Your old Jazzmaster was hanging from your neck and shoulder before I could even find two sticks unsplintered enough to bother with. The amp thumped into life, then the PA, and the tubes got warm, and then the room did as your music and voice filled it up. I wanted to jump up from Felix’s beat-up kit to pull closed that garden door, to keep your song inside the cellar with us, where those smoking and drinking hipsters couldn’t hear it.
We were playing, that first time we played, and it already came naturally. You’d start strumming, and you’d look up at me just as you began to sing, not close enough to the mic for your voice to sound full, but near enough so I couldn’t see your lips. I only had to listen for a few moments, a measure or two, a phrase, a chorus, one lilt of the melody, and I’d be playing along. It wasn’t just the music, either; our bodies’ rhythms fell into step together, marched along with your melodies and my beats, and we never fell away, never took a break. Even between songs, the rhythm went on, in my heartbeat and the blinks of your eyes and the tapping of your foot. When you perched on the arm of the couch and laid your guitar on your knee, I put down my sticks and lay down beside you, to just listen and watch. But the rhythm still went on.
…
“You know,” I said, back behind the kit, as you bent over your gig bag to zip away your guitar, one hand awkwardly on your belt, “you could probably stay here again, if you need a place to stay.”
You turned and smiled, and reminded me of myself last summer: eager and afraid. “If it’s okay with you, that would be great.”
“I’ll ask Fish,” I said, getting up. You followed me out the back door and quickly into the bar. I stopped short. “Jonny!”
But he wasn’t smiling. There was his gorgeous Jonny face and blond cropped hair, with that shock of pink, brighter than I remembered it, right up in front, catching the light from the beer lamp that hung over the pool table. But where was his openmouthed smile? Where were his wide-open arms, inviting me inside?
Instead, his head was shaking, and he was pushing me back, back into the garden, out of the bar. He hardly glanced at you, and something had to be wrong.
“Hold on,” came a stern voice from behind him. Jonny’s head dropped and he stepped to one side. Two men in pants and jackets—cops—stood with Fish near the front booth. All three were watching me and you. The older one asked, “Is one of you known as ‘Kid’?”
I looked at Jonny, but he didn’t look back. He just dropped his butt onto the edge of the pool table, then both his palms, like a disappointed teacher on his big wooden desk, and let out a slow sigh.
“I’m Kid,” I said, stepping through the door.
“How old are you?” one of the cops said. Who cares which.
I glanced at Jonny, but his eyes were on the tiled floor, so I looked for Fish. She was angry, practically snarling. “Just keep your mouth shut, Kid,” she called out to me.
“I’d advise you to keep your mouth shut,” the cop said, barely glancing at Fish. “If this one’s legal, I’m J. Edgar fucking Hoover.”
“Come here, Kid,” the other cop said, I think. That one might have been smiling, like the “good cop.” But there’s no such thing as a good cop when you’ve lived in the warehouse, so who cares, like I said.
Still, I walked over there, keeping my head up best as I could. My bag was over my right shoulder, and I gripped the strap with my left hand, so my forearm cut across my chest.
“I’m sixteen,” I said when I reached them. “I told her I was twenty-one. She didn’t know I was underage.”
“Don’t worry about that,” the good cop said. “We want to talk to you about the warehouse fire.”
“You know about the warehouse fire?” the other cop said. He had a shaved head and sunglasses hanging off his shirt pocket. I looked past them out the front door. Their car was there, double parked.
I nodded quickly. “Yes.”
“Kid, don’t say anything,” Fish said. “Call your parents.”
“From what we hear, you don’t talk to your parents much. Is that right, Kid?” the bald one asked. They might have both been bald, or close to it.
I shrugged. “Not much, no. So?”
“How long did you live at the warehouse?” one of the cops asked.
I tried to look in his eyes to answer, but mine were getting dry. I blinked a few times. “Not even a year,” I finally said. “Maybe ten months.”
“Do you smoke, Kid?”
It was the other cop again. Were there three of them? I turned my head, but all the cops were looking at me and I wasn’t sure who spoke. My hand went to my pocket, where a soft pack made a rectangular bulge.
“I…”
“Where were you on the morning of May second of this year?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Do you remember the fire at the warehouse, down off Water Street?” another cop asked. I turned to him. “That fire was in the middle of the night of May first. The very early morning of May second. Where were you?”
I finally let my head drop and looked at the floor. The tiles were cracked where they met the bar. Several stools still hadn’t been used that afternoon, with two of their legs still tucked over the foot rail.
I thought back to that morning. The smell of smoke, nothing unusual: it comes and goes with the breeze in Greenpoint. But it was acrid. Burning tires, gasoline. It fell around me like two gloved hands around my throat. It burned my eyes, and left them parched, so I cried without tears, wanting to run and grab Felix by the wrist, to pull him off the couch, take him with me. But of course he was long gone, and I was alone, with cigarette butts and empty bottles of vodka. Wrappers from the Burger King at the corner of Greenpoint and Manhattan. Empty white paper bags from Danny’s Pizza. Soon they’d all burn, just so much fuel. I stood for a minute as the smoke billowed around me. The easiest thing would be to take it in. I’d been practicing, hadn’t I? All those cigarettes. I was ready for the big leagues. Just breathe it in … just breathe it in….
“If you won’t talk here, we can take you down to the station,” a cop said. I snapped out of my flashback, just a little. “We’ll call your parents, the whole deal. Is that what you want?”
“This is over.” It was Fish. I felt her hand on my wrist and looked up. An arm fell around my shoulders. “Unless you plan to make an arrest?”
One of the cops smiled. He pulled a phone from his pocket and stepped away from us. The other pulled out his handcuffs.
“Are you serious?” Fish said.
“Put your hands in front of you,” the cop said to me, so I did. He put the cuffs on me, more gently than I thought he would.
The other cop came back. He smiled at Fish, then slammed an open hand on the bar three times. “This bar is closed,” he shouted, smiling big, like he was making last call, “by order of the New York Police Department. Everyone out, right now.”
I looked at Fish, hoping she would look back, hoping she’d forgive me. She’d had plenty of trouble from the police in the short time I’d known her, and this incident would be a point against my presence here, I knew.
“Shit,” was all she said.
Jonny came up beside us. “I can be down there in thirty minutes, Kid. If you need bail. I’ll come down, just in case. Okay?”
I shook my head. “Don’t.” I looked back through the bar, at the door to the garden, but you were gone.
One cop took me by the arm, right on my bicep. His grip was hard and I wondered if he knew a special way to inflict pain without leaving a bruise. I assumed he did and tried not to squirm. His partner pushed open the front door and I was led through. It had started to rain, just a little. The raindrops were better spaced than a downpour, and smaller. One of the cops guided me into the backseat and closed the door behind me. There was no cage between me and the front seats, like I would have thought. Soon both front doors opened and closed and the car started. I looked to my right and saw you, standing under the awning of th
e bodega at the corner—red with that yellow trim, littered with tiny lightbulbs and “grocery,” “tropical,” “produce,” “dairy,” covered in years of dirt. Your gig bag hung from your shoulder, against your lanky frame, and in the mist you reminded me of a young soldier, maybe just inside the tree line, with his gun hanging heavily around him, unable to join the battle.
Our eyes met for an instant, I think, and I looked down at my cuffed wrists in my lap, and as we drove away, I hoped they’d lock me up forever.
(THE NIGHT OF THE FIRE)
Monday nights at Fish’s bar weren’t as dead as you might think, but they weren’t exactly a scene either. They were slow enough that Fish would let me and Konny hang out in the back booth. Not that Fish would ever give us a drink, but sometimes she’d look away as one of us pulled a bottle from our bag and sloshed a glug or two into our Cokes—I guess especially since Felix.
Since the beginning of the school year, with both of us sometimes making it to class, Konny and I were pretty inseparable again. I guess with my Felix gone, and with Konny needing a friend who she didn’t also screw, it was easy enough for us to forgive each other. That Monday, we’d actually made it to a couple of classes—art and our poetry elective—but after that Konny scammed a fifth of vodka and we thought it made very good company. By the time we reached Fish’s place it was after midnight, and we were falling all over each other, laughing or crying or a little of both, loopy and buzzing.
Konny and me mostly leaned on each other, talking too loud and projecting our laughter toward the bar. We stayed that way, the two of us, sipping Cokes and a little something else until Fish decided to lock up early at two. She came to the back and bolted the door to the garden—the smoking section—then leaned across our booth to cart away our empties. “I gotta lock up this shit hole,” she said.
Konny and I nodded slowly, more like a gentle long sway of our necks, but we managed to get up. It was the hour when buzzed and tired blend into a very pleasant ride in the womb, and anywhere can be your bed. I swung an arm around Konny’s waist and she dropped hers over my shoulder.
“We’re a couple of drunks,” she whispered, close to my ear, and I laughed.
When we reached the door, it swung open. I hadn’t even noticed Fish walking beside us through the bar.
“Where are you sleeping, Kid?” Fish asked as we passed through, into the wee hours.
“The usual, I guess: Felix’s old place,” I said. “Unless you’re going to let me crash in the cellar for once?”
Fish sighed. “I can’t, Kid.” I glared at her, and the meaning in my eyes was clear: Fish had let Konny sleep down there, but she wouldn’t let me.
Fish and I had been through that argument a million times, so don’t ask me why I even bothered. “I know,” she said off my glare. “But Konny was desperate and was about to get a place of her own. It was two nights!”
I waved her off. Fish was always trying to stop me from staying at the warehouse, at Felix’s old place. I don’t know her motivation, but she didn’t care enough to open her door to me, so it doesn’t really matter, does it?
“Same as any other night,” I said, and added, “Besides, I gotta walk Konny home,” which was ridiculous, because in her three-inch-heeled shit-kicking boots, Konny—with her torn tights and black leather skirt, and her short-cropped raven-black hair—was a very intimidating six feet of femme fatale. Way scarier than I could ever hope to be.
“Why do you want to sleep at the warehouse?” Fish said. “Why do you even want to sleep in the cellar? Why do you keep surrounding yourself with…”
She trailed off, but I knew where she’d been going: with memories of Felix.
I lit a cigarette and said through my teeth, “I’ll be fine. I’ll be sober by the time I make it back this way, and you’ll probably see me again in about ten hours and we can start all over, okay?”
Konny and I waved goodbye as we turned and started along Franklin, toward Williamsburg.
“Or you could go to school tomorrow!” Fish called after us.
I swung my backpack around to the front and dug around for the fifth of vodka, which still had a little left, and we passed it between us while we walked. We didn’t say much, just drained the bottle. It ended up smashed against a toilet factory on Banker Street.
Halfway through McCarren Park in Williamsburg, Konny stopped short and I nearly fell.
“What the hell,” I said.
Konny nodded toward a nearby bench with a couple of people on it, one of them, from the sound of it, moments from ecstasy. I squinted into the dark but couldn’t make out their faces.
“Hey, Ace!” Konny called out, and then I got it. He was in our art class, and Konny and him had been couply for a little bit, maybe a year or so. Ace—dumbest name ever—was one of those Clash boys, always sneering and rolling up the cuffs of his jeans and covering himself in obscure political buttons. Such crap. He had a mohawk—the tall kind—for a year in ninth grade. He was cute, but he knew it a little too well, and got his hands on every piece of ass that would let him. Not that Konny was any better at fidelity.
The ecstasy was averted, and Konny strode toward the bench, heavily throwing her hips: I might fuck you, I might kill you.
“Konny,” Ace said, feigning pleasure to see her. His benchmate stood and Ace went to grab his wrist, but he took off like a fellating little rabbit.
“Who the fuck was that?” Konny said, and I decided it might be time to make my exit. I wasn’t worried about leaving Konny alone with Ace, even though she was drunk and this park was deserted. I might have worried about Ace a little, but I never liked him anyway.
“Good night, Konny.”
I crossed back over Bedford, alongside the school, past the tennis courts, and I could still hear Konny’s shouting. When I moved onto Banker—down the canyon of factories and underground clubs—Konny’s voice switched off, blotted out by the brick and cement blocks.
In my pocket, my thumb ran over the textured wheel of my lighter, over and over, until I remember my breath was a little short and reached for my cigarettes. I’d meant to quit, since Felix, but I hadn’t gotten around to it. I suppose I was waiting for a reason.
The wind off the river was shooting down the Banker Street canyon, so I stopped walking and took cover in a doorway to light up; I guess I wasn’t as practiced as I thought I was. Finally I got a little of the tip to burn orange and dragged hard. The cigarette started to burn down one side, but finally caught and burned evenly. I let the smoke come in with my breath and sighed it back out. Then I looked out from the doorway down Banker, toward the warehouse. I knew right away I wouldn’t be sleeping there that night. I wouldn’t be sleeping there ever again. No one would.
…
By the time Konny found me, I was sitting on the curb across West Street, near the corner of Meserole, just watching. Fire trucks were already there, and more were on the way. Apartment building doors began to open and the streets began to fill. I felt a hand on my back and then Konny sat beside me and wrapped her arms around me. I shook, and laughed that I had a chill so close to all this heat.
Konny stayed with me, watching the firefighters, watching the warehouse burn from the inside, to a charred husk, for hours. It was long after sunrise and the firefighters were still trying to contain the blaze when Fish came running down West, completely in a panic.
Konny and I watched her approach. “Do you think our parents know where we stay?” Konny said. I looked up at her but didn’t reply. Konny’s eyes went wet and she looked back at Fish, who was almost upon us. “I wonder if they’d care.”
Fish threw her arms around both of us and cried. We all cried, I guess, and she led us up Calyer and along Franklin and said, “You’re staying in my cellar as long as you need to,” and with people staring we walked in a group hug all the way to her bar.
GREENPOINT TERMINAL WAREHOUSE
I never even made it into a holding cell. Instead I sat in a small, boring room, waiting for
my parents to show up. No one said anything. A new cop was there, an older, uglier one. His face must have been made of leather. I wondered if this precinct had a token female and where she was, if she planned to join us.
My father didn’t say anything. He sat next to me and bubbled toward boiling. My mother sat on my other side and held on to my arm, comforting but looking for comfort too. She took my chin in her hand and looked at my face. She’d missed me, she said.
Everything was clean and clinical now. There was a tape recorder on the table in front of me, and I answered everything right into its microphone.
“Yes, I have slept at the warehouse…. For about ten months … summer of 2005 … That’s when I left home.”
He didn’t even shift in his seat. My mother’s hand moved up and down my forearm, once, and she gripped my elbow hard.
“I spent most of that night at Fish’s bar…. Yes, the one you found me in, on Franklin…. A couple of blocks from the warehouse, yes…What do you mean? Oh, yes. I was drunk when I left the bar that night…. A friend, only. I left with her, and I walked with her to, um, McCarren Park. Then I turned around and headed back to Greenpoint, back toward the warehouse…. I don’t know. Like I said, I was drunk. It was late. After two, I think….”
He asked me if I smoked when I got back to the warehouse. I said I didn’t remember. He asked me if I was still drunk when I got back to the warehouse. I said yes, probably. He asked me if anyone else was at the warehouse. I shrugged and said probably. There were usually people at the warehouse. Lots of people slept there.
“But not in the section where you slept, is that right?”
“There were a few,” I said. “It wasn’t only me.”
Brooklyn, Burning Page 2
