Just to make sure, thinks White Mike, as he looks over the ocean, pointing his arms out in front of him. He thinks: England. Than he points left: Canada. Right: Mexico. He turns around and points again: California. Just to make sure, he thinks.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
WHITE MIKE GETS off the train back uptown and is beeped by his most amusing customers. The thuglings, White Mike calls them in his head. Timmy and Mark Rothko. They have missed his call to set a place. So he figures he’ll make the little fuckers walk. Instead of calling, he sends a text message for them to meet him at Forty-fifth and Fifth in an hour. White Mike wants to walk down Fifth Avenue. He likes looking at all the pretty girls as they pass by. Fifth Avenue is a river of them. White Mike feels like he looks good himself. Sometimes he catches girls staring at him from a distance, and he thinks they do this because he looks a little like a movie star with the overcoat and the jeans. He walks with a purpose, he has somewhere to go. I have something to do, he thinks, and that is important, and it makes him walk a better way, and it clears the afternoon.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
“FUCKIN’ FORTY-FIFTH Street? What in the damn shiz fo a niz?”
Chapter Fifty-Nine
WHEN WHITE MIKE was fifteen, he had acne on his face that he squeezed because he thought it cleansed his soul. He actually felt cleaner when he did not have the dirt-headed worms burrowed into his fair skin. He was handsome, and he knew it. But he also knew that he wouldn’t be attractive, really, with the acne.
His mother picked up on his distress and made him an appointment with her dermatologist. She made it seem like he had no choice, because she knew he would never go on his own, that he would think he was going in for cosmetic treatment. So she told him he had to go get the warts burned off his knee, and why not ask the doctor what she thought about the acne.
So White Mike walked up Fifth Avenue to the dermatologist’s office. White Mike always liked Fifth Avenue. It was fall and the leaves were turning, and as they piled, the doormen dressed like midranking Soviet officers swept them into the gutter. White Mike supposed all the doormen looked exactly the same by design. You saw only the uniform. And so many. White Mike was counting things as he walked. Five blocks, four West Indian women pushing strollers (he recognized the dialect because there were so many West Indian nannies: shit n’man, he could imitate, who de ass gonna say dat ta me?), two kids in polo shirts on skateboards, one motorcycle, twenty-one doormen so far. It seemed to White Mike that there were always more doormen guarding the bright buildings and ready to help than there were people coming out of them who needed either protection or help.
One doorman took out his whistle and walked into the street, blowing it, trying to hail a cab. A woman in all black and simple gold jewelry looked expensive as she waited under the awning; and then gracefully, because she had much practice, though it is hard to do gracefully, she got into the cab in one fluid motion as the doorman held the car door and then closed it behind her.
There was a woman with a cat on a leash, a gray and white animal, walking down Fifth Avenue. White Mike didn’t stare at the cat, but he noticed as it stepped over the little wrought-iron fence around a tree and clawed at the bark. The woman waited patiently, holding the leash. She was wearing a fur coat that came up to her square double chin. Her hair was frizzy and gray and flew out, straight back behind her head. As White Mike walked by, he thought: I’ll never be old.
Chapter Sixty
WHITE MIKE IS just passing FAO Schwarz and can see huge animals in the window, bigger than he, some of them as big as a small car. Lions and tigers and bears as big as Hondas. White Mike, with the cool air clearing his head on Fifth Avenue, thinks this is funny and, on a whim, walks into the toy store.
It is frenzied inside, even right after Christmas. There are tourists everywhere. White Mike walks to the bear area. There is a big pile of the stuffed creatures on the floor, and kids are climbing all over them. He picks up one of the animals. It is soft and warm and well made, a medium-size polar bear on sale for $99. White Mike strokes it and puts it back down. Then, off to the side, he sees one little boy with curly blond hair clasping a bigger bear’s head in his arms. The boy is looking right at White Mike and is chewing on the bear’s ear. He is chewing the bear’s ear off. White Mike turns his gaze and leaves the store quickly.
Chapter Sixty-One
MARK ROTHKO WENT downtown one night, with Timmy, to buy a fake ID. Timmy knew this place on Bleecker Street that had a sign advertising ID PICTURES, and he had gotten his ID there. The place was fluorescent-lit and dingy but well stocked with magazines and candy and cigarettes and a copy machine. The man behind the counter showed them a card minus the picture. It had a repeating hologram of the Ohio state flag, the buckeye. He said to Mark Rothko: “Never fails. Only forty dollars.”
“Yeah, let’s do this.”
The man pulled his long hair back in a ponytail. Timmy looked at him. The man directed Mark Rothko to stand in front of a white screen, and with a digital camera, he lined up the shot. Then he lowered the tripod and lined up again and finally took the picture. Mark Rothko was awed by the myriad of possibilities opening like a flower in his mind as he held the card and looked into his own eyes. He had a new date of birth. He was born again.
Chapter Sixty-Two
JESSICA WAKES IN her room, surrounded by her teddy-bear collection. Big bears from FAO Schwarz, little soft bears, old bears with button eyes, brown bears, black bears, all sprawled with her on the bed. The first thing she thinks of is the Twelve she is going to score the next day. What a drug, she thinks. That is a drug for people like me. Tonight, tonight, tonight. That guy Lionel will come to the party and she’ll give him the money and she’ll get high. She’s got only about three hundred dollars left, but she’ll get some other kids to chip in for the sake of the party, and it will all work out.
Jessica doesn’t have anything to do until later, when she has to go out to lunch with her mother, so she stays in bed and turns on the TV so she can watch the late-morning talk shows. Jerry Springer and the dregs of humanity, engaged in their backstabbing incestuous homosexual bisexual overweight gothic bizzaro wet-hot fucking and stealing and lying. Jessica is, like, disgusted, you know, but, like, weirdly fascinated also. Maybe that’s why sometimes she inquires about the maid’s son, who is in trouble all the time. Bitch, she thinks of herself. Maybe she deserves to die, she thinks. Maybe someone ought to kill her. Pop. Easy. Shot in the head and then everyone bullshits a eulogy and the parents cry, right, because she was such a lovely girl, such a wonderful, wonderful girl. Pop pop, someone comes into school and pulls the trigger. And then they’re on television and Jessica lies bleeding and people sit transfixed in front of the television watching it all unfold on CNN and the police come and tie it all up in yellow crime-scene ribbon and send it to you as a gift to unwrap and fuck with and get off on. Right? So someone could just pop her. Pop. And she’s dead and then everyone would do some more thinking and she’d be dead and would never get to eew again, never get to be a bad wife and then a bad parent. Just pop. Gonna fucking kill that bitch first. Jessica dazedly arranges her stuffed animals in a circle and talks to them, listens as she hears them talk to one another. It’s like the best talk show ever.
“Yeah, point the camera here, we’ll have a talk show, sit there,” says Jessica. “So there is a lot of fucked-up stuff in our school, isn’t there?”
“Yep,” says little brown Teddy with the black button eyes.
“They all have bad taste in music, they’re all assholes,” says Betty, the big soft pink bunny.
“Right. Makes you just want to kill the fuckin’ bitch,” says Teddy.
“Ha ha, that’s right, but we’re not serious. We’re not crazy, but who would you kill first and how, if you were to kill someone there?” asks Betty the bunny.
“Well, I think I’d have to kill that Jessica bitch first,” says Teddy. “You know I’d take the gun and be like pop pop. Right in the back of
the head. Make her kneel like she does for the blow jobs she gives to all those football assholes.” Teddy turns his button eyes to Jessica. “And then, if you were looking at the front of her face, it would seem to bulge out for just a split second, and then there would be blood all in front of her, and she would fall into it and hit her nose, and maybe break it because it might have been weak from surgery or something. And then CNN would come in and get the shot, and then schools across the country could have a moment of silence for the horrible, inexplicable massacre.
“Could we have a moment of silence, please,” continues Teddy, now solemnly, “for those who died. And now could we please have a moment of silence for those who killed them.”
Chapter Sixty-Three
ON THEIR WAY downtown, Timmy and Mark Rothko stop in the Star Deli to buy cigarettes. The deli is clean and well lit but empty right now. The dark-skinned man behind the counter eyes them as they move quickly to the back of the store. Buying cigarettes requires more poise and human contact than shoplifting CDs. Finally, they shuffle up to the counter and look up at the packs of cigarettes behind the man. He looks down his nose at them, and Mark Rothko shifts uncomfortably in his big frame. He is still nervous about stuff like this from the time a guy snapped his fake ID in two. On the counter is a calendar that has the date on which you must be born to purchase cigarettes. Mark Rothko tries not to look at it and says: “Pack of Parliaments.”
“You got ID?”
Mark Rothko rolls his eyes in disgust and searches for his wallet in his cavernous cargo pockets. Timmy fiddles with the candy. Mark Rothko finds his wallet and takes out the Ohio ID card. In the picture, his head is tilted down toward the camera in an effort to throw shadow on his chin. Short in a head shot.
The man looks at the ID card, snorts at Mark Rothko, and drops it on the counter. “No, is fake.”
“No? What the fuck, motherfucker? Don’t hate the playa, hate the game!”
Timmy likes the sound of that and jumps in himself. “Yeah, what de dilly, you damn camel jockey? He’s eighteen, give ’im the cigarettes. See the ID?”
“Is fake.”
“Is not fake, motherfucker.”
“Leave or I call the police.” The man reaches toward the phone.
“How ’bout I call my foot up yo ass.” Mark Rothko feints his double chin at the man. Timmy waves his hand sideways in imitation of gangsta music videos and concurs: “Word. Tell ’im. Sail breezy on the heezy fo sheezy mah neezy.”
The man looks at Timmy and then leans across the counter and stares at Mark Rothko, right in his little blue eyes. “I have this,” he says, pulling a revolver, old and battered, from beneath the counter and holding it over his head.
Timmy and Mark Rothko bolt for the door, Timmy shouting, “Shit, he busted out the nine milly and gonna pop a cap in yo cracka ass!”
The shopkeeper is surprised at how fast the boy said all that. He puts the empty handgun back under the counter.
Chapter Sixty-Four
IN THE WAITING room at the dermatologist’s office, there were old women with faces that made White Mike suddenly understand why the Indians called white people pale demons. The women’s eyes were open, a little too wide, or slit just a little too narrow, all the time. One of them with a tiny chin was flapping ostrichlike at the terrified girl behind the desk.
“It’s very disrespectful. I’ve been waiting here for an hour, and I have another appointment that I simply must go to now.”
“I’m very sorry—”
“And I simply can’t do this, I have an appointment to keep, and now I have to reschedule in a week or two weeks or a month or three months.”
“We have an opening next Monday. Any time up to nine o’clock in the morning.”
“What about nine-fifteen?”
One of the other girls behind the counter shook her head, and the woman saw it and shot her a look.
*
In the examination room, a Chinese woman popped the blackheads out of White Mike’s face with a silver tool, and he stared at her eyes and his reflection in the magnifier attached to her head like a miner’s lamp. This is a woman whose job it is to pop pimples, thought White Mike.
White Mike thought about jobs and what color his eyes were. He could see his eyes in the reflection, and they were blue. Light blue eyes, thought White Mike. Not blue fire, not ice, not the sky, not the sea, just blue. And it pissed White Mike off. He thought about his father’s job. He gives people a place to eat. This woman pops pimples. His mother who sent him to this woman to pop pimples and used to teach people about anthropology, the study of man. White Mike wondered, of course, what his job would be. Maybe he would pop pimples for a living.
Chapter Sixty-Five
JESSICA IS HAVING lunch with her mom at some bistro on Madison Avenue. It is a place of bisques and pâtés and teas and sorbet. Jessica is unsure why her mother wants to have lunch. It is not something they do. They are not best friends. They order small salads, Diet Cokes, one linguini with clam sauce, and one grilled monkfish.
“So how are you, Jessica?”
“Fine, you know”—she laughs a little laugh nervously, this is weird—“the same.”
“Your report card came.”
Jessica doesn’t say anything. Her grades dropped last quarter from As to B’s. She knows why she didn’t do the work. She was busy.
“Yeah?”
“Well, Jessica, I know you try really hard, but with college applications coming up and everything, I thought we could maybe . . . rethink things.”
“What do you mean, like a new tutor or something?”
“Well, no. I was wondering though, is something wrong? Is something upsetting you?”
“No.”
“Because I was thinking if something was, upsetting you that is, then you might want to go and see this doctor I know.”
“A shrink?”
“Well, yes, I suppose, but you know, I go to one. Lots of people do.”
“A lot of girls at school go to one.”
“Yes, see, and I thought that maybe you might want to talk to somebody who wasn’t so close, you know, and that might help you get your grades up. Because you know your father has his heart set on you going to at least Wesleyan.”
“Whatever, Mommy. I don’t need a shrink.”
“It might make you feel better. It always helps me. It’s just talking to someone to help you see things more clearly.”
“I don’t know what I would talk about.”
“Oh, you’d find things to talk about. Look at your grades. There must be something.”
“Okay, whatever. I’ll go. Just tell me when.”
“You’ll be happy you went.”
At school, Jessica knows girls who talk about how they try to fuck with their shrinks. Or how they actually try to fuck their shrinks. How they lie to them and make things up about their lives. One girl who is a terrible student talks about how she could ace her classes but is frustrated by the stupid teachers who don’t even make it hard enough to be interesting. She says she isn’t challenged. The ugly girl who never has boyfriends complains about boy troubles. Jessica starts thinking of things she’ll talk about. Not Twelve.
Chapter Sixty-Six
“WHAT DE DILL, Mike?” inquires Timmy as they roll up to meet White Mike on the corner of Forty-fifth and Fifth.
“Don’t talk that shit to me.” They start walking. “Fifty?”
“Yeah, fiddy,” says Timmy.
“Fiddy,” say Mark Rothko, chuckling. White Mike just looks at him. Mark Rothko gets nervous and turns away. He nudges Timmy, who removes a crumpled fifty-dollar bill from his pocket and palms it to White Mike while he hands Timmy a plastic film canister full of weed and turns away from them, downtown.
Mark Rothko is suddenly so happy he bursts into quiet song and busts out the pimp walk. “S’all about the Benjamins, baaabyyy . . .”
As White Mike is walking away, Timmy calls out to him. “Yo, Mike, hold up, I got a cu
stie for you.”
White Mike waits with his back to them as they catch up.
“He went to my school. His name is Andrew. Called me for the hookup, ’cause he knows I got the connection. Can he get some?”
“It’s on you if he’s a fuck-up, Timmy.”
“Yeah, no problem. He’ll probably beep you tonight. Here’s his number.” Timmy hands White Mike a Broadway show stub. Timmy had grabbed it from beside his mother’s phone. “The Producers.”
“Peace, White Mike,” says Timmy
“Right.” And White Mike walks away.
Timmy and Mark Rothko head to Timmy’s roof to smoke a fatty jay.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
IN CENTRAL PARK the fall that White Mike didn’t go to college, there was a gang of skater kids who hung around by the little half-dome amphitheater near Seventy-second Street. They spent the afternoons smoking and doing tricks while old men played chess around them and the fit people Rollerbladed and jogged past and dogs got walked. White Mike first saw the skaters by chance but then kept coming back. He waited for his beeps on the benches and watched the skaters. It was pleasant. The weather was good.
The skaters would stack their boards sideways, and then someone would try to ollie over them. Some of the kids were pretty good. They could clear three boards. A lot of air. The tallest kid, one of the best skaters, always had a cigarette in his hand while he skated, and as he would glide by, sometimes he would take a long, elegant drag and the smoke would float behind him. He would hold the cigarette even as he did tricks, and after he landed a trick, he would take another drag. He wore big bag-ass pants and skate shoes and wraparound reflective Oakley sunglasses and a backward Yankees baseball cap. He never fell. The first time White Mike saw him, he cleared four boards, arms out to the side like some bird of prey, with the cigarette smoking at the end of one long arm, and landed on the other side smooth and easy. White Mike was impressed.
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