‘Pick him up,’ Skip said, and grabbed one of Stoke’s shoulders. Stoke slapped at him weakly with one wax-dummy hand. Skip ignored this, might not even have felt it. ‘Hurry, for Christ’s sake.’
I grabbed Stoke’s other shoulder. He splashed water in my face as though we were fucking around in someone’s backyard pool. I had thought he’d be as cold as I was, but there was a sickish heat coming off his skin. I looked across his waterlogged body to Skip. Skip nodded back at me. ‘Ready … set … now.” We heaved. Stoke came partly out of the water — from the waist up — but that was all. I was astounded by the weight of him. His shirt had come
untucked from his pants and floated around his middle like a ballerina’s tutu. Below it I could see his white skin and the black bullethole of his navel. There were scars there, too, healed scars wavering every whichway like snarls of knotted string.
‘Help out, Natie!’ Skip grunted. ‘Prop him up, for fuck’s sake!’ Nate dropped to his knees, splashing all three of us, and grabbed Stoke in a kind of backwards hug. We struggled to get him all the way up and out of the soup, but the slush on the bricks kept us off-balance, made it impossible for us to work together. And Stoke, although still coughing and half-drowned, was also working against us, struggling as best he could to be free of us. Stoke wanted to go back in the water.
The others arrived, Ronnie in the lead. ‘Fucking Rip-Rip,’ he breathed. He was still giggling, but he looked slightly awestruck. ‘You screwed up big this time, Rip. No doubt.’
‘Don’t just stand there, you numb tool!’ Skip cried. ‘Help us!’ Ronnie paused a moment longer, not angry, just assessing how this might best be done, then turned to see who else was there. He slipped on the slush and Tony DeLucca — also still giggling – grabbed him and steadied him. They were crowded together on the drowned Walk, all my cardplaying buddies from the third-floor lounge, and most of them still couldn’t stop laughing. They looked like something, but I didn’t know what. I might never have known, if not for Carol’s Christmas present . . . but of course that came later.
‘You, Tony,’ Ronnie said. ‘Brad, Lennie, Barry. Let’s get his legs.’
‘What about me, Ronnie?’ Nick asked. ‘What about me?’ ‘You’re too small to help lift him,’
Ronnie said, ‘but it might cheer him up to get his dick sucked.’
Nick stood back.
Ronnie, Tony, Brad, Lennie, and Barry Margeaux slipped past us on either side. Ronnie and Tony got Stoke by the calves.
‘Christ Jesus!’ Tony cried, disgusted and still half-laughing. ‘Nothing to him! Legs like on a scarecrow!’
‘ “Legs like on a scarecrow, legs like on a scarecrow!”‘ Ronnie cried, viciously mimicking.
‘Pick him the fuck up, you wop nimrod, this isn’t art appreciation! Lennie and Barry, get under his deprived ass when they do. Then you come up — ‘
‘ — when the rest of you guys lift him,’ Lennie finished. ‘Got it. And don’t call my paisan a wop.’
‘Leave me alone,’ Stoke coughed. ‘Stop it, get away from me . . . fucking losers . . . ‘ The coughing overtook him again. He began to make gruesome retching sounds. In the lamplight his lips looked gray and slick.
‘Look who’s talkin about being a loser,’ Ronnie said. ‘Fuckin half-drowned crippled-up Jerry’s Kid homo.’ He looked at Skip, water running out of his wavy hair and over his pimply face. ‘Count us off, Kirk.’
‘One . . . two . . . three . . . now\’
We lifted. Stoke Jones came out of the water like a salvaged ship. We staggered back and forth with him. One of his arms flopped in front of me; it hung there for a moment and then the hand attached to the end of it arced up and slapped me hard across the face. Whacko! I started laughing again.
‘Put me down! Motherfuckers, put me DOWN!’
We staggered, dancing on the slush, water pouring off him, water pouring off us. ‘Echolls!’