The Falconer

by Dana Czapnik

  The one time James and I hung out on our own, without Percy, was when we went to see A Tribe Called Quest perform at the Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage this summer. Percy had ditched us to help Sarah’s sister move all her crap out of her boyfriend’s apartment up by Columbia. I couldn’t understand it. Tickets to Tribe were only seven dollars with our student IDs because their performance was part of a collective art show. We’d been looking forward to it all summer. “Let me break it down for you, Loose,” James said to me on the train into Brooklyn, after I probably complained a little too much about Sarah stealing Percy away from us—potentially revealing my hand to James, who would undoubtedly share this new insight with Percy when I wasn’t around. “Sarah has a tongue ring. And she gives Percy head with that tongue ring whenever he wants. Do you know how few girls do that? Like, no girls do that. If I had the promise of a guaranteed blow job waiting for me tonight, you’d be heading out to see Q-Tip by yourself right now.” So that’s the mystery of Sarah solved. It’s not like I couldn’t have figured it out for myself.

  Sarah’s arm is resting on Percy’s waist. I have to lie down on the roof and look at the sky so that my longing doesn’t overpower me. I watch the way traces of clouds scatter overhead. The sky over New York is a busy sky. Local news helicopters monitoring traffic and black police choppers hover in place above us like dragonflies over water. Low-flying private planes and sky writers and jets and of course lumbering pigeons. The faint outline of the moon too. It’s there, just beyond the polluted dome. Down the block, on Broadway, a man is playing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” on a saw with the horsehair bow of a violin. It makes a despairing sound akin to the caterwauling of a feral cat. He’s been there for years, that saw-playing man. When I was a kid, I’d hear him playing all night long from outside my open bedroom window. In my bed, watching shadows of steam cresting over building facades, I’d fall asleep and dream inside the long, thin strand of one of his never-ending notes. The only part I truly love about being high is the way the world sounds, what happens to music. Traffic noise fades. The guy yelling “Socks for one dollar” somewhere on Amsterdam is silenced. All I hear is that saw. The melody feels like it’s detonating in my veins, becoming a part of my bloodstream. I close my eyes and inhale some air through my nose. “I want to live my life in the minor keys,” I say to no one in particular.

  I hear the rustling of clothes and open my eyes as Percy sits up. He pokes me in my thigh, and I watch as the fingerprint he leaves in my leftover summer sunburn fades from white to brown. “That’s why I’m friends with you.”

  A wave of heat swells through me. We smile at each other until Sarah destroys the moment. She rolls her eyes and gets up and makes a huff, slips her Candies back on, and teeters over to the dented metal door. She hesitates for a count of three, I’m sure expecting Percy to chase her, or even just to ask, “Where are you going?” But he doesn’t. He doesn’t even crane his neck to watch her leave. The heavy metal door slams behind her, but we’ve rigged it so that the door can’t close all the way, so we don’t get locked on the roof. It swings back open violently, knocking over some brooms and metal poles.

  James collapses in laughter, but I’m secretly proud of her. Percy’s been playing her for weeks. About time she stormed off and didn’t look back.

  “Drama,” Percy says to us and lies back down on the tar, stretching his arms behind his head. “A little pussy isn’t worth that much drama.”

  * * *

  We leave the roof and bypass my apartment to go on the hunt for some good, cheap pizza, leaving my dusty old boom box at the top of the stairwell, where it has remained unbothered for years.

  We make our way to Big Nick’s. I get a nice big slice of regular cheese pizza for one dollar. I fold it and eat it that way, the grease dripping off the crust and onto the paper plate in orange constellations.

  James tells us about some girls he met at his job as a barback at his dad’s club and he persuades Percy to head downtown, to hang out at the bar while he works. They invite me to come along, but I can tell they don’t really want me there.

  Outside of Big Nick’s, we go our separate ways. They head down to the subway and I watch them as they go. Percy’s all broad and bony shoulders and has a jank in his step like the wind is always at his back, pushing him forward. There are added, unnecessary movements to his gait because a body in motion craves more motion. There’s a jukiness, a jazziness there, a wild combination of cocksure and awkward. James is broad and tall too, a little more filled out and muscular. His T-shirts resist his body more than Percy’s. His movements smoother, economized, rhythmic. The two of them. I can’t even describe the way they look from back here. Their back muscles and shoulder blades all shimmering right angles.

  I let them go and turn in the direction of home.

  On the walk, I swing by the bus stop where Percy wrote whatever magnum opus with a dry-erase marker that almost got us killed or arrested or fined or not earlier today. I didn’t catch what he was writing at the time. I was in the bodega on the corner grabbing a Coke and I came out at the exact same time the cop saw him, and we had to make a mad dash. I suppose I could have just asked him but I didn’t want to. I wanted to experience it the way anyone else on the street would experience it. Whenever I accidentally stumble across something Percy’s scribbled on public property, it feels like a secret treasure that no one else can discover. It’s something I have just for myself. I know who wrote that thing that gave you pause on your way to work. I know whose handwriting that is.

  There on the glass, surrounded by tags and noisy graffiti, is the only thing written that has any sound.

  The rich don’t have to kill to eat.

  —Céline

  It’s written in compact young man’s handwriting, though none of his letters blend into one another. They’re all tiny islands with their own rivers of glass in between. I notice that the E in “Céline” is curled up at the end, as though he had intended to write another letter there but had to abort. He probably messed it up when he saw the cop. I put my forefinger up to the glass and wipe away the excess ink. It comes off easily, and I rub the black powder left from the dry-erase marker between my fingers.

  My cousin Violet says we’ve all got a bad case of American dread. Which I think she said has something to do with the land, how beautiful and diverse and wild it is and how we want people to live up to that, but it always turns out they can’t. Or maybe she said it had something to do with being a nation of cities with no histories, no inquisitions or castles on hills, no desecrated cathedrals or ruins of war. Or maybe she said it had something to do with not having a collective dream beyond a house with a patch of grass and a two-car garage and granite countertops and a refrigerator with an automatic ice maker. I don’t remember exactly. But what she said feels like it’s somehow connected to Percy wanting to be some sort of artistic renegade. Some rebel who mostly writes in dry-erase markers and chalk.

  The weed is wearing off. Percy only gets good weed when his brother, Brent, is home and he has access to an ATM card; otherwise it’s usually crap from Washington Square Park. The lights from the Gap store on Eighty-Sixth Street are bright straight ahead. That store is my beacon on rough nights. It means home is very close. I walk by it. The grates are down because the store is closed, but all the lights are on, illuminating their current tagline on the glass: “For every generation there’s a GAP.” It reminds me of the line from the Passover Haggadah, “In every generation they rise up against us.” Percy once came to an Adler family Seder because he wanted to see what it was like, and when we read that portion, he asked me if I really believed that. I said, “Well, history seems to suggest that it’s true.” And he said, “Yes, but that’s partially because for all of human history, we’ve engaged in bloody wars. We live in the most peaceful time man has experienced since the invention of spears.”

  Next door is a low-fat frozen yogurt place. I feel in my shorts pocket and find a dollar and some change. I get myself
a cup of butter pecan low-fat soft serve with rainbow sprinkles and I have enough change to buy an extra little cup of sprinkles so I can keep pouring them on when the first layer has run out. I take it to go and eat it as I walk. I think about what Percy wrote on the bus stop. We don’t have a real war. We don’t have a gas crisis. We have straight teeth, clean gums. We have personal computers. We have candles that say things like “Live Out Loud” on them, purchased from stores that only sell candles. We can slip crisp dollars into automated slots, and machines release tiny bags of processed food to us from a coil. Funyuns. Munchos. We have violin lessons. Guitar lessons. Latin lessons. Pottery lessons. SAT tutors. French tutors. College essay tutors. Physics tutors. We are extremely marketable. We sew “Mean People Suck” patches on our army knapsacks because mean people are the worst. We can walk into a bodega and select from twenty brands of cigarettes: Marlboro. Marlboro Lights. Parliament. Kool. Camel. Winston. Newport. Half of them are owned by the same company that manufactures Oreos. We have no dictators. No one we have ever come in contact with has made a necklace out of human ears. We have older siblings who take semesters off from college to snowboard. We recycle. We take class trips to Washington, DC, and to places in the woods with ropes courses. We trust fall. We don’t believe in brands. Calvin Klein. Timberland. Tommy Hilfiger. We don’t have to kill to eat. The only thing we have to kill is time. And time is an easy kill.

  Orchard and Grand. Laundromat. Lots of linoleum and rows of machines and a few people folding clothes in the window. Two boys run onto the sidewalk and nearly take me out. Watch the knees, kid! These are my diamonds. A woman’s voice calls to them in high-pitched Spanglish from somewhere behind the open door. They laugh as they run back in, one tripping over the other in the entryway and falling down. Strange how children’s bodies just collapse like that. Like rubber bands.

  Grocers. Dyed tulips and roses that will turn the water purple when they’re brought home and put in vases by mothers or girlfriends, keepers of vases. Bruised oranges. Metal vats full of melting ice with Pepsis and Cokes floating on the surface like corporate-branded buoys.

  Nothing. A black door with cardboard in the window and a sign that says, “Buzzer Broken.”

  Nail salon. Fluorescent lighting and a row of dingy Barcaloungers with water buckets at their base. Only three customers. Asian women with lightly permed hair wearing the same dark blue aprons, filing away at strangers’ nails. An emery board orchestra inside. Never had a manicure. You can’t have long nails and play ball. I hate it when opponents have nails. The dirty ones use them on purpose to scratch your shit up. Oughta be illegal.

  Pink Kitty Peep Show. Narrow door, a bouncer on the inside looking out. Wonder how much the women make. Is it desperation or power that moves them? I’d like to get to know one of them one day. Find out everything. What it feels like to stand behind that little circle or rectangle or whatever shape of peep and be watched. Maybe even loved.

  Another nothing. Something was here once, now boarded up behind metal grates covered in ugly graffiti. The eyesore kind, the kind that says nothing more interesting than anger. In the patches of window that are visible, dropped-ceiling tiles and busted light bulbs dangle.

  Kosher bakery. A small, dirty window that hasn’t been washed. Shiny black-and-white cookies covered in Saran wrap on display. A hunched old lady with her hair in rollers struggles to open the door. Race to open it for her. Her face all loose skin. How old do you have to get to stop feeling like something magical is just around the corner? My cousin Violet says you can’t stay forever young, but you can stay forever open to wonder.

  Scaffolding. Wheat-paste posters: concert bills for bands that will try till they die. Sucker Fuel and Missus Robinson at The Knitting Factory on Saturday. Club listings: Professor Qutie Qute presents DJ Nefertiti at Palladium Thursday night. Obsession for Men ad with a dead-eyed Kate Moss staring through the camera. Obsession again. And again. Her ribs visible through the skin on her back.

  Street. “Don’t Walk” sign. The lights of the “Walk” are out. Just says “Don’t.” Someone with a messier life could see that and think it was a message. Street empty. Cross.

  Orchard and Broome. Bodega. Small windows with thick Plexiglas. Very little produce. Likely a front. Large men in sweatshirts hanging around with toothpicks in the corners of their mouths. Which one is an undercover? There’s gotta be one in there somewhere. Walk faster. Skinny Brit-punk guy with a huge Mohawk of yellow spikes. How much time does that take? He’s chewing gum. It’s unexpected. I like that. Smile at him. He looks down at the pavement. I understand, buddy. The pavement’s a good friend.

  La Caridad. Small take-out chicken place. Unappetizing pictures of food backlit on a board over the counter. A mob of middle school kids in Catholic school uniforms inside, screaming at each other. They crash out of the doorway like water through a busted dam. The distinct atmosphere of a fight brewing. One kid swipes at another. Hits air. The other kid pushes him into the mob, which screams and nudges him back into the center of the quickly forming circle. The bleep bleep of a blue-and-white. The monotone “No loitering. Go home” instructions over the car’s megaphone. The kids’ faces shut off. All that screaming, all that posturing, and not an ounce of true defiance. They scatter silently, like antelope over the plains.

  Leo’s Hardware. A guy is making a key. Screeching takes over the sidewalk. Wonder if he ever gets the smell of metal off his hands. My grandfather worked at the Fulton Fish Market in the Thirties. He used to wash his hands with vanilla extract when he’d come home. Maybe I should let Leo in on the trick. Nah—I’d look a little nuts.

  Empty lot. A patch of plywood. Disfigured and broken chain-link fencing. Lots of rubble. Pavement chunks, dirt, rocks. A few rusted, abandoned lawn chairs. A filthy, corroded doll head with dirt and some weeds growing out of the empty part where her body should be. Nature has a sick sense of humor.

  Turn the corner.

  Tiny church with a sign in Chinese.

  Tenement with a Puerto Rican flag flapping out the window. It’s very clean, must be new.

  The kind of block where there should be small trees on the sidewalks surrounded by gates and elegant, handmade “Curb Your Dog” signs. But there aren’t any trees. Or gates. Or “Curb Your Dog” signs. Or dogs. Boys my age or close hanging on a stoop, eating Italian ices. Pavement, you dear friend. I love you and all your varied blemishes.

  The sound of an asshole on a motorcycle intentionally backfiring his engine. Look up. Alert. Always alert to the music of chaos. I’ve got a slightly sordid addiction to it. That’s why basketball moves me. It’s all chaos theory if it’s done right. There is an end game, a fixed number of players, and a contained universe, but no discernable pattern. Unlike football. Football’s all pattern, pattern, pattern, then boom—flash of chaos. Or baseball, which is a game of order, tightly compressed in a diamond. A lethal injection of geometry and trig. My addiction to chaos is why I’m comfortable in a world without God. Why Midtown and its symmetry do nothing for me. All you need there are basic equations, the values for X and Y, and you’ve got everything figured out. It’s all double-breasted suit jackets. Chinese lunch buffets. Office buildings slicing the skin of the sky. Dark clothing. Identical haircuts. Now, this neighborhood down here—no logic at all. An irregular pulse. An arrhythmic heart. An adrenaline rush that ends with a defective parachute.

  Broome and Ludlow. A huge brick building with a wall of grimy windows. A converted button factory, now a government-subsidized artists’ residence. Buzzer 6A. A plastic nameplate that reads “Lost Grrrls of Never-Never Land.” Buzz. No answer. Buzz. No answer. Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. A crackle. “Yeah?” “Violet, it’s me.” “Who’s ‘me’? There’ve been too many ‘me’s buzzing me lately.” “Lucy.” “Oh, that ‘me’! You shall pass. Come up already.” A twist of a doorknob. A pull of metal. A vortex of air. Inside. A single light bulb hangs from the ceiling where a lamp should be, swinging like a pendulum. It’s gravity that makes it move
, but it feels like someone’s hand has set it in motion. Shadows shift like comic-book villains on the cracked and peeling green walls. Blood loses its viscosity and soars to my heart. I bolt up the uneven staircase. It’s half-lit and seedy the whole way. Three black lacquered doors on each landing. Behind each one a different world. Who lives in there? What are you all doing behind those doors? Behind those windows? I’m sure lots of bad stuff. Lots of bad stuff and good stuff and ordinary stuff. Maybe some beautiful stuff. Human-being stuff. I wish I knew. I wish I knew you all.

  * * *

  Six flights of stairs, and the air feels thin at the top. With a heavy backpack on my shoulders filled with textbooks, no less. I stop to slow my pulse. Violet’s music is blasting from inside. Michael Stipe’s voice aches through the crack under the door to fill the hallway—hey, kids, where are you, nobody tells you what to do—and it feels like his intention always was to be heard in a location such as this. A desolate Lower East Side landing with octagonal mosaic-tile floors, the remains of antique leaks on the edges of the walls. A place that feels somehow apart from and a part of the streets outside. I test the doorknob and find it unlocked. Walk in and drop my bag on the floor. Illuminated by a wall of light streaming in through huge factory windows stands Violet. About six feet tall, holding a paintbrush in one hand and a Greek-diner coffee cup in the other. Her dirty blond, curly, kinky hair floats wild above her head, like a cloud that refuses to hold back the sun. We have the same hair, Violet and I, inherited from our grandmother. The difference between me and Violet is that she always wears her hair down and out and in a state of madness, damn whoever dares judge. I always wear my hair up in a tight, neat bun because I don’t have the guts to let it just be ugly and free. That’s probably why I’m drawn to her: her chaos. She reeks of it.