#*singsong voice* ITS HEEEEERE

[flysafepapi]

heart of the ocean

It’s arrived! Backstabbing, thinly veiled insults, Frank, all the good stuff!

Parts one, two, three, four

Fandom: Boardwalk Empire

Warnings: No

It’s loud, below decks, but he imagines it’s nowhere near as boring as what’s happening floors above. Mothers with babies mill around, looking like they haven’t had a good night’s sleep in months, kids running in and out of the rooms and darting around benches, laughing and yelling to each other in a dozen different languages, getting scolded in even more. There are old women sitting in the corners with the feet up, men playing chess, girls doing needlepoint or reading dime novels. Across the room, there’s an upright piano where Tommy sits, picking out some song Meyer doesn’t remember but it doesn’t sound half bad.

“Your turn!”

Cora looks up at him, gesturing down to the funny face she’s finished drawing in the open sketchbook, and she smiles when he picks up his pencil and bets her that he can make it even funnier.

“A little English?”

“No, no. Norwegian. Only.”

Meyer shares an amused smirk with Tommy at Benny’s failed attempts to talk to the girl he’s had his sights on all day, and when Cora nudges him again he almost doesn’t turn around to see where Benny’s suddenly staring, his eyes a little wide. He should’ve known it was Charlie.

Charlie smiles when he sees Meyer in the crowd that’s now completely silent, wondering who he is and why he’s here, and starts walking straight over to the table.

“Hello, Meyer.”

“Hello again.”

“Can I speak to you? In private.”

“Uh, yeah. Of course. After you.”

Just before they leave the room, he turns around and looks right at Benny with, admittedly, a bit of a smug smile, then lets the door close on what he’s sure is a very clear view of the middle finger he holds up behind his back. ‘No chance,’ yeah, right.

It’s a different thing, to be on the upper class decks during the day when people are relaxing outside in the sun, especially when he knows that he must look especially poor next to Charlie, especially when Charlie’s wearing that suit. However much it cost, he knows it’s more than he’ll ever get to see in his life.

“So, do you have a name? Or is it just Charlie? Because that wasn’t what anyone called you last night.”

“It’s- officially, it’s Salvatore Lucania. I guess Rothstein, too, after AR took me in.”

“Fancy. And unofficially?”

“Unofficially, I hate it. Neither of them feel like me. Charlie does.”

“It suits you.”

Charlie huffs. “You’re distracting me from what I came to say. It took me all morning to get up the nerve to face you.”

“Well, here you are.”

“Here I am. I- I wanted to thank you for what you did. Not just for.. puking me back. But for not telling anyone what really happened.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Look, I know what you must be thinking. Poor little rich boy. What does he know about misery?”

“That’s not what I was thinking. What I was thinking was, what could’ve happened to hurt this guy so much he thought he had no other way out.”

Meyer sits down beside him on the bench, far enough away from anyone else that no one will hear anything, still painfully aware that he shouldn’t even be here.

“It wasn't just one thing. It was everything. It was them, it was their whole world. And I was trapped in it. I just had to get away.. just run until nothing was familiar anymore.. and then I was at the back rail and there was no more ship. Even the Titanic wasn't big enough. Not enough to get away from them. And before I'd really though about it, I was over the rail. I was so furious. I'll show them. They'll be sorry!

“Uh huh. They'll be sorry. 'Course, you'll be dead. That penguin last night, is he one of them?

“Penguin? Oh, Sal! He is them.”

Meyer doesn’t ask if his fiancé’s name is part of the reason why he chose to be known as Charlie.

“Is he your boyfriend?”

“Worse, actually.”

The sun sparkling off the water really is beautiful, and his breath catches in his throat when he looks out at it, but he’s not sure if it’s from the view or the thought of being trapped with Salvatore for the rest of his life. When Meyer starts to talk, he jumps a little.

“So you feel like you're stuck on a train yout can't get off 'cause you're marryin' this guy.”

“Yes, exactly!”

“So don't marry him.”

“If only it were that simple.”

“It is that simple.”

Charlie turns to look at him, and Meyer can’t look away from those eyes that seem to look right through him. He’s acutely aware of the space between, or lack thereof; every point of contact between them seems to burn through the layers of fabric, and he shifts a little closer, opening his mouth to say, something, he doesn’t even known. Before he can, Charlie stands up from the bench like it’s burning him and clears his throat. The reason why becomes all too clear when Meyer turns to see what Charlie’s looking so pale about.

“Carolyn! This is Meyer Lansky. The man who saved me last night.” Charlie knows that Sal would’ve told AR immediately after going back inside. At least Carolyn wasn’t alone. Margaret and Frank stood with her, looking incredibly amused.

“Charmed, I'm sure.”

‘The others were gracious and curious about the man who'd saved my life. But Carolyn looked at him like an insect. A dangerous insect which must be squashed quickly.’

“Well, Meyer, it sounds like you're a good man to have around in a sticky spot-“ Frank’s voice was drowned out by the sound of the dinner bell ringing loudly, making them all jump. “Why do they insist on always announcing dinner like a damn cavalry charge?”

“Should we go get ready?” Charlie took the arm Carolyn held out towards him, pasting the familiar false smile on his face, and turned to look at Meyer over his shoulder. “See you at dinner?”

Meyer had no choice but to watch them go.

“Man, do you have the slightest idea what you’re doing?”

It’s his turn to flinch a little, unaware that the other man hadn’t left with them.

“Not really.”

“Well, you’re about to right into the snakepit, ao I hope you’re ready. Name’s Frank, by the way. What are you planning to wear?”

Frank snorted as Meyer looked down at himself.

“Yeah, I figured.”

~~

“I can tie a tie.”

Frank smirked at him and held out a hanger with half a dozen ties on it out to him. “Good, because I’m not doing it for you.”

~~

Whatever Meyer had pictured in his head of what tonight was going to look like, it’s nothing even close to what he sees when the door opens for him, held open for him no less, and he steps through to the first class entrance.

“Good evening, sir.”

Meyer just nods to the bowing man and looks around, trying to keep the awe from playing too obviously across his face. Above his head, an enormous glass dome hangs from the ceiling, crystal chandelier at the centre, causing the light to shoot off into a thousand facets and glittering like diamonds. The staircase, sweeping down what must be at least six floors, is polished so that it gleams under the light, the plush carpet covered by a thick velvet runner down the middle. And the people: the women in their floor length dresses, elaborate hairstyles and abundant jewelry,. men in evening dress, standing with one hand at the small of the back, talking quietly. It’s worlds different from what he knows Benny and Tommy are doing back down below decks.

He sees Sal, the fiancé, come down the stairs behind him, then Carolyn on the arm of someone he hasn’t met yet, all of them walking right past him without recognising him. Sal even nods at him, apparently thinking him just another first class guy here for dinner. He doesn’t really have time to be amused, because Charlie comes through the doors just behind them, and Meyer can’t take his eyes away from him.

“You came.”

“I said I would, didn’t I?”

Charlie practically beams at him.

“Sal, surely you remember Mr. Lansky.”

“Yes! I didn't recognize you. Amazing! You could almost pass for a gentlemen.”

It takes everything in Meyer not to say anything, and Frank grins at him like he knows exactly what Meyer’s thinking.

“Hope you’re ready for this, Remember, the only thing they respect is money, so just act like you've got a lot of it and you're in the club.” Frank takes his seat across the table from Meyer, a few seats down from Charlie, and winks at him.

“Tell us of the accommodations in steerage, Mr- Lansky, was it?. I hear they're quite good on this ship.”

Charlie sits directly opposite him, and he cringes slightly when AR asks his question, shooting Meyer an apologetic look.

“The best I've seen. Hardly any rats.”

Frank coughs, badly covering his laugh.

“Mr. Lansky is joining us from third class. He was of some assistance to my fiancé last night.”

The rest of the dinner goes about how he expected; thinly veiled insults about his wealth, or lack thereof, whispering about him behind their napkins like he was less a person and more of an amusing sideshow exhibit. Eventually, thankfully, dinner finishes and the men around him, minus Frank who looks more interested in his glass of whiskey, stand up to make their way to the smoking rooms.

“Are you coming, Lansky?”

“No, I think I’m going to call it a night.”

“Just as well. Talk will mostly be politics, business, what have you. Nothing you’d be interested in.”

“Of course not.”

He shakes hands, kisses the backs of hands, working his way around the table saying his goodbyes, never forgetting that this is all just one big show with him as the entertainment. For everyone except Charlie, or so he hopes. He leaves Charlie for last, and carefully slides the paper into her hand, smiling at him a little more warmly than he’d smiled at everyone else.

“It was nice to meet you, Charlie. Thank you for the dinner.”

~~

Charlie notices the crinkle of paper against his palm immediately, and slides his hand back under the table until everyone’s attentions are elsewhere and he can read it. In what must be Meyer’s handwriting, small and almost cramped but clear, it reads ‘Take a chance. Meet me at the clock’.

When he slips away, finally, Meyer’s standing at the top of the grand staircase, looking at the chandelier intently, as if he’s trying to count each individual crystal that hangs from it like water. Charlie makes it halfway up the stairs before Meyer turns and sees him. When Meyer does, he smiles.

“Want to go to a real party?”

[tevotbegotnaught]

I grew up in a factory town:paper,turbines,cement,feed,cables and caskets. Whistles blew punctually as church bells, even in the deepest night. Plants slung their keening blades past our windows and echoing off the surrounding hills. Beneath each arc, men and women lived and worked. As a boy, I played and dreamed under my own protective warp.

Scully lived with his mom, a deputy sheriff and matron in the women’s prison. She worked long hours and lots of night shifts. When I went to his place before school, she was just getting home. She’d let me in, then shout up stairs to his third floor bedroom. A woman who wore a sidearm and regularly broke up fights between violent and sociopathic prisoners couldn’t get her sixteen year-old son out of bed most mornings. When she tired of yelling, I had to go wake him up for my ride or make the thirty-minute walk alone.

In Scully’s room, mostly a bed and pair of huge dressers, the only seats were a bean bag between the heavy pieces and a windowsill. I sat on the paneled sill and talked to him. Chemically, he needed nicotine to get moving. Emotionally, he was frustrated by the way she shouted at him. His mom, newly single, now a disciplinarian, his dad suddenly the good cop. Scully’s dad actually was a cop, a detective. He solved some tough cases and brought in some real evildoers. A big guy, he beat his son for any perceived weakness.

After his all his dad’s ass whippings, Scully didn’t fear fights. He stepped up. Between us, when tension built up, he just shoved me, hard. I learned to give it right back and we usually crashed to the ground. His attic bedroom had a drop ceiling, the kind with dozens of squishy panels in an aluminum grid. During a particularly exhausting grapple, our tangled arms shot up and through the supports, spilling three or four panels.

"Bitch, look what the fuck you did! Mom’s gonna fuckin’ kill me now."

The fallen panels crumpled under our weight. Thrown clear, a legal size manila envelope. Scully carefully unfolded the metal prongs and dumped it out on the bed.

"No...fuckin’...shit!"

There were nude Polaroids of a woman.

"Dam. That’s ‘Aunt Janie’! Dad always told me to call her aunt."

Under a paperclip, a sheaf of black-and-white 8x10s, his dad and a buxom woman walking on the street or dining out, all taken from oblique angles, surveillance-style.

We examined the Polaroids closely.

"That’s fuckin’ crazy. No wonder. Mom busted his ass, and good!"

Scully seemed impressed, by his father’s voyeurism and taste in women and his mother’s vituperation.

By the time I met Scully, his dad had moved out and was dating a much younger lady from the south end of town. They got a place together in a big development newly built on prime south-county farmland. Scully and his sister saw their dad weekends. He reported back about his new family and the suburban kids. It was different there-the same teen ennui and angst, but indulged with lots more money and unchecked by close-knit family or neighbors. I knew guys from that end of town, but my new neighborhood was revealing its own fascinating topography.

We usually bought weed from Mike down the street. Scully had the connection. I was third wheel. Eventually, I had to go myself. Mike lived with his grandmother in the top two floors of a big house. His bedroom, a teenage boy’s dream: top floor, skylight, tons of posters, black light, an electric guitar, and bitchin’ stereo system with tower speakers.

You entered from the alley, through their back yard and up a metal outer staircase to a landing. Just inside, a kitchen. His grandmother was usually cooking or watching TV. She was a Noman Rockwell, white folks’ gramma: hair bun, glasses on a chain, apron over full skirts. She also knew exactly what Mikey was selling to nervous teenagers lifting her snowman door knocker.

"Yesssss" she said, standing in the enveloping smell of hot skillets, grease and cabbage.

"Mike ‘ere?" I mumbled. Mike’s door behind, she breathed sharply through her nose and bared her teeth.

" Mike! Mikey!" Her voice harsh and directed into me. Jaw levering like a nutcracker on each word "Your...friend...is....here."

She blocked me. "What’s your name?"

"Chris"

"What?"

"Chris"

"You live around here?"

"Yes. I do..I"

Mike’s buddy Chauncey opened the 4th floor door and leaned out.

Gramma stepped back, turning, walking toward the stove. Back to us, she shouted into the bubbling pots "JUST GET YOUR REEFER, THEN. GO AHEAD."

and mocked my solicitude, "IS MIKE HEEEEERE?"

"MIKE AND ALL HIS FRIENDS. DAM YOU."

Chauncey blinked and nodded. I ran up the stairs behind him, closing the door. Downstairs, gramma loosed a winding, wordless scream.

"Don’t listen to her. She’s fucking crazy."

"Yeah. But, jeeez man..."

Upstairs, Mike lay under bed covers. He swiveled his head toward me, eyes sunken and rhuemy.

"Hey. Hey, man. You’re Scully’s friend. Yeah. Cool." He turned away, sighing. Chauncey looked in my eyes. "Lotta people been coming by who don’t even know Mike. It’s fucked, you know." Chauncey was a precocious 70’s teenager-openly gay, wise far beyond our geography and spoke hushed, confessionally.

"They want all different kind of shit. Mike doesn’t like it. He’s been shooting speed."

My face must have showed surprise at that non-sequitur

"I shoot him up." He said in tenderest voice.

"It’s easier and he trusts me. He just likes the airplanes, you know, when you shoot it."

Mike moaned. Bathed in the skylight, we were a Rembrandt. I just wanted to buy a bag and split.

"Chaunce, ask him what he wants." Mike shivered and the bed rattled.

Chauncey made the deal. "It’s fuckin’ killer. I took a couple hits like two hours ago. I’m still fuckin’ wasted." In gentler days, Scully and I would have hung out and partied with them. Scully calling Chauncey a "fucking faggot" and Chauncey spitting back "pizza face". We handed off and I prepared to cross the Scylla and Charbodis. Mike didn’t say goodbye.

I pushed the door until it juddered open. Gramma sat in the adjoining room, crocheted blanket over her legs, TV blaring. I thumb-wrestled with the deadbolt and let myself out, stepping fast down the stairs.

When I told Scully about it, he calculated. "She’s a fuckin’ trip. Mike’s fuckin’ stupid, too. Firing that shit? Better not fuckin’ get us busted". There were two or three police families on each block. After a year in the neighborhood, I was learning that. We needed purchases simple and low-key. Scully had law enforcement on his literal doorstep.

His step-mom had a couple sisters around our age. In a bizarre one-off, he ended up hooking up with one of them; incest minus the c’est. Through her, he found a new connect, Russ. No geriatric kneecappers or teen vampires with Russ. I can’t remember the first bag we got from him. In those days greenish Mexican was it for regular guys. Despite his "higher than median income" school district, Russ enthusiastically promoted that product as "oh-ox-ican". I looked that name up in my Funk and Wagnalls. It was oh-kay.

We got the second bag a week after Halloween. He called it "gold". It definitely looked different. Examined under the car’s dome light, the crushed leaves looked metallic bronze, possibly from an aerosol can. We went up to Scully’s room to twist one up. It was a school night and his mom was at work. Maybe "Houses of the Holy" was playing. That was always my choice at his place. Right away, the smell was funny: an overheated voltage transformer or plastic cutlery melting in a charcoal grill. We took a few hits and put it out.

The house lights went down.

First, the overture:

"tastes fuckin’ weird"

"Like plastic, right?"

"Not smoking that shit anymore"

"Fuck, no"

The show began:

I became an amoeba, gushy on the inside, cilia paddling madly outside. Sinking into the bed, through its frame and down, down. When I opened my eyes, Scully was unwrapping Hershey’s miniatures, flicking them in his mouth, digging for more. With both hands, he offered the candy bag.

"ere..."

My insides jiggled as I waved him off.

Shadows frayed and dissolved. The record played again. Dali’s clocks oozed.

Scully lifted something to his chest, mouth flared. Black lava poured out, disappearing below. Intermittent splattering. Gutteral sounds. Lips opening and closing, an aquarium fish feeding.

I bounced off the bed, high-tide stomach and pincushion eyes.

"You’re sick. Get you cleaned up."

Lava bearded Scully’s chin. Lips gobbing, he handed me the heavy, sloshing trash can. Laughter. I put it on the sill. Down steep steps. At bottom, a hairpin turn. Scully tumbles. I pick him up. Armpits and chest. Funhouse mirror walk. The bathroom. Damp air. Washcloths under the faucet. He pulls his shirt up from the waist, trapping both arms inside. I yank it off violently.

Somewhere below, a door slams. A woman’s voice:

"I’m home. Where are ya?"

Scully looks at me, eyes spilling glue.

"Mom’s home" His voice drops two octaves between words.

She calls out again.

He unfolds an index finger.

"Shhhhh"

The voice gets closer.

I lurch toward the doorway, his mom appears before I can get out.

"Scully’s sick" I say in my serious voice.

She looks at my face,

"You’re wasted"

and pushes past me.

Then she sees her son.

"HO-LEE HELL, WHAT DID YUZ DO?"

"Nothin`, mom" he says cheerfully.

I look away. She grunts, struggling to sit him down on the toilet. He speaks to her in singsong. Her windbreaker rustles. She’s alongside me. Turning my torso with her hands, pushing me down and pinning me to the paneled wall. I smell sweat, perfume and stale smoke. She’s barely five feet tall, but her mouth is level with mine.

"WHAT DID YUZ DO? WHAT’D YUZ TAKE?"

"We drank whiskey. A bottle."

"WHISKEY DOESN’T DO THAT. YUZ TOOK SOMETHING"

"No, we didn’t take..."

"YUZ TOOK SOMETHING. WHAT’D YUZ TAKE"

Her forearm grinds into my sternum. I squirm, then exhale. My body deflates and begins to slide down. She pulls me up.

"YOU KNOW YOU COULD DIE? YUZ BOTH COULD DIE. BOTH OF YUZ."

My lips open, cool air rushes inside-inverted speech.

"GO HOME. I OUGHTA TELL YOUR PARENTS. GOD…DAM…STUPID….KIDS"

She lifts her forearm off my chest and returns to bathroom. I’m very warm. My face, in particular. The steps to the first floor tilt into utter darkness. I guide myself down, palms out, shoulder height.

Outside, cold wind knifes through a deep cleft in my skull. My walk home, one block of paved alley. Each footfall jars my spine, reverberating through my aqueous body and into my gaping head. Step by step, tottering toward our back gate. From the yard, beyond a blinding porch light, I see my mother moving in the kitchen. When I open the door, my body worms away from her.

“Hi, honey. How are you?”

“I’m tired. Gonna go to bed.”

“Your voice sounds funny. You getting a cold? Come here. Let me check you for fever.”

My throat grips and I stride through the doorway.

“I’m just tired, mom. Gonna sleep. I need it"

“Ok, honey. Sleep tight.”

When I reach my room, nauseous and staggering, I fall on the bed. The ceiling light whirls while my body liquefies. As I float, wind howls, and the city calls its third shift to work.