Pickle’s Progress Page 2

  He started awake, trying to reorient himself. “Wha?”

  “Call your brother, right now.”

  “Why?” He winced as he touched the gash on his forehead, then stared at the blood on his fingers.

  “That woman says a guy jumped off the South Sidewalk. Call him.”

  Stan shook his head back and forth, bewildered. “God’s sake, Karen. I’ll just call 9-1-1.”

  “No. I want Pickle. He’s close by. Plus, we’ve been drinking and I don’t want this to get complicated. He’ll know what to do.”

  “But he’s in the city. We’re in Jersey. He won’t have jurisdiction.”

  “No, we just passed the state line—look.”

  Stan turned around. There it was behind them on the opposite side of the bridge roadway: “Welcome to New Jersey.”

  His head bobbed with recognition. “Yeah, I see your point. Okay. Pickle.”

  Karen dragged her head and shoulders back out of the window, then turned to find the woman now propped against the guardrail, utterly still, with her legs stretched in front, her feet canted out in balletic first position. She was drenched, even with the light rain, so Karen surmised she must have been on the bridge for hours. The woman’s inscrutable expression unnerved her. Crouching down, she tried to rouse her by seeking eye contact and gently shaking her shoulder. When she got no response, Karen put her arm around the woman, who then began to moan, “Jacob.” A goner, for sure.

  “What happened? Miss, can you just tell me what happened?”

  The woman looked up, stared at Karen for several seconds, then jerked her head to the side and dropped her eyes to the pavement in what Karen took for embarrassment. And with that gesture, Karen was instantly grateful, because she realized she didn’t want to know the answer. Any explanation would have been a falsehood, the true reason surely unknowable. The kind of agony that might propel a man into the Hudson River stirred Karen in a place she could not acknowledge, and an awful gush of newly sobered reality pinched her heart. It was always strange, this spiked alertness, occurring on so many early mornings when nothing was certain and everything felt at risk. As she looked into this woman’s face, she recognized some aspect of herself, and Karen wondered how the hell she’d gotten to this place in her life.

  She glanced over her shoulder to make sure Stan hadn’t drifted off again, and noticed his fingers punching at the phone. Pickle almost never answered on the first, second or third try, and she saw Stan’s frustration as he redialed. Finally, his lips began to move. He wiped his mouth and grimaced at the blood on his palm. Karen sprinted to the car and grabbed the phone away from Stan, putting Pickle on speaker.

  Pickle’s voice boomed into the car. “Fuck. It’s three in the goddamned morning, Stan. Why are you calling me?”

  Stan rested his forehead on the steering wheel, then jerked up with pain. “Pickle. Thank God you answered.”

  “What … Stan, this’d better be good ’cause I got a lot going on—”

  “Wait. Karen’s here too. I … we’ve been in an accident. On the GW Bridge. We’re on the New York side, heading into Manhattan.”

  The pause was long enough for Karen to wonder if they’d been cut off. Pickle finally broke the dead air. “Okay. And?”

  Stan sighed. “Yeah, we’re loaded.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Stan. Get some help. Get some therapy. Get to the AA rooms. Do something. I’m begging you—”

  “Wait, Pickle,” Karen interrupted. “It’s not what you think. Some guy jumped off the bridge.”

  “Hold on—lemme turn on the two-way.”

  Karen heard crackling and mumbled voices from Pickle’s police scanner.

  “Right. I hear it now,” Pickle said, his voice softening. “Somebody must have called in your accident, but there’s nothing about a jumper yet. Okay, you guys hang tight. I’ll be right there. And for the love of God, don’t talk to anybody till I get there. Got it?”

  The phone went dead and Stan gave Karen a wounded puppy expression. She crossed her eyes and smiled sarcastically as she threw the phone into Stan’s lap. “See? I told you he’d fix it.”

  “God, Karen. Yes, yes, yes. You were right. Let it go. For once.” Stan tried to breathe through his nose. He hawked up a big snuff, aimed his head out the window and spit. With that effort, he let his body slide down to the right, landing across the gearshift between the seats. “Ow.” He waved his hands at her to back off. “Lemme sleep.”

  Karen felt a body come up behind her and then a hand on her shoulder. Turning around, she was surprised to see how tiny the woman was—a few inches shorter than Karen, who was petite herself.

  “Help me. Please? Can you help me?” The woman’s face, expressionless, and her voice, a low monotone, caused a curious hyperawareness in Karen. It was a contrary sensation of being badly needed while at the same time having no agency over what was happening. She ushered the woman into the backseat of the Volvo, then clambered in next to her. The woman slumped forward, her head down at her knees, lips touching her sodden wool coat. Red hair billowed around her head, illuminated now by a beacon of light from the very top of the bridge. The glow made the woman’s tangled hair look like a spiderweb, with no order to madly spun strands. Karen placed her hand on the woman’s arm and gently squeezed. The woman took in a shuddering breath and turned her head to the side. It was then that Karen realized the woman was just a girl, really. Not one crow’s crease at the edge of her eye. Her forehead was unlined like an ingénue, and a sparse set of ochre freckles smattered a thin, upturned nose.

  Karen tried once again for information. “What’s your name?”

  “Junie.”

  Stan jolted upright, quickly turned around, and seeing the two women in the backseat, shook his head. “Karen. Sit up here.”

  “No. It’s better if I’m in the back. For the cops.”

  “But I need you here. I don’t feel good.”

  “Not now, Stan.”

  They sat—almost at military attention—like waiting for the firing squad, while Karen willed herself into sobriety. She listened intently for Pickle’s distinctive siren, always sounding a half pitch above the others. He’d refused to get it repaired. Pickle McArdle was like that.

  2

  WHEN APPROACHING THE GEORGE WASHINGTON Bridge from the Manhattan side, the Bridge Apartments rise improbably out of asphalt, cement, and oil slick. The building serves as a New York City landmark for radio heads announcing congestion at rush hour. “Traffic is backed up for two miles approaching the Apartments,” is a frequent warning to any driver heading out of the city on a typical Friday afternoon. The high-rise is deeply ingrained in the psychic architectural lexicon of New Yorkers who own a car and have a need to travel to New Jersey on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

  Living in the Apartments requires a certain amount of shoulder-shrugging resignation. Air quality is dodgy most days. The floors shake continually from eighteen-wheelers rumbling underneath the building on the Cross Bronx Expressway. Yet, despite these atmospheric and automotive tectonic shifts, residents—solidly middle- to lower-class—remain stoic, or better, sanguine. Perhaps a reflection of the flexibility of New Yorkers, the building is mercurial—simultaneously in-your-face yet off-your-radar.

  Pickle gazed out the large window in his apartment, tossed his cell phone into the pillow at the head of his bed and flicked off his police scanner. If he looked down, his current view of the bridge and the Hudson River might reveal a one-car demolition derby or a swan dive into the water. But he felt disconnected from what he knew had just transpired: both. That was the curious paradox about living thirty-two floors above river level—the panorama that excited him also made him a witness to an occasional tragedy. But most days, he considered his view as just a wide country road dangling from metal marionette ropes, all manipulated by some version of God.

  He assumed his twin brother and sister-in-law were holding up traffic. But then he noticed that cars were, in fact, moving steadily i
n both directions. Through the fog, the glow of headlights engorged as they moved toward him, while red taillights fizzled to nothing. This meant, of course, that their accident was negligible. No one crossing the bridge would know that a man had leaped to his death, unless they stopped to ask. And no one in his or her right mind would stop, or even care, at this hour of the morning. He fumed; let them wait.

  Pickle burped. The Indian food he’d eaten a few hours earlier sat leaden in his stomach. Yellow-orange curry had dribbled down the front of his sky-blue Mets T-shirt—not a nice blend of colors. And he stank. Of saffron, of body odor, of someone else’s cigarette smoke, of his own fetid breath. Yet the woman asleep under his bedcovers, not having moved an inch during the call with Stan and Karen, hadn’t seemed to mind the offensive scents escaping from various parts of his body. Hasty sex and the late hour had thrown her into a hard sleep. But not Pickle. Sex always woke him up and made his brain go a bit mad—pinging on all pistons.

  He walked to the other side of the bed, kicking a shoe with a stiletto heel out of his way, and poked at her through the covers, guessing at the location of her ass. She didn’t move but snorted in disgust.

  “Come on. Get up,” Pickle barked.

  “No.” The pillow muffled her voice.

  “You have to go.”

  “Why?” Now she canted her head, eyes like slits, toward Pickle.

  “Because I have to go to work.”

  “You said you had the day off.” She propped her torso up on both elbows, her heavy breasts swinging like Newton’s Cradle.

  “Something’s come up. You gotta leave.”

  The woman finally turned over, tossed the comforter back, stood up buck naked, and began gathering her clothes. After a quick stop in the bathroom for a pee, she threw a parting shot over her shoulder. “Pickle, think a hundred times before you call me again.”

  Pickle locked the door with a snap of his wrist and turned to consider his jumbled studio apartment. The bed was front and center, because that’s where he spent most of his time during the few hours he wasn’t working his typical sixty-hour week. A Parsons table doubled as a surface for a laptop and meals, one armless chair tucked underneath. He’d jammed an old dresser inside the only closet, shoving his hanging clothes, mashed and wrinkled, to one side. But what did he care? He wore jeans and T-shirts most of the time, anyway. With the kitchen taking up one wall and the west-facing window soaking up another, the remaining wall space was dedicated to a flat-screen TV mounted directly opposite the bed. This 400-square-foot room was the sum total of Pickle’s personal life since he’d joined the police force, straight out of cadet training. At the time, one room and low rent was all he could manage and even needed. But through the years he’d come to prefer it, love it, in fact. Because his eyes owned the near and distant horizon, like a bird in an aviary where, in at least one direction, there were no limits. Dumpy as the place was, Pickle had a surprising million-dollar view.

  Before he left to rescue Stan and Karen, he returned to the window and stood dead center of the bridge’s crossed steel trusses, like enormous see-through Legos anchored deep into the ground. Pickle cast his eyes to the westernmost point and pondered what it might feel like to not be Stan McArdle’s twin.

  They were truly identical—the rarest—indistinguishable even at third glance. As infants and then as toddlers, their mother had been reduced to dressing them in different colored outfits just to tell them apart—they were that interchangeable. On fourth glance, the one distinguishing mark was a red mole on Stan’s leg. That dermatological miracle was the only indication that they were different—and to Pickle’s young mind, like midnight and noon.

  Growing up, Stan gave Pickle searching rights whenever he felt the urge. Lying on the bed, pliable as a damp rag, Stan allowed Pickle to inspect his body to locate that dot, again and again, which Pickle saw as important as an Eagle Scout merit badge. But it was impossible to share with the world, as the thing lived on Stan’s uppermost thigh. So, when the public at large pointed out for the ten-millionth time—Look! They’re completely identical!—Stan refused to drop his drawers on command, much as Pickle pleaded.

  They were adults now—still the same weight, wrinkles appearing at the same pace, temples greying not at all—still utterly identical. And ridiculously handsome. The swivel-headed stares continued—now not so much for being twins—but for their Clark Gable looks. With emerald eyes, coal-black hair and clear, wan complexions, the brothers could pull a noisy room down to a whisper.

  Pickle turned to the mirror glued to the back of the front door of his apartment and scrutinized his face. Sure, he was good-looking—that part was easy and didn’t even count, because he wasn’t responsible for that luck of the genetic draw. The problem was he didn’t feel smart enough, and not nearly clever enough. He wasn’t terribly ambitious and though he’d risen in the ranks on the police force, he couldn’t even acknowledge that small amount of success. The truth was, he’d just never live up to the way of his brother.

  The corner of a framed photograph poked out from under the bed and caught his eye. Pickle had kicked it there months ago, for what reason, he couldn’t exactly remember. Bending down, he pulled it out, dragging along with it an unused condom covered with dust balls. It was an eight by ten, black-and-white image from Karen and Stan’s wedding. They stood in a line—Stan at the left, Karen in the middle and Pickle on the right. The shot was not posed; they were all in mid-motion, but the lens’s focus landed squarely on Karen. The photographer knew his craft and had zeroed in on her beauty. That left Stan and Pickle a bit fuzzy. Still, the composite impression was decidedly a trio shot.

  Pickle strained to recall the exact moment, and what might have caused Karen to glance away from the camera. Her gaze, aimed skyward, left her mouth in a crooked, slightly ironic smirk. Her eyebrows slanted in a concerned parenthesis, as if a hawk were about to swoop down, grab her by the hair and drag her off. She looked just this side of afraid, dressed in virginal white.

  This was the only image Karen had given Pickle from the dozens taken that day. There were so many that perfectly captured the wedding, now in evidence stacked across the mantel above the living-room fireplace in the brownstone. But this one was not exceptional, with expressions that didn’t particularly flatter any of them. It was such an odd selection, and he had pressed her about it.

  “This is a shitty photo. Why’d you even bother framing it?” he’d asked.

  Karen had flatly dismissed him. “I don’t know, Pickle. It just looks like who we are. Okay? Let it go.”

  He did let it go, for a long time. Now, before coming to their aid once again, Pickle suddenly understood what she meant. Karen was the only one in focus.

  3

  FOUR EVENLY PLACED ORANGE TRAFFIC CONES blocked one lane of the Manhattan-bound off-ramp from the George Washington Bridge, allowing for police to travel west toward the accident, and for eastbound traffic to filter through. With all windows opened wide and a soggy breeze passing through, Pickle idled his car for a few minutes on the Manhattan side of the bridge. He took a deep, wet breath. He was headed toward a tragedy, yes. Someone was dead and that was, of course, a pity. Yet Pickle couldn’t help but feel invigorated, almost hopeful, because the night itself was glorious. Bulky rain clouds floated above him and the moisture at street level shimmered. Chilled droplets from the invisible mist clung to the hair on his arms and he rubbed the sky’s sweat into his palms, hoping to create energy from the friction. Pickle gunned the gas in neutral; the engine roared, yet nothing moved—an inert power he admired. He shifted the gear into drive and deftly swerved around the cones.

  “Assholes,” he muttered to himself while jabbing at his siren. With each successive punch to the horn, Pickle hoped to dissipate the feelings of frustration that arose when he thought of Karen and Stan and the brownstone. A century-old piece of Upper West Side real estate, it was truly a gorgeous hunk of Queen Anne architecture, albeit a wreck. In spite of the need for a gut
renovation, Karen had explained to him, the brownstone was ideal for two units. She and Stan would occupy the parlor floor and sublevel with access to the garden, and Pickle would live on the two upper floors where skylights flooded the top story with sunlight.

  How nice. Sounded perfect. But it hadn’t happened. Karen and Stan’s space had been renovated first and they now lived there. The second phase—Pickle’s—continued to languish into an endless stall. Which was all the more irritating because initially he hadn’t particularly wanted to buy in. After all, Pickle had argued, he’d be giving up his view. But as Karen kept at him in her usual nudgy fashion, he gradually came around and eventually found himself excited by the prospect. So, he’d forked over a considerable chunk of his savings.

  Now their meeting, scheduled for the next morning when Pickle had hoped to lay his frustrations out on their lovely mid-century modern dining table (in the very house he was supposed to be living in, but wasn’t), was in jeopardy. All because some dumb jumper and his brother’s subsequent drunken fender bender had collided on his bridge. He glanced down and was reminded again of his last meal, staring up at him from the front of his T-shirt. Pickle absently scraped the crud off with his fingernail. A crusty remnant flew onto the dashboard and slid into the defrost air vents. “Fuck them!” he yelled to no one in particular, and thumbed the siren once more—this time with feeling.

  As he slowed to a stop, Pickle took it all in—the experienced cop—guessing who might feign innocence and who was surely not guilty. On the face of it, the scene presented as deceptively serene: people sitting in a car, each banged up, but both easily repaired. Several cruisers fanned out with their noses abutting the Volvo, splayed like half of an all-black color wheel. While Pickle waited for someone to notice his arrival, he watched his crew from a distance. They stood lined up like matchsticks at the barrier to the Hudson, looking south toward the Battery. Some joked as a coping mechanism, while others were obviously sobered by the assumed fate of the jumper.