an eye on?”
“He’s so gentle. I don’t know. I take him out, I put him on my desk, we have a conversation, the phone rings or the teakettle whistles, or my e-mail chimes out ‘You’ve got mail,’ and I take my eyes off him or go downstairs for just five minutes, and next thing I know he’s crept to the bathroom and is hanging out on my toothbrush. Just help me find him before we leave.”
“Fine,” I said. Then I sighed for effect. Lewis really did try my patience. Just as, I’m sure, I tried his.
I began scouring Ripper’s favorite haunts: behind Lewis’s collection of brains in formaldehyde-filled mason jars; tucked in the eyeball socket of the human skeleton in the corner of the room, whom Lewis called Schmedrick; inside any one of the used but not yet washed coffee mugs that dotted the bookshelves. I remember once picking up what I thought was my coffee mug and finding the very large and very hairy Ripper nestled inside.
“Nope, Lewis, I don’t see him anywhere.”
“Here, Ripper…come out, come out wherever you are.”
“Oh, Jesus! Look!” I pointed up at the poster of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. Ripper was perched on the corner, looking as if he belonged to one of the zombies depicted in the poster.
Lewis nodded. “Ripper has great taste in movies.” He walked over to Ripper and stuck out his hand. As if on command, Ripper extended a hairy leg and crawled onto Lewis’s palm. Lewis then took him and set him down inside his tank, putting the tank lid on tightly, and placing a dictionary on top of the lid for good measure. He started to leave, then stopped, looked at the tank and added a thesaurus on top of the dictionary.
“That should keep the rascal. I should have named him Houdini.”
“Come on,” I snapped. “We’ll be late for brunch.”
“Don’t want that,” Lewis said. “I hear your brother’s got a truckload of stolen DVDs he’s looking to get rid of. I’m hoping he’s got a few things I might actually want to watch, instead of like last time. I mean, who wants a DVD of Showgirls?”
“A lot of guys might like that.”
“Please. You’ve seen one breast in a pastie, you’ve seen ’em all. Anyway, I’m praying this is a good haul—like movies still in the theaters.”
Whereas I had long ago tired of the shenanigans of my brother and father, Lewis remained quite amused by them, perhaps because his own parents were so staid and boring.
Lewis and I descended the stairs and went outside to my car. I unlocked the doors, and we both climbed in.
“How’s David?” he asked. “Sleeping any better?”
I shook my head. “Not really…. And you?”
He looked out the passenger-side window. “No. Not any better at all.”
Lewis had an IQ over 160, and on a good night he usually slept about four hours, thriving on spending all night reading, playing chess over the Internet and often tormenting me with lengthy conversations about brain matter, blood spatter and serial killers. Then he fell in love with C.C.—a nun who for now was on a spiritual retreat trying to decide just what to do with her friendship with Lewis—and his insomniac life grew a lot worse, only now he was seriously depressed with a case of unrequited love.
“I’m sorry, Lewis.”
“Not one word from her. Not even a letter. Or telegram. Carrier pigeon. Nothing,” he wailed.
“She told you that she was going to go away and she wouldn’t contact you. Me. Any of us. She was going to pray about this, Lewis, and she’s just doing what she said she was going to do.”
“But that leaves me no opportunity to talk her into marrying me…. And yes, I used the M word.”
“I thought you were terrified of the M word.”
“I’m more terrified of living without C.C. Do you know I’ve never so much as kissed her? And if something happened to me and I died before doing so, I might think my life here had been a waste.”
“Lewis, when you’re in love, you’re more melodramatic than ever.”
I headed toward Hoboken. We found a parking spot on the street and walked two blocks to Quinn’s, already sweating in the pre-noon heat.
“Wish this God damn weather would break already,” Lewis muttered.
“You’re from New Orleans. Steamy humidity is in your blood.”
“Maybe, but it’s downright hellish around here. I expect this, south of the Mason-Dixon. But, my God, it’s miserable in Jersey.”
We reached the door to Quinn’s, stepped inside and felt a blast of air-conditioning that was a welcome break from the outside temperature. My uncle Tony came over and hugged me, his bald head shining. He shook Lewis’s hand and wrapped a tattooed arm around his neck. “Gang’s all here,” Uncle Tony growled.
Sitting at tables pulled together were my assorted cousins and my father and brother, and my brother’s girlfriend, Marybeth.
“Hi, Daddy,” I leaned over and kissed my father. My brother stood and grabbed me in a sort of headlock.
“Mikey…” I snapped, “we’re getting a little old for this.”
“Never.” He released my head and then hugged me tightly. “Got a whole truckload of bootleg DVDs in the back office there. Go pick through and take whatever you want.”
I narrowed my eyes and gave him a dirty look.
“What?” he asked.
“Mikey,” I said under my breath. “You promised me you’d straighten out.”
“Come on, Billie…it’s just a few DVDs.”
“It’s just a friggin’ parole violation.”
“I got the complete three-DVD set of The Godfather trilogy. You love that.”
I rolled my eyes but noticed Lewis was already heading back there.
“It’s all fun and games until I’m visiting you on Sundays and admiring your orange jumpsuit,” I said sarcastically.
“Come on, sit down and have a beer. You take life too seriously.”
I took a seat by him and poured myself a mug of beer from the pitcher on the table. Sunday brunch was family style. The place was closed until four in the afternoon, so it was only family. My uncle Tony’s short-order cook, Declan, right off the boat from Ireland—and as far as I knew with no immigration papers—made massive plates of scrambled eggs and home-fried potatoes, rashers of bacon and dozens of biscuits. Diets were forgotten in favor of good old-fashioned fatty food.
Lewis returned to the table with six DVDs—all horror movies, his and my favorite. “Nothing like some zombies,” he said. “Mikey, good haul this time.”
I glared
