“I like it a lot,” Izzy says. “Tristan… Tristan and Marcus said that you’ve lived here a long time. You must have seen a lot of changes come and go.” I internally applaud this admirable evasion, really the best one she could have managed under the circumstances.
“Not so many until these past few years,” Patrice answers breezily, her back turned, but then the front door swings open and Marcus’s voice fills the apartment.
“Knock, knock!”
“You made it,” Patrice says as Marcus swings around the doorframe into the kitchen.
“Of course,” Marcus says. He goes in to kiss Izzy on the cheek first, and she stiffens, causing his lips to land somewhere near her right ear. He draws back, a little stung, but then walks over to kiss Patrice, who is pretending to still be absorbed in her cooking. He doesn’t glance in my direction. It’s like I’m a ghost in this scene, no one even seeing me aside from Izzy, who stares at me, her uneasiness contagious.
“Let’s eat,” Marcus says, rubbing his hands together cartoonishly. It’s strange that he hasn’t greeted me, but I chalk it up to his moodiness, and things start off smoothly enough. Patrice has gone all out on dinner, with roti and stewed goat and her famous macaroni and cheese, and even though I know that Izzy is largely vegetarian, she tastes everything anyway and praises it enthusiastically. Marcus talks about how smart Izzy is (“Maybe even smarter than T,” he says, finally looking me in the eye, and I respond with “Gee, thanks for saying so, Marcus”), and Patrice likes that, and they talk for a little while about her plans to be a doctor. I let myself relax a tiny bit, like a belt that is loosened one notch after all that mac and cheese.
“You see how Izzy is always thinking ahead?” Patrice says to Marcus. “I keep telling you that that is what you need to do.”
“How do you know I don’t think ahead?” Marcus says. “I got all sorts of plans.”
“Phoo. This one and his plans,” Patrice says, rolling her eyes heavenward. “I’d like to know what you were planning when you decided to have your run-in with the police.”
Izzy pretends to be overly invested in her plate, not wanting to get in the middle of this one. I’m with her.
“Aw, come on, Auntie,” Marcus says. “There’s no planning around that. They say that only three things are certain in life: death, taxes, and the fuzz.” I laugh at this, but Patrice’s smile is tight. She turns her gaze to Izzy.
“Izzy,” she says, “I see why Marcus has been talking about you so much. But what is such a nice girl doing with a troublemaker?”
She means it lightly, I think, more a product of her constant teasing of Marcus than an attempt to catch Izzy out, but I watch as Izzy’s face passes quickly through a palette of colors, landing on a mottled pink.
“I been wondering that myself,” Marcus says, smiling sweetly at her. He reaches toward her, and Izzy lets him cover her hand with his giant one.
“I…” she says, faltering, then stops and tries again. “Even though I’m sort of a nerd…” She stops again, clears her throat. “Marcus and Tristan were both so nice to me, before they even knew who I was, really. And that must mean that they’re…” She pauses to swallow, and then finishes in a small voice. “That they’re pure of heart. Both of them. Maybe more than I am.”
There’s a quiet beat in which all three of us take in what she’s said. “That’s very sweet, Izzy,” Patrice says finally. “You’re a very sweet girl, I can tell.” Patrice is smiling now, but it’s as opaque as the dining room table. My eyes flick over to Marcus and I realize he’s been studying me while Izzy has been talking. What does he see there? The thought cartwheels through my brain: He knows. I don’t know how, but he knows.
“Tristan,” Patrice says, turning to me, “why don’t you help me clear this and get the dessert?”
I comply, though I don’t really want to leave Izzy alone at the table with Marcus. He’s speaking in a low murmur to her, only a few paces away in the little dining area, but I can’t make out their words over the clink of dishes in the sink. I start to cut the sweet potato pie, still straining my ears, while Patrice pulls out forks and plates.
“Boy, you’re making a mess of this,” Patrice whisper-hisses at me, and I think she’s talking about the pie at first, but she lays a hand on my wrist and I see her expression is serious. “Why didn’t you tell me Izzy was sweet on you? You’re going to mess around and get that girl hurt, Tristan.”
“How did you…?” I ask dumbly, as if it matters.
“I’m not a blind person is how.” She aggressively stabs some crumbs with her thumb and flicks them into the sink. “You’ve got to tell Marcus right away. You know how he can be.”
My face feels too hot and the sight of the pie, quivering and glistening, makes me feel queasy. I close my eyes. “I know. I’ll figure it out.”
“And what about you? You have feelings for her?”
I can’t look at her. There’s too much I could say in response, so I don’t say any of it.
I hear her release of breath, an extended whistling exhale through her teeth, which says more clearly than words that I’m a fool to have gotten myself into this situation, but when I open my eyes, she’s already gone, walking back to the table with the two slices of pie I cut. I hurry up with the other two and slink back to the scene.
“I can’t understand how being scared feels good,” Izzy is saying. She’s smiling in a good-natured way, though I know she could fill a book with the things she’d rather do than go to the haunted house.
“Gets your blood pumping,” Marcus says, bumping a fist against his broad chest. “Makes you feel alive.”
“If you say so.”
“Maybe I should come, too,” Aunt Patrice says. “You wouldn’t want me to miss all that fun, would you?” She might be teasing Marcus. Or she might be thinking that he’s less likely to kill me if she’s present, which I find oddly heartwarming. They gaze at each other across the table until Marcus laughs.
“You’re too live already, Auntie. Eat up, guys, we have to get going.” He tucks into the pie with enthusiasm, and Izzy sets about emptying her plate one polite bite at a time. It’s one of Patrice’s specialties, but the filling turns to paste in my mouth, so I mostly push it around my plate. It’s a brilliant orange, the color of Halloween.
THE ROOK
SHE’S SURPRISED AND HAPPY TO SEE ME OUTSIDE THE Delancey Street subway station, and I smile and wave, feeling the whole time like the worst kind of snitch. Marcus and T are on either side of her, and for a second, I have a hot rush of blood to the head that tells me to grab her hand and run.
“Caballito,” Marcus says, before I have time to make good on my impulse, before Izzy has a chance to say a word. His voice still makes my heart pound faster, even though I’m beginning to wish it didn’t. “I didn’t realize you were coming tonight.”
That’s because I wasn’t invited, not really. I happened to be cleaning up in the back of the restaurant when Hector’s phone, lying nearby, buzzed with a text message from Marcus. Chateau Fright, tonight at 9. Then, a few beats later, Something might be poppin off. You should be there. I heard Hector coming back from the bathroom seconds before the phone buzzed for a third time, so I never got to see what that one said. I went back to unscrewing and filling salt and pepper shakers without saying a word, but I was dying to know if it had anything to do with Frodo. Later, I asked Hector, trying to play it cool, whether he was going to this haunted house thing I’d heard some people talking about. “Nah,” he said, almost under his breath. “Too much goin’ on without any more of Marcus’s shit.” Then he looked at me and poked a threatening big brother finger at my nose. “You shouldn’t be there, either. Not if you’re smart.”
Smart was never my strong suit. I can’t say that Marcus looks pleased to see me, but he doesn’t bother to dwell on it. As for me, I don’t have a plan (the last one worked out so well), but I couldn’t sit at home, wondering what was happening, so instead I link my arm through Izzy’s a
nd drop a little behind the boys as we walk to our destination.
She tells me that they’re coming from a dinner with Tristan and Marcus’s aunt, which must have been a big helping of awkward. “The whole thing was such a bad idea,” Izzy whispers to me. “Like we’re supposed to be one big happy family now?”
“A seriously dysfunctional one,” I say.
“Sorry,” she says, squeezing my arm tighter. “I didn’t ask how you were.”
I start to mumble something, but then someone leaps, shrieking, into our path. It’s just stupid fucking Tyrone, but my nerves are shredded and I make a noise like a frightened pig. Izzy jumps, too. It’s the usual assholes, cackling and bumping shoulders with Marcus: Tyrone, Frodo, K-Dawg, plus a couple trashy-looking girls I don’t recognize. No Roxanne; maybe she’s wised up and broken up with Tyrone again. They don’t even bother to acknowledge me or Izzy. I see Frodo lean in and whisper something in Marcus’s ear. Izzy’s arm feels very small and thin wrapped through mine.
We move in a herd down the street, and the boys are loud, getting in everyone’s way on the sidewalk. An older white lady coming from the opposite direction grits her teeth, shoots us a look. Stupid kids, she’s probably thinking, or maybe something much worse.
The haunted house is really a dingy-looking office building with some cheesy fake hotel signs out front. I never come to these things because they’re too expensive, but Marcus knows someone who works here, of course, and we get waved in without tickets. In the waiting room, made up like a hotel reception area full of cobwebs and already half-full of tourists clutching bags from souvenir shops, the boys are noisy, teasing one another, reminding K-Dawg how loud he screamed last year when someone put a bag over his head. Frodo is trying to impress the unknown girls with a tattoo he got a few days ago. I can’t work out what it’s supposed to be at first, and then I realize that it’s the outline of Brooklyn with BK in the middle, red and puffy and totally butt-ugly, but the dumb girls make appreciative noises like it’s so smart and novel. Only T is silent, watchful.
A guy comes out in a tuxedo and a stringy wig, made up to look like a zombie innkeeper. He gives us his spiel about people checking into this “hotel” and never checking out again, about how it’s not the fault of the Chateau Fright if we all die of heart attacks, etc., etc. Then he tells us that only a certain number of people can go through at a time. He starts to herd the tourists that were there ahead of us into a little roped-off area.
“Seven more,” the innkeeper drones, and Marcus throws his hand in the air like a little kid.
“Come on, T,” he says, dragging his cousin into the line with him. The three stooges fall into step, and the two girls shuffle in to take the last two spots, leaving Izzy and me for the next group. Fine by me. “Aw, no,” Marcus says when he sees the shape of things. “I gotta go through with my girl.” Maybe it’s the casual ownership in his tone, or maybe it’s some protective impulse, but I step right up to him.
“What, you think we’re not tough enough to handle it on our own?” I snap, throwing my arm around Izzy. It’s a tone I never take with Marcus, and it feels good. “Go on.”
The boys hoot at my rudeness, and the tourists look sort of scared, but Marcus does a little bow.
“Sure. If you say so, Caballito.” But he’s smiling as if he planned it this way all along.
Then the innkeeper grumbles at them to hurry up, and they’re gone, disappearing through the door in a puff of dry ice, and I feel like I can relax a little. I don’t have time to say a word to Izzy, though, because another employee comes in to wrangle the next group and stops short when he sees her. He’s done up like a bellboy with boils and decaying skin, seriously gruesome, so it’s weird when he announces flamboyantly, “Izzy! You’ve come back to us!”
Izzy laughs, something I haven’t seen her do much of lately, and hugs the bellhop. “I do still remember how to get to Manhattan,” she says.
“Well, you wouldn’t know it, missy, from how often you visit,” he fake-scolds her. “Careful, don’t get my makeup on your shirt.” I feel out of place and start to recede toward a wall, but Izzy reaches over and tugs on my wrist.
“This is my friend Brianna,” she says, and the kid makes a funny little noise, maybe a coo of curiosity about me, and extends his hand, palm down. I shake it awkwardly.
“Philip,” he says to me, and then, before I can respond, he heaves a sigh. “I can’t be breaking character like this. I’ll totally get fired, and it’s the closest thing to a paid acting job I’ve ever had.”
“Congratulations?” I offer.
“It’s a start,” Philip says. He smiles at me for seemingly no reason, and for the first time, I can tell that he’s probably pretty cute under the hideous makeup. “Well, one twin has made a surprise return,” he says to Izzy. “When are you going to do the same?”
Izzy shrugs, instantly uncomfortable. “It’s complicated.”
Philip laughs. “Hull has a way of making things complicated. But we love him anyway. Can you hang out later?”
“I can’t. I’m with a big group of people who are ahead of us. I’ll visit soon, though. I promise.”
“Promises, promises. Call me, why don’t you?” Philip says, but he’s limping away already, gasping and croaking, harassing the new bunch of visitors that has started to fill up the waiting room.
“Would you believe that he was the first person I ever kissed?” Izzy whispers in my ear, and then laughs at whatever face I make in response. “We were in sixth grade. I had no idea he was gay. I was… maybe a little naive. He’s always been a good friend, even if I don’t see him much anymore.” She smiles, remembering something maybe, but then goes quiet. Philip shepherds us toward the dark doorway, beyond which can be heard yawps and screeches and maybe even the faraway buzz of a chainsaw, and the group snakes its way into the building’s shadowy interior.
The haunted house is a pretty decent one: people in bloody makeup jumping out from dark corners, some cool special effects that make it look like there are ghosts drifting out of the paintings on the wall, a guy who really does look a lot like Jack Nicholson in The Shining chasing us through the last part. Izzy has a serious startle reflex, and she spends most of the time gripping my left arm so tightly that it’s asleep by the time we reach the end. I’m distracted, though, thinking of Izzy and how she smiled when she saw Philip and how her life must have been pretty nice before she met all of us. It makes me feel jealous. It also makes me feel sharply all the ways I’ve messed up since becoming her friend. Philip wouldn’t have ratted on her and Tristan, I’m pretty sure, especially to someone as dumb as Frodo.
The room where everyone is dumped at the end of the tour is brightly lit and disorienting, not to mention crowded with people buying stupid T-shirts and mugs, and maybe it’s the fluorescent lights or maybe she really was scared, but Izzy looks a little green.
“Where’s Tristan?” she asks. “Where’s Marcus?”
I look around, see nothing but strangers, and I realize she’s right; it’s strange they haven’t waited for us here.
“Bathroom?” I wonder hopefully, but Izzy shakes her head.
“I have a bad feeling,” she says, and then she makes for an exit, not the main glass ones where people are pouring out onto Delancey, but a fire door, marked with an exit sign but painted the same color as the pinkish-brown walls. And maybe she’s a little clairvoyant, Izzy, because no alarms go off and I can hear Frodo’s high-pitched little whine as we push our way outside.
We’re in a narrow side alley, rare enough in New York, but here we are. It smells like a homeless person or two sleeps here on the regular. That’s not the most important revelation I have, though, in those first few seconds after we step outside. That prize goes to the fact that Tyrone has T up against a wall, shaking him so hard that his head knocks against the bricks like a door knocker. Even K-Dawg is bouncing on his toes like he’s ready to fight. The skanky girls have fled, probably at the first sign of trouble. Marc
us looks grim; he’s holding a phone out toward T, thrusting it close to his face, and Frodo is spitting words excitedly.
“This is the first good photo I’ve been able to get, sure, but it’s not like this hasn’t been going on for weeks. Shit, my man, you know it’s true.”
Marcus drops the phone (Frodo’s, I guess) and punches T in the face, the kind of clean, hard punch that makes a terrible crunching sound on impact. And at the same time, or so quickly afterward that it feels like the same time, Izzy lets out a shriek so loud that it raises the hair on my arms and probably halts traffic for a block in all directions: “Stop!”
Marcus pays no attention to her, lands another punch. Izzy’s on him immediately, trying to pull him back. “What is this about? What are you doing?” she’s demanding. She looks tiny compared to him, he could break her in an instant, and a jab of real fear stabs me: We shouldn’t be here.
I scoop the phone up from where it’s landed a couple feet from me and look at the screen. It’s an image of Izzy and T, standing next to some beater of a car, their faces close to each other. It doesn’t look good, but it’s probably not as damning as it could be. Frodo is just as shit at being a spy as he is at everything else. I glance at T, but it’s impossible to read his face since his nose is a fountain of blood and he’s thrashing around, trying to break free from Tyrone.
“I don’t care what Frodo says!” Izzy is shouting. “Since when do you care more about what that asshole says than your own cousin?”
Marcus flexes the hand that he used to punch T. “Thing is, my cousin hasn’t said much of anything to defend himself.”
Izzy’s face is flushed now; it’s the thing that shows up best in this shadowy alley. She’s still hanging on Marcus’s elbow, staring straight up into his face. I can hear that her breaths are ragged, but when she speaks, her voice is low and even and that makes me feel strangely proud of her. “Well, then listen to me instead.”
Marcus takes the hand he’s been flexing, rests it on Izzy’s collarbone. As recently as a few days ago, the sight of Marcus touching Izzy would have flooded me with envy, but now I look at that hand, at the raw knuckles, and thinking about being in her place makes me feel a little sick. “You’re saying you haven’t been creeping with T?”
Izzy + Tristan Page 15
