Midnight Taxi Tango

by Daniel José Older

  Devon flips her off. “Shut the fuck up.”

  “You guys,” Sally says. “Let’s not do this, okay? Gilberto unfortunately had an altercation in a bar the other night and won’t be able to . . .”

  “Somebody faded Gil?” Devon translates helpfully. “Shit.”

  Tarik jumps up. “Wait! Gil gets jacked up at a bar and the new homey got a shiner? Y’all ain’t seeing what I’m seeing?”

  A general murmur ensues. Sally looks vexed. “Guys, it’s Rigoberto’s first day here and—”

  Mikey B. raises his hand. “Rigoberto a Dominican name, right?”

  Rigoberto smiles. Teeth: perfect. At least four audible sighs happen. “Actually, I am from Brazil, like your last teacher.”

  “You speak Spanish, man?” someone yells.

  “Well, I do, but in Brazil we . . .”

  “Dumbass, he speaks Brazilian.”

  A bunch of us roll our eyes at the same time.

  “Y’all so stupid,” Karina says. “He speaks Portuguese. Now how ’bout we let the man talk and stop showing off how ignorant y’all are, ’kay?”

  Laughter breaks out, and then people settle down and look at Rigoberto. Sally smiles a little too broadly. “I’ll just let you talk to the kids now, Rigoberto. Thank you!” She pats his majestic shoulder and skitters out of the room.

  Rigoberto stands up. Dude must be six three at least. He’s perfectly proportioned; each piece fits into the other just right. His arms hang just right; his loose white pants fit just right—it’s almost sickening. “Hello, guys and girls,” he says with a doofy wave. “You can call me Rigo.”

  “Do we have bulge?” Karina whispers, peering over Devon’s baseball cap.

  We do. “We appear to have bulge,” I report.

  Karina nods. “Confirmed bulge.”

  “Rigo, you married, boo?” Kelly yells out. I want to punch her in the face. Everybody groans.

  Rigo chuckles. It sounds a little forced. “Today we’re going to talk about capoeira, yes? Not Rigo’s personal life.”

  “Fat chance,” Karina mutters.

  “Let’s begin by seeing what we know so far, okay? Because I don’t know this other teacher, Gilberto, yes? But he may be, how do you say . . . incompetent? Capoeira is how my people survived European domination in Brazil. It is beautiful, but deadly.”

  “Just like him,” Karina mutters.

  “It is a martial art disguised as a dance, but it is also a dance disguised as a martial art. Why? Because we were not allowed to train to fight. We had to disguise our training as dancing, yes? We had to become clandestine warriors in a system that did not believe we are human, yes? Maybe this is something you can understand today, or maybe not. I don’t know. But for this reason, it is very serious, the study of capoeira. We can have fun, but we also must remember it is survival, class, okay?”

  Everyone just stares at him.

  “That time, it was not rhetorical, the question.”

  As one, the whole class yells: “Yes!” It’s the first time we’ve done anything in synch with one another.

  “Holy fuck.” Karina sighs. “He’s beautiful and rebel deep.”

  “Now, why don’t we have demonstration?” Rigo says. “Which one of you is Kia Summers?”

  My heart lurches into overdrive. I suck at capoeira. And I hate standing in front of people. And. And. And. People are snickering and turning back to stare at me. Karina shoves my shoulder. Rigo searches our faces till his eyes lock with mine. He smiles that eerily perfect smile and says, “Ah, you are Kia, yes?”

  I nod, praying he’ll change his mind, knowing he won’t. Why would he call me by name anyway? What kind of . . . ?

  “Go!” Karina hisses in my ear. The moment has grown long, awkward. I stand, somewhat shakily, and make my way through the group to the front.

  Rigo wears altogether too much cologne. It’s something synthetic and overbearing, and it makes me dizzy. “You remember how to do a basic ginga?” he asks, smiling down at me.

  I shrug. “I mean, kinda.”

  “The ginga is the basic step of capoeira, yes? Everyone has their own ginga. It is as personal as a signature. Just like everyone has their own rhythm.”

  “Devon doesn’t!” Karina yells.

  “When you understand the ginga, when you find your own”—Rigo swings one leg back and raises his forearm toward me, then switches sides, moving so smoothly it’s like he’s gliding a few inches above the wood-paneled floor—“it becomes like just walking down the street! You see? Natural. Come, we do it together.” I try to mimic him, sliding my left leg back and then shifting my weight to the right. I feel like a broken mannequin.

  “Clap, kids, yes? For the rhythm?” He lifts his hands over his head, and those thick triceps glare at me. I lose my entire sense of rhythm and have to start over. “Clap, clap!” Rigo yells, breaking into a syncopated beat in time with his hovering step.

  The group claps, and I work my way back into a steady ginga.

  “Yes, yes, very good!” Rigo yells over the clapping. “Now what happens when I go with one of these?” He spins; one foot anchors and the other flies up toward me. I know this part—I’m supposed to dodge-bend backward like in The Matrix and then spin into some impossible acrobatic shit and kick. I arch back and throw myself off-balance, hurl sideways, and catch Rigo’s sneaker in the face.

  Everyone in the room yells, “Oh!” as I stumble. I hear Rigo mutter, “Porra!” as a whoosh of wind brushes past. Arms wrap around me. Thick arms. Rigo somehow evaporated and reappeared behind me. Again, audible swoons erupt, not all of them from the girls.

  My hands cover my eye and Rigo’s hands are on my wrists. “Let me see,” Rigo says softly. “Let me see. I’m so sorry, Kia. Let me see what I did.”

  I shake my head. I probably look like one of those deep-sea monstrosities right now. The hell I’ma let Brazilian Ken gape at me.

  “We probably need to ice it. Can you see, Kia?”

  I relent. The collective gasp is all I need to tell me what an instant freak show I’ve become. Rigo scrunches up his face. “Is not so bad, minha. Let’s get some ice, okay?”

  “I’ll take her!” Karina yells.

  Thank God.

  • • •

  In the rec center nurse’s office, Karina informs me that I have a boyfriend.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” I say. The ice pack pulses a numbing void against my forehead. From the wall, a cartoon condom explains, with the winningest of grins, that he’s not reusable.

  “I’m just saying,” Karina says. “He called that ass out by name. He was like”—she drops her voice to an absurd baritone and affects something like a Polish accent—“‘Kia Summers! Please for to come to ze front of ze el roomio.’”

  “Karina.”

  “You in love, girl. That’s okay. We all are. Homeboy is eight feet tall and fine as fuck. And he’s packin’. I’m just mad it’s you, not me, but I support you, Kia. I got ya back all the way. And when it come crashing down because he’s too old for you, I’ll step in and pick up the pieces on that distraught friend tip and get me some too.”

  “How that even make sense? You the same age as me.”

  “I’m more mature though. And I’m Jamaican, so . . .”

  “What does that even . . . ? Just be quiet, woman. You’re giving me a headache.”

  “That headache is called Love. A love ache.”

  All I can do is roll my eyes, but even that hurts. “You going to the park after class?”

  Karina scoffs. “It’s Saturday, ain’t it? You know I got all those baby beckys to take care of.”

  A bunch of the new white folks in the neighborhood linked up on some social media site, and now they have regular Saturday-evening dinner parties where they plot, I’m sure, how to make the perfect vegan cupcake and take o
ver the world. Karina got the gig watching their rug rats, and she usually just lets ’em loose in Von King.

  “They ain’t scared by all the shit been going on there?”

  “Pshaw! It’s added flavor and excitement to the urban adventure.”

  “I’ma come with,” I say.

  Karina sits up real straight and wipes off her stupid grin. “If Renny there, I got ya back.”

  I sigh. “It’s not like all that, Karina. It’s cool. I’m cool.”

  Renard Deshawn White, of all the old-man-ass names for a teenage boy, is this kid I used to talk to. He’s big and black and beautiful, all those loving folds of flesh to get lost in, and he got a quiet easy way about him like I do when Karina’s dumbass isn’t around riling me up. We used to walk the length of the park after school just talking. I mean, he talked most of the time, and I just let him. He talked about his favorite video games and his moms and his little sister and how he wanted to be an engineer and okay, yeah, it seems pretty boring if you not in it, if you don’t give a crap about Renny, but I devoured every word and then waited in the silences for him to look over at me and then wrap around me and I could disappear into him and and and.

  And in February he started dating Maritza Lavoe. And then they started walking the park, same path we took, same leisurely loving pace, and I sat hugging myself next to Karina while all those little white kids ran screaming around us and wondered if Maritza made him laugh more or if she listened better, if they’d made out yet, and if they kissed when they had sex. Dumb shit, I know, but that’s where my off-kilter mind went and that’s where it stayed. Me and Renny didn’t even put our lips against each other, but I felt like I could go through things with him and come out on the other side a better person. I put the best King Impervious breakup rhymes in my ears and walked out of Von King Park one night. And I haven’t been back since.

  “You sure you cool?” Karina eyes my faraway look, and I snap out of it, flash a smile.

  “Girl, fuck Renny and his video-game-playin’ ass.”

  “That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout.”

  We dap and then I say, “For real though, he still roll through there with Maritza?”

  Karina shoves me, and I almost fall over the desk I’m sitting on. We’re both laughing so hard we don’t notice that Sally’s standing in the doorway, arms akimbo, until she says, “Young ladies,” and then all we can do is bust out laughing again.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Carlos

  New York weather doesn’t give a fuck about any of us. It wants us confused and off-balance, and if it has to become absurdly warm after the sun sets on a brittle afternoon in a brittle icy week, so be it. Folks are shedding jackets and sweaters, unraveling scarves, looking around dumbfounded and annoyed. Old people step out onto their stoops and stretch muscles cramped and tight from flinching against a long, hard winter. They smile as I pass, turn to each other and wonder who gonna get it tonight and how, what unaccountable tragedy will strike which corner of the park, and why . . . They shake their old heads, jowls dangling, eyes squinting in the streetlights, and wonder.

  I stand in the center of Von King Park and let the whole universe of it spiral around me. Little kids swarm the brightly lit playground in the southeast corner. Dog walkers stroll along in small clumps. In the field behind me, a baseball game wraps up. I’ll say this for the community: the recurring traumas have not deterred people’s impulse to commune. Who can resist the first night of spring? The thaw has come early, and knowing New York’s tempestuous temptress ways, tomorrow will see another frost.

  “Mass random disasters be damned, huh,” Riley says, appearing next to me.

  “I was just thinking the same thing.”

  “The people gonna have their park.”

  “Ain’t mad. It’s a beautiful night.” I’m sweating into this damn overcoat.

  “Game plan?”

  “Bell’s at the southwest entrance.” I nod toward the Marcy Ave. gate at the far end of the field. “Posted some’a her soulcatchers at the northeast end; the rest are scattered along the edges. You take the northwest.”

  “Where the little doggy park is? Man, fuck dogs.”

  “You have no soul.”

  “All I am is soul, brother.”

  “I’ma be over at southeast. Kia got a friend that watches some kids there. Gonna see if I can rustle up any information.”

  “Kia, as in Baba Eddie’s little botánica badass?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Alrighty. You worried? You look worried.”

  “That’s my face, man.”

  Riley shakes his head and moves out to the edge of the park with long ghostly strides.

  • • •

  Am I worried? No. Not worried, but a growing unease rumbles through my core. I don’t have a name for it, can’t trace its roots. It’s been there for the past couple days, I realize, unnamed and rising. I’m just getting myself together when I see Kia sitting next to her friend on the bench. One of Kia’s eyes is swollen and blue. The unease erupts into a full-blown swath of rage.

  “The fuck happened?” I say, quickening my pace as I cross the playground. “Who I gotta kill?”

  Before Kia can answer, her friend is up in my face. “The fuck are you, homeboy?”

  “I . . .”

  “You gonna back up off my friend ’fore I—”

  Kia’s hand lands on her shoulder. “Karina, it’s cool, girl. That’s Carlos. He’s my people.”

  Karina glares up at me for a solid three seconds before backing off. She has a shock of blue hair pulled back in a ponytail and glittery lipstick. Her eyes say she’ll kill me if she has to and I believe them. I smile—not to seem condescending; I’m just relieved Kia has someone else around, someone her age, who will throw herself in the line of fire to protect her. I know I would.

  “Karina, Carlos, Carlos, Karina.”

  I nod at the girl, and she appraises me with a squint.

  “Ya hair laid, Carlos,” Karina says.

  “What?”

  Kia puts her hand over her face and groans.

  Karina is undeterred. “What you put in it though?”

  “I mean, shampoo.”

  “Ugh! I hate men! Y’all so simple!”

  “What happened to your eye?” I ask Kia.

  “It’s fine. It was an accident, is all.”

  Did the disaster ghost strike already? Seems there are no accidents these days . . . “Here?”

  “Nah, man. At the rec center. Capoeira-related injury.”

  “What is this capoeira of which you keep speaking?”

  “It’s an Afro-Brazilian martial art. They came up with it during slavery, when they had to disguise their combat training as dance. Or their dancing as combat—can’t remember which. I suck at it.”

  “She’ll be aight,” Karina puts in. “She was struck by an angel.”

  Kia swats her. “Shut it.”

  “A Brazilian angel.”

  Kia wraps both arms around her friend from behind and covers the girl’s mouth. “Ignore her, C. What did you wanna ask about?”

  They’re so easy with each other and for a second I’m a hundred miles away. Physical contact with the living? I tend to avoid it.

  “Carlos?” Kia says.

  “You take care of all these kids, right?” I ask over Karina’s muffled giggles.

  She pulls away from Kia’s hands and straightens herself. “Indeed I do.”

  “Every Saturday?”

  “Unless the Ministry of Whiteness decides to give me a night off.”

  I squint at her. “The Min . . .”

  “Never mind, C,” Kia says. “She here every Saturday, yes.”

  “You saw the old guy get hit by that wheelbarrow from the construction site last weekend?”

  Kar
ina shakes her head and inserts a stick of gum in her mouth. “Uh-uh.” She offers me a piece. I decline. Kia grabs one and starts chewing loudly. “I heard about it though. And the lady that ran into a city bus the next day. She lived though, I heard. But yeah. Whole lotta disaster up in these streets, man.”

  “You seen anything weird, like, around the park?”

  “Besides white people jogging through Bed-Stuy after dark?” Kia says. They both fall out laughing for a minute and then collect themselves. “Nothing really. Same ol’ usuals. Ol’ Drasco and his cat parade. The cops making rounds. That’s it.”

  “What about the kids?”

  “You wanna ask ’em?” Karina stands and makes a pretend megaphone with her hands. “WHAT WE GON’ DO WHEN DI REVOLUTION COME?”

  An eerie choir of high-pitched voices rises in the night around me. “Burn dem houses and kill dem sons.”

  I boggle at Karina. “What the hell is that?”

  Little white kids pour off the slide and swing sets. They repeat the line in unison as they make their way toward us.

  Karina shrugs. “Song my grandma usedta sing. It gets their attention.”

  “I don’t think . . .”

  “WHAT WE GONNA DO WHEN DI CITY BURN?” Karina yells.

  The kids bustle in around us. “Light dem mothafuckas in dey turn,” they chant.

  “Karina . . . Do their parents know you have them—”

  “Shit, I hope not. I’d probably get fired. I get nothing but tips and thank-yous, so I’m guessing nah. I swore them all to secrecy. Right, soldiers?”

  “Ashé!” comes the yelled response.

  “Ashé though?” Kia says. “You confusing these children, Karina.”

  “Hell, I’m a Jamaican in cold-ass New York City. I grew up confused—why shouldn’t they? What’d you wanna ask ’em, Carlos?”

  Pale expectant faces stare up at me. They all have big cheeks and wide eyes. “Anybody . . . notice anything . . . strange?” I ask them. I don’t really know how to talk to kids. Not living ones anyway.

  They just keep staring at me.

  Karina furrows her brow and stamps one foot. “Ay, soldiers. Tell Mr. Carlos the truth.”