Strike

I’m under the impression tonight is my last night on earth.

I just set flame to Sonny’s Vintage on second avenue and ninth. Watched it burn for a meditative moment till my skin felt the first bite of heat, then I bolted eastbound. The crystal methamphetamine was just beginning to warm my guts and the murmurs in my skull falling taciturn. But in a cruel flash cut, I’m now half-curled over a Tompkins Square Park bench like a busted garter snake and something inside is resurrecting.

I had to burn Sonny’s. It was that or face the wrath of Mr. Menza. That’s Melvin Menza a.k.a The Brownsville Butcher. Such was my fate due to the mix up last Tuesday night with Melvin’s rhino skinned wife Pamela.

I was at Floyd’s pool hall on Norfolk St. in the Lower East side. Betting games was my new religion being that it kept my medicine coming. Though as the night unfolded, the warm rays of luck I’d been basking in were waning. A four game losing streak had me on unusual edge, but it wasn’t until I shotgunned the eight ball at the corner pocket of my choice that the evening took a nasty turn.

I’d put a little extra mustard on the shot and watched the black sphere of ivory careen off the leather binding and sail upward through the bar lights and shadows. Time slowed as the ball suspended like one of those sea birds of prey hovering on the wind before the dive bomb. As time released, the eight ball went crashing down into the corner dining booth. An honest mistake except that it exploded Pamela Menza’s martini, whipping shards of glass through the liquid shell of her once joyful eyes. Melvin spat his garlic meatballs at the tablecloth and raged at the bartender to call an ambulance. Then set his sights on me.

I knew The Butcher’s face because I’d seen him on tv three years prior in the South Bronx Edison trial. It was a famous case in which he sat with a cold dead stare and freely admitted to the prosecution that he carved an adversary’s face off and blood pasted it to the visage of the King Jagiello monument in Central Park. Jagiello being the King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. Mr. Menza was of Eastern European decent and was sending a message he is not to be fucked with by way of adopting the ancient Aztec warrior tradition of wearing your enemy’s skin.

So what’s all this got to do with a thrift shop. Well Pamela Menza in her hey day, was a punk rocker, a disciple of the St. Marks street crews. It’s hard to imagine now that she’s blossomed into such a classy, purse carrying broad. But she used to be in the thick of things, the four AM booze flooded nights, the needle culture; the East Village music scene back then was riddled with all forms of jittering night crawlers. She eventually went into the vintage clothing business and did a start up shop with Betsy Bloom, the formidable junky who ran Max’s Kansas City. Rumor has it Betsy once blew New York State Senator Rich Ramsey, right on the bar stool as the patrons formed a wailing heathen circle around the proceedings.

I think I want to tell you now that my son died last year. Though I would understand if you have less sympathy for me now, knowing that I’m an arsonist who purposely set fire to someone’s business. Only a lost neanderthal would do such a thing. I can only tell you I’d been lost in the molten swamp ever since my ex, Miranda told me she thought our son’s death was a suicide. I was looking to bound from the likes of reality and discovered the warm blindness of crystal methamphetamine. Since then, I’ve been living outside the ozone layer, shivering blissfully, staring into the cosmos; anticipating the next celestial event. I was perfectly content to waste away in the Lower East side pool halls when earth came calling for me in the form of my shredding up poor Pamela’s corneas.

At first, when Melvin told me I’d be hanging from the Williamsburg Bridge by midnight if I didn’t go set fire to Sonny’s, I was confused. But he explained my crime against his beloved Pamela rendered me his conduit to end the life of one of his greatest enemies. So now you know, I’m not just an arsonist. I’m a murderer.

Melvin had sent his soldiers to seal off the fire escape at Sonny’s Vintage the previous evening; the torching had already been planned. But Menza’s fire guy was delivered to him this morning in five separate UPS packages. The Butcher decided that I would do fine as a fill in arsonist being that I had zero ties back to him or his network.

As the ambulance catapulted from Floyd’s with his prized Pamela, The Butcher told me if she ends up blind, it wouldn’t matter if I torched Sonny’s or not; he’d kill me anyway. He gave me a book of matches and asked if I was a man of God. I told him the only God I know is the one who hands me my medicine. He suggested I do some serious praying on my way uptown. Not just for my own life, but he believed the more people praying for Pamela, the better. I was not a person who prayed. The idea of it just seemed so humiliating. Instead I lumbered up First Avenue in total silence. Aside of course, from the usual bone marrow hum of a methamphetamine state.

As I headed north toward Sonny’s, images of my son were now breaking through the drug barrier. I was becoming terrified; my son’s eyes reflected a campfire and he mouthed words of which I couldn’t decipher. Then surprisingly, the only thing that occurred to me was to pray. As I began praying to be spared from my reverie, a sudden boiling blast of city air knocked me backwards and the streetlights snuffed out like dying stars.

I woke to a man in a business suit with black hair peeling me from the sidewalk. He carried me like a wounded veteran to the nearest bus bench as I sobbed uncontrollably. He sauntered off and I could hear him snickering to himself like some evil rat. That’s when my souring guts kicked my liver sideways. But I still had a job to do.

Turns out, my chore as an arsonist was to be easy. I only need drop a lit match down the sewer in front of Sonny’s. Menza’s crew had it rigged to do the rest. The basement in Sonny’s Vintage had been the long time meeting place for Victor Jack and his men. Tonight, it was gonna burn from the bottom up and Menza’s crew knew by the time the fire department arrived, nobody on the basement floor would be alive, effectively ending the reign of enemy number one to The Butcher.

I arrived at Sonny’s under a moonless sky. It must’ve been around eleven o’clock. It was time to do the deed. As I pulled the matchbook from my pocket, I couldn’t help wondering if Pamela would ever have her eyesight again. I smirked at the Manhattan Braille Institute billboard standing atop the building across First Avenue, but hoped it wasn’t some kind of harbinger.

I’m still vexed that it never occurred to me to run. To hop a bus out of town and never come back. I think the broken junky in me was terrified to untether from the medicine man. Or just unwilling. Maybe I could’ve waited it out. If Pamela Menza’s eyes were to be saved, then potentially I could beg The Butcher to elect another arsonist. But under all of this, I knew it was time to face the music. The death of my son. To take it on like a man. To spring from the wilderness of drug induced confusion onto the barren landscape of sobriety.

I opened the matchbook and plucked a match from the row. Standing over the sewer at Sonny’s curb, I heard the murmurs of Victor and his men reverberate through the sewage system. It reminded me of the night I stood in the delivery room, waiting for my son to be born. I knew the world would be different for me if he were still alive. That’s when I struck the match.