The Geographer's Library

The Geographer’ s Library
I pushed it quietly, leaving it open behind me and calling out as I entered,
“Hello? Hello?”
In response a deep voice began singing from my kitchen. The song was
familiar, Latin and churchy-sounding. It didn’t make me feel any more comfortable,
though.
I picked up the only thing even vaguely weaponlike in my apartment: a
miniature blue baseball bat, the type given away free at stadium promotions,
bearing the signatures of the 1985 Mets. Hoping not to get any blood on
Hubie Brooks, I eased toward the kitchen, clutching the bat in my sweaty,
upraised hand.
There, standing on one of my rickety kitchen chairs and belting out the
Latin, was Sal Gomes, the glare of the kitchen lightbulb turning his head into
a disco ball. Joe Jadid sat in the chair next to him, shaking with silent laughter.
Two open bottles of Heineken were on the table. “How did you ...?” I
sputtered.
Joe slapped Gomes on the calf, pointed to the bat in my hand, and let
loose a cackle so loud and violent that it forced his head backward. He toppled
over, breaking one of my two kitchen chairs with a gunshot crack and
spilling beer down the front of his rumpled and mustard-stained shirt.
Gomes stopped singing and helped his partner up. “This was his idea, man,”
said Gomes, struggling to lift Joe, who was still convulsed with laughter.
“We’ll pay for the chair.”
“Jesus Christ, Paulie, you’d really scare the living shit out of a starving,
nervous, nearsighted midget burglar with that thing. Pass it over here,” said
Joe, lumbering onto his hands and knees like a man climbing a hill. The bat
looked like a Magic Marker in his paws. “This Mets team broke my heart.
Mookie Wilson. Ron Darling. Ray fucking Knight.” He snapped out of his
baseball reverie, tossed the bat to the floor, and looked back up at me. “By the
way, you remember what I told you about your lock at the station this afternoon?”
“Yeah.”
“I was wrong. Really, it’s a piece of shit; I picked it in, like, ten seconds.”
“You should understand,” Gomes interrupted, wiping up the beer from
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