The light shows me the piled heaps of twisted rust and grease. It looks like
someone bought the scrapped wreckage of a hundred demolition derbies and dumped it all in here until it could be made use of.
How lucky for me to find such cozy lodgings.
I skirt the piles, working my way to my burrow at the base of the north wall under the buckled hood of a 49 Ford. Behind the mix-and-match seats I've wedged together for a cot, I find a filthy nylon laundry bag.
Worldly goods.
A couple plain black Ts mean I can scrap the pastel thing I'm wearing. Rarely felt better about getting rid of an article of clothing. Spare boots means I can get my feet unpinched and out of the sneakers. No backup pants just now so I'm stuck with the khakis, but they're getting nice and greasy now, so that's not so bad. Spare works. I open the kit and make sure its all there: hose, needles, blood bags.
No spare gun or switchblade or Zippo.
But lots of paperbacks. Moving from place to place these days, a DVD player is a bit of an encumbrance. And an expense. I find the copy of Shogun that I couldn't get through, unsnap the rubber band that holds it closed, open it, and take the brass knuckles and straight razor from the hollowed pages inside.
A faucet scabbed with peeling lead paint juts from a wall at the back. I take
my jacket, the Le Tigre shirt, and a small box of detergent from a Laundromat vending machine, and go squat by it. I get the shirt damp and sprinkle some soap powder on it and start to work at the blood on the jacket. Not the first time I've done this.
Back outside, I pull the door closed and look at the City of Light Christian Center across the street. Is it ironic, me crashing across from a church? No, it is not fucking ironic. What it is is fucking business as usual in the Bronx. Churches are like hair salons up here. Cant go two blocks without passing at least one.
Pentecostal Church of Jerusalem II. Cherubim and Seraphim Church. Congregation of Hope Israel. Healing of the Heart Worship Center. Concillio de Iglesia Pentecostal Vision Para Hoy Inc.
Danger isn't that you'll burst into flames should you accidentally rub against one, danger is that all those fucking places are breeding grounds for superstition. Not just the usual shit about the virgin giving birth and her son growing up to get crucified and come back to life. These people, they believe in all kinds of crap.
Not least of all, some of them believe in vampires.
The fact they believe in the kind that can be chased off with garlic and by
invoking the name of the Lord is beside the point. Simple fact is, they believe.
I hit the corner of Rockwood and the Concourse at the big apartment building that looks like Charles Addams was a big inspiration in its design, and cross the Boulevard.
Believers are a problem.
Believers keep me moving from shithole to shithole up here. Mean, you slap a reputation for nocturnal habits on top of the white skin, and some of these churchy types get even more nosy than usual.
But the Bronx isn't the only place where believers make trouble.
That scene cooking over the river. That isn't about believers facing off for a dustup, I don't know what it is. Everyone putting their back in a corner, going into a big stare-down, waiting for someone to twitch and turn their eyes away. That happens, someone blinks, and the rest will be on their throat. Whittle themselves down till there's two left, circle, sniff and hit the floor with their teeth buried deep in each other's flesh.
Smells like a lot of dying getting ready to happen.
I think about Predo's little presentation on the Horde girl and everyone's reaction to her plans. Trying to pry the truth from the cracks between all his lies isn't worth the time. I've tried, and never come away with more than
bloody fingertips.
Only way to get to the heart of what Predo s up to is to pick up a knife and start digging under the skin till you hit a gusher.
One could ask, Why bother?
Why jump when the little prick comes calling with a setup that could be straight and narrow, but that just as clearly won't leave room to squeeze out at the end? Things so bad up here? So miserable just eking it out? Life lack some kind of meaning when it's lived this close to the bone? Willing to put your neck on the block just for a chance to live back in Manhattan? Mean to say, Joe, it's a great city and all, but the rents are out of fucking control!
And I could answer back, Mind your own fucking business.
Man have to have a reason to do something stupid?
Man got to be more than just bored and sick and tired of what he's got right now to decide to risk a pile of worthless crap on a crooked wheel?
So.
Figure I got a reason. Figure I got a couple reasons. Figure there's some people over there important to me. Figure there's two of them.
Figure one of them I got to kill.
The other. Well, figure that's a little more complicated. Figure the other is a
girl. That's always more complicated.
Figure a chance to get across the river with a little time to work with is all I've been breathing for. Get picky about who comes offering everything you've been dreaming about for over a year, and it'll slip away, never to be seen.
So it's a crooked deal. So I'm angling to get myself real fucking dead. So what?
I play this right, I may get to see my girl again. Fact that if she's alive, it could mean she's just waiting for a chance to kill me doesn't enter into the situation.
I like her anyway.
Besides, you got something better to die for?
Past the Morris Hair Salon and Spa, the svelte figure of a yellow neon woman standing in for the / in Morris, Bonner dead-ends in a cul-de-sac of weeded gardens. One yellow-brick tenement, a three-story town house of rotted wood shingle, a gray aluminum-sided row house with a rooster weathervane bolted above the porch, and another fucking Pentecostal church.
Juan 3:16 on a green sign.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever
believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Funny thing. Live in this life, do the things we do to stay alive. Know that if you do it enough you could go on living for a very long time, sometimes you think funny things.
Like that line about drinking His blood and eating His body.
Guy like me hears that and he could get ideas about what was really going on at the last supper. Not that I'm saying anything. Just that I like to give myself a good laugh every now and then.
Back of the church, behind chain-link, is a yard of high green weeds and low-hanging branches that screen the rear of a dingy white row house seated off the cul-de-sac. I go over the fence, through the brush and scratch at the red backdoor of the place.
Nothing happens. I scratch again. More nothing. So I knock. Same result. I pull my hand back to give the door a good banging and smell the gun oil on the barrel of the shotgun before it tickles my neck. -You wake my neighbors and I'm gonna be mad as hell.
I raise my hands.
— You use that thing and they'll wake the hell up all right. -They will. But they II be too scared to look out their windows.
— Good point.
She takes the gun away. -The hell you doing here, Joe?
I turn and show Esperanza my new scar. -Hoped you'd have a pair of sunglasses I could borrow.
— Thought you had a quiet night planned.
I settle into the ladder-back chair in the corner of her basement room. -So did I. Ran into a guy named Lament had other ideas.
She puts the.20 gauge on the floor next to her old army cot. -Lament. -Got in a tangle with some of his kids.
She pulls a drawer open on an old bureau. -You hurt any of them?
I point at my face.
— I look like I hurt any of them? Want to see where that crazy fucker bit my toe off?
She digs in the drawer. -No, I do not.
— Didn't think so. Between that, losing an eye, and
my bad knee, I'm gonna be roadkill any night now.
She looks up from her search. -Kind of doubt that.
I light a smoke and drop the spent match in one of those ashtrays with a plaid beanbag base.
— Doubt all you like, but I'd have to contract dire leprosy to start losing parts any faster.
She takes a green and gold sweatband from the drawer and stretches it between her fingers. -Howd you get away? — Cut a deal.
She drops the sweatband back in the drawer and looks over. -Cutting deals Isn't Laments style. -What can I tell you, I cut a deal.
She scratches her upper thigh just under the hem of the flannel boxer shorts
she wore outside to threaten me. I'm assuming she was wearing them already and didn't put them on special for the occasion. -Guess its not unheard of.
She's washed her usually slicked hair and it hangs black and glossy to her jawline. -I cut a deal with him once.
There's an old Ewing poster above the cot, corners ripped by thumbtacks.
I stretch my leg, feel the gravel in my knee grind.
— Don't say. Didn't know you know the guy. Truth is, before tonight, I didn't know he existed.
She twists a hank of hair.
— Like I said before, you don't look to get involved in the neighborhood, you can't expect to know what goes on. -True. True. So you one of his kids?
She tucks the hair behind her ear. -Yeah. I started over there.
She cocks a hip, rests a hand on it and leans against the bureau, flashes some attitude.
— But I didn't like the way he ran things. -So you cut a deal.
She works a cigarette from her pack on the bureau top and puts it between her lips. -I cut a deal.
I watch her look for a match, and take mine out of my pocket. -Having seen his operation, that sounds like it was a wise move.
I flip her the matchbook. -What kind of deal did you cut?
She lights a match and puts the flame to her smoke.
— I cut the kind of deal where I dragged him out of the sun when the Mungiki would have let him burn.
She crosses and drops the match in the ashtray.
— Deal was, he was too fucked up at that point to do anything but whine while I kicked him in the face before I left.
She drives her bare heel into the floor a couple times. -I was smarter, I would have left him in the sun.
— What stopped you?
The tip of her tongue appears between her lips, slips back inside. -I was afraid. Stupid. Afraid he'd be able to do something if I killed him.
She knocks some ash. -He has a talent for that.
She takes a drag and smoke rides her words. -A real gift for making kids afraid.
The tips of our cigarettes flare a few times.
I stub mine out. -Never too late to make up for past mistakes.
She nods.
— Yeah, I've thought about it. Every time I hear another kid went missing up here, I think about going over and finishing that deal. -Something holding you back?
She walks back to the bureau. -Yeah.
She rests her smoke on the edge of the bureau and starts digging again.
— I'm still afraid of him. How funny is that?
I think about my parents, about urine running down my leg as they came at me.
I watch her, and try to read the dark tattoos on her dark skin in the dark room. -Nothing funny about that at all.
She takes a pair of big geriatric sunglasses and a compact from the drawer, crosses to me and slides them on my face.
She tilts her head and gives me a once-over. -Just like you just went to the eye doctor.
She palms the compact open and holds it in front of my face.
I take a look at myself in the huge black goggles. -Oh yeah, very inconspicuous.
She clicks the compact closed. -Better than walking around with that hamburger showing.
She takes the glasses. -It gonna grow back?
— No. But it'll heal some. Part of the eyelid might grow back. Probably skin will just seal it up.
She sets the sunglasses and the compact on the top of her boom box next to the ashtray.
— Gonna be light in a few hours. -Yeah. -Just saying, you may as well stay here.
I shift in the chair. -No, I gotta-
She holds up a hand.
— Don't tell me what you gotta, Pitt. I didn't ask. I don't need to hear your excuse. And, for the record, I didn't mean anything by the invitation.
She goes to the bureau for her smoke.
— You've made it plenty clear you re not interested. I've made it plenty clear I am, and that there's no strings attached. I don't need to be turned down twice in one night. When I say, You may as well stay, I'm picturing me in my cot and you on the floor. Not that I'd suddenly play hard to get if you climbed under my blanket, but you've let me know that's not the way it's gonna be.
She crosses her arms over her cutoff WNBA tank. -So you staying or going? Cuz I'm ready to get some sleep.
I look around her little bunker room. Knicks posters, the scratched bureau, boom box and a stack of hip-hop and reggaeton CDs, small collection of basketball shoes, microwave, few groceries stacked on milk crates, chem-toilet in the corner, pile of books in both English and Spanish, that little cot.
The chambers of the Queen of the South Bronx.
The idea of climbing off that floor and into her cot, well, a man would have to be flat-out dumb as mud to pass on a chance like that.
But two people would break that cot. -I cant stay.
She heads for the cot. -No problems. Door is right there. -I need to go.
She lies down. -Don't tell me your plans, Pitt, just get going.
I lean forward and rest my elbows on my knees.
— I need to go across the river.
She looks at me.
I look back. -And I need help.
I rub my chin. -Tonight.
She laughs.
I nod. -Yeah, funny, right?
She laughs some more, stops, looks at me. -No. Not funny. Just I get it now.
She puts her hands behind her head. -Man I was freaking out on it. -What's that?
She laughs again.
— Why you kept saying no. I mean, I've been turned down, shit happens to any girl. And I don't usually offer twice. You, I've put it out there a bunch of times. I
mean, a girl thinks, What's wrong with me? I didn't know if it was the whole jock thing, like you like your chicks more feminine, or maybe you don't like Latinas. I could not figure that shit out. I mean, Pitt, there ain't that much up here to choose from if we want to stay in our own kind. You don't look so bad, you can talk when you get the urge, and you're not some freak running round gnawing on anything with blood in it. And I know I got something that works. I could not figure this shit out. Why the fuck we never hooked up.
She rolls on her side and points at me. -You got yourself a girl over there.
She laughs.
Women. You tell me they're not all witches, and III tell you you haven't been paying attention.
— It's not that easy. -You do it all the time.
She raises a finger and wags it at me.
— OK, first, I do not do it all the time. I do it every chance I get, but that is far from all the time. Second, what I do on my own, and what you need, those are two very different things.
I look at the clock.
— Its the same damn river, Esperanza.
— It may be the same damn river, Pitt, but we are two very different people. -Which means?
She points at her skin then points at mine. -That need to be spelled out any clearer?
It doesn't. -I still need to get over.
She taps a bare toe on the shotgun lying next to her cot. -I hear that. But they don't want you over there. I mean.
She raises her hands over her head. -You came up here, you had to know that was like a one-way ticket.
I walk to the bureau and look at the high school basketb
all trophies lined on the top. -I need to get over.
She jabs a finger at me. -They. Don't. Want. You. I cross over, it's one thing. Mean, I been hitting
Rucker since I was a kid. Before Lament ever got his hands on me, I was a face over the river. Once I got infected and then got clear of Lament, I started going back. Didn't take long before one of Diggas rhinos saw me play. He sniffed there was something extra in my game. But they're cool with me. Digga called a sit-down, spelled out the rules: As long as I tithe over a percentage of what I take from the boys I school playing one-on-one at Rucker, I can come and go.
She gets up and comes over and takes one of the trophies from my hands. -Don't fuck with those.
She puts it back in place.
— You can't just go back, man. That ain't the way this works. You got sense, you know this. Shit, you're from over there. You know damn well they don't want any of us outer-borough trash coming over. I wanted to pledge Hood, Digga might have me, but that's as much because I'm an earner as it is I'm brown. They don't want no more mouths to feed over there.
She rubs her thumbs on the chipped leg of a gilded ball player. -Why I stay here. We want anything, we got to make it better over here. Fuck their Island. Shit cant be sustained. How you going to keep the population down? Think on that. It's a goddamn virus, no way to keep it from spreading. Mean, I barely stayed in school enough to play ball, but even I can read
enough to get that straight. Island cant last. Future is over here. Where there's room to spread.
She lifts her chin.
— Wait and see. Years go by, it's gonna be the other way around. Gonna be their asses trying to cross over. Get to this side.
I take one of my custom-cut smokes from the pack. -No argument. But it don't change things.
I light up. -I need to get over.
She throws her hands up and walks away. -Like you're not even listening.
I study the scratches on the cement floor. -I'm listening. I'm just not hearing anything that helps me.
She turns. -If that's what you're waiting for, you should get moving.
I look up from the floor and study her young face.
— I'm not asking you to hold my hand. I'm not asking you to carry me across. Way I figure, chances are no one will even see me. How many subway
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