Chinatown Angel

by A. E. Roman

  I moved along 42nd Street on my bike as the road bent and dipped and turned and sloped upward again and strangely, surprisingly, I found I liked it, the details of the city as it passed before my eyes.

  Being a bike messenger was systematic and predictable, as natural as eating or sleeping. From one drop to the next I went, from the East to the West to the North to the South of Manhattan, parking my bike, chaining it to a meter, a gate, a tree, making my drop, and going again past the tall concrete and steel behemoths of Midtown, the hidden nooks, the tiny parks, riding with subways rumbling below, beside cars and buses and taxicabs, past pedestrians at yellow, red, green lights, until I felt I really was seeing the city for the first time, finding it all shockingly busy, the crowds, the buildings of glass, stone and brick, the statues of city founders, heroes, politicians, millionaires, billionaires, grifters, scoundrels, thieves.

  I almost felt like riding forever, no end in sight, casting off and abandoning my old life, cold winter wind on my face, rolling up Times Square and out of New York City.

  Then I caught sight of him: Irving Goldberg Jones riding along on his bike, and I knew exactly what I had to do. Build a connection where none existed. Joy St. James called it my specialty.

  “Watch out!”

  I hit the brakes suddenly and my packages went flying.

  I had stopped short in front of Jones. He looked at me with startled eyes and said, “You came outta nowhere.”

  I got off my bike and parked it up against the curb. Irving got off his bike, too, helped me pick up my packages and added, “Nice T-shirt.”

  I snatched up my strategically dropped book, Leaves of Grass. Irving’s eyes lit up as he took it from me.

  “Do you like poetry?” Irving asked.

  I touched my chest as if his question went into my heart like a thunderbolt, as if I wanted to jump around and testify, to bang a tambourine, to commit a thousand sins.

  “I love poetry.”

  Irving’s eyebrows rose and a giant smile took over his face.

  Soon we were talking about poetry and Irving was inviting me to a reading and we laughed about our close call.

  Yeah.

  It’s what I do.

  That night I stood in Irving’s bedroom in the cluttered apartment on Delancey Street in the Lower East Side that he shared with his mother. On the walls were colorful paintings of workers at the Fulton Fish Market and Katz’s Delicatessen. Sculptures and poems in frames and materials for homemade candles and handmade soaps were scattered around the room along with protest signs that read NO WAR, NUCLEAR WAR KILLS CHILDREN and PEACE NOW.

  In shelves and on the floor and on the bed in Irving’s room were countless books of poetry. Tacked on the wall, over his desk, was a news clipping about Hugo Chavez of Venezuela with three question marks.

  Irving Goldberg Jones searched for some misplaced poems, mad Afro shooting this way and that, with mustard on his chin, chewing on half a lettuce, tomato, and Swiss cheese sandwich and chugging a Dr. Brown’s Cream Soda. He put down his half-eaten sandwich and soda. He scooped up some pages, sat across from me, and nervously rattled three small stones in his hand as he read.

  “What’s with the rocks?” I asked.

  “I got one from a visit to Wounded Knee,” said Irving, without looking up from his poems. “Another from a visit to an abandoned Virginian slave auction site, and another from Dachau.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  A bit creepy but okay.

  “I’ll throw them away,” he said, “when there’s nothing left to fight for in the world, when all people are free.”

  Just then the door opened and a wild-eyed white woman in paint-smeared overalls, carrying a paintbrush, rushed into the room and yelled at Irving, “You tell Walter Jones, your father, when you see him tonight, that he is an ass!”

  “Why don’t you tell him yourself?”

  The wild-eyed woman’s jaw dropped.

  Irving turned to me and said, “She’s in a mood today.”

  “Your father,” Ruth Goldberg said, undaunted, waving her paintbrush. “You know what he did? That schmuck?”

  “Mom,” Irving said, pointing at me. “My friend Chico is still here.”

  Ruth nodded and said, “Hello, friend,” and went back to Irving. “Do you know what your father did?”

  Irving rolled his eyes. “No. And I don’t care.”

  “Feh!” said Ruth. “Screw him and screw you!”

  Irving looked innocently at his mother, pointed at himself and said, “Why screw me? What did I do?”

  “Don’t defend that man! I carried you in my belly for nine months! Don’t you dare defend that man to me!”

  “I’m not defending him.” Irving threw his arms up. “I didn’t say anything!”

  Ruth raised her hands to heaven. “One of these days I will crush that man with my own two hands!”

  Irving shook his head. “Why do you two even speak? Why do you meet for coffee? Why do you go to the theater? Why do you cook him dinner every couple of weeks?

  Ruth looked at her son. “You don’t understand anything about love!”

  And as quickly as Ruth Goldberg entered the room, she disappeared with a door slam.

  A couple of hours later I was sitting in a joint called The Nuyorican Poets Cafe with my new best friend Irving Goldberg Jones and his father, Professor Walter Jones.

  “What did you think?” Irving said, as his father placed Irving’s poems down on the café table.

  “It’s poetry,” said Professor Jones. “I guess.”

  “What’s wrong with it?” Irving asked.

  “Well. Your first poem is called ‘Nobody Loves You Poet.’ I mean, really. Your poems are a little self-indulgent, son.”

  Professor Walter Jones, a thin black man in his sixties with thick glasses and a short gray Afro, a professor of political science at Hunter College, tugged at the worn sleeves of his shabby tweed jacket and adjusted his bow tie. Laughter and smoke spilled down from the balcony just above our heads as Willie Colón’s trombone wailed.

  “Why are you judging?” Irving yelled.

  “It’s my job to make judgments,” said his father.

  “I asked you to read my poems. Not to judge.”

  “I’m not a writer,” said Irving’s father. “What do I know?”

  “That’s true,” Irving said. “You’re not a poet.”

  “But I will say this,” said Mr. Jones. “I found these poems all a bit indiscreet.”

  “It’s poetry,” Irving said. “They’re supposed to be indiscreet.”

  “Perhaps,” said Mr. Jones. “But you only seem to write about things that happen to you. What happened in your childhood, your friends, things about your mother’s days with me in East Germany. Things I’ve told you in private.”

  “So?”

  “I would be more comfortable,” said Mr. Jones. “If you used your imagination.”

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” said Irving.

  “Well, I don’t read poetry. So maybe I’m not the man to ask,” said Mr. Jones.

  “No advice?” Irving asked. “Nothing constructive to say?”

  Irving’s father looked at him and said, “Don’t quit your day job.”

  I gave Irving a sympathetic look and gave his back a consoling pat.

  “Thanks, Chico,” said Irving.

  “Look,” Professor Jones said to his son. “You’ll take your trip to Cuba and you’ll come back and you’ll go for your master’s in education and you’ll teach. Teaching is a good profession.”

  “I want to write.”

  Professor Jones removed his glasses, looked his son in the eye, and said, “You’re not serious.”

  “I am.”

  “Don’t be a putz, Irving!”

  “I think,” I said, “his wanting to be a poet is a noble thing.”

  Irving gave me a look that said he would follow me into hell wearing a hat made of candlewax and an outfit
dipped in kerosene. The boy was mine. All I had to do now was ask. If he knew where Tiffany was, he was gonna tell me.

  More laughter and cold wind blew into the café when an old friend of mine danced in like a hurricane on five-inch heels, leading a tiny crowd of howling Brazilians. She was all hips and dark cleavage stuffed into a familiar short white winter coat. Pilar’s coat. She saw us and floated across the room like a cloud and settled down at our table. Tipsy and reeking of rum, makeup, and perfume, she kissed both my cheeks as if I were some long-lost love.

  Renata said, “Chico!”

  “You know Renata?” asked Irving.

  “I know heem,” she said. “How are you, Chico?”

  “I’m good. I don’t need much.”

  She grinned. “You no look happy to see me?”

  “No. I am. Very happy.”

  “Well,” Professor Jones said. “It’s been groovy. I have a plane for New Orleans to catch.” He grabbed his small beat-up suitcase, stood up, and put on his trench coat. He nodded at Renata. He slapped my shoulder and said, “A T-shirt is not politics.” Then he looked at his son and said, “Get a haircut,” grabbed his fedora, and exited the café.

  Irving sat there staring at the empty place where his father had sat.

  “Larkin was right on,” Irving said. “They fuck you up, your mum and dad.”

  He looked at me and he shook his head. “Sometimes I could kill ’im.”

  “No,” Renata said. “You both good people. You no mean.”

  “Yes, I do. I do mean.”

  Professor Jones leaving gave me some breathing room for when Irving turned back to me and said, “So how do you know Renata?”

  “Marcos,” said Renata, ratting me out.

  “I met Renata,” I said, taking her hand and squeezing, “at a small gathering in SoHo.

  “Kirk Atlas,” Irving said. “Is that how you got the job in the executive dining room and then in the mail room? Marcos is a friend of yours?”

  Renata looked at me, all mischievous.

  “I wouldn’t say a friend.”

  “What then?”

  “Old business associate,” I lied. “He owed me a job.”

  “So after they fired you in the dining room Kirk hooked you up in the mail room? You must have some juice with him.”

  “I do. I won’t lie. It pays to know the right people.”

  “Shoot,” Irving said. “How do you think I got my job?”

  “Olga,” Renata said and looked at my face for a reaction.

  Jesus. She’s playin’ me.

  “Olga?” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Irving. “My friend Olga Rivera got me my job in the HMD mail room. Did you know Pilar?”

  “We met.”

  “Renata is now living in Pilar’s old apartment,” said Irving.

  Renata grinned at me. It was not a nice grin.

  “I met Renata a couple of days ago,” said Irving, “looking into what happened with Pilar.”

  Irving took a giant pause. “Pilar is dead, you know?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

  “I didn’t believe it when I heard,” said Irving. “I had to go check myself. That’s how I met Renata.” He shook his head suspiciously and said, “Waitaminute? Do you know Tiffany?”

  I looked over and I saw that Renata was sitting there, staring at me intensely now, tapping her beer bottle with long red fingernails, nodding her head and grinning.

  “I don’t know her,” I said. “But I do hear she plays a mean violin.”

  “Yeah,” Irving said, still looking at me suspiciously. “Who’d you hear that from? Kirk?”

  “Yeah.” I checked my Timex watch. “So when is this poetry thing supposed to be starting?”

  Later, because of Renata’s little game, it wasn’t easy getting anything out of Irving again. So when he told me that he was a lightweight when it came to drinking I got him drunk on beer and rum after he read a sad poem called “The Last Samba,” dedicated to Pilar Menendez, his parents, and an unrequited love, Tiffany.

  When he blacked out around 3 A.M. on a couch on the second floor of the café, Renata long gone, I made my escape, but not before turning out Irving’s pockets and not without a short story I found in those pockets, a story I read on the No. 6 train back to Pelham.

  FIFTEEN

  Trilogy of Terror: Chinatown Angel

  by Irving Goldberg Jones

  Two-thirty A.M. Most of New York City is asleep. It’s time.

  You stand tired and cold under a black winter sky on a street corner in Chinatown. You wear a dark hat, coat, and gloves.

  The street is deserted. You feel invisible as a taxi passes and hate rumbles in your belly. You look down at your hands. They’re shaking. You’re alone.

  You see that bastard inside the restaurant, dressed in his usual soup-stained button-down shirt, white apron, and black trousers. Brooks Brothers. Who wears Brooks Brothers to work in a restaurant? Your head aches.

  He has ruined you, everything you are. Though your heart pounds and your knees tremble, you know it has to be done. You knock on the glass door.

  He opens the door, clutching a brittle vinyl record.

  He’s a big-bellied bear, hair still black and thick, still handsome, still burning the midnight oil, an insomniac, a businessman, the owner of a luxury condo in SoHo, a yacht, a gold Cadillac. Oh, and the Chinatown Angel restaurant! The smug bastard.

  He scowls. His eyes are hard, unforgiving, like yours.

  “Forget something?”

  “I wanted to talk.”

  He steps toward you.

  He stands silent for a few minutes, holding that damn record, looking at your outstretched hand. Finally, he shakes his head, puts out his hand, and smiles back. “I’m glad you’ve come to your senses.”

  You watch as something seeps into his eyes, a hint of loneliness, a gleam of wanting to be understood or forgiven or both.

  “Would you like a drink?” he asks.

  You follow him, into the kitchen with its harsh and unforgiving fluorescent lights. As he walks you feel inside your right pocket for the small black bag with its rubber tubing and syringe. Then you feel in your left pocket for the gun. A .22 with a mother-of-pearl handle. Ready. A little liquid courage and that will be the end.

  On a chrome counter in the middle of the room sit three dirty plates, empty coffee cups, drained shot glasses, gambling chips, and a deck of cards with nude models from the fifties. The remnants of the last poker game he will ever enjoy.

  From a vintage record player in a corner of the room comes Jimi Hendrix’s electric guitar. Purple Haze.

  He points with thick fingers. “I love this riff.”

  He goes to the liquor closet and comes back with a new bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He gets two clean glasses, opens the bottle, and pours. He looks at you and smiles. “Peace pipe.”

  He throws back his drink in one gulp and signals for you to do the same. He pours two more. You slam them back and he pours again.

  He plays records for you as you drink: Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, The Rolling Stones. He hums and taps along, happy when he plays his music. He thinks his money makes him immune.

  He pulls two cigars and a gold-plated lighter out of a pocket in the white apron tied around his waist. He lights and puffs. Smoke floats past you in lazy rings. He grins, warm and sweet, and hands you one. “You see, we don’t have to be enemies.”

  He doesn’t know how much you hate him. You always did. Maybe it was all just a matter of time. He sees the unlit cigar in your right hand and in your left hand, a gun.

  He flicks some cigar ash on the floor.

  “You want money?”

  “No,” you say. “I’m going to kill you.”

  He slams back another drink. “Am I that bad?” he asks.

  “Let your life be your judge,” you answer.

  He shakes his head. “That was many years ago. I was sick and suffering. Whatever I did wrong, I made up for it
.”

  “You can’t make up for all the evil things you’ve done.”

  His eyes dart about the kitchen from the stoves to the freezers to the sinks and back to the gun again, searching for a way out, always looking for an angle, even now, especially now.

  “I can’t turn back time. I can’t undo the past. I can’t fix that.”

  His face is a blank mask, vacant of emotion, eyes like concrete, a cool stillness running from his brow to his chin. “You’re not going to kill me.”

  “Roll up your sleeve.”

  You take the small black bag out of your coat pocket and toss it on the chrome counter.

  He closes his eyes. He understands.

  “You only have two choices.”

  You raise the gun and stalk toward him. You point the gun at his head. You hold the gun steady. “Door number one.”

  You point at the small black bag. “Or door number two.”

  You grip the gun even tighter. The bastard opens his eyes and throws up his hands.

  “This isn’t you. You’re not a killer!”

  “Roll it up!”

  He lets out a breath of air from deep inside his gut. He sits still and silent for a few minutes and you watch as a tear streams slowly down his cheek. He looks up, eyes open, directly into the harsh light of the fluorescents.

  He does not move and when he does, he does something you do not expect. He slaps his own face in a rage, again and again and again. He is not as free of the past as he thinks. He is not innocent. He is not immune. He is filthy man trying to escape responsibility. He must be punished.

  “Enough!” he says. He is finished, red-faced, breathing hard, bloody-lipped, but calm.

  “Enough.”

  He rolls up the sleeve of his left arm, revealing the tattoo of a naked Chinese girl with angel wings and an apple in her mouth enveloped by a green snake.

  He takes the small black bag and expertly removes the rubber tubing and the syringe. He fills the needle. Before he hits the vein he looks up at you. There’s no horror in his eyes, no fear, not anymore. The bastard is smug, even now!