Brooklyn, Burning

by Steve Brezenoff

  “It’s fine.”

  I turned away from you and faced the window, then opened my buckle. I kicked off my shoes, then sat on the edge of the bed and pushed my jeans down and over my knees to the floor. I got under the cover quickly and said good night, but I watched you in the low light, looking around again, sitting on the edge of my bed, pulling off your sneakers, standing again, opening your jeans and letting them fall around your ankles, stepping out of them, stretching out on the floor, pulling the blanket over you, up to your chest, staring at the ceiling, probably wondering what the hell you were doing here.

  (HOW I ENDED UP ON THE STREET)

  “So, I got a job,” Konny said one morning in July, last summer.

  She didn’t really have a choice. I never heard details, but for a couple of days she’d been hauling her duffel around a lot and I was pretty sure she wasn’t going home. “At that comic place on Metropolitan. For Zeph.”

  I nodded. Me and Konny were sitting on the loading dock of one of the old warehouses off West Street. Under us, the pavement was losing its fight against the weeds: nature was storming the beach at Greenpoint.

  “Where are you sleeping?”

  I looked over at Konny, sort of sideways, squinting a little at the sun just peeking out from around Quay Street. She’d pulled up her cutoff cargos and was picking at a scab on her knee. Then she looked out at the river, or maybe out at Manhattan, and twisted up her mouth.

  “Zeph says I can sleep on the futon in his office until I find my own place.”

  “He gave you the job and a place to stay? Wow.”

  Konny went back to her knee, pressing on the bloody spot with her thumb, then pulling it away until the flow picked up again, then putting it back and pressing again. “He gets a lot of indie fans in there, and I guess I blew his mind with my vast expertise on the world of independent comic publishing. Plus, you know, I’ve given him my goddamn allowance since I was about five. He owes me.” She looked at me and smiled and I weakly smiled back.

  “Where have you been sleeping, though? I mean, meanwhile—you haven’t been home in a few days, right?”

  Konny shook her head once. The cropped section of hair had grown in a little bit, kind of funny and uneven. “Fish let me sleep in her cellar.”

  My chest got tight and warm. “With Felix?”

  “I haven’t seen him much, actually,” Konny said. “He just practices there. And sometimes he passes out on the floor. But he must have someplace else he usually stays.”

  Konny and I had been hanging out at Fish’s a lot, mostly before the real night scene would get going. We got to see a few of Felix’s sets, and Fish was always there working, and Jonny was usually there hanging around. But I hadn’t thought Fish and Konny had gotten close or anything.

  “Why did Fish let you stay?”

  “I asked her to let me stay,” Konny said. She licked her thumb and shrugged. “I guess I was kind of a mess—crying and … and shit.”

  She chuckled, and I knew she didn’t want me looking at her, so I pulled my eyes away and onto the river. It was fairly still that morning. Konny took my hand, and it occurred to me that I had no idea what day it was.

  Konny and me were never more physical than that. Neither of us wanted to be, though I tried one time. We were leaning on each other in the alley behind her parents’ place, and Konny was thumbing through an issue of Fables. She looked down at me when she laughed sometimes, so I’d ask her what was funny and she could read me a panel or page.

  I let my hand slide up from her knee, along her thigh. Konny closed her comic and moved it away.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, so I faced her and threw one leg across her lap, then lowered my face to her long throat and kissed her collarbone. She pushed me off.

  “What the hell?” I said.

  “Are you serious?” she asked, laughing.

  I got up and walked across the alley and kicked the cement wall. One of those stencils of Andre the Giant looked at me.

  “Isn’t that what you want?” I said.

  “From you?” Konny said, and it stung, so I walked away fast. Konny wasn’t letting it go, though. She followed me on her long legs and had a hand on my shoulder in ten steps. “Come on.”

  “Am I so bad?” I asked without turning around.

  “You’re not bad at all,” Konny said. “I love you. I love you because you’re not bad. You’re my…”

  I looked at my feet. “I thought it’s what you wanted,” I said. “It’s … it’s always what you want. All those boys and girls that follow you around.”

  “Is that all?” Konny said. I felt her arms close around me and her chin on the top of my head. “You’re just doing what you think you’re supposed to do?”

  I shrugged against her and she laughed.

  “Be the one I don’t have to do that with, Kid, okay?” Konny said, and I nodded. And that was that.

  …

  Konny headed to work after dropping me at Fish’s. She had to run down and grab her bag from the cellar, so I went down there with her. The only lights on were a few strings of flashing Christmas lights, hanging across the low ceiling and along the pipes on the right wall. Felix—a skinny boy with dark short hair, in torn cargo shorts and a beater—was sitting on the grimy yellow couch, strumming an unplugged electric guitar, eyes closed, and humming.

  “Hi, Felix,” Konny said. She grabbed her duffel. “Bye, Felix.” Then she smiled at me and headed up the stairs again. I just stood, watching him, listening to the melody he hummed. Even without words, it haunted me—it filled the room and everything in it. The visions it gave me: they were dark, but beautiful. They took me out of the cellar, up to rooftops at night on the lower East Side, down into the subway, onto the tracks, and into the tunnels. They brought me deep into the city, deeper than anyone can ever really go: into its heart.

  I stared at him, willed him to open his eyes and see me, but he never did.

  Back upstairs, the early afternoon sun was too bright, so I joined Jonny at the bar.

  …

  Dad packed my bag for me. Just before the sun came up some morning that August, the bag was sitting on my bed, waiting for me when I came in. I stood there, staring at it, swaying a little on my tired feet and a beautiful rocking wave of vodka.

  A light clicked on in the corridor behind me, but I didn’t turn around.

  “You’re drunk.”

  I nodded, looking at the duffel and at the collage of models I’d made when I was nine, all now with their eyes blacked or gouged out with a ballpoint pen. The collage was surrounded by my sketches—still lifes and nudes and abstract shapes and curves I could remember shading for hours, focusing all my energy on the tiniest square inch of the page—and looking from one sketch to the other I could trace my growth as an artist. I could see where my stroke had changed, had suddenly improved.

  “Where did you drink tonight?”

  I didn’t answer. Didn’t turn around.

  “Who were you with? Konny?”

  I slipped my hands into the pockets of my baggy jeans and lifted my elbows in a lazy shrug that didn’t end. The truth was I had hardly seen Konny in the last few weeks. She was spending all her time at the comic shop or working out with Ace, and I was always at or under Fish’s place.

  “I know her parents threw her out. If that’s how you want to live too, then here’s your chance.” He sniffed and cleared his throat. “That’s everything you deserve to take. Don’t be here when we wake up.”

  A moment later the hall light clicked off. I took my bag and twenty dollars from the grocery money in the kitchen and went back to Fish’s place.

  …

  The gate was already down, and Fish already home in her bed. If I’d known where to find her, or where to find Jonny, I might have. If the cellar was open, I’d have happily slept down there. But instead I stood in front of the dropped gate, holding my bag, thinking I’d stay awake and on my feet until Fish showed up to open again for the da
y drinkers. In a neighborhood like this one, with writers and musicians and artists in every loft, Fish got a lot of day drinkers.

  While I stood there, though, drifting off on my feet, wishing for a little more vodka and thinking of finding Jonny to get some, the cellar doors flew up and open. The rust-colored panels slammed into the cement of the sidewalk, one just inches from where I stood. My reverie was shattered.

  “What are you doing here?” Felix’s head stuck out from the cellar steps. His deep-set eyes were half closed—as open as I’d ever seen them—and his dark, short hair was pressed flat on one side, like he’d been sleeping.

  “Nothing,” I said. I looked down at my ratty sneakers, already looking like a street kid’s, and spoke into my chest. “I’m just waiting for Fish to open.”

  Felix clambered out and swung the cellar shut, then locked it. “She’s not going to be around for hours, kid.”

  I lifted my head and stared at him, startled at his tone. “I know. I don’t have anywhere else to go, so I’m going to wait.”

  He was a little shorter than me, and skinny. His mouth was small and his lips seemed to purse slightly, now and then, in a rhythm. I wondered what music was in his head.

  “You can come with me.”

  “I thought you slept in the cellar,” I said. “Where are you going?”

  Felix started to head across desolate Franklin, and I took a quick step or two so I could shuffle beside him. “Sometimes I sleep down there, but Fish doesn’t like me to,” he said. “Have you been to the warehouse?”

  “Of course.” Everyone I knew went down to the warehouse; it had always been like that, probably since right after it quit being in the business of housing wares.

  Felix loped. His long neck put his head out and down, so it seemed to dangle before his shoulders, rather than on them. He had the gait of a hungry hyena.

  “I saw your set tonight,” I said. Felix and I still hadn’t played together; he didn’t even know I was a drummer yet, though it seemed I dropped hints at every opportunity. I looked at my feet and the long shadow I was casting as the sun came up behind us. “Last night, I guess, since it’s morning now.”

  Felix pulled out a cigarette and offered one to me, so I took it. He lit it for me when we reached the opposite corner. “Did you enjoy it?” he asked, and the lighter flickered and bloomed at the front of his cigarette as he spoke.

  “I thought it was amazing.” We kept walking, on toward Water Street and the warehouse complex. The sun on my back had warmed my neck a little and I pulled off my backpack and let it hang from my free hand. “I love your voice. You know that.” You must, the way I swoon when you play.

  Felix might have shrugged, but he stopped and didn’t face me, just closed his eyes. I wondered how old he was. He could have been thirteen, might have been thirty.

  “I don’t know my own voice,” he said, then took a long drag. “When I’m singing, I’m somewhere else completely. The songs are a mystery to me when I’m not inside them.” He opened his eyes slightly, just for a moment, and saw me. “Do you know what I mean?”

  I fingered my cigarette and followed him when he began to walk again. “I guess I do. When I play drums, I get lost in the music sometimes. But the way you describe it sounds much deeper.”

  He nodded as he walked. I couldn’t be sure whether it meant yes, or simply was an effect of the mechanics of his walk. “Why don’t you have anywhere to stay? What happened?”

  “My father asked me to leave.”

  Felix smirked, and for an instant I felt tiny, tinier than I was, tinier than Felix, and I waited for his wisdom. We turned on Water Street and cut across it toward an entrance to the warehouse complex. “So you’ve got your freedom,” he said. “The question is: what will you spend it on?”

  I followed Felix through the weeds and rubble, up some decaying cement steps, and into an old loading dock. That’s as far as I’d normally have gone, with Konny or anyone from the neighborhood, to just sit and drink. But Felix kept walking.

  He led me through a big open room, with beams lying diagonally from ceiling to floor, walls of pocked cement, the reinforcement bars visible through scars—left by vandals or time, no difference. Light snuck in through the dirty cracked windows, where the green paint they’d been covered with had peeled away, or where whole panes had been smashed. The light hung in the room in dusty pockets, and every step Felix took among the rubble sent a new cloud of tiny fragments of cement into the stale air.

  For me, it was like imposing on an ancient city, where people once worked and lived. I imagined the men—in my mind, all stocky and crew-cutted, in heavy cotton shirts, dark green, with sleeves rolled up to their biceps. They smoked on the job, and managed to laugh now and then in their somber way, though the work was hard and the only air in the room came through the huge fan blowing smelly air in, off the East River. At lunch, they’d take their metal lunchboxes down the access road through the warehouse complex, and maybe sit where they could see the skyline. Over the years, they’d seen the buildings of downtown get higher and higher, and then midtown. They’d watched the Twin Towers grow, and though empty, the warehouse still stood after the towers had fallen.

  Felix took me up a flight of stairs—I was surprised by how stable they seemed—then another, and we came to a door standing open and went through. Some rusty cots were piled in the corner, and a couch and an old kettle grill were in the middle of the room. In the far wall was a tall narrow doorway with an arched top. It led out to a fire escape.

  Felix went over to the door and looked out for a moment. He pulled out a cigarette and said. “Isn’t it amazing up here?”

  After a drag, he moved to the couch and sat, and I walked past him to the fire escape and leaned on the door frame. It looked out over the access roads of the complex, and beyond that I could see the waterfront buildup—condos and condos—down in Williamsburg. I heard Felix flick a cigarette lighter, and I pulled out my own and a cigarette and lit one for myself. Turning, I saw Felix hunched over on the couch. I knew right away he was shooting up, and I don’t know why it surprised me, since I should have known. He was never really “there.”

  I turned back to the outside and wondered how soon he might fall asleep so I could leave.

  …

  I got back to Fish’s bar before noon, but she and Jonny were already inside, flirting across the bar at each other while Fish got ready for the small but reliable crew of daytime drinkers, Jonny himself first and foremost. When I walked in, they both jumped a little; even Jonny’s smile looked flat, just for a second.

  “Hi,” I said, just as flat.

  Jonny recovered and gathered me up in his hug, while Fish slapped open the register and filled it with change for the day.

  “What are you doing here, Kid?” Jonny said.

  “I haven’t seen Felix yet today,” Fish added without looking at me, but answering the question she thought I’d come to ask. I shot her the stink eye and climbed onto the stool next to Jonny. “Coke?”

  “Thanks,” I said. Jonny put a firm hand on my thigh so I’d know he was on my team, and because he liked having a hand on my thigh. I didn’t mind. “Fish, I need a place to stay.”

  I felt Jonny’s cringe through his hand. Fish looked up with a sigh and put down the glass of Coke. It was already sweating. I wrapped both my hands around it, cold and wet, and leaned forward to take the straw into my mouth. I looked down the length of the straw at the surface of the soda and ice, popping and fizzing onto my cheeks.

  “I was thinking maybe the cellar,” I went on before Fish could say anything, before she could start explaining, kindly, how insane this was. “It would just be until I find someplace else, like with Konny.”

  “What happened at home?” Jonny asked. He turned on the stool and faced me.

  I shrugged. “I came home drunk, and I guess my dad heard about Konny being evicted, which is ridiculous. I mean, she got kicked out for always bringing fuck buddies by, right? For screwin
g Ace all over her parents’ apartment. In the kitchen, for Christ’s sake. Wherever he said ‘go.’” I pulled another sip up the straw. “I never brought anyone home. So what if I have a few drinks in the summer?”

  I knew what it was about, though, really. Jonny and Fish did too, from the little glance they exchanged. I made Dad uncomfortable, virgin or not—just like Konny made her folks uncomfortable. Bringing Ace home, girls home … whoever—what difference did that make? Konny liked to fuck; kicking her out just said “not here;” it didn’t say “not at all.” As for me, who knows—maybe it would have helped if I brought someone home so my parents would be able to put me in a box, a check mark on a census form.

  The Coke was about drained, so I sucked at the diluted remains, then stirred the ice cubes around and around the bottom of the glass. “Plus, yeah, my dad’s a bigoted asshole, I suppose.”

  I looked up at them both, at Fish and Jonny, because I knew how much bigoted assholes made them angry, indignant, and defensive of yours truly. Jonny gave Fish the look he uses when I just want one goddamn vodka and cranberry, but Fish’s face stayed stern and she pulled away my empty glass to refill.

  As she placed the new Coke in front of me, she said she was sorry.

  “You let Konny,” I said.

  “Konny was a mistake,” Fish said, a little regret in her voice. “I could have been arrested. I could have lost everything.”

  “I don’t have anywhere else to go!” I said, throwing my hands up. I let them both fall back to bar. They made a loud slap, and my hands stung.

  “Come on, Kid,” Jonny said. “We’ll find somewhere for you to stay.”

  “No, I know what this is about,” I said, glaring at Fish. “There’s no reason you should have let Konny stay but you won’t let me. It’s because you don’t want me hanging out with Felix.”

  Fish laughed quickly. “Like that wouldn’t be a sensible reason all by itself.”

  I slapped the bar again and stared her down.

  Fish wasn’t having it. “He’s a goddamn junkie, Kid!”