Slow Motion Riot

by Peter Blauner

  She shakes her head like she doesn’t quite believe me. “There must’ve been another reason …”

  “Yeah. There must.”

  It’s hard to recall how I ended up where I am. I guess it started off as a process of elimination. I didn’t want to go into business. I didn’t want to work out at the airport as an engineer or anything. But I guess the biggest thing was that I didn’t want to be someone like my father. So I did the thing that I thought would displease him the most. I tell Andrea most of this, but I leave out the fact that the old man would probably have a heart attack if he saw me trying to make time with this beautiful black woman.

  “You know what I like?” she says suddenly, sitting up straight.

  “No, what?”

  “I liked what you said to me before about giving people a break.”

  I’m caught a little off guard. “What’d I say?” I ask as the Ray Charles song with the same name starts playing on the jukebox.

  “You said I should give you a break,” she tells me. “Because every day you give somebody upstairs a break. And I thought to myself, this is a nice man.”

  I slug down the rest of my beer, feeling a little bit like a fraud. Outside the front window, the crowd near the park’s entrance is growing steadily. Pale skinheads and punks in heavy black boots, old bearded hippies, stocky Puerto Rican women in tank tops, elderly Ukrainians, and various people without clear connections to each other or anyone else. Signs say things like Die Yuppie Scum! and Fuck Tha Police! A dozen or so cops stand around the park entrance. Something’s definitely about to happen.

  “So I was going over a couple of your cases who needed to be violated the other day,” Andrea is saying.

  “Who?”

  “Oh. This guy, I think his name is Freddie Brooks or something …”

  “Oh no.” I frown. “Don’t violate Freddie.”

  “Why not? He just got arrested for disorderly conduct.”

  “Yeah, but that’s bullshit.” I lean across the table to her. “Freddie gets into fights all the time. He lives in Grand Central. If you look at the arrest report, you’ll see the complainant is probably another homeless person. That’s what they do. They fight each other over space. It’s terrible, but you shouldn’t violate him for it. Freddie’s a good guy.”

  Andrea looks amazed. “You really like these people?”

  “Yeah! That’s what I said before. They have a lot of … I guess, variety in their lives. Not like yuppies or anything.”

  “I guess not.”

  “Don’t send Freddie to jail,” I say. “He just wants to get drunk and ding people for quarters. He doesn’t want to hurt anybody. He’s a sweet guy.”

  She seems simultaneously amused and touched. “And he likes you too?”

  “Sure,” I tell her. “I mean, I guess so. We’re friends. There’s plenty of other people you could violate instead.”

  “Like who?”

  I think for a moment. “You ought to violate Scottie Austin. He’s a pretty bad guy.”

  The smile still plays on Andrea’s lips. “Oh yeah? What does he do?”

  I hesitate, not quite believing she wants to hear all of this. “His big thing is hanging around the Port Authority bus terminal when he’s not robbing old people at his house. He’s into all the scams.”

  She seems interested. “Like what?”

  “Everything,” I say. “He hangs around the phone booths and when he sees businessmen making calls with their credit cards, he memorizes the numbers and sells them to the other hustlers for twenty dollars. And then he likes to put on a tie and stand by the Greyhound ramp where the buses come in so the people coming off think he’s like a porter. Then he takes their bags and walks them to a deserted part of the terminal where he either beats them up and robs them or makes them pay fifty dollars before he’ll give back the bags.”

  “Oh yeah?” Now she’s fascinated. She orders another glass of wine and settles back in her chair. “Who else do you have?”

  “You really want to hear this?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  I tell her about Mo Armstrong. Mo is a guy in his mid-seventies who liked to take pictures of himself having sex with other elderly people in his senior citizens home. His big thing was using the photos to blackmail their grandchildren. I’ve actually seen a couple of the shots myself. In one of them, another old man is on his hands and knees in front of Mo, fellating him through the bars of his walker, while Mo affects a look of serene, almost regal indifference. I could understand how the pictures were part of the blackmailing scheme. What I never quite got was why Mo felt the need to enlarge each shot to poster size so he could hang them on the wall.

  “I’m a dirty old man,” he once told me, “and my masculinity is fading. I wanted something to remember it by.”

  Instead of gasping in horror when she hears this story, Andrea grins strangely. “People are so interesting,” she says.

  I realize I’ve never been out with a woman who wanted to hear about my job before. We’re starting to hit it off and I hear myself telling stories I haven’t told in years. I’m excited about being with Andrea. I hope I do something for her.

  “Can I ask you one more question?” I say, realizing I’m a little looser than I expected to be after two beers. “Are you, you know, seeing anybody right now?”

  She breaks off from smiling. I get scared I might have pushed too far and asked the wrong question. I wish I was somebody like Richard Silver, who knows just when to stop pushing people. She looks as if she’s remembering something unpleasant.

  “I was seeing Joel until the start of the summer,” she says.

  “What was he?”

  She crosses her arms and looks over at the neon sign for a defunct gasoline company on the wall. “Joel is a very ambitious young man who just graduated,” she says. “Now he’s going to be a nasty yuppie and make lots of money … One of my friends said he had the looks of a movie star and the manners of a Visigoth.”

  “That’s better than the other way around, right?”

  “You certainly do not remind me of Joel.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  She raises her glass. “It’s all right with me,” she says.

  After a few more minutes, we pay the check and head for the front door. She asks me to hail a cab. It’s unclear if I’m invited along for the ride.

  The point’s moot anyway, since a riot’s beginning outside.

  The first thing I notice is the helicopter hovering low over the park. I turn and see about two hundred cops lined up near St. Marks Place. It’s hard to make out their faces under their helmets and visors, but you can tell they’re good and pissed from the way they’re standing. About one hundred freaks and demonstrators are taunting them on either side of the street.

  “PIGS OUTTA THE PARK!”

  “DIE YUPPIE SCUM!”

  Suddenly a bottle gets thrown and it shatters in front of several officers.

  Pandemonium breaks out. Now everyone’s running. More bottles are thrown. M-80 firecracker rockets explode under the park’s dense, twisting trees. Riot cops shove their way down the middle of the street as people scream and bubble gum lights sweep over the building. Sirens howl. Odors of horseshit and fire fill the air.

  Andrea’s about to say something when she gets caught up in a stampeding crowd and almost dragged away from me. I grab her around the waist and pull her back to my side. “Let’s head toward Avenue B,” I say. “This is getting a little too scary …”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I live around here,” I say. “It might be safer just to hang out inside awhile.”

  She stares at the nihilistic ruckus on Avenue A and gives me a worried look. “Shouldn’t we try to do something?” she says.

  “Like what? Call the cops?” I put my hands in my pockets and start walking east toward my place.

  She lowers her head and comes trotting after me. I put my arm around her shoulders and guide her to the
doorway of my building. For the first time, I feel heat passing between us.

  A couple of old homeless men are taking refuge in the foyer. Andrea and I pass them and go up five flights of warped old steps to my apartment. I get the door ajar, reach in to remove the “police protection” pole that keeps it shut, and turn on the lights.

  “You live like this?” Andrea says right away.

  “Something the matter?”

  She blinks in wonder. “Well.” She shrugs. “Nobody can say you live better than your clients.”

  She takes a good look at the mattress without the box spring and the stacks of probation folders and albums in the middle of the room. I know I should be more concerned about her seeing the place in its current state, but I’ve been living this way for so long that I honestly do not give a shit anymore. The only thing I hope she doesn’t notice is Barbara Russo’s turquoise earring, still lying near the corner of the room.

  “There’s no place to sit in here,” Andrea says, still short of breath.

  “Try the mattress.”

  She laughs quietly to herself, as if to say, “Yeah, right, buddy.”

  “Can I look at your records?” she asks.

  “Help yourself.” I go into the kitchen and open a beer.

  “Get me one too,” she says.

  I look through the cupboards for a clean glass to pour her beer into. I hear her rummaging around in my room.

  “Hank Williams,” she says. “Mom has this. Can I put it on?”

  “Go ahead. Do you know how to …”

  I hear the long, painful squeal of the needle scratching across the length of the album side. I wince and after clearing my voice of all irritation, I tell her to just push the first button.

  This time the needle settles easily into the grooves and Hank Williams starts singing about honky-tonking. I step into the room. Andrea is sitting on my mattress. I still feel the heat coming from her. Her right leg is stretched out invitingly. Her left leg is drawn up as if to say “not so fast.” She leans back on her elbows, displaying the fullness of her breasts and the roundness of her hips. The ponytail is gone and her hair falls in a seductive curtain over the left side of her face. She turns up the corner of her mouth and gives me a look that makes my knees go weak.

  “Thanks for pulling me out of that herd,” she says. “I thought I was going to get trampled.”

  “Yeah, that would’ve been a bummer.”

  I sit down and hand her the beer. I hope she won’t notice my hands aren’t quite steady. She sips from the glass once and then puts it down. Leaning back so that our bodies are parallel, I start to say something, but think better of it. Hank Williams sings a few more songs, including a real strange one about a cigar store Indian who falls in love with the wooden maiden across the street.

  “You’re touching me,” Andrea says in a soft voice.

  I look down. The knuckles of my left hand are barely brushing the knuckles of her right hand. “So what’re you going to do about it?” I say. She smiles and leans toward me. We kiss.

  She pulls her entire body toward me and I feel something melting around my heart. I draw her onto my lap and hold her tightly as I kiss her lips, her smooth jawline, and the nape of her neck. She reaches down the front of my shirt to stroke me and nerve endings I forgot I had awaken.

  There’s a flapping sound in the distance. A slight breeze comes through the window bars and stirs the drapes. Hank Williams sings “Settin’ the Woods on Fire.”

  She raises her arms and smiles dreamily as I pull her shirt over her head. I slide off her sneakers and massage her feet. She makes a small sound. I pop open the buttons of her jeans and her body springs forth. She has a lovely young figure with firm abundant breasts, slender thighs, a long back, and a heart-shaped ass.

  I take off my shirt and slowly make my way down her body. I kiss her lips, her throat, her shoulders, and the tops of her breasts. I move my tongue in prolonged orbits around the areolas, making smaller and smaller circles as I close in on her nipples. I lick them until they get hard, and then I move down to her pussy.

  I explore the sides and top with my finger and tongue. As her pussy gets wet, I catch a powerful, salty smell. I locate the sensitive spot near the top and she begins to moan loudly. Voices call out from the street below as though they’re answering her. Her first orgasm is brief but intense; she pulls my hair in the back as she shakes and then cools herself down for a moment.

  It doesn’t take long before she’s kissing me again and pulling my pants off. My cock leaps from my boxer shorts like a dangerous lunatic finally out on parole. I quickly find one of the condoms I buy occasionally as articles of blind faith and I slip it on.

  “Do you wanna fuck me?” she says.

  “Definitely.”

  I raise myself over her and feel my way around the outside of her pussy and its lips with my cock. Then I begin to move in. I start with short, gentle entries before making more profound, soulful thrusts. She grinds her hips against mine, pushing my cock farther and farther into her body. I don’t think I’ve ever been this deep inside a woman before.

  The flapping sound has grown louder just outside the window. It’s like a couple of burly angels are beating their wings out there and watching us. Andrea sits up on the bed and straightens her spine so that we’re face-to-face. We drive ourselves together harder as something inside her sucks my cock onward and squeezes it tight.

  Andrea starts to tremble again, more violently this time. Her low, steady moans turn into fierce, ecstatic gasps. Her mouth opens wide and her eyes shut. As she comes again, my own hot spreading sensation begins.

  The flapping sound is so loud now that it seems to be coming from inside my head.

  Finally, I realize it’s the police helicopter hovering over the park and Avenue B. A strong wind blows in the window. The whir of the helicopter’s blades and the force of our orgasms shake the room. Our clothes and the papers from the floor are swirling up into a whirlwind at the foot of the bed. Dust and ashes fly against the walls. The sheet is tugged up from under us. Andrea cries out as her eyelids flutter and she grips the back of my neck.

  Then as suddenly as it started, the great wind subsides and everything lands. The helicopter draws away and Andrea lies back on the mattress, with her eyes still closed and a smile on her lips.

  The riot is over.

  31

  “I ASSUME THE BOY doesn’t have a father,” Goldfarb, the lawyer, said.

  “Well, you assume wrong,” Darryl King’s mother told him.

  “Where is he then?”

  “I dunno.” She shrugged. “But he somewhere.”

  They were standing outside a courtroom at 100 Centre Street. The air was heavy with stale smoke and discount ammonia. With its worn marble walls and its dulled brass railings, the lobby had retained just traces of its 1930s art deco glamour; it was a little bit like the slatternly old hooker walking by just then, who still had good legs and a pair of stylish stiletto heels. Goldfarb, who was in his late sixties with a shock of white hair and a breast pocket full of shiny silver pens, looked after her with a wan smile that turned into a leer.

  “You know, it’s been quite some time since I’ve had sex,” Goldfarb told Darryl King’s mother. “My wife died five years ago. A lonely man can start to have some desperate thoughts.”

  “Well, keep them to yourself till you get my son off,” she said, scratching the front of her brown slacks.

  “Where is the dear boy anyway?”

  “Who?”

  “Your son, the defendant,” Goldfarb said, taking a pen and a small notebook from his breast pocket. “I need to speak with him. He should be here. I barely have anything to work with. This is a violation of probation hearing, is it not?”

  “I guess so,” Darryl King’s mother said, putting her right hand on her left arm, which was only slightly thicker than a policeman’s nightstick. “He just don’t get along with his P.O. That’s all. That man wouldn’t let him be. That’s a
ll. Darryl didn’t do nothing wrong. He’s a good boy. It’s just that man.”

  Goldfarb clicked his pen several times, wondering if he should bother writing any of it down. He put the pen away and glanced at his watch. “About the payment,” he said.

  “What?” Darryl King’s mother began to raise her eyebrows but gave up before she got halfway. “I haven’t got no money with me.”

  Goldfarb looked deeply chagrined. “How do you expect me to defend your son without a retainer?” He was peering around frantically now, like he was hoping a bank would suddenly pull up. “Why didn’t you get a Legal Aid lawyer?”

  “You’ll get paid,” Darryl King’s mother said.

  “With what? A man of my age needs security. What collateral can you offer? What incentive is there for me to defend your son?”

  “Well, what incentive do you want?” she said, putting a hand on her hip.

  He checked his watch and looked around furtively. “Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?” Goldfarb asked.

  Both of them seemed to notice at the same time that the janitor had left the door open to the broom closet at the end of the hall.

  “Well I don’t know,” said Darryl’s mother.

  32

  AT A QUARTER PAST ten, I see Andrea walk into the courtroom wearing a demure white blouse and a red skirt. It’s the first time I’ve seen her since we slept together and she almost doesn’t recognize me because I have on a jacket and tie and my hair is neatly combed. I put my hand on the seat next to me in the first row so she’ll sit there.

  She seems shy and a little distant. “I guess I should say I’m sorry for leaving like that the other night,” she murmurs.

  “I guess.” She was gone by the time the Sunday morning birds woke me up. No note, no phone call.

  Now she’s glancing around the spectator section to see if anyone can hear us. Two little energetic Hispanic boys are chasing each other between pews. “Mikey, I’m gonna kill you, man,” one tells the other. An old black woman is weeping in the fourth row. In the back, a young white guy in a khaki suit and glasses with tortoiseshell frames reads New York Newsday.