No Matter How Much You Promise

by Edgardo Vega

  When she had almost given up, Papo appeared. He said he was sorry he was late and did she want to take a walk to the Village? Maybe they could go to a movie.

  “Like what?” she asked.

  “Pretty Woman,” he answered. “It’s suppose to be good. It’s funny and shit.”

  “You saw it?” she said.

  “My cousin Marisol tole me about it. She said I should go check it out. You got any money? My moms was supposed to leave me some money but she forgot and left the house.”

  “I got twenty dollars,” she said shyly, already feeling funny.

  “Bet,” he said. “Let me go tell my grandmother where I’m gonna go. Walk me over to B?”

  They went over to Avenue B, where he told her to wait for him. He then went upstairs to a building and five minutes later he was back and they went over to the Village and walked around with the Saturday crowd. Around one o’clock they ate at McDonald’s on West Third and then went across Sixth Avenue to the movie theater. During the film she let Papo kiss her a few times. She closed her eyes. He smelled like a hamburger, but she liked the feel of his tongue in her mouth and the warm feeling it gave her. She liked resting her head against his arm or his shoulder like she’d seen Cookie and Vee and her mother do, but a couple of times his hand casually wandered too close to her breast; she sat up straight but didn’t say anything. He’d pull her back gently to rest against him and she’d reluctantly return to the position, only to go bolt upright again. Finally, she said if he kept it up she was leaving. He stopped then and contented himself with kissing her, which she began liking more and more, until she forgot about his touching her. The next time she laughed at something on the screen, she realized that his right hand was on her breast. She said nothing this time.

  When they came out she asked him what he thought of the movie, wanting to discuss it as she and the family did when they went to see a film, talking about the performances of the actors and the plot and the significance and everything, which she liked doing because it was fun to hear what other people had to say. Her mother always said that if ten people saw something, they’d all have a different story, and it was almost more important to hear other people’s observations of events than what one perceived.

  “Did you like the movie?” she said, as they sat in the pizza shop. She felt more relaxed after being in the dark with him.

  “Yeah, it was okay,” Papo said, his mouth full of pizza.

  “Just okay?”

  “Yeah, da guy was trying to eat up the girl’s mind, right?”

  “No, she was a call girl. A prostitute.”

  “A ho? No way. She was a nice girl. How the niggah be buying all kinda shit for a puta? Niggah don’t buy a ho expensive shit. He kick her ass. If she was a ho, niggah woulda kicked her ass.”

  “No, really. She was a prostitute in the movie.”

  She tried explaining the film and how the male character had hired the call girl to go places with him. Papo interrupted her and said that’s what he was talking about.

  “Dat’s the point I’m bringing out,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Dat he wanted to date her so he bought her stuff. You have to do dat with nice girls.”

  “He wanted her to look nice,” she said, feeling exasperated.

  “Because he was gonna marry her. She was pretty.”

  “Right, that’s why they gave the film the title,” she said tersely.

  “You saying she was a ho because she was pretty?”

  “No, I’m not saying that at all.”

  “Cause you pretty and you ain’t no ho, right? My pop always be callin’ my moms a ho.”

  “I thought you told me you’d never seen your father?”

  “When he was around I remember. Anyways, my moms wasn’t no ho. And if the bitch was a ho in the moobie, the niggah shoulda got his gun and shot her.”

  “There was no gun in the movie,” she said, her annoyance increasing with each sentence he uttered. “Anyway, we should go back. It’s getting late.” He was so stupid, she thought. God, he was almost fifteen. The reason he had been in her class was that he kept getting left back. He was cute, but he was stupid. Maybe he couldn’t help it, she thought, and then felt bad for him. She smiled painfully at him and stood up.

  Papo nodded, and they began walking east on Bleecker Street.

  The other three had literally salivated when Papo came into Frankie Cabeza’s apartment where they had set up their headquarters while Frankie was doing a bit at Rikers for assorted breakings of the law. Papo said he was taking the little bitch to the movies and whatnot, but he was going to call them later in the afternoon and that they should just hang loose.

  “You gonna call here?” Pepe said.

  “No, I’ma call across da street. Go ovah dere so you can hear da phone ring,” Papo said.

  “Why you gonna call across da street?” Pepe said.

  “Pepe, shutup,” Pupi said, taking out the bolo knife he’d purchased at the Army & Navy store. He spit on a whetstone and began sharpening the blade.

  “Niggah, I just wanna know where he gonna call,” Pepe said.

  “You a retard, bro,” Pupi said. “Niggah’s gotta call here, okay? How we gonna know he calling if he call someplace else? Anyway, chill.”

  “Yeah, so, like, chill here and I’ma a call and we can get us some pussy,” Papo said.

  “Word. You want me to bring Macho Man?” Pupi asked, referring to the pit bull his uncle had given him and which he had personally trained.

  “Yeah, bring him in case she don’t wanna give up no pussy. Scare da shit out of da bitch.”

  “Yeah,” Pepe said, baring his teeth like a dog. “Macho Man scare da bitch in her pussy.”

  They all laughed at Pepe and fived and whatnot and off Papo went, but now it was after three o’clock and da mothafucka was still gone and he was probably fucking da bitch by himself and making her all dirty and sticky, man.

  “I’ma get me a Uzi and Jacuzzi da shit outta da niggah if he pulling some shit, cause dat was supposed to be pussy for all da homeboys and he just gobbing it all up and whatnot,” Pipo said, rubbing the ever-present diminutive erection through his baggy trousers.

  And then about three-thirty the phone rang, and they were up, slipping into their sneakers and grabbing their dicks through their pants and brandishing them at each other, making pumping movements with their pelvis. Pipo took the brief phone call and hung up.

  “Where we gonna meet him?” Pupi asked.

  “Over on Eldridge,” Pipo replied. “The empty building.”

  “What we gotta do?” Pepe asked.

  “He said, just hang back and when he go in with da bitch, wait a couple of minutes and then come up to da fifth floor,” Pipo said. “He said come to da apartment dat’s got da couch where dey found dat niggah Nestor OD’d.”

  “Word,” Pupi said. “I’ma go get Macho Man. I’ll meet y’all in da yard.”

  They went out and bopped down the street in their fades and their baggy pants and pure white pumps, looking definite. Before he left, Pupi went into Frankie Cabeza’s room and in the closet found the little silver pistol with the clip and put it in the waistband of his jeans, so that it felt cold at first. He pulled the T-shirt over his pants and turned his baseball cap around.

  “Let’s do it,” he said as he came out of the bedroom.

  Fawn and Papo walked east to Broadway and then downtown. He tried holding her hand as they crossed Houston, but she pulled it back, feeling uncomfortable.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Do you wanna see da puppies?”

  “What puppies?” she said.

  “My brother’s pits. Vanna had six.”

  “Vanna?” she said.

  “Yeah, like da girl on Wheel of Forshun,” Papo said.

  “That’s the dog’s name?”

  “She’s one of da girls. You’ll like them. Maybe he can give you one, if I ask him.”

  “I don’t know,” she sa
id, wanting to tell him she was scared of the dogs and had read in the paper that up in East Harlem a pit bull had crushed a baby’s skull. “I’d have to ask my parents. I don’t know if they’d want a dog.”

  “Anyway, dey’re beautiful.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Over on Eldridge.”

  “I guess,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.

  She went with him reluctantly, knowing that it wasn’t such a good idea but as if something inside were driving her forward, urging her to do something reckless. It was like watching a movie or reading a book and wanting to know what came next.

  The entire day, Billy Farrell felt as if something was going to happen. Things were heating up in Kuwait. The Marines had to intervene. It was going to happen. It was the same feeling he’d experienced when something was going to break when they were in-country, or sitting in a bunker at night. This was before he began to not pay attention to things and was fucking up and they’d sent him back to the base and the whole thing happened with Joey. Everything became very still, and you could hear the wind in the trees and the water rippling in a rice paddy and the insects buzzing around—except that it wasn’t peaceful and instead everything was magnified. The young guys’d always ask what was going on and somebody would inform them that the shit was going to hit the fan. “How do you know?” they’d ask, and somebody like Grady, who’d been in the Corps since Korea, getting his stripes and getting busted and working like a son of a bitch only to lose his stripes again, would tell them he just knew, and they’d better tighten up their asshole or it’d be their shit that was going to spray everybody.

  “Ten fucking times I’ve been a sergeant and ten times they took my stripes. And it was always some Mickey Mouse thing,” he’d say. “Some wet-behind-the-ears louie telling me shit he learned from a book and me trying to explain to him that out in the field it wasn’t like that and he insisting and me getting pissed until I’d finally lose it and cuss him out and he’d start talking insubordination and Article 15 and the brig. I’d fucking lose it altogether and smack him. One time I even pulled a forty-five on a captain. Thirty days in the brig and my stripes.”

  The feeling was like his heartbeat, steady, insistent, without awareness of itself, but animal and alive. He was sure now that something would happen. As the day wore on, the feeling of anticipation increased. The day Joey got it, however, he’d felt calm and something had happened anyway. Now, as his hearing became sharper and he could smell mud and grass and the sweet aroma of pot and the peculiar odor of gunpowder and firearms, he doubted himself for a moment. Immediately, he retracted his doubt and was again certain that it was coming and he had to be ready. He thought of the music, of the rehearsal that night and the way everyone was coming together, “beginning to be in the pocket,” Cliff had said, sounding grown-up and hip. The remark made Buster Williams chuckle and nod approvingly. Cliff was a mystery to him. Other than his interest in girls he was like a blank slate. In music he was so gifted that it left you shaking your head how someone so young could cram so much in his head, but he didn’t seem to have much ambition. It was almost as if he could take it or leave it as far as the music was concerned. Billy’s own playing was becoming so smooth that when he sat back, comping behind Wyndell or Cliff’s solos, it became effortless, the chords placed with exactitude. “Play so that the music accentuates the solos of the other musicians,” Mae Wilkerson would say, “and provides the improviser a framework without intruding into the performance. When your turn comes, you’ll be well within the chord structure of the tune and then you can let go with even more force. Do you understand what I’m saying, Billy?” “Yes, ma’am, I certainly do,” he’d say, enjoying the lilting of his voice as he imitated the African-inflected language. It was like Joe Namath who went to school down south and even though he was from Pennsylvania talked like a southerner. Almost thirty years later he could still hear Mae Wilkerson’s strong and loving voice. Pop said it had broken her heart when she heard that he’d joined the Marines. As Billy Farrell thought of those days, he was almost a hundred percent sure that he had made a mistake, but something still told him that if people like him didn’t serve then there would be no country at all.

  A few minutes before four, while he sat in his rocker, his body resting but his mind alert, he heard the elevator. Everyone was due back at seven for rehearsal, so it was too soon for that. Lurleen wouldn’t be coming back from the video store with Caitlin so soon and neither would the girls. It had to be Cliff. The elevator doors snapped open and hit below and above with greater than usual force. Simultaneously, he heard Cliff calling him, his voice surrounded by fear.

  “Dad, Dad,” Cliff was saying.

  Billy was up and out of the rocker, his heart suddenly racing, but his head clear. He threw the door open just as Cliff was about to put the key in the lock.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  “It’s Fawn.”

  “What about her? Are the girls back from the beach?”

  “No, she didn’t go with them.”

  “How come? They said they were taking her.”

  “She changed her mind at the last minute. Something about a bathing suit being too tight.”

  “What happened to her? Is she okay?”

  “I don’t know. She went into an empty building over on Eldridge with that kid.”

  “What kid?”

  “You know. The one she likes, I guess.”

  “Yeah, okay. She’s hanging out with him. He’s friends with a pretty rough crowd, right?”

  “Yeah, and they went in after Fawn went in with him.”

  “The same guys he hangs around with?”

  “Yeah. And they had a pit bull with them.”

  “Like it was arranged?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

  Cliff explained how he’d come from the subway station on Grand Street, turned the corner, and saw Fawn and the guy walking up the street. He’d wanted to call her, but didn’t since she got so spooked by everything lately. He’d crossed the street, went into a bodega and made like he was going to buy something. That was when he saw Fawn and the boy go up the steps, and inside the building. He told his father that he then saw the three others open the broken door of the abandoned building and follow Fawn and the boy. Billy asked if they had seen him.

  “No, I was gonna go in after them but figured I better come home and tell you.”

  “You did the right thing,” Billy said.

  “We should go get her, Dad,” Cliff said.

  “How long ago did it happen?” Billy Farrell said, ignoring Cliff’s suggestion.

  “Just now. They went inside and I ran the six blocks over here to tell you.”

  “What do you think?”

  “They’re bad. I told her she shouldn’t be hanging around with those guys. They’re into crack and holding people up and everything. I heard from some of my homeboys that they even killed somebody, Daddy. A Chinese man.”

  “Why didn’t she go to the beach with Cookie and Vidamía?”

  “I told you, she changed her mind. Something about a bathing suit. Cookie said she should wear shorts, but Fawn said the hell with them and they wouldn’t understand and left the store. Vee went after her, but she just ran down the street. She’s been acting weird lately anyway. What are we gonna do? Shouldn’t we at least go and see if she’s okay?”

  “No, forget that. Call the police and give them the address and the description. They know how to handle situations like that.”

  “I don’t know the address.”

  “Well tell them where it is, and we’ll go and meet them.”

  “Should I call Mom at the video store?” he said.

  “No, it’ll worry her. Just call the police.”

  Cliff nodded, went to the phone, and dialed 911.

  62. An Awful Kaleidoscope

  Fawn and Papo came to the abandoned building on Eldridge Street, its windows smashed, trash surrounding t
he entrance to the cellar, and old sneakers and stuffed toys stuck on the iron spiked fence in front. She followed him, feeling apprehensive but thinking that she was just a big baby and maybe it was all about him wanting to kiss her and touch her again and that wasn’t so bad as long as no one saw them.

  “Nobody lives here,” she said when they got to the top step.

  “Yeah, that’s why we keep the dogs in the building,” Papo said. “C’mon.”

  “Is it dark?”

  “No, don’t be scared. It’s okay.”

  But she was scared. The place was dark and it smelled of pee and caca and pot and garbage, and she felt sweat running from her armpits down past her ribs.

  “Where are they?”

  “On the top floor.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they get sun up there,” he said.

  “Sun? For what?”

  “Dat’s how dey get bitamins,” he said, having heard this bit of correct information from Pupi’s uncle one day when Mike was talking to Pupi about taking care of the dogs.

  “Vitamins?”

  “Yeah, bitamins. Tru dere eyes, cause dey got fur all over dere body. And dey keep cool tru dere nose. Dat’s how you can tell if da dog is sick.”

  “Yeah,” she said, frightened but eager to see the puppies. “If the nose is cool they’re okay, but if it’s hot they’re sick.”

  “Yeah,” he said, stopping on the fourth floor. “One more floor. You wanna rest?”

  “No, that’s okay.”

  When they got to the fifth floor she avoided looking at the strewn newspapers, discarded boxes of Chinese food, and dried feces on the landing. Papo led her to one of the doors, opened it, and invited her in. It was an apartment that had been abandoned but was obviously used by people from time to time. Here and there she saw empty crack vials and under an old dinette table she saw a syringe. One of the walls of the apartment had been knocked down. On the other side of the room there was an old couch, and that’s where Papo headed and plopped down. Fawn stood, looking at him, unable to figure out what she should do. She looked around at the apartment. It had been a six-room flat, but the roof had collapsed on half of it. The dwelling had been reduced to an empty room that faced the street, another room with a bathroom to its left, and the room they were in, the living room. Beyond that room she could see the open roof and the sky, the sunlight coming down and illuminating the destruction. It was as if someone had dropped a bomb on the roof. She saw pigeons roosting in the debris near the roof level.