Winston pushed Fariq away. “You tripping.”
Undaunted, Fariq continued, his voice rising a couple of octaves to an overzealous infomercial pitch. “Tuff, think of the long-term savings for the consumer.”
While Fariq rambled on about his marketing strategy, Winston ignored him and watched the Manhattan skyline creep closer, lapsing into a funk somewhere between semi-alertness and sleep. The images of the dead bodies he’d left behind flickered in his head like science-class slides. He closed his eyes and began counting the number of dead bodies he’d seen in his twenty-two years. Including Fariq’s grandmother in the funeral home: sixteen.
After a warm weekend night, at 109th and Fifth Avenue, the border of Spanish Harlem and black Harlem, bodies turned up on the streets like worms on sidewalks after an afternoon shower. Sometimes the coroner pulled junkies stiff as Styrofoam from the abandoned apartments on 116th Street, or a group of kids on their way to school found a homeless person frozen to death under the brick railroad trestle of Park Avenue. Two weeks ago, on his way to buy an Italian ice at the pizza shop at 103rd and Lexington, Winston heard the screech of truck brakes. He looked up to see little Ursula Huertas, seven years old, flying across Lexington Avenue as if she’d been shot out of a circus cannon. She lay there in the gutter, a crumpled, unmoving ball of black hair and bony brown limbs, her mother and the purple flowers on her bleached white Sunday-school dress doing the screaming for her. Winston planted a sandalwood punk in the cardboard shrine Ursula’s relatives erected on the spot where she died. Filled with burning candles, assorted kitsch pictures of the Virgin Mary and angelic saints Winston didn’t know, the shrine was one of many forever-flame memorials that pop up on Spanish Harlem’s street corners and last for about two weeks.
The encroaching skyscrapers of the city began to look to Winston like tombstones for giants and he grew strangely homesick. Niggers die everywhere, Winston knew, but he longed to be back home among the tragedy of the familiar. Drinking brews on a corner where he knew or had at least heard of the names mentioned in the spray-paint cenotaphs that dot the neighborhood. Watching the children flick skelly caps over the sidewalk epitaphs where so-and-so’s nigger got dropped. Mourners with money to spend hired local graffiti artists to paint huge murals on handball walls or tenement sides. A larger-than-life-sized portrait of the deceased accompanied by Day-Glo renditions of luxury cars and the stylized signatures of his friends. The neighborhood women were never memorialized on the walls. Winston wished he could draw. He would have painted a three-story mural dedicated to his older sister Brenda. Winston was twelve when Fariq called up to his window, “Nigger, you better come on, Brenda getting dogged up on Seventeenth.” Winston arrived on the scene just as the ambulance was leaving. He walked to a public phone, one from which, thanks to deregulation, he could call anywhere in the United States and speak for thirty seconds for a quarter. Winston dialed local, his mother’s work number. “May I speak to Mrs. Foshay?… Ma, go to Metropolitan. I’ll meet you in the emergency room.”
Winston took out an indelible marker and absentmindedly scribbled his grade-school tag on the bus’s frayed upholstery: TUFFY 109. “So you down, kid?” asked Fariq, elbowing Winston in the ribs. “We talking googobs of money. Scads o’ cash.”
“Shit ain’t going to work.”
“And why the fuck not?”
“Because addicts is looking for a reason to get up in the morning, and crack, heroin, whatever, is the reason. Lipping that pipe like falling in love every day—maybe a little better. Can you imagine what it’s like waking up in the morning and knowing that soon as you hustle up ten dollars, you going to be in always-and-forever love? To do that you can’t wake up already in love. You got to get up in a cold room, mad as fuck you been sleeping on a flat pillow, or without a pillow, convinced that life hates you, and you hate life. Then you can cherish the high. You want the high to last, but not forever, yo.”
Fariq punched his friend in the shoulder. “You sound like you know what you talking about.”
Winston thought about confessing to the time, the fifth anniversary of his sister’s death, he experimented with crack and spent four days in his bedroom closet tweaked out of his mind. Like an addicted jeweler, he held powdery rocks to his eye with a set of tweezers, examining each brownish-white marbled facet for imperfections. When he ran out of cocaine he pronounced the bread crumbs and balls of lint flawless and stuffed them into his pipe. On day four Winston realized he’d been masturbating with paper-towel rolls and petroleum jelly for entertainment, and quit his mini-addiction out of sexual shame. But whenever Winston heard the line “I wanna rock right now” from Rob Base’s hip-hop classic “It Takes Two,” his throat parched. Turning away from Fariq, Winston mopped his brow. “I don’t know nothing about it, but I’ve heard people talk.”
Fariq paused for a moment. “Maybe what Eternal Bliss needs is some type of time-release-cold-remedy-type mechanism.”
Winston groaned, and the bus jolted to a stop. “Broadway Station, last stop.”
From there it was the J train across the bridge to Canal Street, then a long walk through the dank algae-laden tunnels to catch the uptown local. Once on the train, Fariq leaned down and glared at a middle-aged man seated next to the door. “Can’t you read, motherfucker?” he shouted, pointing to a sticker that read, THESE SEATS RESERVED FOR THE HANDICAPPED AND ELDERLY. The embarrassed man rose and politely offered Fariq his seat. Winston laughed, and the tweed-jacketed man standing next to him nonchalantly checked his wallet. Winston took a deep breath and, to keep from slapping the man upside the head, grabbed him firmly by the wrist, digging his watchband into his skin. “I had a long criminal-activity-filled day. One more crime ain’t going to hurt me none. Crime down, but it ain’t stopped.” The man rushed out at the next stop. A woman two seats away tucked her brooch beneath her blouse and twisted her engagement ring so the stone’s brilliance was doused in the dark of her palm.
“Uptown bound, yo.”
“No more Brooklyn Rambo niggers in camouflage pants.”
“Word. Fuck Brooklyn.”
“Spike Lee, Jackie Robinson, Barbra Streisand, Woody Allen, Mary Tyler Fucking Moore can all kiss my black Manhattan ass.”
Winston tossed the last piece of bubble gum into his mouth, unfolded the comic that was, as usual, unfunny, and then read the fortune. Don’t carry grudges—they can weigh you down. Unmoved, Winston blew bubbles till the subway doors opened at 116th Street.
2- PAQUETES DE SEIS DE BUD
Like prairie dogs fresh out of their burrows, welcoming the cool desert night, the duo popped out of the subway station and stood motionless, gazing at a Spanish Harlem just emerging from its early-evening siesta. A foursome of sturdy tank-topped old-timers played a staid game of dominoes in front of the Laundromat. A frenetic salsa fell out of an upper-floor window like a Boriqua waterfall. Winston, roused from his momentary trance, giddily splashed around in the Latin percussives, stutter-stepping, shaking his hips, and singing the lyrics. No tengo miedo, tengo bravura, tú y yo, tenemos amor pura. Winston was back on the block.
“That’s Hector Lavoe.”
“You say everybody’s Hector Lavoe. That’s the only Spanish singer you know. It might be Marco Manteca from down the street.”
“Just change your drawers, son. You smell.”
Fariq pulled out a spare pair of underwear and walked into Kansas Fried Chicken to use the bathroom. Winston headed straight for the T&M Tienda, “Dos paquetes de seis de Bud, por favor,” then reimmersed himself in the nighttime bustle, snapping the gray hood of his sweatshirt over his head. After Fariq finished tidying up, the duo headed east toward Third Avenue, Fariq insanely jealous because Winston could walk and drink, while Fariq had to wait until they arrived at their destination before he could sip his beer. Winston stopped and held the can of beer to Fariq’s lips. Fariq took two gulps.
“My brother.”
“Tastes good, don’t it?”
“True, t
hat.”
With a firm brush of his thumb Winston removed the suds from Fariq’s mouth. He considered telling Fariq about the gun but decided against it. Once people knew you had a gun, it was like having a car—everyone begging to borrow it, wanting you to use it to make their lives easier. Winston pointed to their usual drinking spot by the empty pool in Jefferson Park. They liked to sit on the edge, their legs dangling in the void, reminiscing about taking turns feeling up Henrietta Robles in the shallow end. Even Fariq risked rusting his leg braces for a few blind gropes.
Winston figured four, maybe five beers and Fariq would agree to lend him enough money to get him through the rest of the month. There was a pulse against his hip and Winston peered down at his beeper, illuminating the numbers. Fariq knew, from the sour look in Winston’s face, who was paging him. “You better get home, nigger, you a father now.”
“Mmm.”
Winston shut the beeper off and wrested another beer from the plastic ringlet, and thought back to that Sunday years ago at Coney Island, walking away from the Hellhole, crying and cursing his cousins. He recalled his father soothing him with promises never kept. That day was the last time he’d cried, the last time he’d held his father’s hand.
The beer slid solidly down Winston’s throat and bubbled in his nose. Winston pointed the half-empty can at the diving board. “Remember when Raymond Vargas dove off that fucker and smashed his mouth on the edge of the board?”
“Yeah, he used to talk about diving in the Olympics. Toe the edge of the board and say, ‘This is a Dominican Escape-from-the-Ghetto Inward One-and-a-Half Twist with a Cry-on-the-Gold-Medal-Stand-During-the-National-Anthem Pike. Degree of Difficulty: the fact white people think niggers can’t swim.’ Then, blam, the kid was at the bottom of the pool unconscious and toothless. Didn’t you go to the bottom and drag him up?”
“Uh-huh. Rebroke Raymond’s jaw a month later when he said that when I swam I looked like a big black oil spill.”
With some effort Fariq lifted himself to his feet, finished his beer, then, with one crutch, golfed the empty can toward the far end of the pool. It nestled about two feet from the drain and Fariq mimicked a golf announcer’s whisper: “That leaves Fariq Cole a short putt for a birdie.”
“Sit, you’re making me nervous.”
Fariq sat back down. “Tuff?”
“What?”
“Golf a game or sport?”
“Goddamn, you’re restless. Don’t you ever stop and chill? Look up at the stars? Look, if you can wear a watch at the professional level—golf, tennis, bowling—it’s a game or a pastime, not a sport.”
“I just wanted to say, good looking out today. Thanks, that’s all.”
Winston returned Fariq’s gratitude with an embarrassed nod. Taking his own advice, he lay back over the pool’s edge, gazing up at the twenty or so stars visible in the hazy New York City night. Using the can propped on his stomach as a sextant, Winston charted a course through the black sea above him, navigating an out-of-body escape from the madness.
TEN YARDS UP: I’m floating next to a middle-aged woman looking out her third-story window, elbows folded on a bath towel, and wearing nothing but a flimsy white slip, looking over the block like an urban hoot owl.
TEN THOUSAND YARDS: I’m riding a double-seater bike with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. I’m in the back, E.T. steering through some thin cigarette-smoke-looking clouds. I tell him, “Pedal faster them pesky white kids gaining on us.”
OHE MILLION YARDS: The earth’s surface looks as if it’s been smoothed with wood-shop sandpaper. The Himalayas are the same height as the Indian Ocean and the Grand Canyon. The whole planet look like it’s been shellacked with sunlight.
OHE BILLION YARDS: I’m on the moon. I hot-wire the lunar buggies and joyride from the Sea of Tranquillity to the Bay of Rainbows.
TEN MILLION MILES: From here the earth is one of many small moth-eaten holes in a raggedy interstellar theater curtain. When does the show start?
ONE HUNDRED MILLIOH MILES: Allergic to the space dust in the asteroid belt, I sneeze. Fifty years from now a meteor will land in the desert with traces of mucus on it and scientists will lose their minds.
ONE BILLIOH MILES: The tilted ring around Saturn is the felt brim on the gaseous head of the solar-system pimp. Those bitches Venus and Uranus betta have my money.
TEN BILLIOH MILES: From here the sun is the size of a flickering match two football fields away. Goddamn, it’s cold.
ONE HUNDRED BILLIOH MILES: Set the boom box adrift, tune in radio static. Me and the constellations listen to an aircheck from 1937. Good evening to the East Coast, and to the West Coast, good morning. This program of ultramodern rhythms comes to you from the Savoy Ballroom, known as the Home of Happy Feet, located in Uptown New York City. It’s Count Basie and His Orchestra featuring Billie Holiday, and here’s “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.” The constellations jitterbug, entrants in a dance marathon that’s been jumping since the dawn of time. Orion swings Cassiopeia around his hips. I slide Andromeda through my legs.
ONE TRILLION MILES: Color disappears. Everything is black-and-white. My mind and the universe are the same size. My father is holding court in a faraway lounge, conferring with ancient poets, saying, “See I told you so, everything is everything.”
ONE LIGHT-YEAR: The time it took for Daddy to send that first child-support check.
ONE HUNDRED LIGHT-YEARS: Depth perception disappears. Nothing in the universe seems more than an arm’s length away. The universe must be handled gently, like the oldest vinyl record in the collection. I pull it slowly from a worn cardboard jacket. Holding the universe by the edges, I blow on its scratchy surface. Flipping the universe over, another puff and the dust from side B is a new galaxy. If you could play creation on a turntable, what would it sound like?
ONE THOUSAND LIGHT-YEARS: I see the souls of Demetrius, Zoltan, and Chilly Most trying to find the happy hunting ground. “Where are we? Alpha Centauri? Nigger, we want Alpha Cygni! Give me the map, motherfucker!”
“You see your heaven up there?” Fariq was propped up on his crutches, which formed a makeshift cruciform on the chain-link fence behind him. Ankles crossed, arms to the side, a can of beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other, Fariq began yelling, his voice carrying throughout the empty park: “Beer and fish for everyone! Who sold me out? Judas? I knew it—greedy bastard! Before I die I leave you with this last holy piece of advice: Never, never let a nigger kiss you in public.”
Uncapping his marker, Winston jammed his forearm into Fariq’s throat and scribbled on his friend’s wrinkled brow. He stepped back to admire his work. “There, now you’re Jesus.” Fariq wet his hands with beer and tried to rub the inky scrawl from his forehead. “Come on, man, what’d you write?”
“I-N-R-I.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know, but it’s always at the top of any Jesus-on-the-cross painting I’ve ever seen. A Rasta once told me it means, ‘I Negro Rule I-ternally.’ ”
Fariq stopped rubbing his brow. “ ‘I-ternally’? Now what the fuck does that mean?”
“No idea. I thought you would know—sound like that crazy Five-Percenter ‘White man is the devil’ madness you be talking.”
Fariq pirouetted on his clubfeet and removed the crutches from the fence. He was about to right himself when he lost his balance, teetered, and fumbled away his walking sticks. Before he could pick them up, Winston scooped the metal stabilizers off the ground and waved the poles in Fariq’s face, snickering, “Drunk?”
“Drop my shits, fat boy. I can pick ’em up myself.”
“Fat boy?”
Winston tossed the metal poles about ten feet away from Fariq’s twisted legs. “Fetch, punk. If Jesus Christ could walk on water, a fake Jesus can at least walk on two legs.” Without hesitating, Fariq released the fence and boldly ambled forward, his feet pointing inward at an angle that made his toes touch, his thin legs bent at the knees, forming an X. Feet never lea
ving the ground, Fariq took three wobbly steps, stopped, and exhaled. Winston couldn’t restrain himself. “Why are you holding your breath? You’re not swimming underwater—breathe.”
“Don’t be watching me walk,” Fariq cautioned Winston. “I hate it when motherfuckers be watching me walk.”
“You ain’t walking, nigger. You ice-skating or something. You so shaky it looks like there’s an earthquake but you’re the only one who can feel it.”
Reaching out for his crutches, Fariq pounced on them like dollar bills in the street, clutching the supports to his chest before they could blow away in the wind. “Told you I could walk.”
“You better quit bragging, track star, before I call Social Security tomorrow and tell them to stop sending you them disability checks. Let’s go get some more drink.”
They headed back to the store in silence, listening to what passed for a quiet night in the city. A streetlight sputtered and hummed. Rats scaled mountains of trash bags. Caught up in the headwind, sheets of loose paper and debris blew past the boys’ feet. A campaign flyer for the upcoming election plastered itself to Winston’s chest. He peeled it off. The handbill read: VOTA WILFREDO CIENFUEGOS, DEMOCRAT POR COUNCILMAN DISTRITO 8. SEPTIEMBRE 9TH. ¡PARE LA VIOLENCIA! Pare la violencia: Stop the Violence—a phrase that prior to the Brooklyn incident was part of the ecumenical white noise he’d heard and seen since grade school. Don’t Smoke. Just Say No. Safe Sex. Be a Father to Your Child. Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk. Pare la violencia. Winston didn’t have a problem with Mr. Cienfuegos’s advice, though he didn’t find it very practical. How? he wondered. Would an impassioned plea from a politician turn Winston into a pacifist? Could Wilfredo Cienfuegos have convinced the Brooklyn henchmen to put away their guns and allow a cripple and a sluggard to walk off with Bed-Stuy’s money in their pockets, beneficiaries of the ghetto’s free-market economy?