Property Of, the Drowning Season, Fortune's Daughter, and At Risk

by Alice Hoffman

  Monty shrugged. “I know McKay’s got a habit he can’t fix with Coca-Cola,” he said.

  I smiled. “What else is new?”

  We were silent for a while. The store was empty except for an occasional customer buying ice cream or a copy of the Daily News. The bells above the door jangled softly. Tosh and the Orphans walked in, filling the candy store with silence and leather.

  “Oh shit,” I said softly.

  Monty moved away, retreating to the far end of the counter. Tosh sat on the stool nearest me, and the other Orphans and Property stood behind us. The candy store was very narrow and the backs of the Orphans rubbed up against airplane models and teddy bears.

  “Sister,” said Tosh.

  “Didn’t know we were related,” I said. I wondered how much was known. What Kind knew could not hurt McKay; what the Dolphin knew could.

  “Well,” Tosh said, running a hand over his shaven head, “if you’re still with McKay I guess we ain’t related.”

  They knew something. “I’m still with him,” I said.

  “Then you’re against the Orphans,” he said.

  “And with a junkie,” Kind said.

  There was silence.

  “I’m still with the President of the Orphans.”

  “Wrong,” said Tosh.

  “You’re sitting next to the President of the Orphans right now,” said Leona.

  I looked at Tosh and he smiled. “Bullshit,” I said, but I thought, “Of course.” Of course the Dolphin would choose Tosh, a soldier who was used to taking orders and who would never let honor or words get in the way. Tosh would protect the Avenue for the Dolphin and never ask questions. “Bullshit you’re the President,” I said.

  “Tell McKay,” Tosh said.

  “You tell him,” I said.

  Tosh hesitated. He looked at the other Orphans for support. “Oh yeah?”

  The Dolphin was no fool. I had to smile.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You want McKay to know you think you’re President of the Orphans, you tell him.”

  I reached for the brown paper bag which held the last of my credit (I figured McKay and I owed Monty thirty-five dollars’ worth of sugar and tobacco now) and threw the Coke and cigarettes into my purse alongside the steak knives and razor blades. I could tell they knew nothing about McKay and the creek; they suspected nothing about the Dolphin and Cantinni’s murder. But they knew enough.

  Monty was winking at me. I thought of the silver locket I wore and wondered if that was why; or if the movement of the old man’s lids was merely an intertwining of eyelashes. I rose from the counter. Kind stood in front of me so that I would have to push by her to leave the narrow candy store.

  “Kind,” I said, “don’t give me any shit.”

  “You already got all the shit you could ever need.” She smiled. I smiled too. We were sweet as cyanide and calm as electric wire. Her neck touched the paw of a teddy bear as she moved aside.

  “Sister,” I said.

  “Sister,” she answered.

  The Orphans parted, leaving a thin aisle for me to walk through. I was on the Avenue, once more walking on the hot cement. I didn’t look back.

  I walked for a while, for some reason thinking not of McKay or of Kind, but of Danny the Sweet. I was no longer afraid to think of the Sweet. I wanted to think of him and not of Kind’s eyes or the tracks on McKay’s arm. I smiled and walked on. The cans of soda in my purse made sloshing noises as they hit against the knives and other dangerous metals.

  I stopped at a corner to wait for a light; someone was following me. I turned my head to glance over my shoulder but behind me the Avenue was still. I was nervous; I cracked my knuckles and stood first on one foot and then the other. When the light turned green I looked left, I looked right, I looked behind me. And then I ran.

  Behind me I heard the sound of boot heels on cement. A block before the auto repair shop and the apartment where McKay waited I turned into an alleyway. It was cool and dark in the narrow shelter of gray and red bricks. I leaned against the wall and breathed deeply. I saw black leather. I held my breath and watched the entrance to the alleyway where a black jacket sleeve hesitated. I bit my thumb. A figure moved into the entrance of the alley; his shadow blotted out the sun. He walked toward me and I thought of the darkness in the creek and the touch of Kid Harris. He hesitated, and I saw that the leather jacket was too large for him who wore it, that the cuffs fell to the knuckles. I saw that the black leather covered Tony.

  “Goddamn you,” I said. My heartbeat grew slower, my pulse calmed. Ivy that had once been green climbed up the brick walls around us. “Goddamn you, kid,” I said.

  I knew Tony had often followed McKay around on the Avenue, but I didn’t want him following me.

  “I want to see McKay,” he said.

  I lit a cigarette and, what the hell, I offered Tony one. What did I care about lungs that were only fourteen years old?

  “Forget it,” I said.

  “Don’t give me loose talk,” said Tony. But I wouldn’t buy any jive toughness from a kid who was too short and thin to find the correct-size leathers.

  “Hey, I said forget it, boy,” I told him. “McKay is sick. And he’s not seeing anyone.”

  “He’ll be a lot sicker,” Tony said and began to walk away.

  Not bad, I thought, not a bad line for a kid.

  “All right,” I said. “All right, tell me what you know.”

  Tony turned to face me. “There’s a meeting tonight. I hear they vote against him tonight.”

  “All right,” I said. I walked out into the sunlit Avenue.

  Tony followed. “All right?” he said.

  I stopped before the Esso station. We stood with our feet in streams of gasoline and oil.

  “All fucking right,” I said. “I’ll tell him.”

  “If there’s trouble, I want to be there, see?” Tony said.

  “You punk,” I said. We moved from the gas-station driveway to allow an impatient Firebird entry. I wanted to smile, but knew he would put the moves on me to bring him along if I did. “I’ll tell him you were the one who found out about the meeting.”

  Tony scowled. “Yeah?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  I left him standing on the street. When I opened the door of the apartment McKay was asleep. The empty Seconal bottle lay by his side and his face was covered with a film of sweat. The TV droned on with no audience: Monty Hall was giving trips around the world to human asparagus, Cadillacs to life-size chickens. I turned off the volume.

  “McKay,” I said. If I could I would take the leather jacket with the letters “President Of” and throw it onto the Avenue to be fought over and pulled apart by souvenir collectors. I couldn’t. And I knew McKay couldn’t do anything but attend the Official Monthly Meeting of the Orphans. “McKay,” I said, “they meet tonight.”

  He opened his eyes. “Fuck it,” he said. He rose and dressed quickly. For a minute I saw the President of the Orphans. “I got to get off first,” he said.

  “I have Darvon.”

  “Darvon, shit. Starry’s always holding.”

  “Flash only cops enough for her. He’s not dealing, so forget it.” I was tired. I sat on the bed and opened a can of Coke.

  McKay rummaged through my purse and found the Darvon. He ate several. “I ain’t fucking prepared,” he said. “What time tonight?”

  “What do you care?”

  “Hey, what do you care if I care?”

  We became silent and watched a wordless news broadcast on TV.

  “Who’s my replacement?” he said finally.

  “Tosh,” I said. McKay threw back his head and laughed hoarsely. “Tell them about Cantinni,” I said. “Tell them the Dolphin murdered Cantinni. That’ll get Tosh nervous.” Why was I giving him advice on the how-to’s of reinstating himself as President? I shut up even before he said, “Shut up. There’s no proof about that.”

  “There’s no proof that you shot Kid Harris in the back.�
��

  He scowled. “I saw it. And that’s the proof.”

  I shrugged; it was his war.

  “I’m going to steal the Chevy,” McKay said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll help,” I said. And McKay smiled.

  We walked down to the closed garage. McKay jarred the lock open with his switchblade. As we silently pushed the Chevy into the street I felt McKay struggle with the weight of the car. He was not in shape to meet the Orphans; he was wasted. The Darvons had slowed his speech and movements. I ran back past barrels of auto parts and rows of tires McKay himself might have stolen and stealthily closed the garage door.

  “Stealing my own fucking car,” McKay said as he started the engine and steered the Chevy out into the Avenue. The Chevy roared past the White Castle and the Esso station, past the gray stone chapel of St. Anne’s. In a schoolyard corner kids shot baskets, and outside apartment buildings men in white sleeveless undershirts sat on stoops drinking beer. I looked for tremors in McKay’s hands, but they held steady to the wheel.

  Motorcycles idled outside the Tin Angel Bar and radio music sang into the air of the Avenue. As the sun moved lower in the sky the streets glowed with pink iridescence; the crackle of nighttime neon was beginning. We drove nearer and nearer to the liquor store.

  “McKay,” I said as he parked the Chevy in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven Food Store around the corner from the clubhouse.

  “Will you get some wine?” he said.

  “McKay,” I said. I wanted to tell him that his retaining the office of President of the Orphans meant nothing to me.

  “Get some wine,” he said. “And check out the situation.”

  I walked around the corner. The Orphans’ cars were parked in the alley near Munda’s. In the liquor store the night clerk sat leafing through the pages of a magazine. When I picked up a bottle of Thunderbird wine and walked to the register he quickly threw the magazine under the counter.

  “I.D.,” he said. The clerk’s face was white and thin. His fingers tapped on the counter, anxious to be rid of me and back to the magazine.

  “I.D. your mother,” I said. “This is for McKay. He wants it on his account.”

  The clerk nodded at the mention of McKay’s name. He packaged the bottle of wine in a brown paper bag. In the Chevy McKay sat smoking a cigarette and staring into the air.

  “It’s cool,” I said. As cool as it could be.

  McKay opened the wine and drank with the bottle still covered with brown paper.

  “Darvon and Thunderbird?” I said.

  “Hey,” he said. I shrugged my shoulders. It was easier to get credit at a liquor store than with a dealer of junk.

  When he had finished half the bottle the Avenue was dark.

  “Stay here,” he said.

  He opened the door and began to walk. I opened my door and stepped over empty and crushed Slurpee cups. I followed him. He knew that I would and he reached behind him and offered me his hand. I accepted and entwined my fingers with his.

  Light and smoke drifted from the open basement windows of the clubhouse. We walked down the stairs and McKay opened the door.

  I stood behind him as he went into the basement. Though it was warm in the clubhouse, I held my arms around myself as if I were cold, and I followed him. Silence greeted us. Smoke and silence and the eyes of Mick Jagger glaring from a poster.

  McKay’s pink motorcycle goggles glittered under the basement’s electric lights. “Brothers,” he said. The silence continued. I sat down on an orange crate near the door. I thought of leaving, I thought of a million reasons and none why McKay would want to attend the Official Monthly Meeting. I lit a cigarette and crossed my legs.

  Tosh sat in a large chair. Behind him stood the Dolphin. The colors of the tattoos cast a reflection upon Tosh’s shaven head.

  “Brothers,” McKay said once more. He nodded to the Property. “Sisters.”

  “McKay,” Tosh said. He hesitated, running his tongue over his lips as if tasting for the words he wanted to use. “McKay,” he said, “get your ass outa here.”

  “Yeah?” McKay said. He struck a match on his fingernail, lit a cigarette, and snuffed the match with his thumb. He inhaled. “Yeah?”

  Even though his hands shook, the way he lit a match could silence a room; the way he inhaled smoke could force dozens of eyes to widen. McKay. I smiled. I knew why I had followed him to the clubhouse: to see him light one match.

  The Dolphin moved from where he stood and faced McKay in the center of the room.

  “McKay,” he said. “Just in time.”

  McKay smiled. He threw the cigarette to the floor and crushed it with his boot heel.

  “Just in time,” said the Dolphin. “We need the jacket, you see. We need the jacket of the President of the Orphans.”

  They stared at each other and fought with their eyes. In the center of one pair was the waterless creek; in the center of the other the betrayal of Cantinni.

  “Brother,” said McKay. “You gonna have to take it. You want this fucking jacket, you gonna have to take it.” He smiled again.

  The Dolphin signaled the Orphans, and Tosh and the Marine walked toward McKay. Each held a leather sleeve; each held one of McKay’s arms. McKay looked at Tosh, then at Martin the Marine. He smiled and then he moved quickly, wrenching one arm free and catching Tosh’s jaw with his fist.

  When they held McKay on the floor, I turned away. I did not watch as they slipped the jacket from him and left him lying on the cement with blood on his face and the pink motorcycle goggles shattered.

  When there was silence once more I looked: Tosh held the leather jacket above him in the air and McKay lay clothed only in jeans and a T-shirt. His arms could now be seen: they were scarred and covered with abscesses and I felt as if I had never before seen that part of his body.

  Tosh cloaked himself in McKay’s jacket and sat rubbing at his jaw. McKay lay motionless. I had known he could not fight them all, but still I held my hand to my mouth, and I bit far into the skin of my palm.

  The Dolphin stood above McKay. He reached into a pocket and then held two pale envelopes in the air. “Severance pay,” he said. The Dolphin threw the envelopes of heroin on the floor. McKay reached for them and tucked them into his boot. Then he stood up, nodded to the Dolphin, to the Orphans, and to the Property. “Brothers,” he said. “Sisters.”

  He walked toward the clubhouse door. I wondered if he had forgotten me. Then he walked out the door and his boot heels sounded farther and farther away.

  I did not move. I tasted blood. There were tooth marks on my palm and blood trickled across my skin. The room was silent. Tosh delicately touched the leather of the jacket he wore. The Dolphin stood behind him once more. And then I thought of the envelopes and then I thought of the other President of the Orphans, Cantinni. And again of the envelopes.

  “What’s in them?” I asked.

  The Dolphin smiled. I thought of arsenic, of strychnine. “Poison,” I said.

  “Not necessarily,” said the Dolphin.

  “Poison,” I said.

  “Heroin,” he said.

  “Heroin? A gift of heroin?”

  “Enough for two fixes, or for one.”

  “A gift?” I said.

  “Ain’t nothing,” the Dolphin said, “for an honorable man who finds out there is no honor.”

  Nothing but suicide. Nothing but the dance with the ghostly white powder. I ran from the basement, the Dolphin’s laughter in my ear, his words forcing me to run faster. The Chevy was still parked in the 7-Eleven lot. McKay could not be far away.

  I ran back to Munda’s Liquor Store and the clubhouse. In the alley the Orphans’ cars were still parked. And there I stopped: he lay beside the cement wall. The needle was still in his arm. I crouched and rocked back and forth on my heels, holding my arms around my knees. I thought if I did not keep my head down I would be sick. My throat made strange noises. He looked very cold lying there on t
he cement in nothing but jeans and a T-shirt. His body was raised slightly away from the cement. His chest moved. The skin was a pale bluish color, and when I reached to touch him he was cold. But still his chest moved and the liquid in his veins still flowed.

  The night clerk from Munda’s Liquor Store saw us when he began to unload empty crates in the alleyway.

  “It was an accident,” I whispered as the night clerk ran to dial for an ambulance.

  I watched McKay breathe until I heard sirens on the Avenue. Then I closed my eyes. Boot heels and stretcher wheels were close by. When the attendants circled around us the moon was high and there was a hot night wind. I raised my head and watched them lift McKay to the stretcher. I was glad to see that they placed the oxygen mask over his face very gently.

  “It was an accident,” I said as I watched them take him away.

  JANUARY

  NINE

  DOING TIME

  1

  For six months I did what women do: I waited. This is what women are taught to be good at. It’s said that a woman’s life is merely preparation for the primal nine-month wait. Whatever the reason, they do it well. Sometimes they drink or bite their fingernails down to the wrist. They count stars and initials and wait: for something to happen, for something to pass, to change, to begin, to end. In wide cotton blouses beside empty cradles there is the wait for a child; in black and veils there is the wait for death. In bathrobes and with painted eyes, with the counting of stars and the turning of glossy magazine pages, there is the wait for him, for the man. There is always the wait for him.

  How do women occupy themselves during the wait and why, in fact, do they wait? Interesting questions to which interesting answers have been formulated at the cocktail parties of the world, in the conference and lecture halls of the universe. The interpretation now served up has never been certified, clarified, or cooked in butter and garlic. No apologies; the cooking metaphor cannot be escaped. They bake; they clean; they watch TV and talk; they sleep at night or they are forced to the Seconal bottle; they kiss their children, or they beat them; they wish that they had never had children to clutter up the waiting, or they wish they had children to fill the waiting. They walk; they drink coffee; they drink gallons of gin or of wine; they place their heads in the ovens or under the hair driers; they call fifty men into their bedroom at one time, or they never turn their eyes to men. They watch second hands and suns and moons; they find ways to fill the waiting.