“Fine. But make sure you have some marble in there,” Mr. Wamsley advised. “Nothing says Greece like marble. Nick? Terry needs your assistance.”
Terry’s unofficial title was Fabric Bitch. Her office looked like a fabric outlet. There were yards of prints in rolls leaning against the walls. Swatches littered every surface in the room. Two chairs stood in the center of the chaos, half covered in a red-and-gold-patterned silk.
“I need you to hold. I’ll staple,” she said. Somehow she managed to speak while gripping several pins between her lips. I made a mental note to dress as Terry for Halloween.
A girl my age walked in and dropped three bags on the floor. She crossed something off a list and said, “Your organza, Madame.”
“Thank you, Susan,” Terry said. Three pins flew across the room. She said to me, “Susan’s our buyer.”
“Hi,” I said. I jumped as a staple missed my pinky by a millimeter.
“Hey,” Susan replied. “Want to go buy a piano?”
“Uh, now?”
“He’s helping me,” Terry said.
“I’m not blind,” Susan stated. Terry shook her head and muttered something unintelligible through the pins. “I’m supposed to meet some friends in an hour. We’re going to a concert, and I’m worried I’ll be late if—”
“You can’t make Nick pick up your slack,” Terry admonished. “Just because you suck at budgeting your time—”
“Who asked you, Terry?”
“Or, maybe you were shopping for yourself again, instead of—”
“I don’t mind. Really,” I insisted. “I’ve never bought a piano before. Could be fun.”
“You’re not authorized to use the company cards,” Terry said. “Put your finger here. Don’t move, while I get the glue gun.”
“She’s right,” Susan said and sighed. “Oh well. Thanks for offering. Stupid piano.”
“That girl thinks time stands still for her,” Terry said, once Susan had left the room. “Wait until she’s my age. She’ll see that it all zips right by you. Time waits for no—hey!”
I laughed as she chased Ottoman, who’d grabbed a yard of organza and run from the room.
I didn’t mind getting up early every morning to go to work. The job was a little like I Dream of Cleanie, in that I got to go inside people’s residences as well as businesses. But the stays were of shorter duration, and it was a lot more fun to deliver a piece of furniture, or hang a painting, or even drop off boxes of tile, than to clean someone’s toilet.
As long as I got enough sleep, I found that I was actually cheerful in the mornings. It was fun to see what Eileen was up to at her desk, dodge her offers of food, and be greeted by the poodles. I continued to enjoy getting to know my coworkers. And Isaiah was an interesting, if hazardous, pilot, who apparently not only woke up happy, but stayed that way no matter what the day dealt us.
However, even with my new schedule, I planned to sleep late on Saturday morning, my first work-free day. Apparently, Morgan had other ideas. I opened one eye to see the sheet pulled back, allowing me a clear view of the living room. Morgan was poised at the stereo, watching me, and as soon as she saw eyeballs, she began noisily opening and shutting empty CD jewel cases.
“Look,” she said. “Not here. And nothing here. Wow. Nada. And yet another empty case. Where are my CDs?” When I just stared at her, trying to remember how to speak, she went on. “I know how this works. I’ve been taken before. First you use my TV, my DVD player, my stereo. Then you eat my food. Then you lose my CDs and my books. Next you’ll be wearing my clothes.”
“Well, no,” I croaked.
“It’s not going to happen this time, you understand?” She jabbed her finger in my direction. “These CDs better be back in their cases when I get home tonight.”
She swooped out of the room, and I heard the apartment door slam shut. That was usually the moment when Kendra came out of hiding and Roberto emerged from the bathroom. But I seemed to have the place to myself. Rare. I let out a sigh that I felt I’d been holding for weeks.
I’d hoped that having a job would get Morgan off my back. Of course, it would take a while for me to get my cash flow adjusted. Especially since more cash had flown from me to Kendra than I liked to think about. But I hadn’t told Morgan or Roberto that. As far as they knew, everything was fine.
The sound of a key in the lock alerted me that someone was home. I was betting on Kendra and jumped up to put on clothes. She had an annoying habit of crawling on the futon, forcing me to stay under the covers or flash her.
I was pleasantly surprised when Roberto rounded the sheet into our room.
“Yo!” He jumped back a little. “Make some noise next time, will ya? I just about took you out.” He peered at me. “What’s wrong with you?”
“What makes you think something’s wrong?”
He looked at me like I’d just asked if he knew the alphabet. “Don’t waste our time with guessing games. You need to jump in the shower. We got stuff to do.”
“I was gonna hang out here today.”
“You’ve already been hanging out here.”
“I just woke—”
“Time to take the act on the road. It’s a great day outside. I won’t even make you take a subway.”
“I hate it when people who wake up earlier than everybody else think it’s their business to get the world moving,” I said.
“Squeaky clean boys get a cup of hot tea,” Roberto promised.
“Yeah, whatever.”
From the patch of blue I could see through our window, it did seem like a nice spring day. But after I showered and drank my tea, I grabbed a sweatshirt just in case. I had no idea where we were going or for how long.
“Hey,” I said when we were on the street, “we have to stop by my bank. As long as I have to be out at this ridiculous hour, I have junk I can take care of, too.”
“It’s almost eleven.”
“I didn’t fall asleep until after four. I’m tired.”
“It’s all about you,” Roberto said.
“Don’t you forget it.” Roberto stuck out his arm for a passing cab.
“What are you doing? Where are we going? I can’t be throwing a bunch of money around for a cab.”
“I’m paying.”
He gave the driver a Lower Manhattan address and ignored my frown. We rode in silence. Occasionally, I saw a branch of my bank come and go past my window, each time thinking, Oh, we have to stop there….
When the cab dropped us, we walked for a while down Lafayette Street until Roberto paused in front of a building.
“What?” I asked.
“You wanted to come here.”
I glared at him. “To SoHo?”
“No, to the bank. Right? Citibank? Isn’t that you?”
“Oh.” I felt my face turn red. “Yeah. Give me a minute, will you?”
I went inside and looked at the unfamiliar lobby. After wandering around a few minutes, I found a customer service telephone. I took out my wallet, found the Visa card that I had in case of emergency, and looked at it.
Emergency. It was a word that could mean different things. Some people would call not having any cash at their immediate disposal an emergency. Others would say it was an emergency to need a pair of Prada shoes. It was all relative.
And relatives were on my mind as I followed the directions on the Bat Phone. I’d never actually used the card, knowing my parents would be the ones paying the bill. No emergency was worth having to explain myself to them.
But thanks to Kendra…
The computerized voice told me that I had fifteen hundred dollars available. I felt light-headed. Then I got in line behind other customers. Unfortunately, the line moved slowly, allowing time for an internal debate to kick in.
Was I really about to rip off my parents for fifteen hundred dollars? Of course not. I wouldn’t max out the card. That would be stupid. I’d only withdraw what I could afford to pay back.
Like five h
undred. Five hundred dollars was nothing to my parents. And I would pay it back. I’d even call my mother and let her know the bill was coming, so she could prepare my father. Everything would be out in the open.
“May I help you?”
“Yes,” I answered, fumbling for the card that I’d held only minutes before. I found it sandwiched in my wallet between my Social Security card and my Wisconsin driver’s license. I pulled it out and placed it on the counter.
“I need a cash advance on this, please. Five hundred dollars.”
The teller looked at the card, then back up at me. She picked up the card and examined it. “Unless you’re a lot older than you look, honey, you can’t collect on this one for quite some time. If ever.” She handed my Social Security card to me.
“Oh, sorry.” I went back into my wallet, producing the Visa card. “This should work better.”
“How much did you say you wanted?”
I hesitated. Odds were this would be a one-shot deal. My father might hit the roof. Maybe I should ask for a thousand. Or blow the whole wad. Screw ’em.
“Five hundred, please.”
The teller’s pen flew over her paperwork with the efficiency of a machine, and she turned the slip around for me. “Sign here, Mr. Dunhill.”
It gave me a creepy feeling to be addressed like I was my father. I signed my name, then stuffed the hundreds and twenties the teller counted out in my pocket.
Roberto was leaning against the building with his arms folded. “Are you okay? I was about to go in and see if you were holding up the place.”
“Yeah, yeah, c’mon. Let’s go take care of what you wanted to do. Then we can get something to eat. My treat this time.”
“You so robbed that place. I know you’re broke.”
“Don’t sweat it. Just let me do this, okay?”
“Fine.”
We continued to walk up Lafayette Street toward Houston in silence, until Roberto stopped and said, “This is it.”
I stared at the window of the Pop Shop and said, “This is why you dragged me out of bed? You’re kidding, right?”
“I need a Radiant Baby T-shirt. My old one has paint all over it, and I want one for a date.”
He danced in place for a few steps before entering the store. I wasn’t sure what that was about. Maybe he was boxing the ghost of Keith Haring. I shook my head and followed him inside.
I’d always liked the shop. Every time I came in, I saw something I hadn’t noticed before. Or I got lost in the floor-to-ceiling murals. I loved the paintings of Keith Haring the way Roberto loved Basquiat. But as far as I knew, there was no Basquiat shop.
“Hey, how you doing?” A man appeared next to me with a box of merchandise to put on shelves: mugs, buttons, notebooks. He looked about my age, with dark hair, very carefully messed up. He had a couple tattoos on his forearms and a ring through his eyebrow. His eyes were the same bright blue as mine, and I couldn’t stop peering into them, almost squinting. He smiled. “You looking for anything special?”
“I’m here with him.” I gestured in the direction where I’d last seen Roberto, who had of course moved on. It wasn’t like me to be such a geek in reaction to an appealing face. I shrugged and said, “I’m just looking.”
“You ready, Nick?” Roberto asked.
I looked at Eyebrow Boy. “Thanks.”
“No problem. See you next time.” He flashed another smile.
When we were outside the store, Roberto said, “Were you cruising him? Do you want to go back?”
I regarded him warily. “If anything, he was cruising me.”
“Oh, I see.”
“I wasn’t cruising him. He totally wasn’t my type.”
“Okay, that does it. We’re going back.” Roberto turned and started toward the Pop Shop.
I lunged, grabbed his arm, and spun him around. He was laughing.
“Damn,” I said. “I can’t take you anywhere.”
“Were you taking me somewhere? I got us here.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, “I’m feeding us.”
We walked for a while, watching for possible places to eat. I started to point out a diner to Roberto when I realized he was no longer next to me. I turned around and saw him looking in a shop window. Instead of going back, I waited. After a few seconds, he approached me.
“Here’s one for you,” he said. “What do Basquiat, Keith Haring, and Roberto Mirones have in common?”
“You’re all amazing artists who started on the streets?”
“I cannot deny what is, but that’s not what I was thinking.”
“What were you thinking?”
“AIDS will kill us all.”
He made it a simple statement of fact, but I felt like he’d knocked the wind out of me. I thought of Morgan and Kendra gossiping about him. I remembered Mark telling me that he was Roberto’s friend, not his doctor. And Davii saying that I enjoyed being tragic.
No, fuck no, I do not, I thought.
I stared at Roberto, keeping my eyes locked on his rather than checking his appearance for evidence. I wanted him to take it back. I wanted to yell at him. I wanted to sit on the sidewalk and bawl like a lost child.
“Nothing good ever happens below Houston Street,” I said and turned to keep walking.
He grabbed me from behind, his arm tight across my chest, and pulled me back against him. Like a lover. Or a mugger. Which was probably the thought of the woman who’d been walking toward us. She stopped and frowned at Roberto.
“Don’t you hurt him,” she said.
“I’d cut out my own heart first,” he promised her.
It made me smile. Even though it was probably the smallest smile in New York, it reassured her. She nodded and walked on, but Roberto wouldn’t let me move. His mouth was against my ear, and he made a fist of the hand that was over my heart.
“I told you this,” he said in a tone so low that I had to strain to hear him, “because you’re the only one of my family that’s strong enough, that I trust enough, to tell. JC doesn’t believe in AIDS. Leo thinks it’s a government plot to kill the gays and anybody not white. Ernie and Santo—they look up to me.”
“I look up to you,” I said.
“Hermano, it may kill me, but I never said I’d die young. I’ll die when I’m seventy-two. Then Leo can say, ‘See? The AIDS killed him. I told you they were out to get us.’” I laughed, because he wanted me to. He pushed his chest harder against me and said, “I’ve got your back. Always.”
“Me, too,” I said.
“I know.”
He let me go. I turned around, looked him in the eye, and repeated, “Always.”
For just a moment, he allowed his brown eyes to get soft. “No questions?” he asked, his tone a little surprised.
“No,” I said. “None of that matters.”
We were at a place on Spring Street with a board out front that advertised pizza by the slice. I had no appetite. But many months before, Roberto had taught me something.
Just pretend like everything’s normal. Do the same things you do every day, like it’s any day. Soon it will be normal again, and you’ll be okay.
Eating was normal. Anyone could eat pizza, no matter what time of day or night. Pizza was always right. We’d eat it, everything would seem normal again, and we’d be okay.
“Here?” I asked.
“You read my mind,” Roberto said. “Pizza is always right.”
May 14, 2003
Dear Nick,
I could barely read your letter about being fired from your cleaning job because I was laughing so hard. I’m sure it all seemed horrible at the time, but it’s good that you have a sense of humor about it now. I imagine that’s because you got another job that you like better. It’s funny how things work out, isn’t it?
We did have a great time on our trip, thanks for asking. I’m enclosing photos of the two of us looking like typical sunburned, stupid tourists on the beach. Adam wanted me to point out that it’s only t
he camera angle that makes my biceps look bigger than his. Always competing.
One thing Adam and I agree on. If you need anything, just ask. I know you aren’t crazy about flying, and Adam’s the same way. We’d drive to Manhattan to get you if you wanted to visit Wisconsin. Otherwise, I’m not sure when we’ll be back in the city, but I’ll definitely call you when that happens. You know my mother won’t let me stay away from Brooklyn forever.
Take care of yourself and call any time. Collect if you need to. And nothing you say ever goes past me, as usual.
I love you,
Jeremy
8
Bet She’s Not Your Girlfriend
My friend Adalla and I “met cute.” If we’d been in a romantic comedy, the audience would have known immediately that we were destined to fall in love and get a happy ending. It was a movie-perfect afternoon. A brief cloudburst, which would have made the day sopping in winter or steamy in summer, left everything feeling refreshed in May. Leaves were green. Flowers were blooming. An upbeat soundtrack played through my mind.
Or maybe that was the salsa music on the supermarket’s sound system. I was trying to pick a checkout lane by mentally reviewing Nick’s Rules for Fast Shopping. These were roughly similar to Nick’s Rules for Picking Up Men While Shopping, but I was after only groceries on this particular day.
Rule One was, Never get behind elderly ladies. Despite a few unhappy times with my Dunhill grandparents, I didn’t dislike old people. But old ladies tended to trap cashiers, unwary bystanders, and managers in pointless—and endless—conversations. Avoiding them was the best option whether I was picking up guys or soy milk.
Rule Two also applied to both situations: Stay away from people on cell phones. Most cell phone users couldn’t do two things at once. Since the phone was their first priority, they did anything else in slow motion. In fact, Roberto had stayed on the sidewalk while I shopped so he could continue one of his many phone conversations with a random Mirones brother without annoying me.
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