by Bob Proehl
* * *
—
The DJ slides from the chopping beat of helicopter blades into the warping noises that introduce “Reflections” by the Supremes, and Clay smiles, knowing the segue is lifted from some dimly remembered Vietnam drama his parents used to watch. His smug satisfaction at this I see what you did there moment is evidence he’s already a bit drunk. The DJ punctuates the Motown track with digital bomb sounds that Clay can attest bear no resemblance to the real thing. A real bomb you don’t hear with your ears; you experience it with your entire body, mostly in the liquid parts of your midsection. Flashbulbs go off at random intervals, and the entire loft is fugged with manufactured smoke and the burning plastic smell that accompanies it. Muscular waiters in ripped fatigues snatched up that afternoon by the garbage bag full at Kaufman’s Army & Navy Surplus on 42nd and Dyer distribute trays of “meat bombs” dripping with red sauce and miniature cannolis made to look like empty bullet shells. The room is strewn with cargo nets and wooden crates with PROPERTY OF ARMY stenciled on them so recently that the paint glistens.
The bartender comes over to Clay. He’s got streaks of blacking under his eyes and a red bandana pushing spiked hair back off his forehead, and he wears a desert camo jacket with no shirt underneath, the sleeves hacked off to expose gym-sculpted biceps.
“Get you another, soldier?” he asks, reaching for Clay’s empty glass.
“I shouldn’t,” Clay says, shouting to be heard over a Jefferson Airplane song emerging from a murk of fighter jet whine. “I have to pick up my kid in an hour.”
“Double, then,” says the bartender, smiling so determinedly that Clay acquiesces. The bartender places a full tumbler of whiskey in front of him. “How old’s yours?” he asks.
“Fourteen,” Clay says.
The bartender projects an image of a toddler with perfect plaits directly into Clay’s brain. She’s gripping a hand-me-down stuffed rabbit and looking at the camera with a disdain for cameras that a runway model might aspire to. “She’s three,” he says. “I hate not being there when she goes to bed. But we haven’t won the war on rent, so here I am.”
“Can I ask you something?” Clay says, turning away from the rest of the room and leaning across the bar.
“Shoot,” says the bartender as the digitized sound of handgun fire punctuates an M.I.A. song.
“What will you do if she doesn’t have abilities?” Clay says. The bartender fixes him with that same bulletproof smile.
“She will,” he says. “My girlfriend is crazy pyrokinetic. And I may not be much of a projector, but I—”
“It’s not guaranteed, though,” Clay says. “They don’t know for sure. So I’m asking what if.”
“I’d be freaked out,” says the bartender. There are people waiting for drinks, but Clay has his attention.
“Practically,” Clay says, “what would you do?”
The bartender straightens up, points a finger toward another customer, and leaves Clay waiting for his answer. The dull roar of the room fades into background noise as Clay fixates on his target, noting that the bartender doesn’t look his way again until the bar is cleared. Then he leans in close, and for a second Clay imagines the bartender planting a delicate kiss on his cheek. “It happened to a girl I worked with,” he says.
“No shit,” says Clay. “What did she do?”
“There’s a guy in the Bronx she went and talked to,” says the bartender. “Kindred Network asshole, but he’s got a soft spot for kids. He runs a rehousing program. She paid for it. I guess it worked.”
Clay swallows an ice cube that feels like it’s covered in battery acid. “Does she ever see the kid?”
The bartender shrugs. “She quit,” he says. “Wasn’t making enough. But I think it was because going to see him was expensive and she needed more money. So I guess she gets to see him.”
“She have a name?” Clay asks. This puts the bartender’s hackles up; he searches the bar for a customer he can take care of.
“I shouldn’t say,” he tells Clay. “I don’t want to get her in trouble.”
“Yeah, no, I get that,” says Clay. He downs the remainder of his drink in two large gulps and places a twenty under the glass. On unsteady legs, he crosses the room, finding Dom dressed in a naval uniform so pristine that it glows purple under the blacklight. Dom is crystalline, and Clay knows it’s because dark bags of worry have set in under his eyes.
“You leaving?” Dom asks.
“Soon,” Clay says, aware there’s a slight tire-leak sound in his s’s. Dom gives him a long look.
“Take a cab, okay?”
“I’m good,” Clay says.
“This has been a lot for you to carry,” says Dom. “I’m glad you’re not alone with this anymore.”
“Me, too,” Clay says. He hugs Dominic, reveling at the solidity of Dom’s crystalline form and at the same time pining for his husband’s softness right now, something he could collapse into. “Who’s the girl that quit recently?” he says into Dom’s ear. “Has a kid Rai’s age, maybe older?”
“Marietta?” says Dom.
“Okay, sure,” Clay says.
“She asked for a raise,” Dom says. “A big one. I said I couldn’t, and she quit.”
“You have her number?” Clay asks.
“What is this about?”
“Text it to me,” Clay says.
“Don’t do what you’re doing,” Dominic says. “Whatever it is, wait. Tomorrow, we’ll sit and we’ll come up with a plan.”
“It’s research,” Clay says. “I promise. I won’t do anything without you.” Dom nods, takes his phone from his pocket, and reverts to dark, ordinary flesh. A few taps and Clay’s phone buzzes, the information received. Clay takes Dom’s hand and squeezes it as the DJ destroys a Clash song in a barrage of rat-tat-tat and bang.
* * *
—
Dom spends the morning gathering as much of their money as he can put his hands on. This isn’t something they know how to budget for. Marietta wanted money to give up her contact, and the contact asked for three times that to set up a meeting the next day, without any indication how much more he might ask for. There’s no ceiling to what they’re willing to spend. If what they have isn’t enough, they’ll promise more. They’ll find it, borrow it. They’ll figure it out.
Clay walks Rai to school and then heads to work, partly to keep up appearances but also for a final bit of information gathering. For the first time since he’s met him, Clay is happy to run into Thao on the train in. His enthusiastic “Hey man, good to see you” is enough to put Thao’s guard up. Clay leans in conspiratorially. “Hey, you go over to the Bronx sometimes.”
Thao looks around them. Everyone is packed into the train car, but no one pays any attention to anyone else. Knowing that doesn’t alleviate the feeling they’re all being watched.
“No, Clay,” Thao says, too loud and formal. “I do not have any reason to be over there. And I certainly do not have the necessary clearance.”
Then he leans in and whispers. “It’s like the fucking Wild West over there, man,” he says. “You can get whatever. Not in the sense of things as in material goods. But if you want to do something or you want something done to you? It is the free market.” He pauses, considering. “I mean, I don’t know what the options are for boys who like boys or whatever, but probably for you too.”
“And getting over there is no problem?”
Thao shakes his head. “Not on a good day,” he says.
“What’s a good day?”
Thao shrugs. “It’s not like ‘Tuesday is a good day,’ ” he says. “A good day, whoever’s working is slack.” When people talk about Faction members, they make a distinction between slack and taut. There are Faction members on point all the time, constantly taut. They’re directly connected to central authority, fe
eding information and receiving a steady stream of orders. They’re elite. Attentive. Taut.
For every elite agent, there are ten guys who scrub toilets, high while doing it. It’s not unusual to run into a Faction agent working an ass-end detail, staring into space when he’s supposed to be manning the watchtower. They have a vacancy behind their eyes Clay associates with longtime addicts. Lights on, no one home. Slack. Trouble is, they can snap to without warning, pulled taut. There’s no telling whether they’re ever as slack as they seem. The ones who come off as slack might be the worst. You let your guard down thinking they’ve done the same.
“And you slip them a bill?” Clay asks.
“Try to be cool about it, but yeah,” Thao says. “The thing is, when you’re there, they will steal anything that isn’t nailed down. I knew a guy who went over to see this Damp hooker.” Clay feels a little sick that they’ve bonded enough for Thao to lapse back into using the slur. “He fell asleep after he fucked her and woke up in a tub of ice with a surgical wound where his kidney’s supposed to be.” Thao pulls up his shirt to indicate where a kidney belongs, and Clay is half surprised not to see the story’s scar there on Thao’s own belly.
“That’s an urban myth,” Clay says. “That never happened.”
“Didn’t it?” Thao asks, winking with what he must imagine is an air of mystery. Clay thanks him, and there’s a pause in which Thao might be waiting to receive money in exchange for the information. Maybe this is what the rest of our lives will be like, Clay thinks. Paying out for phone calls and conversations. Carrying cash to slip to anyone who provides us any help. The train pulls into the station, and Thao wriggles his way through the disembarking crowd, high-fiving Omars and assuring them today is gonna be the day.
* * *
—
They pull up in front of Berkeley Carroll in a car Dominic borrowed from the production team of the film, its hood pocked with precisely drilled bullet holes. Clay goes into the office to sign Rai out, feeding the receptionist some bullshit about a doctor’s appointment. Mr. Castillo is in the office, running off copies, and Clay feels caught. But Castillo shies away from Clay as if they’d hooked up, and when Rai comes in from class, confused, Clay rushes him out of school and into the car.
“We going to the movies?” Rai asks. When he was little, Clay would kidnap him from school to hit up a matinee and binge at Shake Shack. It was a secret they kept from Dom, designed to secure Clay’s spot as favorite dad. More than once, he’s feigned enthusiasm for going to see a movie with Dom that he and Rai went to weeks before. Clay doesn’t answer, and Rai looks confused when he sees Dominic sitting in the passenger seat of the unfamiliar car.
“Who’s is this?” he asks as he gets into the backseat.
“It’s from the movie,” Dominic says.
“They gave you a car?”
Clay thinks about what Thao said about people in the Bronx stealing anything not nailed down and wonders if the film’s producers will be getting this one back.
“Where are we going?” Rai asks.
“We’re going to talk to somebody about our problem,” Dom says.
“What problem?”
Dom looks at Clay, and Clay realizes that not only did Dom think he was the last one to know, Clay was working on the assumption Rai knew or suspected what he was. He’s been using a different experience to understand what Rai’s going through. When Clay came to the realization he was gay, when he admitted it to himself, he was discovering a fact he already knew, although he tried feebly to deny it. What Rai was or what he wasn’t might be something else, a true revelation.
“Going to talk to a guy about a thing,” Clay says. “Don’t worry.” Rai knows when Clay is shutting down.
“I’m not,” he says. He takes out the Polaroid Clay saw him looking at a few nights ago, which he’s kept in the front pocket of his school uniform. He looks at it for a second and, calmed, puts it back and leans back in the seat. He smiles, imagining this is an adventure, a grown-up version of their jaunts to the movies, with the added bonus of both his dads being present. At fourteen, anything beats being in school.
“Who’s that?” Dom asks.
“Friend,” Rai says, patting the pocket where the photo’s come to rest.
At the checkpoint on Randall’s Island, Clay eyes the Faction member on shift. If he was any more slack, he’d be asleep. Warily, Clay hands over his ID with a hundred-dollar bill wrapped around it.
“Coming over to see family,” he says. “I feel bad for them, you know?” The kid doesn’t respond, and Clay feels a nervous need to fill the dead air between them. “I try to come over once a month, but it’s so depressing, right? Are you on the checkpoint often? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.”
“Yeah, it’s fine,” the Faction agent says, and waves him through.
“Did you bribe that guy?” Rai asks. Clay ignores him and takes the first turn he can, convinced that at any moment the Faction kid will snap taut and come after them. After a few blocks, he relaxes. He orients himself by putting Bronx Kill at his back and heads north to the address.
It’s a three-story brick building on a block of abandoned shops, the only one on the street with lights on. Clay parks in the alley alongside the building, sure the car will be stolen by the time they come out. A pair of security goons work the door, more attentive than the kid at the checkpoint. One’s got a shaved head that looks fitted onto his shoulders without the intervention of a neck. The other looks as if he’s come right down from the mountain after killing something with his bare hands. Clay gives his name and watches to see if they hold their hands palm up waiting for another bribe. The men wave them in, Clay and Dom sandwiching Rai protectively between them.
The main room of the hall looks like a bar from an old gangster movie, oak with decades of tobacco smoke soaked into it, stained glass shades on the lamps hanging over the pool tables. What little natural light there is comes through glass block transom windows. The smell of fried food permeates. Men are gathered in booths; around the pool table, others are shooting as if it’s a job they’ve lost their passion for. When Clay asked how he’d know his man, Marietta told him hipster bigot, and even if he hadn’t recognized him, Clay could have picked Gavin Olsen out as the group leader. Rooms like this, dedicated male spaces, there’s always a big man in the room, and Olsen’s it. There’s a knot of men with him, around which orbit others trying to pretend they’re not waiting to see him. Clay wonders if there’s security on the door when Olsen’s not around. The bald security guy appears at Olsen’s shoulder and says something that brings Clay, Dom, and Rai to Olsen’s attention. He looks at Clay, then Dom, obviously confused, then opens his mouth with an ahh of understanding.
“I didn’t realize this was an Adam and Steve situation,” he says to Dom. “You don’t sound queer on the phone. Anyone tell you that?”
“You talked to my husband,” Dom says, gesturing to Clay.
“Do not care, man, do not care,” says Olsen. “There was a time, I will tell you, that my opinion on this matter was more conservative, and now I am happy to let people do whatever gross fucking shit they want to one another and it’s none of my business. This the kid?”
“This is Rai,” Clay says.
Olsen stands up and walks over. For a moment, Clay thinks his entourage might follow him, but they just look on. Olsen sticks out his hand. “Nice to meet you, kid,” he says. “I’m your new best friend. Rough luck for you.” Rai shakes the man’s hand warily. “Where’s your stuff?” Olsen asks.
“What stuff?” Rai asks.
“He didn’t bring anything,” Clay says. “We thought this was more of an informational meeting.”
“Oh, no, curriculum night’s not till the middle of the semester,” Olsen says. The men behind him chortle. He swivels on his barstool to face Clay. “You bring the kid and money and then you leave.
It’s an elegant system. Un-fuckupable, I thought. But then here we are.”
“Dad, what is he talking about?” Rai asks Clay.
“So you’re the dad and you’re the mom?” Olsen says. “Sorry, I know I said I didn’t care, but I’m curious by nature.”
“We’re not going to hand over our kid to a stranger,” Dom says.
“That is by definition what you are going to do,” Olsen says. “You are here to pay for that exact privilege. I assume from the fact you came to see me you are desperate. Who would leave paradise across the river and come here otherwise? If you’re not desperate, that’s fantastic, man. Good for you guys. Scamper on home. But I don’t do informational meetings. I give not one shit about you. I will help your kid because he is a human being. You get no such consideration.”
“We need him hidden until we figure out what to do,” Clay says.
“That is not how this works,” Olsen says. “We will house him. We will give him a home. There are people here who want children, because our children are no longer our own. The people we give him to will love this boy of yours. But they will keep him. Do you understand?”
“Dad, why are we here?” Rai says. He’s asking both of them this time, pleading.
Clay does understand. There’s a fear that dogs an adoptive parent that the child will be taken back. Rai’s parents are long dead, and there was no family to be found. He belongs to Clay and Dom; no one has a claim on him. Clay has nightmares about a knock at the door, Maaya and Koyo waiting on the threshold with open arms. Blood trumps all, trumps love.
“I’m sorry,” Clay says. He puts his arm around his son. “I think I’ve made a—”
Before he can finish, the mountain man from out front comes flying across the room, trailing his guts in the air like streamers. He smashes into the side of the bar near Rai’s feet, already dead from the massive slash across his stomach. Clay shoves Rai behind him. Dominic becomes crystal and takes a wide stance. The door hangs off its hinges, and a Faction Bloom files into the Knights of Columbus hall. One has blades for hands, the left one covered in blood. All the men in the room turn to face them as one of them steps to the front. Clay recognizes her immediately. It’s the girl who recruited him into the Black Rose Faction: Ji Yeon Kim, who once held the National Guard off for weeks with a barricade made out of old boats and Chevy fenders.
