“That’s a rough area. You going to be long? You’re not going to be long and I can wait for you, take you back here.”
She didn’t look like any hooker that he had ever seen, although he knew that the Point catered to all tastes. The cabdriver didn’t like to think about what might happen to a nice gray-haired lady moving among the bottom dwellers of the Point.
“I will be some time,” she said. “I don’t know when I’ll be coming back, but thank you for asking.”
Feeling that he could do nothing more, the driver pulled into traffic and headed for Hunts Point.
He called himself G-Mack, and he was a playa. He dressed like a playa, because that was part of what being a playa was all about. He had the gold chains and the leather coat, beneath which he wore a tailored black vest over his bare upper body. His pants were cut wide at the thigh, narrowing down to cuffs so small he had trouble getting his feet through them. His cornrows were hidden beneath a wide-brimmed leather hat, and he kept a pair of cell phones on his belt. He carried no weapons, but there were guns close to hand. This was his patch, and these were his women.
He watched them now, their asses barely hidden beneath short black imitation-leather skirts, their titties busting out of their cheap bustier tops. He liked his women to dress alike, felt like it was kind of his brand, m’sayin? Anything worthwhile in this country had its own recognizable look, didn’t matter you was buying it in Buttfreeze, Montana, or Asswipe, Arkansas. G-Mack didn’t have as many girls as some, but then he was just beginning. He had big plans.
He watched Chantal, this tall black hooker with legs so thin he marveled at how they could support her body, teeter on her heels as she headed over to him.
“Whatchu got, baby?” he asked.
“Hunnerd.”
“Hunnerd? You fuckin with me?”
“It’s slow, baby. I ain’t had but some blow jobs, and a nigga try to stiff me in the lot, makin like he goan pay me soon as I’m done, wastin my time. It’s hard, baby.”
G-Mack reached out for her face and held it tightly in his fingers.
“What’m I goan find and I take you down that alleyway and check you out, huh? I ain’t goan find no hunnerd, am I? I goan find bills hidden in all them dark places, ain’t I? You think I’m goan be gentle with you, huh, when I go lookin inside? You want me to do that?”
She shook her head in his grip. He released her, and watched as she reached under her skirt. Seconds later, her hand emerged with a plastic Baggie. He could see the notes inside.
“I’m goan let you get away with it this once, y’hear?” he said as he took the Baggie from her, holding it carefully with his fingernails so as not to sully his hands with the smell of her. She gave him the hundred from her handbag too. He raised his hand as if to strike her, then let it drop slowly to his side and smiled his best, most reassuring smile.
“That’s just cause you new with me. But you fuck with me again, bitch, and I will fuck your shit up so bad you be bleeding for a week. Now get yo ass back out there.”
Chantal nodded and sniffed. She stroked his coat with her right hand, rubbing at the lapel.
“Sorry, baby. I just —”
“It’s done,” said G-Mack. “We clear.”
She nodded again, then turned away and headed back onto the street. G-Mack watched her go. She had maybe another five hours before things got quieter. He’d take her back to the crib then and show her what happened to bitches who fucked with the Mack, who tried to embarrass him by holding back on him. He wasn’t about to discipline her on the street, because that would make him look bad. No, he’d deal with her in private.
That was the thing with these hos. You let one get away with something, and the next thing they were all holding out on you and then you weren’t nothing better than a bitch yourself. They needed to be taught that lesson early on, else they weren’t worth having around. Funny thing was, you fucked them up and they still stayed with you. You worked it right and they felt needed, like they was part of a family they’d never had. Like a good father, you disciplined them because you loved them. You could screw around on the ones who were sweet on you and they wouldn’t say boo, because at least they knew the other whores you were seeing. In that sense, a pimp beat a square any day. It was all okay as long as you kept it in the family. They were your women, and you could do with them what you pleased once you gave them a sense of belonging, of being wanted. You had to get psychological with these bitches, had to know how to play the game.
“Excuse me,” said a voice to his right.
He looked down to see a small black woman in an overcoat, her hand inside her bag. Her hair was gray, and she looked like she might break in two if the wind was strong enough.
“What you want, Grandma?” he said. “You a little old to be trickin.”
If the woman understood the insult, she didn’t let it know.
“I’m looking for somebody,” she said, taking a photograph from her wallet, and G-Mack felt his heart sink.
The door to Alice’s left opened, then closed again, but the lights in the corridor beyond had also been extinguished and she was unable to see who had entered. A stench assailed her nostrils, and she found herself retching. She could hear no footsteps, yet she was aware of a figure circling her, appraising her.
“Please,” she said, and it took all of her strength just to speak. “Please. Whatever I done, I’m sorry for it. I won’t tell nobody what happened. I don’t even know where I am. Let me go, and I’ll be a good girl, I promise.”
The whispering grew louder now, and there was laughter intermingled with the voices. Then something touched her face, and her skin prickled and her mind was bombarded with images. She felt as though her memories were being ransacked, the details of her life briefly held up to the light and then discarded by the presence beside her. She saw her mother, her aunt, her grandmother . . .
A house full of women, set on a patch of land by the edge of a forest; a dead man lying in a casket, the women standing around him, none of them weeping. One of them reaches for the cotton sheet covering his head, and when it is removed he is revealed to be near faceless, his features destroyed by some terrible vengeance wrought upon him by another. In a corner stands a boy, tall for his age, dressed in a cheap hired suit, and she knows his name.
Louis.
“Louis,” she whispered, and her voice seemed to echo around the tiled room. The presence beside her withdrew, but she could still hear its breathing. Its breath smelt of earth.
Earth, and burning.
“Louis,” she repeated.
Closer than brother to me. Blood to me.
Help me.
Her hand was clasped in the hand of another, and she felt it being raised. It came to rest upon something ragged and ruined. She traced the lineaments of what once was a face: the eye sockets, now empty; the fragments of cartilage where once was a nose; a lipless gap for a mouth. The mouth opened, taking her fingers inside, then closed softly upon them, and she saw once again the figure in the casket, the man without a face, his head torn apart by the actions of —
“Louis.”
She was crying now, crying for them both. The mouth upon her fingers was no longer soft. Teeth were erupting from the gums, flat yet sharp, and they tore into her hand.
This is not real. This is not real.
But the pain was real, and the presence was real.
And she called his name in her head once again — Louis — as she began to die.
G-Mack kept his face turned from her, taking in his women, the cars, the streets, anything to divert his attention and force her to go elsewhere.
“Can’t help you,” he said. “Go call Five-O. They be dealin with missing persons.”
“She worked here,” said the woman. “The girl I’m looking for. She worked for you.”
“Like I said, can’t help you. You need to be movin on now, else you goan get into trouble. Nobody want to be answering yo questions. People here want to make
money. This is a business. This like Mickey D’s. It’s all about the dollar.”
“I can pay you,” said the old woman.
She raised a pathetic handful of ragged bills.
“I don’t want yo money,” he said. “Get out of my face.”
“Please,” she said. “Just look at this photo.”
She held up the picture of the young black woman.
G-Mack glanced at the photograph, then tried to look away as casually as he could, the sick feeling in his stomach growing suddenly stronger.
“Don’t know her,” said G-Mack.
“Maybe —”
“I said I ain’t never seen her.”
“But you didn’t even look prop —”
And in his fear, G-Mack made his biggest mistake. He lashed out at her, catching her on the left cheek. She staggered back against the wall, a pale spot against her skin where his open hand had struck her.
“Get the fuck out of here,” he said. “Don’t you be comin round here no more.”
The woman swallowed, and he could see the tears starting, but she tried to hold them back. Old bitch had some balls, he’d give her that. She replaced the photograph in her bag, then walked away. Across the street, G-Mack could see Chantal staring at him.
“The fuck you lookin at?” he shouted to her. He made a move toward her and she backed away, her body eventually obscured by a green Taurus that pulled up alongside her, the middle-aged business type inside easing down the window as he negotiated with her. When they’d agreed on a price, Chantal climbed in alongside him and they pulled off, headed for one of the lots off the main drag. That was another thing he’d have to talk about with the bitch: curiosity.
Jackie Garner was at one side of the window, and I was at the other. Using a little dentist’s mirror I’d picked up, I’d seen two men watching TV in the living room. One of them was Torrans’s brother Garry. The drapes on what I took to be a bedroom nearby were drawn, and I thought I could hear a man and a woman talking inside. I signaled to Jackie that he should stay where he was, then I moved to the bedroom window. Using the raised fingers of my right hand, I counted three, two, one, then hurled the smoke canister into the occupied bedroom. Jackie tossed his through the glass of the living room, then followed it with a second. Instantly noxious green fumes began to pour from the holes. We backed away, taking up positions in the shadows across from the front and back doors to the house. I could hear coughing and shouting inside, but I could see nothing. Already, the smoke had entirely filled the living room. The stench was incredible, and even at a distance my eyes were stinging.
It wasn’t just smoke. It was gas too.
The front door opened and two men spilled out into the yard. One of them had a gun in his hand. He fell to his knees on the grass and began to retch. Jackie came at him from out of nowhere, put one big foot on the gun hand, and then kicked him hard with the other. The other man, Garry Torrans, just lay on the ground, the heels of his hands pressed to his eyes.
Seconds later, the back door opened and Olivia Morales stumbled out. David Torrans was close behind her. He was shirtless, and a wet towel was pressed to his face. Once he was away from the house he discarded it and made a break for the next yard. His eyes were red and streaming, but he wasn’t suffering as badly as the others. He had almost made it to the wall when I emerged from the darkness and swept his feet from under him. He landed hard on his back, the wind abruptly knocked out of him by the impact. He lay there, staring up at me, tears rolling down his cheeks.
“Who are you?” he said.
“My name’s Parker,” I said.
“You gassed us.” He vomited the words out.
“You tried to steal my car.”
“Yeah, but . . . you gassed us. What kind of sonofabitch gasses someone?”
Jackie Garner shambled across the lawn. Behind him, I could see Garry and the other man lying on the ground, their hands and legs bound with plastic ties. Torrans’s head turned to take in the new arrival.
“This kind,” I told him.
Jackie shrugged.
“Sorry,” he said to Torrans. “At least I know it works.”
G-Mack lit a cigarette and noticed that his hands were shaking. He didn’t want to think about the girl in the picture. She was gone, and G-Mack didn’t never want to see the men who took her again. They found out someone was asking after her, and then another pimp would be taking care of the Mack’s team, because the Mack would be dead.
The Mack didn’t know it, but he had only days left to live.
He should never have hit the woman.
And in the white-tiled room, Alice, now torn and ruined, prepared to breathe her last. The mouth of another touched her lips, waiting. He could sense it coming, could taste its sweetness. The woman shuddered, then grew limp. He felt her spirit enter him, and a new voice was added to the great chorus within.
2
The days are like leaves, waiting to fall.
The past lies in the shadows of our lives. It is endlessly patient, secure in the knowledge that all we have done, and all that we have failed to do, must surely return to haunt us in the end. When I was young, I cast each day aside unthinkingly, like dandelion seeds committed to the wind, floating harmlessly from the hands of a boy and vanishing over his shoulder as he moved onward along the path toward the sunset, and home. Nothing was to be regretted, for there were more days to come. Slights and injuries would be forgotten, hurts would be forgiven, and there was radiance enough in the world to light the days that followed.
Now, as I look back over my shoulder at the path that I have taken, I can see that it has become tangled and obscured by undergrowth, where the seeds of past actions and half-acknowledged sins have taken root. Another shadows me along the path. She has no name, but she looks like Susan, my dead wife; and Jennifer, my first daughter, who was killed beside her in our little house in New York, walks with her.
For a time I wished that I had died with them. Sometimes that regret returns.
I move more slowly through life now, and the growth is catching up with me. There are briars around my ankles, weeds brush my fingertips as I walk, and the ground beneath my feet crackles with the fallen leaves of half-dead days.
The past is waiting for me, a monster of my own creation.
The past is waiting for us all.
I awoke to darkness, with dawn impending. Beside me, Rachel slept, unknowing. In a small room next to ours, our infant daughter rested. We had made this place together. It was supposed to be a safe haven, but what I saw around me was no longer our home. It was some composite, a collision of remembered places. This was the bed that Rachel and I chose, yet it stood now not in a bedroom overlooking the Scarborough marshes but in an urban landscape. I could hear street voices raised, and sirens crying in the distance. There was a dresser from my parents’ house, and on it lay my dead wife’s cosmetics. I could see a brush on the cabinet to my left, over Rachel’s sleeping head. Her hair is red. The hairs caught in the brush were blond.
I rose. I entered a hallway in Maine, and descended stairs in New York. In the living room, she waited. Beyond the window, the marshes shone with silver, incandescent with moonlight. Shadows moved across the waters, although there was a cloudless night sky above. The shapes drifted endlessly east, until at last they were swallowed up by the waiting ocean beyond. There was no traffic now, and no sounds of the city broke the fragile quiet of the night. All was stillness, but for the shadows on the marsh.
Susan sat by the window, her back to me, her hair tied with an aquamarine bow. She stared through the glass at a little girl who skipped on the lawn. Her hair was like her mother’s. Her head was down as she counted her steps.
And then my dead wife spoke.
You have forgotten us.
No, I have not forgotten.
Then who is that who sleeps beside you now, in the place where I once slept? Who is it that holds you in the night? Who is it that has borne you a child? How can you say th
at you have not forgotten, when the scent of her is upon you?
I am here. You are here. I cannot forget.
You cannot love two women with all of your heart. One of us must be lost to you. Is it not true that you no longer think of us in the silences between every heartbeat? Are there not times when we are absent from your thoughts while you twine yourself in her arms?
She spit the words, and the power of her anger sprayed blood upon the glass. Outside, the child stopped her skipping and stared at me through the pane. The darkness obscured her face, and I was grateful.
She was your child.
She will always be my child. In this world or the next, she will always be mine.
We will not go away. We will not disappear. We refuse to leave you. You will remember us. You will not forget.
And she turned, and once again I saw her ruined face, and the empty sockets of her eyes, and the memory of the agonies that she endured in my name were brought back to me with such force that I spasmed, my limbs extending, my back arching with such force that I heard the vertebrae crack. I woke suddenly with my arms curled around my chest, hands upon my skin and hair, my mouth open in agony, and Rachel was holding me and whispering — “Hush, hush” — and my new daughter was crying in the voice of the old, and the world was a place that the dead chose not to leave, for to leave is to be forgotten, and they will not be forgotten.
Rachel stroked my hair, calming me, then went to attend to our child. I listened to her cooing to the infant, walking with her in her arms until the tears ceased. She so rarely cried, this little girl, our Samantha. She was so quiet. She was not like the one that was lost, and yet I sometimes saw a little of Jennifer in her face, even in her first months. Sometimes, too, I thought I caught the ghost of Susan in her features, but that could not be.
I closed my eyes. I would not forget. Their names were written upon my heart, along with those of so many others: those who once were lost, and those whom I had failed to find; those who trusted me, and those who stood against me; those who died at my hand, and those who died at the hands of others. Each name was written, carved with a blade upon my flesh, name upon name, tangled one unto another, yet each clearly legible, each subtly engraved upon this great palimpsest of the heart.