In the street the cold air hit me in the face like a slap from an angry woman. The temperature had taken a dive. A sharp wind was howling up the street. A rusted fire escape was twisting with it, making strangely beautiful metal music. I wanted to shout to the heavens. I wanted to challenge the Gods to a chess game.
Drunk Jake was drunk. He slipped on a patch of ice, lay in the street. He was giggling. I dragged him to the curb, just ahead of a barreling Denali. Jesus, I thought, that’s a big fucking vehicle. I began to sober up. Jake didn’t. I hauled him to his feet. I put my arm around him, held him up. We staggered comically toward the PATH train to Manhattan. I was hoping for a cab to pass, before we had to be subjected to the underground’s indignities.
At Bloomfield Street we stepped over a guy passed out on the sidewalk. We paid no mind. Just another obstacle on the road to becoming a man. But he took offense. We had awakened him. From a most important dream, it seemed. He crawled to his feet.
Hey, he yelled, the fuck you think you’re doing?
I’m trying to rescue my frigid friend here from the ravages of the evil drink, I said. The devil rum. A concept you might well want to attend to, I added, eyeing his vein-lined face and trembling hands.
I was confident that the inebriate wouldn’t follow a word of it.
Fuck you, the degenerate responded. Quote Shakespeare at your peril, shitbag.
Ho, ho, an intellectual walking dead pile of drunken pus, I said, strategically ignoring the fact that Shakespeare had nothing to do with it.
He must have mistaken my friendly tone, for he immediately launched himself at me, all hundred pounds of desiccated liver and grime-encrusted flesh aimed at my midsection like an RPG from the ninth circle of hell. I stepped aside, losing my grip on Drunk Jake’s armpit. Jake staggered to a lamppost and held himself up by sheer force of will. The homeless bag of bones fell face-first into the gutter, reaping a visage full of dirty snow.
I laughed. Our dead-end friend gathered himself and launched another pathetic attack. I could see that he was going to take some convincing. I batted him upside the head as he came within arm’s length, knocking him sideways into a wrought iron fence, sending him sprawling once again.
This time he lay there for a moment, catching what little breath his ravaged lungs made available to him, and cursed me from the prone position.
You piece of whale shit, he said, I’ll Melville your ass from here to Nantucket.
Gad, I said, you’re a literate piece of crap. Get up and I’ll buy you a drink.
Stick him, Rick, kick his fuckin’ head in, yelled Jake from his position at the lamppost.
C’mon, Jake, I responded, my words slurring for the first time, he’s a fellow traveler. An angel sent from Dante for our delectation. Let’s buy him a drink.
All the bars are closed, Jake said, more cogently than could have been expected. Kick the shit out of’m.
I’m not sure that our good friend here should be the victim of the mere contingency that it’s after closing time, I replied.
The angry hobo was not appeased. He gathered himself up and took another run at me. He was hunched over. I detected a glint of metal in his left hand. A lefty, too, I thought admiringly. A creative thinker. I landed a heavy uppercut to his sternum. He collapsed in a silent heap, and bothered us no longer.
Pity, I said. I was looking forward to some interesting conversation.
Fuck that, said Jake, let’s find a cab.
As luck would have it, one tooled by at just that moment. We flagged it down.
Manhattan, I said to the driver.
He smelled of stale cigarettes, and Jersey City.