You walked over to the bottom of the forbidden staircase and craned your neck to get a glimpse. “Do you think he’s still up there?” you asked with mischief in your voice.
I shrugged, kicking around at the bottom of the other set, itching to go up, see what was still in my little room. “Jonny’s throwing a party on Friday night.”
You took a step up the forbidden stairs. “Yeah?”
I nodded, though you couldn’t see me. “It’s an end-of-summer thing. A last chance to see some people and have all the fun he can before people start disappearing, next week, I guess.”
“That sounds like something we should go to,” you said. “I’ll miss some of those people too.”
I turned to face you, sensing you’d finally stopped craning to see upstairs, and you were looking back at me. “Hey,” you said. We looked at each other for a long moment. I couldn’t speak, thinking about you leaving, heading back to the moon at the summer’s end, like Jonny always did, or like Felix did, just once. When I took a step toward you, you suddenly smiled and said, “Catch me.” And you took off upstairs, skipping every other step.
“Wait!” I called, running after you. “He might still be up there.” I came to a stop at the bottom and listened to your laughter.
“I’m going to miss you,” I added in a whisper, and the Polish man was nowhere to be found. Standing there at the bottom of the steps, I realized I knew some truth about the fire.
(MORE ABOUT THE FIRE)
It was early one night last summer, just as the sun was going down and the air off the river smelled a little nice and cooled my neck a bit, when Felix and I were strolling back to the warehouse. Fish’s place had gotten crowded, so it must have been a Friday or Saturday, and the stomping over our heads was screwing up our practice.
“You could probably have gone upstairs,” I said to Felix. “Done a set.”
He shrugged off the notion and pulled out his cigarettes as we hit West Street.
“Spare one?” I asked, and he could and did. He lit mine with his, and I took a long slow drag and let it loose toward the river. We were close then, me and Felix. I probably loved him as best as I knew how.
“What the hell is this?” Felix said. I found what he’d seen: a little forest-green car parked near the bay where we usually entered the warehouse. When we reached it, Felix peered in the windows.
“Who knows,” I said. “Some suburban kid looking for a party, probably got lost.”
“And left his car here?” Felix said. I just twisted my mouth up a bit and hopped up onto the loading dock. I sat there, watching Felix check out the car. “Besides, this is no kid’s car. It’s too classic.”
“I guess,” I said, not really caring. I never got cars, or their appeal. For a second it seemed odd that Felix did, but with all his talk of leaving town, I guess it made sense. “Doesn’t seem like it belongs here exactly, huh?”
Felix shook his head. “Not one bit, even.”
I got comfortable in the dock, leaning against the wall and enjoying my cigarette. The heat wasn’t so bad, fully in the shade now from the setting sun.
“There’s a bunch of papers on the passenger seat,” Felix said.
“What kind of papers?” I asked, but I wasn’t really interested. It was just sort of fun watching Felix get into it.
“I can’t tell,” he said. “One of them says ‘something something Construction.’”
“There ya go,” I said. “Someone casing the warehouses to knock’em down, put up condos. You know, like all over Williamsburg.”
Felix must have been thinking that over. After a minute he said, “Yeah, probably.”
“You all right?”
“Sure.”
I took a last short drag and tossed my cigarette into the weeds. For a moment I thought it might start a little fire. It didn’t. “You worrying about where you’ll sleep if this place is gone?” I asked.
“Nah,” he said. “There’s always someplace to sleep.”
I started to worry, though. I started to think about losing the warehouse, about the owner of this car showing up and catching us here—a couple of urchins. He’d probably beat us up, skinny and weak as we were. “Let’s get inside.”
Felix took one more long look into the car. “It’s a nice car.”
Then he jumped up into the bay and I got to my feet. Together we found our staircase and headed up to our room. We had company.
He wasn’t tall, and he wasn’t intimidating at all, outside of his obvious money: his clothes were expensive but ugly. His face was fat and smooth, and his hair was thin and slicked back, like he’d just gotten bigger and learned to walk—a giant baby.
“Who the hell are you?” Felix said, but it was obvious: he was the owner of the little green car parked outside.
The man didn’t smile, didn’t try to ply us with words. He just looked at me and Felix in turn. “Do you live here?” he asked.
“Yes,” Felix said. “But you don’t.”
“I’m thinking about it, though,” he said. “Thinking about buying this warehouse—the whole block, actually.”
“So don’t you have people who come check this sort of thing out for you?” I asked. “You’re getting your shoes dirty.”
He smiled at me slowly and went mum.
“Well, it’s a shit hole,” Felix said.
The man looked back at Felix for a moment, then moved over the little terrace at the back of the room. Stepped out onto the wrought iron and looked at the river. “A historic shit hole, in point of fact,” he said. “Historic property equals headaches to people like me.”
“So?” Felix said, and I thought about all those men in brown shirts, or navy blue, or maybe deep, forest green, grunting and sighing and laughing and shouting, pushing carts and hauling boxes, sorting and storing—taking smoke breaks out on the loading bay, just like me and Felix.
“So,” the man said, turning around to face us again, “if I were to buy these warehouses, I’d have to bring them up to code, keep them intact, relatively speaking, in order to convert them, make them useful again.”
“As condos?” I put in. “We don’t want any more of those.” I sat down on the couch and Felix tossed me his pack. I pulled one out and lit it. When I took a drag and sent my exhale toward the visitor, it meant: You can go now.
He laughed and took a cigar from his pocket. “I assume you don’t mind?” he said, glancing at me with a smirk. Then he bit off the tip and spit it on the floor—right on the floor—and lit the stinky thing. Smelled like shit right away.
Baby Face puffed at his reeking pacifier. He glanced around Felix’s and my little place, looking at the little piles of trash here and there on the floor. He smiled briefly, then dropped his cigar right into a paper bag of Burger King wrappers. It burst into flames.
“Whoa!” he said through an openmouth smile. He was laughing when I jumped up from the floor and stomped out the fire.
“What the hell?” I shouted, one foot slapping the concrete floor over and over, fragments of black, burnt paper floating around my ankle.
“Hey, don’t blame me,” he said to me, still smiling, his hands in front of him in defense. “This place is a fucking tinderbox.”
I stood there, gaping at the psycho millionaire. He was done with me, though, his point having been made. He looked at Felix, and Felix’s eyes glazed over as he stared back.
“If anything should happen here,” he said, his face now serious and dark, “I’ll know who to thank. I can be very grateful when I have call to be.”
Felix put his cigarette in his teeth and wiped his palms on his pants, back and forth on his thighs several times.
“Are we clear?” the man asked, still with the hard stare at Felix.
Felix stood up and nodded slowly. “Absolutely,” he said. “Do we shake?”
The rich guy smirked and pulled a new cigar from his coat, then put it in his teeth. “That’s not necessary,” he said. “Good night.”
&n
bsp; Then he turned and left our little room with a view. I sat there on the couch, watching Felix bounce nervously and listening to the real-estate investor’s heavy steps on the way out. I hoped silently that our insane drunk friend would heave an empty in his direction.
“Are you serious, Felix?” I asked. He continued to bounce and fidget, and I could tell his next move would normally be to reach inside his pocket for a little rubber-banded baggy. “Felix.”
My insistence snapped him from his trance of nerves and excitement and pre-needle. “What?” He stopped his kinetics and faced me.
“You can’t be seriously talking about taking a payoff from that fat fuck to burn down the warehouse!”
Felix flashed an openmouth smile at me. He even opened his eyes past half-mast for an instant. But his mind—his mind was as gone as it ever got, and that’s saying a lot. He reached one hand out to me on the couch and squatted in front of me so I was looking down at his narrow, unshaven, beautiful face. And even though he stopped smiling, his eyes remained as big and bright as I’ve ever seen them.
“Kid, do you know what this could mean?” he said, putting his extended hand on my knee. A muscle twitched in my thigh. “One little flick of my lighter,” he went on, snapping his thumb and first finger together, “and I could get out of here. I could go anywhere, do anything!”
I dropped my gaze from his eyes for a moment and he quickly spoke again. “You’d come too, Kid. You earned your freedom, right? You’ve still got plenty of it left too. We’ll record, hire a full orchestra. You called me Brian Wilson, right? California, Kid. We could buy a place, studio time. This is what we’ve been wanting. Can you imagine?”
I shook my head and pushed his hand off my leg. I was mad at him, but also I thought if his hand crept another inch I’d let him do anything he wanted—and I don’t just mean burning down the warehouse. When he sat back, I got up from the couch and headed to the terrace. “Listen to yourself, Felix.” I backed out onto the terrace and leaned against the wrought iron. “I mean, I’m not going to get all emotional about the warehouse, but you can’t seriously be considering doing this.”
“Why the hell not?” He got up and lit another cigarette.
I rolled my eyes and turned to face the river. “Because it’s stupid. You could get arrested. You could die! And honestly”—I spun to face him—“even if you get away with it and don’t kill yourself or anyone else, he’d probably never pay you.”
He waved me off and dropped onto the couch, then reached into his pocket for a fix. “Come on,” he said. “Why wouldn’t he?”
I stomped toward the couch. “Why would he? What are you going to do, sue him? Take him to court for breach of contract?”
“You’re being melodramatic,” he replied, not looking up from his habit. He was too busy digging around for his spoon.
“Fine,” I said. “I’m going for a walk. Don’t burn it down until I get back.”
I had nothing to worry about, of course. I knew I’d come back in an hour to find him slumped over, passed out on the couch.
WHAT ABOUT YOU?
I almost kissed you that night. I thought it could be our last night. We were sitting on the windowsill in Jonny’s apartment—at his end-of-summer party—looking out into the heart of Greenpoint. I watched you purse your lips when you sipped your drink, and I thought, We could kiss.
Past your face—it looked more beautiful to me by the minute—Greenpoint’s sky was as dark as it gets, hued in green and pink and white, from streetlights and phosphorescence and the world past its close horizons. We hardly spoke, because all night “goodbye” tried to find my lips from where it was stuck in my throat, like a pill that wouldn’t go all the way down, so I pushed it back with sip after sip of my drink.
Your hair fell over your eyes a little bit like it does when you sing and play guitar, when your hands are too busy in the moment to push those bangs back up. I looked down into my drink, which was mostly ice at that point, but instead of looking back up and into your eyes, I just swirled it around, sending the ice in circles around the bottom of the cup. My lips went dry, and then my mouth.
“I’m getting another drink,” I said.
You looked at me and might have smiled. “Okay.”
Jonny was at the drinks table, flirting with Ace. I thought Ace was with some new girl most of the time lately, and I thought about Konny. I knew they were broken up, but I wondered if me and Konny were still even friends.
“Hi, Jonny,” I said.
He gave me a shout through that openmouth smile he uses. It always makes me a little fluttery, I admit, like I have to throw my arms around him and just get lost in there.
“Hey, Kid,” Jonny said. He was drunk, and he bowed deeply, his best Prince Charming. “What has torn you from your window and moments with Scout?”
I held up my cup. “Drinkies?” I was already buzzing too, but Jonny would oblige.
Ace looked over my shoulder, toward you and our window, and I resisted the urge to follow his gaze. Instead I watched Jonny pour some plastic-jug vodka into my plastic red cup. He added plastic cranberry juice and a plastic fluorescent pink stirrer. “Thanks, Jonny.”
“One for Scout?” he said, holding up a new plastic cup and a smile.
I looked back at you by the window, still alone, still staring out. You pushed your hair back finally and looked over at me. Your eyes were sad and faraway—I guess they usually are—but you tried to smile.
“I think it’s time for us to go,” I said. “Sorry, Jonny.”
“Take care of that one,” he said, leaning in gravely. “We all worry about you two, you know that, Kid?”
“I know,” I said, handing him my drink back. “Thanks, Jonny.”
I reached you just as Ace did. He leered at me and he was obviously drunker than usual, because he never looks at me like that—like a hungry lion sizing up a wounded antelope. I grabbed your hand. “Wanna go, Scout?”
“Rude much, Kid?” Ace said.
“Fuck off, okay? We’re leaving.”
I prayed a little, I think, that you would come with me and not stay with Ace to finally give him what he’d probably wanted all summer. Which was stupid, because of course you came with me.
We walked away together, and though I looked back at Ace, you didn’t. You were gone—off in Scout brain. Ace was lighting a cigarette and waving at us, and through his teeth he called after us: “I love you, Kid!” Very singsongy and sarcastic; I wanted to punch him.
I knew I should have headed home. I should have dropped you someplace safe, or even left you with Jonny, but I couldn’t say goodbye. Instead I pointed us toward the river. We walked embracing, down Driggs and across McGuinness, and that’s when you started talking. You slipped your hand around my waist and into the loop of my jeans and talked on, nearly clear across Greenpoint, and when we got to the practice space under Fish’s, you passed out on the floor and I curled up beside you.
In the night, I dreamed you rolled over and kissed me on the mouth. I dreamed that my hands found your body and that we tore into each other like Christmas presents. But when I woke up, I was fully dressed and you were gone.
“Kid.”
Something jabbed me in the side and I jumped a little. “Ow. What the fuck.” I sat up. It was a boot, a big black boot. Just above it was a muscular calf and thigh, covered in ink.
“Kid, wake up.” It was Fish, obviously, and she was angry. With a very loud sigh, she shook her blue bangs out of her eyes. Then she kicked me again.
“Hey! Just stop kicking me.”
“You left the cellar doors open again.”
I looked at my feet and remembered my sneakers were under the couch. I reached under to grab them and also found your orange glittery pick and grabbed that too. While I was sitting on the floor lacing up, Fish sat down on the couch behind me. “Listen, sorry for the rude awakening, Kid. I’m glad you’re safe, but if anything happened to you or Scout … I mean, besides the legal trouble we’d
be in, you and me—”
“I know.”
“Okay,” she said.
I got to my feet and looked down at her. “So, you didn’t see Scout, huh?”
Fish shook her head. “But I have good news,” she said. “And just in time too; summer’s almost over.”
I swallowed and turned away, thinking about the end of last summer, and your arrival when the summer began, and wondering again what the end of summer must mean.
“If People still wants to play upstairs, you can have a set tonight. Right at midnight.”
“No shit?” I said, spinning to face her again. She was beaming. “A Saturday night?”
Fish shrugged. “I had a cancellation, to be honest, but I miss hearing you through the floor since we put up that soundproofing. You two were sounding so good—Scout’s singing is pretty amazing.”
I smiled. “I know.”
“So, find Scout. Make sure you’re here by like eleven, okay? I don’t want to put out the sixteen-plus sign if I don’t have to, know what I mean?”
“No problem,” I said. For all I knew, though, you’d skipped town already. Maybe you hated goodbyes as much as I did, and figured ducking out before I woke up was the best thing. I headed for the steps and up to the sidewalk.
“And for chrissake, Kid,” Fish called from behind me, “lock the damn doors behind you!”
The sun was already pretty high. Saturday, not yet noon, and that night would be our last Saturday before school would start up again. And we had a gig. Meanwhile I hardly knew where I’d be come sunrise on Monday—maybe on my way to homeroom. And when I’d asked you, “What about you?”…
…
Do you remember when I asked, “So, what about you?”? We were walking hand in hand up Driggs. We’d split the little whisky in your flask and figured we’d find Jonny and get another drink.
Do you remember the sun was over the Royal Oak, bright as yellow, and we weren’t sure if it was coming up or going down?
Do you remember that my shoelace tore on my right sneaker and we stopped at that bodega on North 12th Street and they only had black dress laces? You rolled your startling eyes and said, “That will have to do.” The old Polish man behind the counter had been sleeping and our humor was too high for him.
Brooklyn, Burning Page 11
