Free Bucky F*cking Dent by David Duchovny Page A

cancer.”
    â€œShit,” Ted said, and blew the smoke in the other direction, waving it away. He snuffed out the joint carefully and put it back in his pocket. “Sorry.”
    They sat in silence again for a while.
    â€œHey, Dad?”
    Marty checked to see if Ted was being wholly ironic with the Dad thing. Maybe he wasn’t.
    â€œYes, son?”
    â€œWanna go for a walk?”
    â€œNo, not really.”
    Ted flowed back into himself a little, like a wave receding. He felt he had just extended himself a mile, though he knew it wasn’t that far. More like an inch, but it felt like more than it was. Marty sensed this recoil, and bridged a little of the psychic distance.
    â€œI’m not a great walker anymore. I’ll go for a shuffle, though. You wanna take me for a shuffle?”

 
    15.
    Ted had put on his Yankee jacket for the morning chill, and Marty, in retaliatory response, had put his competing Boston Red Sox jacket on over his robe, as well as a Sox baseball cap for overkill. Marty used a cane these days, sometimes even a wheelchair, and he had to lean on Ted for support. There was a green magazine kiosk down at the end of Marty’s block where he went to get the paper—the Post . The Times he had delivered, but Marty didn’t really want to admit to reading the Post . Nobody did. Except for the sports. He went down there to talk to some other old men who had nothing to do but suck on the butt ends of the unlit, last thirds of cigars, complain, bullshit sports, and tell one another lies all morning long. These men had been in the neighborhood for as long as Ted could remember. While working as an advertising man his whole life, Marty had rarely hung out with them. But since retiring a couple of years ago, Marty had been spending more and more time on the corner, and this group of elders, this Polish Russian Black Italian Irish Greek chorus, had become his social life.
    On the way to the magazine kiosk, apropos of nothing, Marty said, “Mariana.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThe nurse’s name is Mariana.”
    â€œI didn’t ask.”
    â€œYou didn’t?”
    â€œNo, I didn’t.”
    â€œHuh.”
    Marty seemed to know half the folks who walked by or perched at their windowsills. It seemed his persona as a crusty old fuck wasn’t just for Ted, but people in the neighborhood were more amused than irritated by him. As a young couple passed them pushing a toddler in a stroller, Marty whispered to the child, “Five and a half games, you little motherfucker.” The husband laughed and said, “Morning, Mr. Fullilove.” An old woman leaned out the window of her third-story perch and yelled, “Fullilove, you front-running son of a bitch!” Marty lifted his middle finger for her. She laughed. “I made some banana bread, Marty, is that Ted?” She asked like she’d seen him yesterday, and not fifteen years ago.
    â€œYes, hi, Mrs. Hager, it’s me.”
    â€œGood Lord, Ted, it’s been ages. My, my, the years go by so fast.”
    Marty yelled up at her, “Yes, sweet Betty, the years do go by so fast, but the days are so fucking long.” Betty seemed genuinely moved to see Ted, shaking her head at the confounding, slow-fast passage of time.
    â€œI have banana bread for the both of you. Stop by on your way home.”
    It took a surprisingly long while to navigate the one block to the kiosk at the corner. But this was Marty time. Ted would have to acclimate. The gray panthers were all loitering with absolutely no intent but to kill snail-paced time. Benny, the owner of the kiosk, was a dead ringer for Cheswick in Cuckoo’s Nest . Schtikker was a fat Austrian Jew, always jingling handfuls of quarters in his front pocket, like he was happily suffering from some form of numismatic elephantiasis. Ivan, a very light-skinned black man who constantly rolled cigarette butts from the street into the