Property of / the Drowning Season / Fortune's Daughter / at Risk

by Alice Hoffman

  And the reason they wait is that they do not know they have a choice. The reason they wait is that they do it so well; because it is what they are expected to do.

  A commonplace occurrence, an expected side effect while waiting is the act of crying. It is very common, while waiting, to drop tears in the lettuce leaves or between the lines of a letter. And although experts occasionally must be called in to remove hot teardrops from within the burners of the stove, or to unclog a sob from the motor of the dishwasher, the act of crying is nothing unusual. It is very common.

  And do women complain of all this waiting? Sometimes; sometimes some of them complain. Some of them are allowed to complain, allowed to pull at their hair, to wail, or to list their complaints in lipstick or ink upon the wall. Those that do this do it well. Some complain, but most do not.

  Either way, they wait. Usually, they wait for men. Men who are in offices or in jail. They wait for men to go away; they wait for them to come home. They wait for men to live; and it’s true, many of them wait for men to die. They also do this well; even if the waiting takes a lifetime, they do it well.

  Mostly, they wait to stop waiting. I stayed on the Avenue without him in the late summer, while McKay kicked a heroin habit in a six-by-eight cell on Rikers Island. The Chevy, towed from the 7-Eleven lot by the auto repair mechanic, paid my rent. And in the early fall, while McKay played dominoes and awaited trial, I began to work behind the counter at Monty’s. By the time McKay was sent to Omen House, a rehabilitation center on Jones Street, I had already perfected the formula of the chocolate egg cream.

  McKay did not write letters of more than one line. Any news was filtered through Jose, who officially had nothing to do with the Orphans or the Avenue, but who had asked the court to send McKay someplace softer than a jailhouse. Once or twice a week Jose would come to the darkened apartment. He talked continuously while we drank scotch and smoked reefer and made love. I did not feel I was cheating on McKay; I only felt I was waiting. And while Jose babbled in the living room, in the kitchen, in bed, I imagined McKay’s eyes and silence. Jose sometimes comforted me, for an hour or two. But when he left, when he walked out the door and took with him his badge and his stories, I was lonelier than ever. So I wrote letters.

  Alone in the apartment or standing behind the counter at Monty’s with one shoe off and the corner kids demanding sodas or cigarettes, I wrote letters. While Monty counted change in the register or after Jose had closed the door and the lock of the apartment had been bolted, I wrote letters. I did not write of death or suicide, of dope or the Orphans; I wrote only of love and the changes in the weather. I received no answers; only one-line messages signed with McKay’s name.

  I saw the Orphans, but did not approach them. They ignored me, erased me as they had erased Starry. I visited Irene at her apartment on days when Viet Nam worked late and I did not have to listen to his snickering questions about McKay. Starry and Flash rarely came to the Avenue, but when they did, we would meet at the Tin Angel for drinks and jukebox music. But mostly, aside from Jose’s visits and the habit of walking daily to work with Tony, I was alone. I was alone and I waited, for changes in the weather and for McKay.

  When the air of the Avenue had grown very cold and ice had frozen upon the cement sidewalks, I discovered at the bottom of the auto repair shop mailbox a thick envelope addressed to me. McKay’s handwriting had scrawled out our Avenue address. I did not want to open it.

  I carried the unopened letter with me as I walked from the dark oil-spattered auto shop. Across the Avenue the attendants at the Esso station wore thick, hooded sweatshirts. Tony was waiting for me in the driveway, where he waited for me every day. He walked silently at my side to Monty’s. It was not that Tony liked me; he had no use for me. But he was McKay’s protégé, McKay had written one of his one-line messages to Tony asking him to keep an eye on me, and that forced Tony to walk with me to the candy store each day. And although Tony scowled and lit a cigarette when I tried to talk to him, I knew he was not with me only to act as a protector. He simply had no one else to walk with. Tony was not of the Orphans, and McKay had drawn him away from the corner kids. How could Tony walk with the gang that sniffed glue in schoolyards when he already knew how to roll a joint quicker and tighter than anyone on the Avenue, when he had already popped heroin?

  The morning was early and still dark. Tony stopped at a red light and struck a match to a Camel. I did not like him much, but I had no one else to walk with.

  When we reached Monty’s Tony held the door open for me, and we walked past the stacks of morning newspapers that lay tied in bundles on the cold cement.

  “Always such a pleasure to see you two charmers in the morning,” Monty said.

  Tony and I raised eyebrows. “He’s hit the bottle already,” Tony said.

  As Tony carried the print-smelling copies of the Daily News inside and I hung my winter coat on a hook, Monty retreated to the dusty back room. With a countergirl he could trust with the cash register, Monty was free to drink away each day. He was rarely seen behind the counter anymore; instead he rested on a faded chintz couch amid the dust and newspapers of the back room.

  I served coffee, newspapers, cigarettes, and muffins to the early-morning rush of truck drivers and school kids. Tony sat in the telephone booth, turning the pages of a Superman comic and smoking cigarettes. When the store had emptied, I poured coffee for myself and sat on a stool. I held a letter in the air. Tony raised his eyes from the comic and watched me.

  “McKay?” he said, and I nodded. “You gonna read it?”

  Again I nodded, and slit the envelope open with a knife. I was used to one-line messages; the thickness of the envelope made me uncomfortable. I feared the contents. I cut my finger on the sharp edge of the envelope when I reached in and drew out the letter. Inside the one sheet of lined loose-leaf paper was money; bills fell onto the counter.

  Tony dropped the comic on the floor and stood behind me. I began to count, but when I saw two hundred-dollar bills, I stopped. “A lot of money,” I said softly.

  I handed it to Tony for counting, and unfolded the loose-leaf paper.

  Darling,

  Like Baby Perez is always saying, “The day is dawning.” A weekend pass this Saturday—if I do good I’m out on parole. Meet me under the Arch at ten. Be there. Don’t hang me up or make me wait. Just be there. Baby Perez has advised I say nothing in this letter—everything can and will be used against me. I heard you’re figuring to invest your money—I advise Chevrolet stock. You might even buy back now what was once sold. Take my advice. And be there.

  Sincerely,

  McKay

  I lit a cigarette. Tony was holding the money and staring at me. “What does he say?”

  “He says to buy the Chevy back.”

  Tony smiled now. “He’s something. He’s something. He’s going to start to race again.”

  I didn’t think that was what McKay had in mind. It wasn’t hard to guess how the money McKay sent had been earned. Baby Perez was probably someone with connections to money; no socialite or jet-setter could be found at Rikers or in Omen House. Something illegal, something profitable.

  I untied the white kitchen apron I wore and reached for my coat.

  “What you doing?” Tony said.

  “What you care?” I said.

  We stared at each other. Tony scowled, disappointed by any exclusion from plans concerning McKay.

  “The city,” I said finally. I planned to stay overnight at Starry’s. Once McKay was back on the Avenue, his disapproval, his dark glare would keep me away from her.

  “I’ll drive you,” Tony said.

  “Bullshit you’ll drive me. With what car? With what license?”

  “The Chevy. We’ll get the Chevy.”

  I shook my head. I would not drive in the Chevy without McKay. I stood before a wall mirror, combed my hair, and watched the reflection of the silver locket I wore. “Monty,” I called. The response was a mumbled echo from the ba
ck room. “Monty, I have to go.” Still he did not answer me. I walked to the cash register and rang a no sale; the noise of the drawer opening and the ringing of the register brought Monty to the doorway between the back room and the store. Monty held a finger in the air.

  “Stealing?” he said.

  “I have to go.”

  “Desertion.”

  “McKay’s got a pass,” I said.

  “Don’t think I’m supporting McKay or any of his habits when he gets out just because you’re working here.”

  “Who asked you to do anything?”

  “Well, don’t ask me to do anything.”

  “O.K.,” I said. “O.K.” We glared at each other.

  “Do you need an advance?” Monty asked.

  “I could use some money.”

  Monty waved his arm in the air. “Take a ten,” he said without looking at me.

  I dipped my hand into the register. “Just one ten,” he warned.

  “I’ll pay you back,” I told him as I tied a silk scarf around my head and threw my navy-blue winter coat around my shoulders.

  “Go on with you,” Monty muttered. “And at least do me the favor of ridding me of that.” He pointed at Tony.

  I placed gloves over my fingers, and fingers over the doorknob. I looked back at Monty. He had picked up an old dishrag and was mopping the already clean countertop. I hesitated.

  “Go on with you. Go on with you,” he chanted. With a move of his arm he waved my hesitation away.

  I bolted out the door into the cold street and down the Avenue toward the subway station. Tony followed me. “You’re not coming with me,” I said to his shadow.

  He followed me silently, walking with me down the cement steps and onto the platform. Tony stood against the wall and smoked a cigarette. “You have the money?” I asked him. He nodded. “Use it,” I said.

  “Me?”

  “I ain’t talking to nobody else. You can pay the mechanic off as well as me.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Just pay him off and leave the Chevy. Wait there for McKay,” I warned.

  A train rattled down the track toward us. The air was smoky cold. When the train stopped, I walked into the car; the door slammed shut, and I watched Tony continue to stand on the platform. Finally I looked away, and then as the train began to move, I closed my eyes, counting the stops that would take me to Starry.

  I walked in and out of subway cars and then into the air like a sleepwalker, dreaming of the next day’s meeting with McKay. I went into a shop. Loud radio music blasted out of speakers attached to the store awnings, posters with low prices on them covered the plate glass. I walked in crowded aisles picking up a toothbrush, two pairs of panties, a thin black turtleneck sweater, and some cheap lilac perfume.

  I knocked at Starry’s door and then waved my hand at the peephole. Flash let me in.

  “Sister,” he said. “How goes it?”

  “It goes well. McKay goes free.”

  “No shit? Starry,” he called into the kitchen, “McKay’s been sprung. In the process?” he asked me, and I nodded. “McKay’s in the process of being sprung.”

  “Big deal,” Starry’s voice called from the kitchen.

  I laughed. “Starry, be nice.”

  Starry came into the living room. “I could never be that,” she said.

  I threw my paper bag full of cheap merchandise onto the floor and sat on the couch. Starry was tiny still, but no eye would mistake her for a child now, with her platinum hair and not-so-fine lines around her huge eyes.

  Flash sat down and rolled a joint. “What’s this I hear about you and my cousin?” he said.

  “You hear trash.”

  “Could be trash, ’cause I heard it from my cousin himself.”

  “It was a way to pass the time.”

  “Please,” Starry said. “I can think of a million better ways.”

  “He’s my cousin, I know,” said Flash. “But a cop?”

  “Get off my case,” I said.

  Starry threw her hands in the air, palms facing me. “Off,” she said.

  We passed a joint among us. When that was done, we smoked another.

  “Baby Perez,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Flash said.

  “You know him?” I asked.

  “I know of him,” said Flash. “He deals in powders. Cocaine and speed.”

  “And what of him?” I said.

  “One evil baby, that man is,” said Flash.

  I believed now that, had I examined the bills, I might have detected the dust of amphetamine or cocaine.

  “As long as it’s not heroin,” I said.

  “And some smack,” Flash said. “I hear he deals some smack.”

  “Shit,” I whispered. Another, a newer contact to heroin.

  We smoked reefer and watched TV through the afternoon. In the early evening the dealer came to the door. Flash went into the dark hallway to talk business and score some smack for Starry and I could only glimpse the dealer’s pale green eyes looking lazily into the apartment.

  “Did he kick?” Starry whispered to me.

  “McKay?” I said.

  “McKay, does he still have a habit?”

  “No, how could he connect to any dope in the slammer?”

  “So he did it,” she said. He had had no choice but to quit heroin; what had Starry expected?

  “I won’t,” she whispered. “I know I won’t be able to.”

  “Do you want to?” I whispered, watching the dealer’s broad-brimmed hat and Flash’s hands moving in a bargaining gesture.

  Starry laughed hoarsely. “No,” she said. “I can’t.”

  “Get busted. That’ll solve your problem.”

  Starry’s eyes widened. “I’m not getting busted,” she said. She placed a hand on her flat stomach. “What I’m getting is worse than busted.”

  We looked at each other. From the hallway came the sound of mumbled voices and laughter.

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “I have to get rid of it. It. It. I have to get rid of it.” Starry’s whisper rose in pitch.

  “Starry,” I said. “What do you do?”

  “Come on,” she whispered with her eyes aimed toward the doorway. “I do what I’ve done before. But him,” she nodded toward Flash. “He’s never been through this before. He’ll try to stop me. He’ll try and force me to keep some fucking screaming junkie baby in this apartment. I can’t tell him I need an abortion, and I don’t have a goddamn cent of my own.”

  “If I had any money,” I began.

  “What about this Perez?” she said, her voice urgent. “He’s rich. I hear he’s got control of the crystal in two boroughs and he’s rich.”

  I shook my head. “He’s a friend of McKay’s.”

  “No,” she said. “No, I don’t want anything to do with McKay, you hear?”

  “All right,” I whispered as Flash closed the door on the dealer and walked back into the apartment. There was a spring in his step and his smile was broad. “Got it,” he said as he sat down close to Starry and put his arm around her shoulders.

  Starry smiled weakly and kissed Flash’s cheek. “Good work,” she said.

  “What you looking at, girl?” Flash chided me. I would not have believed it: Starry was pretending, yes, but it was the pretense that goes along with love. I did not answer. They said good night to me and walked arm in arm, the glassine envelopes in Starry’s hand, into the bedroom. That night I could not sleep. I turned constantly on the couch, walked the length of the living room, opened the refrigerator door and examined cheese and orange juice. When the sun rose, I dressed in the black turtleneck I had bought with Monty’s advance money and sat alone at the kitchen table drinking coffee and reading the ingredients of a cereal package.

  I counted minutes, not wanting to be late, not wanting to keep McKay waiting. Before eight o’clock I scrawled a note across the rough texture of a paper towel, touched lilac to my neck an
d throat, stood at the door of the silent apartment for a while, and then I walked out into the street. I rode buses that morning; I did not want to go underground.

  By the time I had ordered toast and butter and a large Coke in a pancake house on West Fourth Street, it was nine-thirty. I left my breakfast untouched and walked toward Washington Square. Around me there was snow, and sleepers blanketed with overcoats lay upon cement benches. I waited under the Arch.

  At ten o’clock I lit a cigarette; at ten-fifteen another. I stood directly under the Arch, thinking that McKay would not see me if I stood to the right or to the left. An hour passed. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and waited. I felt him near before I saw him. When I turned, sun fell into my eyes, and I had to shade my sight with my hand.

  McKay stood before me. He smiled. I whispered his name. Dressed in a black military coat and a leather cap, he smoked a cigarette and stood with a woolen scarf wrapped around his neck, his hands in his pockets. Snow fell, and my feet and hands felt numb. His hair no longer fell long about his shoulders, and his pink motorcycle goggles were gone.

  McKay walked toward me, and it seemed I could not look into his eyes. There were months between us, and the ground we stood upon was not the Avenue, and I was not yet sure he was not a stranger. I held my arms around him; cold air and overcoat material came between us. I closed my eyes and held my face against his; we held each other for a long time, and I listened to him whisper. The air was very cold; my hands and feet were numb. The snow continued to fall, and, though I had waited, I did not yet want to look into his eyes.

  2

  Baby Perez, McKay told me, had women in every borough of New York. One of them rented an apartment on MacDougal Street with income from IBM dividends. I hesitated at the door of the apartment building. But McKay promised privacy, and there really was nowhere else to go. So I followed him through the door.