Midnight Taxi Tango

by Daniel José Older

  I’m just letting a smile cross my face when the door chimes erupt through my music, through my skull, and a group of white boys rumble into the store. I pause the King, take off my headphones. They pass without a glance in my direction.

  “No, Kenny, no, it’s over here!”

  “Shut up, Bill!”

  “And so I told her, ‘No, girl, it’s not even like that!’ She just shook her head. I’m so fucking tired of her shit, man.”

  “Yeah, man. Yeah.”

  “It’s over here! Kenny, come here.”

  “I’m coming, man, relax.”

  “Bill, you gotta shut up, man.”

  I can’t keep track of who’s Bill or Kenny or getting curved by whose girlfriend, and really, I don’t care. I just want them out. The air fills with them—their banter and boy smell and whiteness, their exaggerated ease with one another and the world.

  “Ahahahaha, these are potions though! Like, for real, this soap is supposed to scare away ghosts.”

  “Oh shit, man.”

  “Kenny, what’s this mean, a love potion?”

  “Yeah, that’s supposed to bring the ladies right to you, man.”

  “Let’s get it for Bill. Maybe Christine will stop friend zoning his ass.”

  Wild laughter. Because really, what’s funnier than other people’s cultures and sexual coercion?

  “No, no, this one, this one: brings in the money!”

  “Woo-woo!”

  “We can pay rent this month! Get three!”

  More laughter. My right hand has found its way to the short blade Carlos gifted me; my fingers wrap tight around the handle. I wonder briefly if my body has figured out something my mind doesn’t know yet. But no floating translucent weirdoes clutter the air, and no child demons emerge from the shadows. It’s not fear, this need to hold something lethal. It’s rage.

  The boys drop eight packets of Baba Eddie’s soaps and herbal remedies on the counter. One of them, Bill, I guess, says: “We’ll take ’em all.” And for the first time, in their world, I exist. A transaction is needed; my presence matters now.

  “No,” I say.

  I’m not sure what it is. White people have been coming in more and more these days. Sometimes they’re respectful, sometimes not, but I’ve never felt like this. When I say no, really it means fuck you, and I relish the sizzling denial lingering in the silence that follows.

  “Uh . . .” Bill says. Then they all laugh, but it’s forced. Surely I must be joking.

  Really, the dried herbs and soaps, on their own, are a quick fix. Baba always tells people that himself. It’s like getting some generic over-the-counter shit when you could go get diagnosed and prescribed a true, tailor-made remedy just for you. But they’re also cheap, and folks are struggling.

  Anyway, the product’s not the point: I’m fed up.

  “What do you mean, no?” Bill says into my icy glare.

  “I mean, you can’t buy them.”

  The chuckles stop.

  “Why not?”

  “Because”—I dig up a smile—“I said so.”

  Suddenly, I can taste violence in the air. It must be their sweaty fight-or-flight glands going into collective overdrive. An unexpected ripple has been torn in their meticulously cultivated ghetto paradise, and I’m the mothafuckin’ pebble. I feel like King Impervious would be proud.

  I smile wider.

  “Wha—?” another stutters. “We want to see your manager.”

  “Kenny,” Bill says, lip curled into a sneer. “Forget it. She’s just a stupid kid.”

  “No, that’s not the point, man! Where’s your manager?”

  “You’re looking at her.” I’m not just a pebble. I’m a stone. A rock. Their whirlwinding frustration curls and crashes around me. “How may I help you?”

  “Fuck this,” a third says. “Where’s this Baba Eddie guy, then? We want to file a complaint. Because this is some bullshit, seriously.”

  I take a piece of paper from the printer and poise a pen above it. “I’ll take your complaint. What seems to be the trouble today, sir?”

  They erupt into a fury of protest. The air thickens. Their wiry bodies tense; that flailing gets erratic. If a hand crosses the counter at me, I’ll take it off.

  “This is so unacceptable!”

  “Yeah, Christine?” one of them says into a super-expensive-looking cell phone. “You won’t believe this shit! We’re at the store around the corner where they sell the voodoo stuff and . . . What’s that? Oh wow, that’s cool, yeah.”

  I probably wouldn’t really chop a hand off. I don’t need to go to jail right now. Baba Eddie would have to handle the fallout, and it’d be a whole thing: Satanic Black Girl Lashes Out. Whatever. But now this game is getting old and I want to go back to King Impervious. And I have no idea how to get these assholes to leave. What if they decide to occupy the place, and then I’ll have to explain everything to Baba Eddie?

  The door chimes jangle again, and Baba Eddie walks in with his boyfriend, Russell. Russell’s Native, Ojibwa, I think, but folks always confuse him for regular ol’ white. He’s wearing a slick business suit as always and looking vexed as fuck, as always. For a few seconds, nobody says anything. One of Baba Eddie’s eyebrows goes up. Russell furrows his brow, then says, “These boys bothering you, Kia?”

  “Wait a minute!” one of them yells.

  “She was the one . . .” another starts. But then they all get quiet, cuz Russell raises his hand. He’s wide. Not fat. It’s just a long way from one side of his shoulders to the other. You could fit three of these scrawny hipsters across Russell’s large frame. “I didn’t ask you a question, son,” he says real quiet-like. “Now, Kia. Are these . . . boys . . . bothering you?” He squeezes each word out like it hurts.

  “Yeah,” I say. “They’re being assholes.”

  Russell turns to them, frown deepening. The boys look at each other and then scatter. They have to go past Russell and Baba Eddie to get to the door, so there’s a lot of simpering “Pardon Me”s and “Sorry”ing and then they’re gone and the jangly door slams shut, and Baba Eddie and Russell lean against the counter and glare at me.

  “They were being assholes,” I say.

  “You didn’t provoke them at all?” Baba Eddie asks. “Not that I think you would, but . . .”

  “They were making fun of your herb packets.” I sound like a petulant little kid, and I don’t care. The fire still rages through my insides. “And being disrespectful. And loud.”

  Baba Eddie sighs. “Then I’m glad you held it down.”

  “She’s still mad,” Russell says. I’m annoyed that he’s talking about me like I’m not there and even more annoyed that he’s right.

  “What’s wrong, Kia?” Baba Eddie asks, coming around to where I’m sitting. He’s pretty small, looks even tinier next to his wide-shouldered boyfriend, and he has to pull up one of the stools to really be comfortable at the counter. “Tell Baba Eddie all about it.”

  I shake my head and stupid tears start to form in my stupid eyes like I’m a stupid . . . well, teenager. I just faced down a throng of unruly hipsters without flinching. There’s no reason I should suddenly become a whimpering douche bag.

  Alas, here I am.

  Russell passes me a silk handkerchief, and I wipe my eyes with it and then shake my head again and then just put my head down on Baba Eddie’s shoulder and sob silently for a few minutes while he rubs my back.

  “I’m fucking angry,” I finally say.

  “At who or what?” Baba Eddie asks.

  “I can’t”—sniffle—“talk about it.”

  “This have anything to do with whatever fuckshit Carlos been on? Because you sound an awful lot like him right now.”

  I manage a choky little laugh. “Only kinda. I don’t even really know what I’m mad about. I
mean . . . I got everything I wanted. You ever . . . you ever get exactly what you wanted and then realize that you’re still mad for not having had it all that time and it just doesn’t seem fair at all?”

  Both Baba Eddie and Russell nod, faces glum.

  “That’s me. I just . . . Why didn’t he ever tell me? Why didn’t he reach out? Anything? I just want to be happy, but I’m so, so mad. All this time. I feel like a terrible person. I am a terrible person.”

  “Ah, Kia.” Baba Eddie shakes his head. “You’re all right. I don’t know what you did or didn’t do, but your feelings don’t make you terrible.”

  Russell snorts. “That’s not what you said last night when I—”

  “Quiet, old man,” Baba snaps. “We’re going out to dinner—Russell made partner today, and we have some celebrating to do.”

  I blink away tears. “Congrats, man!”

  Russell shrugs. “Thanks. I plan to rain even more havoc upon the motherfuckers.”

  “Excellent,” I say, and hock some boogers into his handkerchief. “I would come, but I gotta meet someone. That situation I was just talking about, as a matter of fact.”

  “I’m sure,” Baba Eddie says, “that if you tell the person why you’re mad, they’ll understand, even if it feels like it doesn’t make sense.”

  I punch his shoulder. “When did you get so touchy-feely, man? I can’t deal with this shit.”

  “Pay him no mind,” Russell says, walking to the back. “He’ll be back to his old fuckery soon as you dry your tears. I’m gonna go take a piss.”

  “You alright?” Baba asks.

  “I will be. I’ll say what I have to say. And then we’ll do what has to be done.”

  “That sounds ominous. I’m not sure how I feel about you and Carlos teaming up. I love Carlos like the weird half-dead son I never particularly wanted, but he runs in a dangerous world, Kia.”

  “I’ve noticed.” I want to tell Baba the whole story, from the night Jeremy disappeared on, but he has dinner to go to and I’m not gonna sully Russell’s big night. “I’ll be careful,” I say. “I promise.”

  • • •

  Last time I came to the walkway along the Brooklyn waterfront, it was a pretty but haphazard boardwalk, starting and stopping, the fresh ocean air blending with the exhaust and clutter of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. There were lovers and rats and parts where you probably shouldn’t go at night and parts that looked like postcards. I was with my dad. We had slipped off from some summer-fun program where the facilitators spoke in all caps with too many exclamation points until my dad finally shook his head and muttered, “Let’s get out of here, kid,” and we did. Wandered all through downtown Brooklyn, my little hand in his and white men in business suits and old brown men selling children’s books and teenagers popping gum. We stood on the boardwalk, the bay sparkling beneath the midday sun, and a few feet away, a white woman with bags under her eyes got high. Across the bay, Manhattan’s steel towers glared back at us, reflected the perfect sky.

  Now the waterfront is brand-new. Every plank and screw has been plotted, planned, oh so carefully placed. Nothing is left to chance; nothing deteriorates or scuffs. There’s a carousel and playing fields and the walkway stretches all along the edge of the water, rising and falling around little wooded areas. Gio and Rigo walk hand in hand beside me, a picture, essentially, of perfection. Rigo wears a long leather jacket over a light hoodie and a silver button-down shirt—tacky as hell, but . . . he’s Rigo. He can literally do whatever the fuck he wants and still look like a god. The top bunch of buttons are open, and he’s practically got cleavage, those pecs are so flawlessly defined. I think he has more cleavage than me, dammit.

  And Gio’s just Gio. Still struts with that unceasing flow, even after all the . . . whatever it is he’s been through. He’s in cargo pants, a T-shirt, and that green European-looking overcoat he wears, probably where he keeps all his cool weapons.

  That first night—the night I thought I was going to have sex with Rigo and instead found my long-lost cousin—I finished sobbing into his shirt and then we all sat down to eat. Some incredible seafood stew served in a stone gourd that Rigo called mocqueca. It was red and still bubbling, and little shrimps and mussels lounged around half submerged in the thick broth. And we chatted. Just chatted. The three of us. Like, small talk. Like Gio hadn’t been gone for seven years and I hadn’t finally accepted he was dead and . . . and . . . and . . .

  I played along.

  Because what else could I do? I wasn’t going to overturn the table. Vanquish the instant ease we’d all found with each other. Rigo cracked jokes and talked about his adventures getting lost on the subway. Gio smiled and looked on. I let myself laugh, because it really was funny, but also to stifle that simmering, seething rage trying to claw its way up from inside me.

  How dare he?

  It became a chant, one I was barely aware of. It just cycled on and on like the chorus of hot chicks singing the mothafuckin’ riot behind King Impervious. How dare he not tell me? How dare he just show the fuck up one day out the blue and pretend everything is alright? How dare he disappear in the first place and leave me all alone trapped in a fuckass school system that didn’t understand me? How dare . . . ? The entries piled on and on and I felt more and more selfish each time.

  It wasn’t about me.

  It wasn’t about me.

  It wasn’t—

  “What’s wrong, Kia?” Gio asks.

  “How dare you?” I blurt out.

  The sun has set, the sky finishes off the last touches of night around us. The streetlights blinked on a few minutes ago. Freighters glide silently along the inky water, cutting the shimmering reflections of Manhattan’s skyscrapers.

  Gio and Rigo stop walking. Gio frowns at me, squinting, and lets go of Rigo’s hand. Disappointed? Enraged? I am an asshole for being mad; I want to stop being mad, but I can’t. I want to swallow the words back up, take them inside of me and let them keep wreaking silent havoc, but I can’t. I almost apologize, as if that could scrub away my question, but I don’t do that either. That would be a lie. And anyway, there’s no unsaying what’s been said. You can’t uncast a spell, Baba Eddie always tells me with a chuckle.

  Gio rubs his eyes, mutters something.

  “What?”

  He looks me dead in the face. “I’m sorry.”

  “You are?” I waver somewhere between laughing and crying. “For . . . what?” That probably came out sounding like a challenge, but I really want to know.

  “You’re right.”

  “About what, man? All I said was ‘How dare you?’ It’s a question, not a statement.”

  “About everything. What your question implies. I had no right to disappear, no right not to tell you where I went or why. I had no right to pretend that it wouldn’t hurt you, but I did pretend that because that was the only way I knew how to keep going.”

  “But why didn’t you just . . . ?”

  “I couldn’t. I couldn’t. First I was too depressed and I thought I was gonna kill myself, and reaching out to you would have only made it harder. And I was terrified that the roach guys would go after anyone I talked to, anyone I touched. So for a long time I just didn’t touch anyone. I kept it moving, literally and figuratively. Never stayed in the same town two nights in a row, did horrible, stupid things to stay alive and . . . and I was ashamed. I was ashamed that the only way I knew how to keep going was to be a ghost, cut off from you and everyone I else I knew and loved.”

  “It’s not just me,” I say, feeling brave and feeling awful about feeling brave. Feeling like I’m driving the knife even deeper. “My dad. He . . . he raised you, Giovanni. He thinks you’re dead.”

  Gio nods. Shakes his head. “I didn’t know how. I didn’t. And then, at some point, I started training. I had a goal, a focus. And I . . .”

  “You have to
make it right,” I say. I don’t want to hear about his training and globe-trotting anymore. Not right now. “You have to tell Dad.”

  “I will,” he says, a little too fast. “I will. Once we . . .”

  “No. You can’t let him go another night thinking you’re dead. Not after all he’s been through for you.”

  “Kia, I don’t know if you understand the danger we’re in right now.”

  “Don’t understand it?” I stomp my foot. “Did you forget the part about me getting choked out by a floating toddler? Did you miss the whole thing where I was standing right next to you in the woods with a dozen half-dead guys pointing guns at us? Was that someone else? Get the fuck outta here.”

  I turn around and I’m stomping off, literally stomping the fuck off, when a man comes running down the boardwalk. I hear Gio yell, “Kia!” and then the man bucks forward, sliding into a crouch. For a fraction of a second, he looks suddenly much slighter, just decayed flesh on bones, and then all I see is a swarming cloud of pinkish hell blasting toward me.

  And then I see Gio, his spinning form blotting out the swarm. He swooshes forward, lands in a squat facing me, his hood up. Then he grunts as the mass of pale roaches crashes against him and splays out to either side. He throws one leg back, plants the other foot, and then flies up into the scattering swarm and cracks the guy across his face. The roach man drops, all flaked-off skin and shiny bone. Gio lifts one foot. I can’t look away. I don’t want to see, but I can’t look away. Gio’s foot smashes down, demolishing the guy’s skull with a mushy crack.