Kids of Appetite

  Coco nodded in a very serious manner.

  I looked across the table at Baz. “Yesterday I took the urn and ran. I was going to scatter him in the river, but then I found the note and the photo. I can’t go home. Not until I see this through.”

  . . .

  “Do you remember my first question?” asked Baz.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember your answer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Say it again,” he said.

  “I need help.”

  “And again.”

  “I need help.”

  “And once more.”

  I hoped Baz could see the smile in my eyes; I certainly saw the one in his.

  “I need help, Baz.”

  “And we will help you, friend.”

  Friend.

  What a beautiful word.

  Suddenly Singapore didn’t feel so far away.

  MAD

  Baz carefully removed the top of the bun from his burger, then the bottom, setting them both on the side of his plate. He ate meat; he ate veggies; occasionally, if Coco fell asleep before finishing her ice cream (so very occasionally), he would eat her leftovers. But never bread.

  “You watching your carbs?” asked Vic.

  “Baz is anti-bread,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “Anti-bread?”

  I nodded. “He is against bread.”

  Vic looked back at Baz. “I don’t understand.”

  Baz took a bite of ground beef and lettuce, swallowed. “You do not have to understand everything.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh at this. Baz had a way of taking very simple words and putting them together in a way that people weren’t accustomed to hearing. You do not have to understand everything. The problem was people didn’t know what to do with such forthright simplicity, because they had no practice with it. People expected backroom agendas, conversational Trojan horses that sneaked behind enemy lines and burned you from the high ground of moral ambiguity.

  God. The longer I was a person, the less I wanted to be one.

  Coco scribbled on her napkin while she ate—songwriting was a sort of hobby of hers, though I’d yet to actually hear a final product. Zuz looked over her shoulder, occasionally nodding or shaking his head at what she wrote. He was the only one privy to her creative writings, the only one she let in her circle of trust.

  Eventually Margo brought out another plate of cheese fries, and we all ate while Baz told a story about the time the air conditioner went out at the Cinema 5. “People were yelling very loud,” he said. “They wanted their money back, and all the rest. Later I was on break with a coworker named Russ. Russ remarked how hot it had been. I agreed it had been very hot. He said, ‘Aren’t you from the Congo?’ I said, ‘Well, I am an American citizen now, but yes—I was born in the Republic of the Congo. Why do you ask?’ Russ said, ‘Oh, nothing, I just figured you would be used to the heat, having lived in the jungle.’ I looked Russ in his eyes, asked him, ‘Are you from New Jersey?’ ‘Yes,’ said Russ, ‘born and raised.’ I nodded. ‘So I assume you strip down to your underwear and make out with very tan girls in hot tubs.’ Russ raised an eyebrow and smiled. ‘No,’ he said, ‘why would you think that?’ I said, ‘I have seen the television show Jersey Shore, so I am educated in the way all people from New Jersey live. Admit it. You strip down to your underwear and make out with very tan girls in hot tubs, do you not?’”

  The table chuckled, but I couldn’t. The day it happened, Baz had come back to the greenhouse in a mood, and when he told me what had happened, I really couldn’t blame him. The shit he had to put up with.

  “So, what did Russ say?” asked Vic.

  “He had nothing more to say on the subject,” said Baz, smiling sadly. “It was not the first time, it won’t be the last. People see movies or TV shows, and they think they know us.” He pointed to his brother across the table. “Nzuzi was too young to remember what we lost, praise God. I was also young, but I remember. Our mother was an English teacher, our father worked for the government. We had a nice house and nice things. It was a good life in Congo-Brazzaville.

  “But war changes things. At nine, I did not understand oil or lust for power, or the measures countries would take to have both. At nine, I only understood that the light had left my mother’s eyes. I understood my father’s fear, so thick, I could smell it on him. I understood the sound a bomb makes in the seconds before hitting the earth. I understood that when soldiers enter your home, tell you they are taking your table and chairs, your father’s VCR and favorite movies, your mother’s best dresses—and tell you to be grateful for this—you keep your eyes on the floor and say nothing. I understood the truth about nighttime, the urgency in my brother’s and sister’s cries. And when my own head hit the pillow and I drifted asleep to the violent lullaby—pop! pop! pop!—I understood I would not live to see the sun rise.”

  The table was quiet as we watched him recount his old life. I’d heard this much before, but it didn’t make the hearing of it any easier. If anything, the story grew considerably harder with each telling.

  “You have a sister?” asked Vic.

  Zuz put a hand on Vic’s shoulder, lifted his head high, and put his other hand on his own heart. Baz said, “My brother is telling you about his twin—our sister, Nsimba. When we were very young, Mother sometimes called me by both names, Mbemba Bahizire. When Nsimba tried to say it, all that came out was Baz.” He smiled for a moment, but it soon became a frown. “I do not know if it is better or worse that I remember our lives from before the war. But I do—I remember our beautiful life in the Congo.” He stopped, took a sip of water. “Anyway. No one was living in a jungle. Not where we come from.”

  “It’s a shit job, the Cinema Five,” I said. “Plenty of places you could work until Renaissance Cabs is ready.”

  Baz smiled again, but this one didn’t need to turn into a frown; part of it already was. “My father loved movies. Being there reminds me of him. And it’s a good place to find new Chapters.”

  “Okay,” said Vic. He’d been holding his burger, but he hadn’t taken a bite for a while now. “So, what’s a Chapter?”

  Baz wiped his hands on a napkin, pushed away his empty plate. “I collect stories. For a book I’m writing. And books need Chapters.”

  “Okay.”

  “With your permission, Victor, I would like you to be one of them.”

  A bit of barbeque sauce squirted out the sides of Vic’s burger. He grabbed a napkin and wiped some off his shirt-sleeve, then looked back at Baz as if waiting for further explanation. Receiving none, he nodded once, said, “Okay.”

  “I change names and places, of course,” said Baz.

  “Okay.”

  I understood Vic’s hesitation. Most people didn’t like the thought of their every move being observed, documented, organized, categorized—the idea that their actions and words might be recorded for all to read. I didn’t really mind so much, which probably had something to do with my wanting to leave a mark, something to let the world know I was here long after I wasn’t.

  “So, I know I don’t have to understand everything,” said Vic, “but I’d really like to understand this.”

  Baz laughed, nodded. “Fair enough. A while back, some kids from the Chute were vandalizing Babushka’s, breaking in after hours, smearing red paint across the windows so it looked like pig’s blood. And customers stop coming. Norm, the owner, he comes to me for help. So I helped him.”

  “How?” asked Vic.

  “Ooh, ooh, let me tell it,” said Coco, looking up from her napkin for the first time in ten minutes. “Okay, so get this. Baz takes his baseball bat and a single apple to the Chute. He asks around, ends up finding the kids who kept breaking into Babushka’s. It’s not hard, you know, they’re all bragging about it, the bunch of meatheads. So anyway, he fi
nds them, takes off his shirt—”

  “Coke, I didn’t take off my shirt.”

  “Of course you didn’t, because that would be ridiculous. I’m saying—for the book—you should write that you took off your shirt. Makes it better. So anyway, Baz takes off his shirt, tosses the apple into the air, and hits it with the bat, smashing it to smithereens. Then he looks at the kids and says, ‘The next person who vandalizes Babushka’s will know what that apple felt.’ Ha! Classic, right? Anyway, Norm hasn’t had a single break-in since. In exchange, we get five pounds of meat a week, plus access to his back room.”

  “And his story,” said Vic.

  Baz shrugged. “We are all part of the same story, each of us different chapters. We may not have the power to choose setting or plot, but we can choose what kind of character we want to be.”

  “So, where’s the book?”

  Baz pointed to his head. “I am working on it as we speak. And in the meantime, I’m reading a writing instruction guide by Dr. James L. Conroy. You’ve heard of him?”

  Of course Vic hadn’t heard of Dr. James L. Conroy. No one had heard of Dr. James L. Conroy, but that didn’t stop Baz from talking about the man like he was the definitive voice in the midlevel writing tutorial handbook industry.

  “Is there a title?” asked Vic.

  I said, “The Kabongo Chronicles.”

  “The Book of Baz,” said Coco.

  Baz glared at us. “There is no title yet, but I have time. Nzuzi and I are saving for a car and, ultimately, a fleet of cars. Renaissance Cabs will be the premier taxi service in the greater Bergen County area. The way I see it, what better job for a collector of stories than a cabbie? Just imagine the Chapters.”

  “Just imagine the freak shows, more like,” said Coco under her breath.

  Vic looked at Coco. “What about you? Are you an early Chapter too?”

  “No way, Spoils. What happened to me was my mom left when I was born, see. I never knew her. And her leaving, well, that made my dad really sad. Like sad in his bones, if that makes sense. The kind of sadness that takes time to really sink in, you know? Dad took care of me when I was little. He didn’t jump right into being a lazy bum, I mean. He eased into it until eventually he just stopped getting out of bed in the morning. I cleaned the house, got myself ready for school every day, all that stuff. He hit me sometimes, and out of nowhere. He just didn’t really wanna be a dad anymore, I don’t think. He had this pretty good job at a bank, which he lost. Went from that to working at a convenience store. We were barely getting by, so he started looking for other ways to make money. Found out you got paid if you took in foster kids. Or at least, the government gives your taxes a break, or something. It’s crazy, man. Anyway, Dad spent the next few days cleaning the apartment, cleaning himself, and stocking our pantry so full of food, I thought he’d hit the lotto. Then this lady is walking around our house taking notes, asking all kinds of questions, and the next thing I know—bam—I’ve got two brothers. Baz and Zuz. I mean, Baz didn’t actually live with us, but he was there so much, it felt like he did.”

  “I’d aged out of foster care,” said Baz. “Tried many times to get custody of my brother, but”—he shrugged, but it felt less like a gesture of nonchalance, more like an imitation of Atlas—“by the time they moved Nzuzi to Queens, he was almost eighteen, so I decided to stick close until he aged out too.”

  “So yeah, anyway,” continued Coco. “They needed a family, they got us, which I was thrilled about. I just felt kind of sorry for them, getting paired up with my dad.”

  “We were paired up with you, too, Coconut,” said Baz.

  Coco blushed, went on. “So, then one day, Dad’s gone. Poof. Left just like Mom. I was really sad at first. We’d just had this huge fight that morning. I don’t even remember what I did to make him so mad, but I said something, and he hit me pretty hard, and then I left for school and that was the last I ever saw him. But you know—I figure he just needed to find his own thing. I mean, he wasn’t happy with me or with the life he had, that’s for sure. So I figure he went looking for a new one. And that was fine by me. I wasn’t gonna stand around and cry like a baby. I thought, Well, if Mom and Dad can go off and start a new life, so can I. So I asked Baz and Zuz if they wanted to come to Hackensack with me. Baz got a job, we met Mad, and we all lived happily ever after in a motherfrakking greenhouse. The end.”

  The table was eerily silent for a beat.

  Vic cleared his throat. “I’m really sorry, Coco.”

  Coco polished off her burger, licked her fingers. “About what? Things turned out great. I’ve never been part of a real family.” She motioned around the table. “Not like this, like us. Anyway, I’m no Chapter. If Baz wants to use my story, he’s gonna have to get in line and pay for it. Man, that burger was good. Margo may be batshit, but girl can grill.”

  My heart hurt like it got punched. Coco was far too young to have had a front-row seat to the horror show that was her life. I leaned across the table and hugged her neck right there in front of everyone.

  “Love you, Coco.”

  “Love you too, Mad.”

  She’d told this story before, and while it probably wasn’t far from the truth, it didn’t take much to spot the holes. Clearly there were things Coco didn’t know, things that had been kept from her. I could only guess what they were.

  “Wait, why Hackensack?” asked Vic.

  I sat back down in my seat. “Remember that commercial the city ran for, like, a decade, trying to promote Hackensack tourism?”

  “The one that claimed Hackensack was ‘on the verge of a Renaissance,’” said Vic.

  I winked. “Bingo.”

  “Don’t tell me . . .” Vic looked at Coco, then the Kabongos. “You guys came to Hackensack because of the ad?”

  “It’s coming, guys,” said Coco. “The Renaissance is just around the corner. I can feel it.”

  I snorted in my straw, blew soda across the table.

  “Keep making fun,” said Coco. “We’ll see who’s laughing when the Renaissance gets here. Baz and Zuz will start Renaissance Cabs, and I’ll write a hit song about Renaissance stuff, and then I’ll become rich and famous and the only people I’ll invite to my Renaissance parties are people who don’t laugh at me.”

  Zuz snapped once.

  Coco waved him off. “Yeah, Zuz, you’re golden.”

  “I didn’t know you wrote songs,” said Vic. “What kind?”

  “All kinds,” said Coco. “Rap, mostly. I like beats and rhymes. I’ve been working on my Renaissance rap for a while now—it’s basically awesome.”

  Margo Bonaparte appeared out of nowhere. “All right, guys. Dessert’s almost ready. Follow me.”

  We slid out of the booth, shooting worried eyes at one another, and followed Margo through the near-empty restaurant all the way to the kitchen. “Come on back,” she said. “Sorry about the mess. Haven’t quite got the whole clean-as-you-go thing down yet.”

  Margo stepped up to an industrial-sized stove with four simmering skillets cooking something sweet and caramelly, and my mouth started watering like a faucet. On the floor next to the stove, she bent down, grabbed the corner of a large kitchen floor mat, and pulled. Underneath, in the floor, was the outline of a hatch with a small brass handle.

  I looked at Vic, who pointed at Margo and whispered, “Super Racehorse.”

  I made a mental note to tell him about Margo’s situation, about her gambling habit and how, when she ran out of her own money, she’d dipped into her father’s business account. Atlantic City was only a couple of hours away—it wasn’t an uncommon story. Luckily for Margo, her father was a frequent patron of Cinema 5, where he divulged his woes to a very understanding employee. Baz knew that Hubert Bonaparte had soft spots for his daughter, for his restaurant, and for independent film. So he spent the next three weekends at Napoleon’s, painti
ng the interior and exterior walls, ceiling, and trim; he also arranged for Hubert to have unlimited access to the back alleyway entrance to the Cinema 5 (an entrance with which I was very familiar). The results of these actions were trifold: first, Margo’s debts to her father were considered paid in full; second, the Bonapartes, while somewhat baffled at the request, agreed to let Baz have their story for his book (which, according to Baz, could use a chapter on family redemption); and third, both Margo and her father turned a blind eye when it came time for us to pay the check.

  Oh, and a fourth thing: Margo Bonaparte was relentless in her own pursuit to “repay” Baz Kabongo. Her advances had, as yet, remained unfruitful.

  “This used to be the grease trap,” said Margo, pulling the handle and swinging the door up and open. “You guys ever clean one of these things? Stinks something awful. Every time we had it cleaned, it scared customers off left and right. So Dad had a new one installed outside—way smaller than this one. This old one’s huge. Here, look.”

  We stepped up to the edge of the trap door. Margo was right. Probably five by seven feet, it was roughly the size of an old hatchback, and had the ambience of a tiny unfinished basement with smooth gray floors and walls.

  Margo Bonaparte hopped down through the hatch door. “Stopped using it years ago, but it still smells like sulfuric shit down here.” A couple of seconds later her hand appeared, and in it, a full bottle of Bacardi Silver. Coco took the rum, while Baz pulled Margo out of the grease trap. “Never hurts to order an extra bottle or two,” said Margo, closing the hatch door and pulling the kitchen mats back into place. “Off the books, of course.”

  “Is this real rum, like what pirates drink?” asked Coco, every word in her question at a fever pitch.

  “You’re adorbs,” said Margo, taking the bottle from Coco, “and maybe a little nutso. Yeah, it’s real rum like what pirates drink.” She unscrewed the lid, took a swig while nursing the skillets with the other hand. “You guys ever had Bananas Foster?”