This is a short story based on a Lou Reed song originally written for an anthology. Some prominent crime writers were asked to contribute, including my friend Reed Farrel Coleman. Sadly, the book’s editor died before publication and no one rose to take his place. So here it is, for free.
Coney Island Baby
The warm autumn sun felt good on his skin. In his teens, he’d never been considered particularly good looking, but in his late twenties, he’d grown into his face and was now considered handsome. Roman-cut, coal black hair, dark Mediterranean features, a hint of fashionable stubble.
He came out to Washington Square Park almost every day on his lunch break. Given the parameters of his job, he could afford to be out of the office as long as he liked, but he kept to a rigid schedule. One hour, no more, no less.
For the past several days, he had noticed her staring at him from across the park. She was like a predator surveying her prey. She’d edge a little closer, then fall back, as if not quite sure that the approach was welcome. She was tall and slender, kind of gawky. Something seemed off about her, but not in an unpleasant way.
Today, she finally worked up the nerve to check him out at close range. She sat on a park bench, less than ten feet from him, casting furtive glances his way every so often. He wasn’t puzzled by her reticence. He didn’t think he gave off any standoffish vibes, but he knew that some people were uncomfortable around him. He decided to make the first move, if in fact he had read the situation correctly.
“Beautiful day for this time of year,” was his clever opening line.
“Yes, it is,” came the equally tentative reply. He was surprised by her voice. It was deeper than he expected, with a tinge of Kings County. He’d grown up there and some strange primal instinct attracted him to fellow Brooklynites. There was just something in the way they spoke that differentiated them from the other boroughs or New Jersey.
“I’ve seen you in the park before,” he said. “You work nearby?”
“I’m in a rock and roll band actually. I work, wherever.”
“Really? I play and write a little myself. What’s the name of your band?”
She blushed. “Uh, I kind of stretched the truth there. I’m sorta between bands.”
That was pretty common. For every group that made a go of it, there were probably a hundred that did it as a hobby. And those who took it seriously might lack the talent, looks or networking skills to get noticed by the right people.
She said, “You have a day job? I only see you here at lunchtime. Day like this, I could hang out for hours. Reading poetry. Writing some stuff when I’m in the mood.”
“Yeah, I work in IT at NYU. That’s computers. Programming.” He extended a hand. “Hey, my name is Louis.”
She took it gingerly. Her hand felt a little rough. “I’m Rachel. Nice to make your acquaintance.”
He grinned at her overly formal greeting. “Yeah, I come out here on my lunch hour most days when the weather is nice. ‘Course, this time a year, there’re not gonna be many more like this.”
“True. So you’re a computer geek. Sounds kinda boring for someone who plays and writes music.”
“Huh. I’m not sure how to respond to that. There’s a lot of math involved in music. Just like computers. And the digital stuff helps me make records on my own. I do experimental sounds. Not everyone likes it. I’m not much of a singer and that’s a little limiting, even with vocoding and shit like that. You sing?”
“I do. I can’t say how good I am. That’s for others to decide. You asking if I’d like to sing on some of your tracks?”
“Uh, that wasn’t the first thing I had in mind. To be honest, I was thinking of asking you out.”
“No shit. Aren’t you overlooking the obvious?”
He blanched. Not many people were so quick to point it out. He’d dealt with it since high school but he thought she might be different. He tried to hide his disappointment.
“Sorry. You seemed comfortable with me and I just thought…”
“With you? Nah, that’s not it. I’m talking about me.”
“I’m not following.”
“My name wasn’t always Rachel. It used to be Tommy.”
“I’ve always been Louis.”
“That’s all you have to say? I mean, you come off so straight. That brown suit. Tie. I’m surprised you don’t have a pocket protector and a bunch of pens stuck in there.”
He didn’t tell her that he had left his plastic liner back at work. He said, “Don’t judge a book by its cover. Hate to throw clichés at you. I try to avoid them at all costs in my songs.”
She moved a little closer. Without his glasses, his vision was good enough to get by and he hated wearing them. Now close up, he did notice that her features were on the masculine side. He didn’t care.
She said, “Louis, you’re a tough nut to crack. Oops, another cliché. But here you are, a dude in the most bland of jobs, a goddamn computer programmer. You dress like Mr. Corporate IBM. And here you are in Washington Square Park, asking a trans out.”
“You know, Rachel,” he said. “You’re being pretty judgmental about me. There’s a lot you don’t know. Like I had an album out when I was twenty. You can still find it in some of the underground shops. And I wasn’t always a computer guy. I was deep into the rock and roll life. I did my share of drugs. Even heroin for a while. Slept around, pretty indiscriminately you wanna know the truth. I had my walk on the wild side. But that wasn’t me.”
“Hey man, I wasn’t passing judgment. Just an observation like you seem to be masquerading as something that isn’t who you really are. I did that for a lot of years, so I know.”
“That’s pretty heavy coming from someone I just met five minutes ago.”
“No, no, no. Don’t get me wrong. The thing is, I was happy you didn’t make a big deal out of who I am. Most people do. They don’t have to say it. You can see it in their eyes. You just looked at me like I was just another person in the park.”
“Thanks.”
“I mean, I been watching you for a while. You come out same time, leave same time. Somedays you play chess with the old black men. Somedays chatting up the homeless dudes. Sometimes you watch the kids playing basketball.”
“Wow. Sounds like you been spying on me, Rachel.”
“I don’t know. There’s something about you that pulled me in. I wanted to talk to you before this but I was afraid if I met you, it’d spoil the image I made up in my head.”
“So I’m the man of your dreams?” he said, hoping she’d catch the sarcasm in his tone. “Am I not living up to it?”
She laughed. “No, I’m serious. You act like no one impresses you and no one’s beneath you. I mean, you’re a good looking dude. I bet lots of people like you just for that.”
He had a hard time accepting praise. In his mind, he never deserved it, never measured up. The P.S. 192 shrink said it was because of his dad. The old man was tough on him, and rather than conform, he rebelled. They had even come to blows a couple of times when his father came home all liquored up and threatened his mom. Louis took every desire and command of his father’s and turned it a hundred eighty degrees. He said stand up, Louis sat down.
He said, “Rachel, you’ve been ducking my question. We could do coffee or dinner or just hang at my place.”
“It’s weird. I feel really comfortable with you but you seem so straight. It’s hard to believe you had that ‘wild side’ like you call it. Do you still? Or is it old hung-up Mr. Normal now?
“Clever. A line from Tommy. I met Pete Townshend once. He actually had heard my album. Said he liked it. Now I’m the one ducking the question, I guess.”
Her deep set brown eyes locked onto his. “I need to know where this is going, Louis. I don’t want this to be some adventure in freakdom for you. Can you understand that?”
“Yeah, I can, I guess. I’ve seen you sizing me up over the last few days, Rachel. I notice things. You looked interesting and I was hoping you’d come by. I don’t like making the first move for obvious reasons. But I don’t know exactly what I want from you. I want to talk to you. Have a few laughs. Drinks, whatever. I can’t predict the future. I’m not ready to give the whole thing up for you. Not yet anyway.”
She squinted at his preppy attire and made a face. “After hours, you still dress like that? I’d think at NYU, they wouldn’t make you wear that Sears looking suit. That’s got to be your choice, no?”
“Why are you so hung up on clothes?”
“They make the man.” She almost got up to leave, but thought better of it. “Oh shit, I’m really messing this up, aren’t I? It’s just that people like me tend to flock together. Never had a straight looking businessman ask me out.”
“Forget it then, if you’re suspicious. I don’t know what I did to make you feel that way. When I was a little younger, I was a maverick. An outsider. But then something happened and I changed. I decided I wanted to try to be one of the cool kids.” He winced at how awkward he must have sounded. “You really want to hear this?”
“I do.”
He sighed, then spoke slowly. “My dad died when I was in my sophomore year. I didn’t shed a tear. Hated the old drunk. But he was my dad. Army, served in ‘Nam. Straight as the day is long. After he was gone, there was no one to rebel against. My mom, God love her, just let me be and do whatever I wanted. Found out later she was seeing other men, lots of them, even when my dad was alive. Maybe that’s what turned him into what he was. Maybe that’s what killed him.”
“I’m sorry, Louis.”
“Don’t need your pity. Dad was killed by a drunk driver. Rich guy. We wound up with a big settlement. For a while, I was glad he was dead. Life seemed a lot better without him and with the money. But then, I got depressed about the whole thing. I was getting lazy. That’s when I did all those crazy things. No compass. Just did whatever the hell I felt like at the moment. Hooked up with some bad people.”
Rachel said, “You were free. That’s a good thing. My parents kicked me out when I was sixteen when they realized what I was all about. They didn’t want their son turning into their daughter. I lived on the streets for a long time. Got by on spare change and blowjobs. Then I started hanging with some bands. Discovered I had some talent, music-wise. Never made much bread, lived wherever I could crash.”
“Makes all my problems sound trivial.”
“Not at all, Louis. Until I turned, my folks were great to me. They’re both still alive but to this day, they think it was their fault. Like they did something wrong.”
“I think you turned out fine. Me, not so much. Late in my junior year, I started to think maybe my dad had been right. I was good-for-nothing, like he was always telling me. Around the time I found out about my mom and her cheating. So I started to clean up my act. I was small for my age, skinny, needed glasses. A real nerd. Back then, the coolest kids were the jocks. And the cheerleaders. Those wholesome blond, girl-next-door-types that a kid like me couldn’t get anywhere near. So that summer, I bulked up. Got hold of some steroids. Still was small but a whole lot stronger. When tryouts started for football, I was first in line.”
“You, a football player? Never would have thought that, no offense.”
“That’s all I wanted in my senior year. I wanted to play football for the coach. Thing was, I was never any good at it. I wanted to play linebacker but I couldn’t bring myself to hit hard like I needed to. I’d always pull up, didn’t want to hurt anybody. Funny how it turned out.”
Rachel was quiet for a moment, her eyes downcast. She said, “Not funny. Ironic, maybe. Me, I finally came to grips with what I was all along, even though it meant being an outcast to some folks, including my parents. You tried to toe the line your dad set out for you after he was gone. We went in opposite directions and we both wound up here.”
“That we have. You can guess how it turned out with football. I sat on the bench all year. Never got into a game until the last one. I was thinking it’d be like that movie Rudy, where the little kid makes a big play at the end and the coach realizes he had it in him all along. Coach was a hard case, a man’s man, like my dad, but all I ever wanted was make him proud of me. I felt a lot of pressure when I finally got my chance, even though nothing I could do could blow that game. We were up by four touchdowns, five minutes left. The other team was so pissed that we were running up the score that they were taking cheap shots.”
“Is that when it happened?”
“He put me in the game as a wide receiver. Not linebacker, but it didn’t matter. I was playing football for the coach I always wanted to play for. It was perfect.”
He rubbed the back of his neck and leaned back to catch the sunlight more directly. “Well, look, Rachel, I’ve got to get back to work now. It was great talking with you. Here’s my number. I’d really like to see you again. Somewhere other than here. I hope you’ll call.”
“You know I will. I don’t know or care what anybody else thinks, but to me Louis, you’re the coolest guy I’ve ever met.”
He gave her his best Sunday smile and nodded goodbye. Then he cranked up his wheelchair and headed back to work.
