Something moves in the corner of my eye. She’s standing in the doorway to her bedroom, watching me. I have no idea how long she’s been there, but what’s important is she’s still wearing those flowy pants that look like they could be gone with very little effort, and her nipples are still insinuating themselves through that tank top. That’s what’s important to me anyway. Her mouth is frowning, but somehow I can tell she’s smiling in some deeper place. Her eyes meet mine and she nods her head. It’s the smallest of gestures: Point Zero. I send up a brief silent prayer of thanks to whatever omniscient force has guided my life to this point and a quick silent shout-out to Riley for a speedy recovery, my dear brother, and then I stand, let the sleep slide off me as I rise out of the covers, and follow her into the room.
* * *
When I was lying completely still in that room in Mama Esther’s house, life tiptoeing back into my body, I heard the flutterings of a coupling. Through all that back talk and smack talk, all the tiny and gigantic legends that unraveled, there was one that you could pick out above the rest. A singular, crisp ray of emotion: unmistakable. It was a simple thing—two teenagers. A young dark-skinned girl with big eyes and a Dominican kid, all shiny curls on his head and baggy pants. The other kids’d be rollicking through the motions and these two would join the fun, but there was something else going on. I don’t think it was just me who could sense it; the other young’uns picked up on all that electricity too, with that unerring adolescent radar they have.
He lived in Bushwick, a few neighborhoods over, but they went to the same school and he started showing up on the block and fell in well with the other kids. You could tell he wanted her by his quietness and his stupid boy teasing. In my room, I imagined her shy smile as she punched his arm for saying something stupid and him contorting with joy at the attention. I couldn’t tell you what separated it from any of the other flirtations that played out up and down the block that summer. It was just something you could taste in the air whenever they got within a block of each other. It was easy: a force greater than either of them wanted that union to happen, and the world sent that great magician of the inevitable, gravity, to make it so. Once gravity enters the picture, all bets are off. Those kids were hurtling toward each other like two asteroids that traveled bajillions of light-years just to cross paths at that one fatal instant. Who knows what endless cause and effects spiral out of those gravity-inflicted collisions? There’s something different about them though. They burn harder, and the fallout can shake the whole city on its foundation.
The day they finally did it—a rainy afternoon toward the end of summer—the shit woke me up from one of those deep-as-an-abyss type naps. They were quiet; don’t get me wrong. I think her old grandma was only a few rooms away in her rocking chair, so they had to keep it down. But the vibrations. You could feel ’em tumbling through the air like tsunami after tsunami, a relentless, joyful series of explosions that momentarily collapsed the natural order of things. A giddy kind of chaos burned among the exploding molecules around me. I knew it was happening and smiled. I’m sure even Grandma’s dreams simmered with those colliding, gravity-stricken teenagers. I’m sure she woke up smiling and confused, hopefully none the wiser.
The drumbeat kept up all through the afternoon—I was impressed, actually—and simmered into a gentle caress as night fell. The whole block burned with it, pulsed with it, and when the lights came on to fight off the coming dark, they glowed brighter for the ferocity of that loving, that true sheet-grabbing throb that emanated from the sweat-soaked room on the third floor.
Gravity.
* * *
Outside, the snow keeps falling. I take the back of Sasha’s neck in my hand and put our faces together. The sky is dark blue and flecked with white. I’ll move slow, because I feel the momentum as it wraps around her. The promise of all that’s about to come slides up her legs, weakens her knees, caresses her thighs, and really—there’s no rush.
We have arrived.
My other hand is on her cheek; her arms reach up, encircle my neck. She brings her face up to mine, her lips up to mine. Her skin is cool; my skin is cool. The place where our lips meet is on fire. I’m taller than her and broad where she’s slender, but still: we mirror. The word finally swims through my mind, and then our tongues find each other and do battle and there are no more words. Her hips find mine. I’m rock-hard and let her know with a nudge. Her legs spread and I lift her up into the air, wrap her around me.
The snow’s in no hurry. It’ll always get where it’s going. When it moves fast, clamoring over itself to cascade in all those frantic rivulets, it’s not rushing, just following the pattern the wind has set for it. Teasing gravity, and gravity plays along because they both know, in the end, gravity always wins. Her skin is off-brown against white sheets as she lies back and slides easily out of her clothes. My arms are on either side of her; I’m a shelter above her. I press forward against her and stop, allowing the gravity to collect around us, the sheer, impossible joy of standing on that precipice, her juices flowing, inviting me inside. I wait for her to moan with blissful impatience and then inch forward, and she plays along because we both know, in the end, gravity always wins.
* * *
“You want to hear a song?”
I do, but I’m still groggy and delicious-feeling from those two rapid-fire orgasms that blew through my body like nuclear explosions. I rub my eyes and say, “Yes, please.” She grins, excited like a little kid, and shuffles out of the blankets, reaching across me to the stereo beside her bed. It’s one of those old-fashioned deals with a record player on top and a million buttons. The bedside table actually is one of the speakers, I realize. It’s huge.
A sad piano progression chimes out over some rumbling bass notes. It’s got an old barroom blues feel, all jangly and almost dissonant, and then the drummer kicks in with a modern march, smooth but insistent, and the whole thing comes together: a rickety old soldier stumbling through the rain. It’s just a pretty song until the singer starts. Then something happens. I don’t know shit about music, so I couldn’t tell you if it’s the key she’s singing in, or the way her voice slides in between the notes like she’s flirting with them, or just the simple truth of her sorrow, coming straight out of her mouth, but whatever it is, the song lays me down and eases all my blissfully aching muscles. It creeps inside my heart, circulates into my bloodstream.
“You like it?”
Apparently I do, because I’m smiling pretty hard and I don’t really do that a lot. “What is it?”
She shrugs. “I dunno. Trevor brought it home one time, something he dug up in some archival library when he was researching some shit.”
“There’s no label on the tape or nothing?”
“It’s hand-written. Just says ‘PLEASE’ in all caps.”
“That’s kinda sad.”
“Or beautiful.”
“Both.”
Then we shut up, because the woman’s voice hits this particular note that is everything and just hangs there while the band trundles their cool blues beneath her. You can tell they all know they’re making magic, got that divine swagger like nothing matters but each single note as they play it and then the phrase and how they all wind together and become one.
Halfway through the song, the woman drops out and a trumpet takes over. Sasha puts her head on my chest, and I can feel my slow heartbeat against her face. The trumpet blurts out a note, stops, blurts another, swings into a melody something like what the woman was singing and then takes off into a wild, burgeoning improvisation that leaves me breathless. “Damn,” I whisper.
“Right?”
“Mm-hmm.”
The woman comes back, resanctifying the space, and Sasha’s moving against me. I’m hard again, and I know if I just lie here, her slowly gyrating body will find what it’s looking for.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Council will blast one of their stupid messages through my head any second now. I can feel the
vibrations of imminent ignorance like an oncoming freight train. Sasha smiles in the blissed-out sleep of the fully fucked, I notice with satisfaction, and I’m enjoying a few quiet moments before my mind and unartful employers catch up to me. I slip out of bed so as not to pervert the peaceful air with their bullshit, and the transmission comes as I’m walking into the kitchen.
“New York Council of the Dead to Agent Delacruz. Your presence is required immediately at Council Headquarters for a hearing in regard to yesterday’s events, the extinguishing of a Council agent and the injuring of a soulcatcher prime during the course of duty. Please respond posthaste to room 849 in the headquarters main offices immediately.”
Respond posthaste immediately? Dickheads.
“End transmission.”
* * *
She wakes up while I’m sliding my belt on; blesses me with a groggy smile as she watches me lace up my boots. I take her face in my hands and kiss it, once on the lips, once on the forehead, once on each cheek. A rumbling inside lets me know that if I linger any longer, I’ll be here all day, all week probably; so I stand, nod, and stroll out the door into the snow-covered morning.
* * *
Bureaucracy’s got its own special language. It’s trifling, of course, the lowest order of poetry, and manages to divest words of all meaning and still weigh them down with extra banality. After a while, you get good at it. Riley’s reached legendary status the way he spits that shit out like it’s scripted in him. Makes it look so easy.
I’m not there yet.
I still gotta bounce my mind back and forth along the highways of implications that burst out of each sentence, so my rhythm’s off and I come a little clunky with it. But I’m getting better.
In a chilly, mostly dark room up in some corner of the Council’s industrial warehouse headquarters in Sunset Park, I lay down the story in the best bureaucracy-talk I can muster. The committee is a semicircle of shrouds around me, indistinct in the foggy gloom. Somewhere, the ever-watchful eyes of at least one of the seven ignoble chairmen must be watching us.
“At this point in time, I withdrew from the premises with Agent Washington.”
“Why,” an icy voice cuts me off, “Agent Delacruz, did you not make an attempt to intervene on behalf of Agent Arroyo?”
You see that? Poetry. The most overindulgent, self-important use of language ever. I stifle a curse-out and then say, “The situation with Agent Arroyo had deteriorated beyond any point where intervention would have been . . . useful.”
Where’s Riley when I need him? The motherfucker has a way with words. I can only imagine how he knocked ’em out after the last basement debacle. But Riley’s unconscious somewhere, recovering from the ngk poison. And I’m floundering.
“And by that you mean?”
“The ngks had already dealt mortal injuries on Agent Arroyo, and he was, by my estimation, in a state of Deeper Death. Unsalvageable.” I cringe at the word because it makes Dro into an object that must be thrown away.
“By your estimation.” I sense precise intonations being recorded forever in that endless ghost memory.
“Also, I had no idea what possible intervention I could’ve performed to release Agent Arroyo from the ngks, seeing as his own assault on one of them was the inciting incident that led to the attack.” Now I sound like I’m blaming him for his own death. I want to get out of here so badly it hurts.
An uneasy silence follows my words. Then the voice says, “I see. Continue.”
“Upon withdrawal from the scene, I absconded to what I deemed to be safer territory, namely Eastern Parkway on the corner of Franklin Avenue.”
“At this point you were with Agent Washington?”
“Correct. I was carrying him, actually.”
“He was unconscious?”
“Honestly . . .” I take a breath and then start again with less growl. “I wasn’t able to determine Agent Washington’s level of consciousness because I was too busy”—not getting my ass murdered—“absconding.”
Fuck.
“I see.”
“When I paused at the specified intersection, I then had time to check on my superior and discovered that he was in dire need of medical attention, having sustained an unknown injury from his contact with the ngk machinery.” Which was all y’all’s brilliant idea, jackasses.
The shroud in the middle of the semicircle steps forward, and for the first time I can make out his features: a hyperaggressive chin, sharp eyebrows, and the fakest of smiles. It’s Chairman Botus, the only one of the Ignoble Seven High Council chairmen to ever let his identity be known. I hate that grin he’s wearing like a cheap suit after a bad date, and I hate that he’s towering over me, immersed in shadows. “And here, Agent Delacruz, is where things get murky, so to speak.”
“Hardly,” I say. I’m doing everything not to take the bait, but the whole conversation is so infuriating.
“Ah. Do explain.” Botus leans forward like he really wants to hear what I have to say.
“Agent Washington’s condition was such that, as I stated”—easy Carlos, easy—“he required immediate medical attention. So I . . .”
“So you brought an unconscious agent of the Council to the safe house of a non-Council, unregulated entity.”
“Esther is . . .”
“And left him there.”
“I . . .”
“Did you, Agent Delacruz, file a report with the Council in regard to the incident?”
I hate being interrupted. “I left a message.”
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t have two-way telepathy, Chairman, because I’m not fully dead.”
Botus widens his smile. “Of course.”
“So the Council has generously set up a phone line that I report to, and I left the information on the machine.” I wonder if the sarcasm is gushingly obvious. Then I decide I don’t really care either way.
A moment passes. Botus is probably confirming this information with some other party.
“And did you know, Agent Delacruz, that this house ghost in question—”
“Esther.”
“—has been known to harbor and give aid to various non-Council entities?”
“Esther is the most proficient ghost healer I know. She personally attended to—”
“That wasn’t the question.”
I let a few seconds slip past. “The Council’s healing services would not have been administered in a timely enough fashion, giving the circumsta—”
“Also not the question, Agent Delacruz. The question was, did you know—”
“That Esther had non-Council ghosts up in her library sometimes? I did know that, yes. Found that out that very night, in fact.”
My face burns with irritation. I want to lunge forward and throttle this ridiculous Botus person. Instead I stay quiet while some more murmured conferences go on around me.
“Interesting,” Botus finally says, although at this point it’s not at all clear what he’s referring to. “Your case will be reviewed by the committee. Your complicity has been useful in our understanding of the situation, Agent Delacruz.”
Cock. Time grumbles along like a limping beggar as I wait in a side room. Suddenly, I’m not so good at patience anymore. I can’t stop pacing, and the feeling that nothing’s happening rankles my brain. After a grueling hour, they beckon me back in and explain that they’re issuing me a verbal admonition for breach of protocol and will be keeping a sharp eye on me. They add, almost reluctantly, that I’m receiving official commendation for saving the life of a superior officer, and that I’ll be taking over as lead agent on the case. None of it means anything, of course. It’s all empty words and paperwork. I’m just glad to be out of that damn place.
I leave in a cloud of vague humiliation. I’d hoped, by the end, to at least storm out after some righteous speech. Or maybe go all stony and silent as the frustrated committee buffeted me helplessly with their idiotic questions. I wanted some tiny triumph amid all that unseem
liness. Instead, it just sputtered out and I felt probed and abused and mostly empty.
* * *
Riley doesn’t look so hot. It could be worse, given what he’s been through, but still . . . it’s hard to watch my friend flickering on the edge of existence. He’s in a tidy little room the Council has set aside for injured ghosts—just a cot and whitewashed walls and Riley, all splayed out and muttering to himself. His eyes are closed. The room is charged with some kind of ghost-healing shit the Council uses, something like a hyperbaric chamber for the dead. The shit’s relaxing, whatever it is; as soon as I walk in, a general easiness enters me, washes out all the lingering irritation from my hearing. Underneath that, though, there is a sadness, and the happy healing shit can’t even touch that sadness; it’s not going anywhere.
I don’t think he even registers me walking in. I crouch against the wall near his cot and put my hand on his shoulder. It’s so barely there I almost press right through him and touch the sheets. Riley makes a huffy noise and rolls over, eyes still shut.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
It stopped snowing. The early-afternoon sky is pale with splotches of gray. Folks walk around huddled up into themselves, scurrying from place to place before the hypothermia sets in. It’s practically April, and this is some bullshit.
I hole up in one of those twenty-four-hour Mexican bakeries to take stock of the situation. A happy little round guy with spiky hair takes my order, bows graciously, and disappears into the back. An accordion-driven hard love ballad oompah-oompahs out of the speakers, but I barely notice it; I’m too busy trying to see past the emotional Drano of the last two hours and get a grip on what’s really going on.
I hadn’t really let myself deal too deeply with the thought of Dro being gone. First it was the initial terror of everything, then the dire need to not think about it as I escaped into Sasha’s arms, and then the hearing. Now the reality of it clamors around me; I can’t help but think about that last longing glimpse of his family that I interrupted.
Half-Resurrection Blues Page 11
