Twelve

by Nick McDonell

  White Mike knows he will never jump from rooftop to rooftop, even though he wishes he could. Just like he knows he’s never going to fly. That is what he is thinking as he hails a cab to go to the special bird bookstore he has discovered in Midtown.

  *

  In the last year White Mike has gotten interested in birds and has read a lot of books about them, especially parrots. He has ordered some of them off of Amazon.com but gets most from the bookstore he is going to now. He has a decent little ornithological library. White Mike likes the whole idea of flight, and if anybody ever asked him, he could explain in scientific detail the mechanisms of the wing. He likes owls and condors and ospreys, but nothing has ever captured him quite like the parrot. Pirates had parrots. White Mike even considered getting a parrot and teaching it to talk, although he doesn’t know what he would have it say.

  Of course, he knows parrots don’t think. They just imitate, just repeat. But that’s okay, thinks White Mike. Everybody sort of does that. And my bird will say the smartest shit you ever heard. None of this teaching the bird to curse or any of that. The humor behind teaching parrots to say fuck you baffles him.

  Such humor does not baffle Timmy or Mark Rothko. When the two of them, sitting on a stoop in the Fifties, see none other than White Mike get out of a cab and get buzzed into a nondescript building there on Madison Avenue, they are intrigued. First, because they smoked all their weed and need some more. And second, because they have nothing to do, and yo it’s White Mike.

  Mark Rothko flicks his cigarette into the street like a tiny, angry miner. He follows Timmy toward the building, where they wait for a half hour until White Mike comes out.

  “Yo, Miiike!”

  White Mike just looks at them.

  “Whas in there?” Timmy points at the small bundle of books White Mike is holding protectively.

  “Some weed?” Mark Rothko asks hopefully.

  “Books,” says White Mike.

  “Yo, sorry, Mike. We gotta get some mo of dat shit.”

  “Beep me later.” White Mike starts walking toward home. Timmy and Mark Rothko follow.

  “What are you doing?” White Mike says.

  “We comin’ with you, man.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “Yes we are, we gonna score some Chronic, yeah baby, yeah,” says Timmy. Mark Rothko nods in agreement and takes out another cigarette. White Mike looks down at the two of them and almost laughs. But he doesn’t want these kids following him home, so he tells them that he’ll work out a special deal for them if they get lost now and beep him later.

  “Yo, we got the hookup.” Timmy practically jumps for happiness but is held down by his girth, low center of gravity, and cargo pants.

  “Foh shizza my drizzle,” Mark Rothko concurs.

  “What? Actually, never mind. You won’t follow me now, right? Otherwise, no weed.”

  “Yeah, fo’sho.”

  White Mike leaves them behind, but he has overestimated the power of his deal, because Timmy and Mark Rothko wait until he is two blocks ahead and then follow. They think maybe they’ll find out where White Mike lives.

  A block from home, White Mike gets something else he wants—a milk shake from Haagen-Dazs. They cost five dollars each. They are the best milk shakes in the city, in the world, as far as he knows. He chews on the straw and drinks it on his way home, so that the longer he has it, the more difficult it becomes to suck the sugary stew up out of the cup.

  Mark Rothko and Timmy watch fascinated as their drug dealer drinks his milk shake. Mark Rothko thinks: I’m gonna get one of those later. He and Timmy follow White Mike down the last block to his apartment building. They stand across the street after he lets himself in. It is a small prewar building that looks just like hundreds of other buildings in the city, but not to Timmy and Mark Rothko—it is where White Mike lives.

  White Mike is sitting at the kitchen table, sipping the last of his milk shake and looking at his new books, when Timmy and Mark Rothko buzz up.

  “Hello?”

  “Yo, it us.”

  White Mike is pissed and goes downstairs quick to run them off.

  “You little fuckers aren’t getting any more weed, ever.”

  “Awwww, man . . .” Timmy realizes their big mistake.

  “Goddammit, Timmy. Now we’ll never get blizzy.” Mark Rothko is pissed too.

  “Get out of here.”

  The two don’t move for a second, and White Mike looks from one to the other. Just a couple of soft kids standing on the street, trying to get some weed, have some fun, fill the time, talk a certain way, dress a certain way, walk a certain way, be a certain way because the way they come from is unclear and uncool and with no direction, because no one really has anything to do, all across the city no one has anything to do, so they all do the same thing and make the same references to pop culture and their childhood cartoons (like, Ghostbusters was so much better than Ninja Turtles), and everyone wants to get laid and be the cool kid and everyone wants to be a jock, and everyone wants and wants and wants. White Mike is worried now about what will happen if other kids start showing up at his door. And White Mike doesn’t want to give anybody else weed. So White Mike lets the two kids in.

  After he gives Timmy and Mark Rothko their weed, he tells them he is going to get a bird, a parrot.

  “That talks?” asks Timmy.

  “Yeah,” says White Mike. “What should I name him?”

  “Timmy,” suggests Timmy.

  “Rocko,” suggests Mark Rothko.

  “Rocko?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Nothin’.”

  “Tupac.”

  “Biggie.”

  “Sylvester.”

  “It’s a guy bird, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you know? Do they have dicks?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Fine. Samantha.”

  “Samantha?”

  “S my mother’s name, son.”

  “Yo, sorry.”

  “How ’bout Snoop?”

  White Mike thinks immediately of Charlie Brown. “That’s not a bad name,” he says.

  Timmy and Mark Rothko burst into song:

  “D-o-double-juh-zeee.”

  “Snooop Daawwg.”

  “Smoke till yo’ eyes get cataracts.”

  “Snooop Daawwg.”

  “Who’s that dippin’ in the Cadillac?”

  “Snooop Daawwg.”

  “All right, enough.” White Mike shuts them up. “Snoop it is. Snoop the parrot.” Timmy and Mark Rothko nod triumphantly at each other.

  “We call you tomorrow when we got the kiggity cash flow?”

  “Fine.”

  *

  When they are gone, White Mike sits for a long time, thinking about adults. He is trying to pinpoint the exact moment when he didn’t want to talk to them anymore. The only adults he talks to now are the ones he doesn’t care so much about but has some kind of business with. Like Lionel. His beeper vibrates, and he takes it out of his pocket and puts it on the table, where it rattles violently. White Mike turns it on and off quickly to stop the shaking, at least for now.

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  HUNTER IS ON the phone with his father, who is in a limo coming in from JFK. Hunter’s voice is cracking for the first time since he was arrested.

  “I didn’t kill anyone. I mean, who kills people. Don’t you get this, Dad? Dad?”

  “Hunter, I’m here now, we’ll take care of things, talk to the judge about bail—”

  “No one kills people. Not me. I mean, come on.”

  “Hunter, you have to calm down.”

  “Dad, I’ll tell you straight out that I’m innocent, but I am scared as shit, Dad, but I know that if it was you in here, you’d be more scared.”

  Hunter’s father doesn’t say anything.

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  AFTER THEY LEAVE White Mike’s apartment, Timmy and Mark Rothko go to the grocery store.<
br />
  On the way, Timmy asks: “What did the parrot say to the nigga?”

  “What?”

  “‘Polly wanna cracka.’”

  Mark Rothko laughs.

  “And waz the nigga say to the parrot?”

  “What?” Guffaws.

  “‘Fuck you, bitch,’ and then he busts a cap in the parrot’s ass.”

  They’re both cracking up.

  “We need munchies. C’mon.” Timmy walks through the automatic doors of the grocery store. He heads to the crackers and picks up a box of saltines. He has lost Mark Rothko momentarily, but in the next aisle he finds him with his hand in a jar of Marshmallow Fluff, a portion of the sticky white substance already smeared on his collar and chin. A lady with a shopping cart moves away quickly. Timmy says: “Word, word, lemme get summa that.”

  Timmy opens up a column of saltines and starts dipping them in the Fluff. The two of them keep working on the Fluff until they see a supermarket worker arrive at the open end of the aisle to stack jams. Timmy stashes the rest of the crackers in his pocket, and Mark Rothko drops the jar of Fluff, which breaks on the floor. Timmy and Mark Rothko beat a sticky retreat back to the automatic doors. They got a party to go to. The supermarket worker has a hell of a time cleaning the viscous confection off the floor.

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  THE PHONE RINGS. It is late afternoon, and White Mike is eating Cheerios. He used to go in for all the sugary-type cereals but recently switched to simple Cheerios, so the Cocoa Puffs are rotting into plastic fungus in the cupboard. Mike uses a teaspoon to eat his cereal, not a big soup spoon, because he likes less milk in his mouth with each bite. The phone keeps ringing. White Mike picks it up. It is his father telling him not to go anywhere, that he is coming home and has something to tell him. He is holding his voice steady and level.

  “What?” asks White Mike. “What is it?”

  “I’ll tell you when I get there.”

  “Tell me now. I’d rather know now.”

  “Let me tell you when I get there.”

  “I can take it. Just tell me. Better I know now.”

  “I’m serious, Mike.”

  White Mike is caught off guard by the inflection in his father’s voice. They are both silent for a moment. When White Mike hears his father’s voice on the other end of the line again, it is hard and flat.

  “Charlie is dead. He was murdered three days ago in Harlem, but they couldn’t identify him. The police just called.” He hangs up the phone before White Mike can say anything.

  White Mike screams. An explosion out of his chest, a snarl from the bottom of his spine out into the air to make everything stop for a second while he runs and jumps into the air, off a building maybe, to tire himself out and do something about Charlie being dead and the house being a mess. So White Mike starts cleaning. First he jumps and lands on the couch on his back and flexes his whole body, knocking the pillows off, holding the scream in the very top of his chest. He thrashes until he is worn out, and then he rises and starts cleaning the house. The house is a mess: the dishes aren’t done and the blinds are half drawn and there is no fresh air but you can’t open the windows because the kitchen windows were built soundproof, never to be opened. He goes to the closet and gets a broom and a bucket and a mop and rags. His steps are tight and wired off his toes as he moves from floor to sink to shelves, picking things up, putting them where they belong. As soon as he has cleared every surface in the kitchen, he fills the bucket with soapy water and uses the rags to scrub. He gets on a stool and scrubs the ceiling. Then the stool wobbles and flips, and he falls to the tile floor. On his stomach, he looks out over the plane of the floor, and this is how his father finds him when he walks in the door.

  White Mike and his father look at each other.

  “I’m sorry, Mike.”

  “I have to go out. I’ll be back.”

  “Yeah, a walk might help. I’ll walk you to the end of the block.”

  “Whatever,” White Mike says, and his father flinches.

  At the end of the block, White Mike’s father is telling him that the police don’t know what happened, but they think maybe Charlie was involved in a drug deal. Also, they’d like to ask some questions.

  White Mike shrugs, but for the first time in his life, he wonders what his father actually knows.

  Chapter Eighty-Six

  WHILE SHE IS getting dressed for the party, Jessica becomes distracted by her own eyes in the mirror. She wonders whether or not Twelve makes people’s eyes dilate the way weed does. Whatever. She likes her eyes, big and brown. Strong eyes, you in the mirror. Stronger than all these kids, she is thinking. Strong enough to get into Wesleyan, strong enough to go to that shrink, strong enough to work this party, strong enough to get dressed. Strong enough to get whatever you want. Strong enough to get the Twelve from that drug dealer. Strong enough to do whatever it takes. Strongest.

  Chapter Eighty-Seven

  WHITE MIKE IS walking west, into the sun. Now he turns on to Fifth Avenue, with the snow on the trees and the shadows lengthening. His mind is blank, and his hands are cold. At the north end of Central Park, he hangs a left and walks west again. He turns uptown again on the other side of the park. Up into Harlem.

  He knows where he is going, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. One of the world’s biggest gothic cathedrals. Maybe the biggest. White Mike isn’t sure. It casts a shadow so long he cannot see where it ends. Why are you going here, he thinks to himself. Might just as well walk through Harlem and get shot yourself, like Charlie. You wouldn’t get shot walking through Harlem. Who would kill Charlie? White Mike walks faster through the cold air to the big double doors.

  The ceilings are so high in this place, and it is dim inside, and there is no service or anything happening. White Mike looks at all the candles and almost lights one but doesn’t because he doesn’t know how to do it, really. So he just looks at them in the warm gloom for a second as he passes. Far up ahead of him, beyond what must be a thousand old church chairs, is the altar. He can hear everything and especially his own footsteps. He keeps walking past the little vestibules on the side, in the echoes of the grand building with all its oak and metal gilded opulence. Eventually he comes to the Poet’s Corner, where there are inscriptions he doesn’t know, the kind of stuff he would usually stop to read but doesn’t. He walks to the middle of the cathedral and sits down.

  Isn’t this where you’re supposed to go numb, thinks White Mike. He grips the back of the chair in front of him until his knuckles crack and turn white. The edges of his overcoat pool on the ground around the chair; and he realizes that he is hot and uncomfortable. The cathedral is very warm. He takes off his overcoat and leans his head back over the edge of his chair and stares up into the high ceiling. Out of the corner of his eye he sees someone else, an old lady, stooped and leaning forward in a chair, head down. He suddenly thinks that his posture might be uncouth, disrespectful, in this place, and he tucks in his legs and leans forward from the edge of his chair and bows his head.

  White Mike sits in that chair for a long time, with his head down. And behind him in that sea of little chairs is the old lady hunched down, and somewhere else are two tourists who get up and leave pretty soon, and there are one or two others sitting far from each other. But White Mike sits there and thinks of nothing, his hands gripping the chair in front of him, his head down, and the church dim and quiet and echoey.

  And then he starts thinking of Charlie, and he thinks of how Charlie must have died. He remembers a scene in a war movie when the soldier describes how the bullet penetrates the skin and you get to watch it in slow motion go into some guts and make a clean tunnel almost, and then how that tunnel fills up with green goo, bile. And then when he finishes describing it, it all happens in reverse and the tunnel disappears and the bile is gone and the skin heals and the bullet flies backward, but of course that never happens. And White Mike can’t help it when he thinks of how the next scene in the movie was about how a cow
stepped on a land mine and exploded and how that was mad funny. But he gets angry at himself for thinking about that and decides that the cathedral is dumb and it is time to leave. He takes his overcoat over his arm and walks out into the street.

  Chapter Eighty-Eight

  JESSICA GETS TO Chris’s house earlier than she has ever arrived at a party. She wants to be there in case Lionel is early. Not that she thinks he will be early, why would anyone be early? So she goes over to Chris’s house not long after the streetlights have completely replaced the sun. It is snowing on and off. And the party gets going.

  Kids from half the private schools in the city start showing up. And boarding school kids who have to leave in two days. The party is getting more and more crowded.

  Jessica is talking about Twelve with some of her friends, asking them to chip in.

  A bunch of kids have started doing shots in the kitchen, and someone finally figures out the house stereo, so the music plays everywhere out of the speakers in the walls. It is loud all over the house. The CD player is on shuffle, so the Stones are playing one minute, then D’Angelo, then Weezer, then all the other bands Chris has put in, something for everyone. He doesn’t want to have chosen the music for himself, lest he should have to stand by it if someone brought it up.

  The heavy pot smokers have already found their way up to the terrace, and in the darkness their joints are little points of light.

  By this time there are close to fifty kids in the house. Sara is very happy, smiling, greeting everyone. She tells Chris to leave the front door unlocked. It is hard to hear the bell anyway.

  Sitting in his room in a circle of candles, Claude can feel the house filling up. He doesn’t know if he likes this.

  “Jessica, do you have a number for some weed?” asks a girl in a tank top as Jessica looks at her watch and then at the door.

  “Oh, yeah, fine. Here.” She hands the girl her cell phone. “Hit seventeen.”