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

by Alice Hoffman

  “Picking up one of my soldiers,” McKay said.

  I finished the joint while we waited in the Chevy. The front and rear windows of the car were foggy with heat and smoke. “Very good dope,” I said. Perez’s marijuana was even better than Jose’s “New York City’s Finest.”

  “Of course,” said Baby Perez. “That’s my line.”

  A figure cloaked in black leather walked from the shadows of the Tin Angel’s doorway. He opened the back door and sat down next to Perez.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” said Perez. “This kid is your soldier?”

  “That’s right,” said McKay.

  “This deal looks shittier all the time. Your one soldier could use a baby-sitter,” said Perez.

  “Eat it,” Tony said quietly.

  “Tony,” McKay warned. But I saw him smile at the words of his protege.

  Perez leaned forward. “Pardon me,” he said to McKay, “but what did he say to Perez?” He leaned back again, and sat very close to Tony. “What did this dipshit say?”

  “I think you heard me,” Tony said.

  Perez relaxed. He lit a black Russian cigarette with a silver lighter. “I think I did,” he said. “And I think you should know I’m going to kill you.”

  “Hey, hey,” McKay said. He was no longer amused by Tony’s loose talk, or by Perez’s threats. “There’s business to take care of.”

  “Business,” Perez agreed. “Always business first.”

  We drove north on the Avenue, past St. Anne’s. McKay parked the Chevy in front of the blacktop basketball court. The four of us left the car and walked onto the ice of the court. No horde of school kids jumped up into the air wearing T-shirts embossed with team numbers; no one was dribbling up and down the court; there were no priests blowing whistles and shouting foul. Instead, beneath the basket, four young men stood. As we walked toward them, Perez’s velvet cape swirled around his knees. McKay’s black leather cap was tilted over one dark eye, Tony’s black leather jacket reflected starlight. The four stood quietly watching us. When we reached them, McKay said, “Brothers.”

  Their eyes moved warily as wolves’ as they motioned McKay to join them. Tony and I stood outside a circle consisting of McKay, Perez, and two of the strangers. One of them was short and dark and wore the letters

  PRESIDENT OF THE PACK

  on the back of his jacket. The two other Pack soldiers stood guard over Tony and me.

  “What the fuck?” one of them said. “This is McKay’s army?”

  Tony lit a cigarette with a match struck on his thumbnail in the style of McKay. The Pack guards eyed Tony’s finesse with approval, but I noticed that he now sucked on a thumb, which he had singed.

  “What I want,” I heard McKay say, “is this and only this.” He stood with his hands in the pockets of his long wool coat. “I want the Dolphin.”

  “I’m hip to that,” said the President of the Pack. “Lots of folks would like to pop the Dolphin.”

  “I don’t like this setup,” said one of the guards.

  I didn’t blame him. We stood on Orphan territory, and I was certain that the wind had already carried the news of McKay’s release all along the Avenue. One of the Pack guards drew a fifth of whiskey from his pocket. He drank and then passed the bottle to the other guard.

  “What do you say?” Tony said to the guard.

  “I say if you want a drink, show me your I.D., kid,” said the guard, laughing.

  “Who I’m with is my I.D.,” Tony said, and the guard grudgingly passed him the whiskey.

  “Perez here gets full control of the Avenue traffic, and nobody deals dope without checking it out with him first.”

  Perez lit another black cigarette. As the Pack looked him over I finally recognized the new President of the Pack. I had seen him once and only once before, I had seen him through the darkness of the creek as he stood at Kid Harris’s side. My throat felt dry. The President turned to Perez and fingered the velvet material of his cape. Then he looked up at McKay.

  “Full control of all dope dealing?” the President said. “This fag?”

  Perez exhaled smoke into the Pack President’s face.

  “I don’t know,” Perez said. “On this Avenue you don’t see much action. All you see is jive-ass talkers.”

  “Who you calling jive-ass?” the President asked. I drank from the fifth of whiskey. “This Avenue is out of your territory,” continued the number-one soldier of the Pack.

  “I’m expanding my business,” Perez said. “And I don’t have time for talking trash. You’re interested in a deal or you’re not.”

  “Wait a minute. Wait a minute,” said the President. He lit a cigarette. “Who says I ain’t interested?”

  “What you do with Tosh is not my business,” McKay said softly. “What is my business is the jacket. I get the jacket he wears.”

  “Solid.”

  “All I want,” McKay said, “is the jacket.”

  “Perez gets all the Avenue business, but what you get?” the President asked. “McKay, what you into?”

  “I’m into whatever the fuck I want to be into.”

  The President shrugged. “Tony,” I whispered. “I got to get out of here. I’m freezing.” I was no longer cold; the whiskey had fixed that. But I had to leave before the President of the Pack recognized me. I would not be able to stand his smile.

  “Don’t get panicky,” said Tony.

  “Who the hell is panicky?”

  Tony leaned his head close to mine. “Don’t mess up McKay’s plans,” he said.

  The Pack guard motioned us to move farther apart.

  I thought I might be able to wait a while longer if I could stop myself from thinking of the night at the creek. I stared at the asphalt and recited the alphabet. When I reached W for the third time, the President of the Pack and McKay were shaking hands.

  “All you got to do,” Perez said to the Pack leader, “is not think. We’ll do the thinking; we’ll make the plans. All you got to do is follow orders, and the Avenue is yours.”

  The four of them now walked toward Tony, me, and the two Pack guards. Now I saw the President’s face clearly, now I could remember the touch of his hands as he held me on the bottom of the creek. I thought I might be sick.

  “Who’s the lady?” he asked.

  “The lady?” said McKay. “I don’t think who the lady is should interest you. What should interest you is being ready for tomorrow night.”

  The President moved his face close to mine. Once more I began a silent recitation of the alphabet. I knew from his smile that he had recognized me, and I looked away and wanted silence. I waited for McKay to rescue me. McKay placed his hand on the President’s shoulder; the Pack guards tensed.

  “The lady is mine,” McKay said.

  I looked up; McKay and I looked into each other’s eyes with the stare of strangers. Or of lovers. I silently spelled the letters of his name. McKay.

  He held his arm tightly around my waist, and I placed my hands inside his coat pocket and entwined my fingers with his, as if within our palms we held the night of the creek in silence.

  And yes, all right, I admit to fear.

  You’ve been waiting, I know. And so, all right, finally I admit to fear. Did you imagine that black leather, and midnights and the mist of finely burnt hashish oil, could overpower a spell so strong as fear? In the mood I was in fear was a most intricate, a most delicate sort of magic.

  Sometimes I did not know fear for what it was. I thought the racing of the heart might be the first stages of cardiac arrest; palpitations could easily be caused by an excess of tobacco; the dry mouth could be eased by a beer. No one on the Avenue lived without fear. And no one admitted to it.

  What of McKay? His eyes were half closed, and the side of his face moved slightly with a twitch at his cheek. Did he or I know how well acquainted he was with fear? I think not. He was the most wonderful, the greatest pretender of the Avenue. His eyes were the darkest, his walk the easiest. You’v
e seen that even when he lay with closed eyes in a cold alley of the Avenue, to lift one eyelid was to find a fierce gaze. So great was his pretense that I even imagined myself safe. I chalked up violence, murder, and rape to the whim of the fates, and, when I stood with McKay, I believed myself free of fear. And from doubt. So I stayed by him and recited the alphabet and imagined myself free from fear. I could think McKay a fool, insane, or cruel; I could never think him a coward. He would rush into the thick of any battle; he would walk the darkest streets in the midnight hour; he would chance the risks of crime and war: if I believed him to be without fear, I could disguise my own. So I believed.

  Perez and Tony sat in front of the Chevy. “Assholes,” Perez said of the Pack. “Assholes. What this Avenue is good for is a market for dope. And they fight over it and fight over it for nothing.”

  I sat in the back seat, very close to McKay, moving my fingers in a circular motion at the base of his neck. McKay leaned his head back and then forward, but the knots I felt would not be exorcised. But if I was with McKay, what was there possibly to fear? Anything I feared had happened already.

  Perez turned to face McKay. “From now on,” he said, “it’s all yours. If you need more capital, I’ll lay it on you. But the action is all yours, and if you’re busted, I don’t know you.”

  McKay smiled into the air. Tony turned the key in the starter; exhaust rose from the tail pipe. The night was very dark, very still; the windows of the Chevy were foggy. We had reached the bottom, hadn’t we? If the mood moved us somewhere new it could only be higher. We could only go higher, but, still, each time I rode in the Chevy and each time I caught sight of the dark flare of McKay’s eyes, something clicked, something like the trigger of a shotgun aimed at the cortex of the brain. Something that made my eyes widen, that made my lungs grow tight, my heartbeat race. Always at these times, I would steal a glance at McKay. I could not see any of his life signs alter; my fingers on his pulse could never discern any change.

  Tony shifted gears and looked at McKay through the rearview mirror. “How does it feel to be home?” he said to his President.

  As I ran my fingers down and across the base of his neck, McKay leaned his head back into the deep maroon upholstery. He answered only with a very slight movement of his shoulders.

  2

  “All right,” I said. “Don’t tell me your fucking plans.” I stood behind the counter at Monty’s. Hamburgers were frying on the grill and McKay sat on one stool with his legs kicked out to cover two more seats.

  “Don’t worry,” he said.

  “Who’s worried?” I said.

  McKay watched the doorway. There was the threat that the Orphans knew McKay was now back on the Avenue.

  I leaned close to him; my silver locket hit the linoleum counter. “Honey,” I whispered in his ear, “I don’t give a shit what your plans are.”

  McKay smiled at my lie. “Just do what I tell you,” he said. “I never did like you thinking too much.”

  I had followed the instructions he had given me: called Leona and told her I was through with McKay, asked her questions about Jose’s romantic past, led her—and by now, everyone—to think that I was mad for Jose. Perhaps even he had heard, without suspecting that the words I spoke to Leona had been devised by McKay.

  “I don’t like it,” I muttered as I flipped over a hamburger and splattered my white apron with grease.

  “Did I ask for your opinion?” McKay said.

  I threw one hamburger on a roll, the roll on a plate, the plate before McKay.

  “It’s better for you if you don’t know anything,” he said.

  Monty lumbered out from the back room, bringing with him the odor of gin and cigars. “Ah,” he said. “The no-gooder is home once more.”

  “Old man,” McKay said, smiling.

  “I want you to know,” Monty said, “that of late I have decided to rid this store of bums.”

  “Oh, yeah?” McKay said. “Look, you old fart …”

  Monty did not allow McKay to finish. “Do you want me to fire her?” he said.

  “You don’t have to fire her,” McKay said. “Because she quits.”

  “She does, does she?” I said.

  “She’ll be leaving when I fire her and not before,” Monty said.

  “Do you want to put money down on that?” McKay said. “Do you want to bet?”

  “Do you both want to fuck off?” I said; I untied my apron and threw it across the counter. I sat down on the stool closest to the door; if they continued their argument by threatening each other with my job, I would leave. They both turned to smile at me. I lit a cigarette and stared at them. Smoke billowed from the grill.

  “Something’s burning,” Monty called.

  “That’s right,” I said. I swung my legs and the stool swiveled slightly.

  Monty walked to the grill and flipped the charred remains of beef into a garbage pail.

  “I don’t want to fight with you, old man,” McKay said finally. “Fact is, I got an offer to make you.”

  “You?” Monty said. “Don’t make me any offers.”

  I kicked my shoes off and reached for a copy of the Enquirer.

  “Let me ask you one question,” McKay said.

  “All right, then,” Monty said. He winked at McKay, though I was sure he did not want to. “Ask me one question. Go on with you, ask me.”

  McKay smiled lazily. There was silence; I looked up from the Enquirer to see them staring at each other. “Well, ask him,” I said. I was curious; McKay was not one to ask questions.

  “Well,” McKay said slowly, “what I want to know is how much you might charge me to rent this dust heap of a store for one night.”

  “McKay, you’re one small-time punk if you think I can be bought,” Monty said.

  “I’m a small-time punk?” McKay said. He reached into his jeans pocket, drew out a billfold, and began counting. When he had counted out one hundred dollars Monty stopped him.

  “Now where would you be getting that?” he said.

  “How much to rent this joint?” McKay said.

  Monty was silent. He reached under the counter and his hand reappeared holding a bottle of gin, from which he poured himself a Coca-Cola glassful.

  “You yourself told me everything has a price, old man,” McKay said.

  “The old man’s a mass of contradictions, didn’t you know?” I called.

  “What do you say?” McKay asked. “Do we have a deal?”

  “Not so fast,” Monty said.

  “It’s got to be fast.”

  “How much is your offer?” Monty said finally.

  “A hundred bills.”

  “Hah,” Monty said, disdainfully.

  “One twenty-five.”

  “One seventy-five or nothing.”

  “You bastard.”

  “No less.”

  “You’re a hard man,” I called to Monty.

  “I’m a drunk,” he said, shrugging.

  “You’re that too,” I said.

  “And collateral,” Monty said to McKay.

  “What do you mean, collateral?”

  “A herd of junkies in here could well mean broken windows and a filthy mess to clean up afterward.”

  “What do you mean junkies?” McKay said. “I’m straight.”

  “You’re straight. You’re straight. I don’t care what you say you are, son. Collateral.”

  “You pay her wages, don’t you?” McKay said and he pointed to me. “Something gets fucked over in the store, take it out of her wages.”

  “Not a chance,” I said. Let McKay’s plans be his own. I would not become an indentured countergirl at Monty’s to pay for broken windows.

  “All right, the Chevy,” McKay said grudgingly.

  “That car’s worth nothing to me,” Monty said.

  “That Chevy is the finest Motown metal ever put together. Ain’t worth nothing?” McKay shook his head in disbelief at Monty’s appraisal.

  “Well then,
the Chevy,” Monty said.

  They shook hands to seal the bargain.

  “When?” I said to McKay.

  “Tonight,” he answered. “After closing.”

  Closing was at ten o’clock. There was little time if McKay wanted to get to the Dolphin before the entire Avenue knew each detail of his plan.

  “McKay,” I said.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s going to be easy. It will be easy …” McKay began.

  “Keep the rough stuff to a minimum,” Monty interrupted.

  “… As pie,” McKay said.

  “There’ll be sweeping up to do tomorrow,” Monty said to me.

  “Not for her,” McKay said. “Because after tonight, she quits.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you, McKay, it’s none of your business.”

  McKay turned to glare at me. “It is my business. You are my business. And whether you like it or not you just quit work in this dump.” He kicked a stool with his heel so that it spun wildly.

  Who in her right mind would want to work at Monty’s? And if I wanted anything, it was to be McKay’s business. But I was not. I was far down on the list—after cocaine, heroin, revenge, and the Orphans.

  “I got news for you,” I said to McKay. “I want to be making my own money.” That too was true. I did not want to exist the way Starry did, with not enough money of her own to take a bus downtown.

  “You want money? You want money?” McKay shouted. By now a few customers had come into the store. Magazines rustled, Monty rang up sales on the cash register. McKay threw his billfold on the counter. “What do you call this if you don’t call it money?” he said.

  “I call it yours,” I said.

  McKay threw a coin on the linoleum. The silver rolled down the countertop, spun with a metallic sound, and then fell before me. A dime.

  “You want money, there’s money,” McKay said. “There’s money to call Starry.”

  Why Starry? Why did he even mention her name?

  Monty finished with his customers and came back to McKay and his billfold of cash. McKay held his hand over the money. “Tell her she’s fired,” he said to Monty.

  Monty looked at me. His eyelashes and gin caused his gaze to waver. “Darling,” he said to me. “It’s a hundred and seventy-five dollars.”