by Lisa Unger
I stopped to look at her. She looked real enough, like flesh and blood and bone. But if you reached out to touch her, she faded like a hologram.
I’d left my problems with Jake. He told me to take a break, get some distance and get my head together. So I left the question of my very identity at his doorstep like a bag of unwanted clothes at the Salvation Army. For the time being, I wanted to get as far away from the questions as I could. And yet as the East Village morphed into Alphabet City, unfortunately I realized that every time I caught my reflection in the mirror, I’d be reminded that I was suddenly a stranger to myself.
Maybe you think I was overreacting. Did I really have enough information at this point? Hadn’t I felt guilty and embarrassed not even twenty-four hours earlier for having entertained these very thoughts? What can I say? This idea had wormed its way into my consciousness and was now burrowing and expanding beneath my skin. I wouldn’t say I felt shattered exactly. But I felt like one of those East Village tenement buildings, stripped to naked wood, gutted, old brass pipes exposed, wires hanging like webs, a shell of myself waiting for reincarnation.
I found myself on Avenue C. This is the real Alphabet City. Not the one on Avenue A before Tompkins Square, packed with trendy shops and cafés, million-dollar co-ops, shabby-chic lofts, all struggling in their new opulence for the look of East Village grit that had seemed so undesirable when it was real. The money hadn’t made it down this far yet. It was as though once you passed the park, you’d entered a dead zone, a place that the city had decided to leave to its own devices. It felt lawless and abandoned, except for tiny pockets like the Nuyorican Poets Café, flowers of creativity that had pushed their way through the concrete. Here abandoned buildings stood like limping rebel soldiers against the encroaching wealth that would force the longtime residents of this neighborhood onto the streets. Here empty lots were littered with garbage, old furniture, stripped cars, and barrels filled with fire, surrounded by the city’s discarded people. The homeless, the junkies, the runaways, those among us who had somehow lost their way and had stopped groping for a way back. I walked, aware, but with my head down. It’s not the place where you want to call attention to yourself. You just move through as though you belong. And today I did belong. I was looking for Ace.
On Avenue D and Fifth Street, I came to the building where he’d told me he’d been squatting the last time I saw him. It looked better than most buildings. After World War II, there’d been a rush to put up as much housing as possible in the East Village for the boys returning home. The result was a great deal of shoddy construction, and now many buildings, like my own, were sagging in the middle, facades crumbling, pieces falling onto the sidewalks below. This one looked pretty solid, heavy white stairs leading to an entryway flanked by Doric columns. A black man the size of a refrigerator sat sentry by the door, his tremendous girth completely enveloping the chair beneath him, making it look as though he were levitating. He wore a New York Rangers jersey and a red baseball cap turned backward. His carefully faded denims were clean and pressed. His sneakers were a riot of color and wound up his ankle; he tapped his foot to an invisible beat. I stood at the bottom of the stairs and looked up at him. His eyes were already on me. I could see him sizing me up. Was I five-oh? He gave me a nod and his three black chins knocked against one another lazily, his eyes yellow and flat, revealing nothing.
There was a time when I would have judged this man, this gatekeeper to the hell behind him, in his pockets or hidden somewhere near him the stash of crack cocaine or heroin or whatever it was he was selling. I would have felt the hate rise in my throat like bile. But the relationship between the addicted and the dealer was so complicated, so delicate. Who was worse, the people who wanted or the people who supplied? What about the rest of it? The poor parenting, bad socialization, racism, poverty that created the pain that created the junkies and their dealers. Even I had my place in the chain as the enabler; in giving Ace money, didn’t I have some part in this? See what I mean? I did belong here.
“Whatchu want, girl?” he said, not unkindly. His eyes had narrowed and a smile that was more a reluctant turning up of the corners of his mouth puckered the flesh of his face.
“I’m looking for my brother. Ace.” My voice sounded foolish, naive even to my own ears.
He gave a little chuckle and his whole body shook. “If he’s in there, he ain’t your brother no more.”
There was a wisdom in that statement that surprised and hurt me. I felt my face flush at the truth of it. I walked up the stairs and his expression registered a mildly amused surprise, as if he’d expected me to turn away. I looked at him when I reached the top and he shrugged, apathy slackening all the features on his face.
This was not the first time I’d ventured into a building like this looking for my brother; once in a fit of worry I’d taken the train to Spanish Harlem. The streets seem harder above Ninety-sixth Street, the anger and the desperation crowd the sidewalks, dangle like legs from fire escapes. People are out, driving loud cars, hanging out windows, yelling. The danger is like the humidity in the air before a storm, no doubt that the sky will erupt, only a wondering of when and how and who will be left standing. The air in the East Village here seemed less electric, the violence lazier, slower to ignite. Still I felt a flutter of fear as I stepped from the light into the dark vestibule. The air around me turned stale but alive with the odors of human waste, too many bodies in a poorly ventilated area, and a ubiquitous smell of something burning, something chemical and poisonous. In the walls I heard murmurs, low groans, somewhere the sound of a radio or television, the cadence of a measured and professional voice delivering information. I made my way into the semidarkness and headed toward a staircase.
As children, we’d shared a bedroom wall so thin, I could hear Ace turn or sigh in his sleep. Our bedrooms had once been a much larger room in the old house, and as part of the renovations it had been divided into two smaller rooms with an adjoining bathroom. It was a separate universe from the rest of the house, and the master bedroom where my parents slept on the ground floor, overlooking my mother’s garden. A baby monitor left over from my infancy served as an intercom in case I needed my parents in the night. If I needed them, I could turn it on and call out. But when I woke in the night, frightened from dreams or thirsty or just lonely, it was Ace that I wanted.
I would slip out of my bed and walk softly across my carpet in the dark, through the bathroom that adjoined our rooms. I could see the shadow of the great oak tree dancing in front of his window, hear the heavy breathing of his sound sleep, see the outlines of his Star Wars action figures on their shelf, the pile of books on his desk; I could smell the scent of Johnson’s baby shampoo, which we both used long after we weren’t babies anymore. Pushing myself up onto his bed and into the curl of his body, I would always wake him.
“Ridley,” he would say, his sleepy voice a combination of annoyance and resignation and love. “Go back to your own bed.”
“I will,” I’d say as he draped an arm around me and fell back to sleep. “In a minute.”
I’m not sure I’ve ever slept that well again. You get too old for that kind of comfort, you know? That innocent physical closeness where all you want from other bodies is their cozy, gentle warmth, like puppies in a litter. As you approach adolescence and develop a sexual consciousness of your body, contact with other bodies becomes charged. It happened to Ace first, of course. He started closing the bathroom doors when he got up to pee in the night. The first time I heard him do that, I knew on some instinctive level that I couldn’t crawl into his bed anymore. Overnight we had lost each other in that way.
On the building’s second landing, the floor creaked beneath my feet in a way that made me feel unsafe. I felt it give just slightly under my weight. With every step I took, I half expected to go crashing through the floor and land in a crumbled pile on the level below. Ace had told me he was staying with a girl on the second floor, that she had a window that looked out o
nto the street. So I walked toward the door closest to the street side of the building and knocked.
“Ace,” I called. “It’s Ridley.”
There was only silence as the sunlight from outside filtered in through the dirty hall window; its gate was so rusted it looked as though a single touch might dissolve it to dust. A car cruised by outside and I felt the heavy bass of the subwoofers resonate in my chest and fingertips. The murmurs I’d heard on entering the building had quieted in the wake of my relative shouting. The walls and doors around me seemed to hold their breath. I heard a shuffle behind the door and could sense that someone stood tentatively on the other side listening out as I listened in. From the other end of the hall came an unmistakable squeaking, a scratching within a pile of rubbish that I could just make out in the dim light. I pretended not to see the rats as they skittered and rummaged. I knocked on the door again, this time louder.
“Ace,” I said, sounding nervous and desperate. “Please.”
I startled when the door opened and a wide blue eye peered out through the space allowed by the chain. Long strands of filthy blond hair hung before the eye, a woman’s eye that might have been pretty once. But now it was bloodshot and smudged black with fatigue.
“He’s gone,” she said.
“Where?”
“What do I look like, his wife?”
I shrugged, not sure how to answer. The eye blinked slowly. “Do I know you? You look familiar.”
I shrugged again, feeling at a loss for words. I gave a mild shake of my head to indicate that I didn’t know if she’d seen me before. The eye looked me up and down. I could see something living in the lashes, in the lines beneath. It was hunger.
“You’re the one who saved that kid.”
“That’s right. Look, do you know where my brother is?”
“You’re Ridley. That bastard. He never told me that you were his sister.”
I opted for shrugging again. It seemed like a useful, noncommittal gesture.
“He talks about you all the time,” she said. I heard the crackle of envy. It made me childishly happy to know he thought about me, had told this stranger about me.
“You don’t have any idea where he might be?”
She closed the door and I heard the chain release. Then she opened the door again, but not all the way. I could see a painfully thin leg, a sharp hipbone jutting against gray sweatpants that had been cut down into shorts, one breast flat and hard beneath a lavender cotton camisole, a collarbone that looked as if it could snap like a twig, and half of a gaunt gray face, square jaw, and that one wide blue eye. It was as if she wanted me to see exactly half of her, keep me guessing about the other half. Her fingertips, with nails bitten to the quick, snaked around the door. I felt pink and fleshy, conspicuously healthy and well nourished beside this woman who was all right angles, hard luck written on her body in the form of scars and track marks. I searched my memory for her name. Had Ace even told me?
“I haven’t seen him in a week,” she said.
I listened to her voice, listened for sadness or worry. But it was flat, emotionless. I searched her half face. I’m not sure for what. For something I could relate to, I guess. But her face was a mask of distrust, her eye narrowed now and hard. It told me that she expected everyone she met to abuse her; it was only a matter of how and how bad.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
She hesitated and then said, “Ruby.” Something about her seemed to soften then, and she opened the door a little wider. I looked past her into the apartment but saw only darkness.
“Nice to meet you,” I said, ridiculously.
“Yeah,” she said. “You, too.”
We stood there awkwardly for a minute, regarding each other.
“If you see him…?”
“I’ll tell him you’re looking for him.”
I wrestled with the idea of giving her some money. I had a couple of twenties folded in my pocket. But something about her made me think it might insult her, as much as she might need it. So I nodded and turned around, walked toward the stairs feeling uncomfortable, guilty as if I were leaving the scene of an accident. I heard her close the door softly and I jogged down the stairs and headed toward the light. Outside, the fat guy had left his perch and stood at the corner with a couple of other thugs who all turned to look at me. He smiled, cruel and wolfish, as though he saw something that confirmed a judgment he’d already made. I turned from him and walked toward home. I squinted against the bright sky and saw Ruby’s eye, how hungry it had been and how tired.
nine
I stepped from the cold into Five Roses, the pizzeria in my building owned by my landlady. The heat offered relief to the red and tingling skin of my face. There were a couple of cops sitting at a corner table eating meatball Parmesan sandwiches, dripping sauce and cheese onto paper plates. The sight of it made my stomach grumble. I’d been walking for hours and the day was fading.
The place was homely, badly decorated, but made glorious by the aromas that wafted from Zelda’s magical kitchen. Dreadful faux wood paneling edged the wall, dark and pocked with holes. Fluorescent lights flickered from the sagging water-stained ceiling, casting the space in the worst possible shade of white. There were rickety tables covered by the perennial red-and-white-checkered tablecloths, surrounded by brown vinyl chairs with tufts of foam showing through gouges. A Pepsi cola clock hung crooked above the door. Hundreds of creased, aging photos were taped or thumbtacked to the wall behind the old cash register. My personal favorite was of Zelda beaming up at Robert De Niro, who draped an arm lazily across her shoulders. He smiled that Cape Fear smile and held a slice up to the camera. The best pizza in New York, he’d scrawled above his signature. Zelda looked over the moon in that picture; she was much younger then, her features had an open lightness to them. She wore a bright red blouse that brought out a blush in her cheeks. Her smile was wide but tentative, as if she never expected it to last, was suspicious of the act itself. In ten years, I’d never seen her smile in person and I’d never seen her wearing anything but black chinos and a black turtleneck, both forever dusted with flour.
I walked over to the counter and Zelda didn’t so much as acknowledge me as she shuffled back and forth. She took a pizza out of the oven with one of those giant wooden trays and slid it effortlessly, perfectly into a waiting box. Then with the same quick efficiency, she plucked two slices of Sicilian from a pie underneath the glass case and put them in the oven. I was so predictable, I didn’t even have to order anymore. When that was done, she looked up at me.
“That it?” she asked.
“Yes, thanks,” I said, and handed her a five. She pressed in digits on her ancient cash register and the drawer opened with an excited ka-ching! It was the sound of joyful expectancy.
Zelda was a petite woman with fragile, bent shoulders and small, hawklike features. All the light that I witnessed in the photograph had drained from her, leaving her to sag and go gray. She moved with an aura of resignation, as though her life was no more than forcing herself to put one foot in front of the other. I always imagined that if it were a matter of sheer will, she could lift a ten-ton block of concrete onto those shoulders and carry it as long as she had to. She impressed me as one of those people who saw her life as a prison but wore the key on a chain around her neck.
I used to try to make conversation with her, but some years back I’d given up with no hard feelings. So I stood, waiting for my pizza and staring off into space until she surprised me by talking.
“A man,” she said, her beady brown eyes edged with blue fatigue and a million tiny lines, her lips thin and pressed into a straight line. “He look for you.”
“Who?” I said, keeping my voice sounding casual as a hole opened in the pit of my stomach.
She shrugged. “I dunno.”
“What did he say?”
“He said to call. He said you had the number.”
I suppressed the urge to spin around and examine the faces of
people on the street. A feeling of dread wrapped itself around me as I noticed that the cops had left. Zelda handed me my pizza in a white paper bag.
She looked at me sideways. “No good,” she said with a definitive shake of her head. “He was no good.”
Her words made me go cold inside, and as I left the pizzeria and walked out onto the street, I felt vulnerable and alien. People moved past me, carrying their dry cleaning and briefcases, their backpacks. Someone slid by on Rollerblades; a homeless guy slumped on a stoop across the street. First Avenue was a sea of traffic, honking horns and quick stops emitting brief shrieks of rubber on concrete. The light flashed DON’T WALK. Everything was normal, as it always had been. Except for me.
A little more than a week and a half since standing on this corner and seeing Justin about to get hit, everything about my life had changed, everything about me felt different. I had walked the few feet from the pizzeria to the door of my building about a million times and never been so aware of the scene around me. I looked at the faces of strangers and envied how they bustled about in their lives, secure in the knowledge of who they were and where they were going…or at least where they’d come from. And I sensed a menace beneath the surface of the street noise, as if something dark was waiting, hidden behind the facade of the innocuous scene before me. I felt watched. I moved quickly to the door of my building, opened it with my key and moved inside, feeling the breath of danger on my neck. With the metal clang of the door slamming, I felt a shudder move through me, as if someone was walking on my grave.
