something greater—seeing what lies beneath the well-tailored wool, seeing what the undertaker labored to conceal, seeing the wounds of the knife where it plunged as he danced that night in that club. Who can say what for? All anyone can remember is the blood spilled on the dance floor that night, how even the neon lights could not conceal it. To have done a thing like that, can you imagine the emptiness of a person who could do such a thing to a person such as Aldo?

Sally Boy is weeping now, he’s been broken by this strange place, who among us can blame him. As he wipes the tears from his eyes, as he straightens up and clenches his jaw, he checks the time and finds that his new watch will soon strike midnight. And as that golden seconds hand drags itself with reluctance to twelve, Sally Boy hears a clicking and feels it deep within himself, a cracking of something in his chest. And as he raises his head to watch the beautiful dance of that lost young man, it’s already all too late. All twenty-six of Aldo are already dashing towards Sally Boy, knocking over their chairs and clamoring over one another until they’ve piled on top of him, pulling him apart, piece by piece, ripping away the body in search of the soul.

Perhaps in these final moments, Sally Boy hears the rain in the distance, the roaring thunder berating the city beyond this warehouse, perhaps he hears the rain and thinks of cockroaches, invariably forced inside by the water. Perhaps he thinks of the canal to which he will soon find his final resting place, among the turtles. Perhaps Sally Boy casts one last glance to his watch, to that golden creature living upon his wrist and hears the ticking of time’s past. Or perhaps Sally Boy is not hearing the time at all anymore but instead merely the waltz, as he feels the beat of its vibrations through the carpeted floor upon his cheek and recalls the impossibility of that great dancer’s twirl, the perpetuity in each melodic flourish of his arms and spinning of his hips. Perhaps now, upon hearing the music, never having fully faced it, Sally Boy realizes that the music has only ever really begun after the song has ended.