August and Then Some (15 page)

“I haven't played football since I was ten.”

“You want money? Go ask your mother.”

It was some kind of childish strategy. I mean, what, was I gonna stay there with him? Leave Dani alone? And if I did stay, on account of his twisted logic, then I'd be there for what? Money and sports equipment? Like I gave a can of shit about either.

“I'm going to get clothes,” I said. And walked up the stairs.

“Take all you can,” he said. “Just remember this: I know a little about fathers myself. You're taking me with you, too. Don't ever forget it.”

“Hey-yo, this your first time? You scared? Hey, you scared?” This guy is thrusting his jaw at me trying to get me to talk, but I don't answer. I'm in a jail on Center Street. They moved me here from a holding pen at the 9th precinct. I've been mug-shot, searched, and interviewed. I can't believe I'm going through the system again. Fuckin Nelson. There's fifteen guys in here and one bench that I could have sat on if I desired to be shoulder to shoulder with some guy who's in for shit I don't want to know about. I sat on the floor instead and now this guy's sitting next to me, trying to make friends. I'd break away from his company but where would I go?

“Don't worry, I'll look out for you, I'll look out for you. I'm Kenny.”

This guy's got black and white curly hair shaved close to his head, and some kind of wire thing in his mouth that I think is holding a few fake teeth in. He seems like the kind of guy people wouldn't think to fuck with. He's got to be in his sixties, and skinny as all hell. Looks like a car horn can knock him over. I mean why would someone mess with him? But he also seems like he could handle himself if someone did.

“This ain't
my
first time. Hell's no. I been in The Tombs before. You be all right. I can tell you got a righteous look. It's the righteous that inherit the Earth, not the meek.”

Great. Bible lessons.

“He have on rings? The guy who hit you?” He holds his fists up near his face like a boxer. “He have rings? Cause you got welts look like they from rings. I seen that shit before.” I touch the left side of my face and it fuckin stings. “I mean I'm not saying you was even in a fight or nothing, I wasn't there and shit. I'm just saying whatever.”

I don't know how many hours I've been in here. Feels like it might be getting on morning. Just a little while ago I noticed a sharp throb in my elbow where I hit the street. And I must have bit my tongue deep because I've been swallowing blood since the police car.

“This place ain't nothing, don't worry, don't worry,” Kenny's telling me. “I been in plenty of times. I know all about this place. I was here back when Malcolm and Dr King was walking around. They was something. They was the most righteous. Even Bobby Kennedy. Bobby Kennedy was the only white guy ever had a crowd around him in Harlem. He was bad. Talking bout equality—das right, das right. But they kill all the righteous ones. Anyone talks about fair gets what's unfair. You wasn't even born yet, but that happened to all of em—John Lennon, come on. All we are saaaaaying is give peace a chaaaance.”

I'm too nervous to laugh at his singing, but he laughs a lot—it comes through a throat that has been scraped by many cigarettes and shots from a cheap bottle of something.

“You can't sing that song and espect you gonna survive. Who he kidding? We knew he was gonna get his.”

In the middle of the cell, out in front of everyone, there's a toilet. The seat is broken in half. It's got all kinds of human filth on it. One guy, who looks like he's using, stumbles over to it and
for the second time this hour throws up his insides. I feel my own guts start to gurgle. I'm not seeing a judge until sometime tomorrow and I can't hold it in much longer.

This Kenny guy watches the puking guy fall to the ground after he throws up. He stands up, goes to the bars and yells, “Hey-yo. Hey, prisoner needs assistance.” Again with more emphasis, “Prisoner needs assistance.” “Go fuck yourself,” is what comes back. “OK, then he'll be waiting for you. Where's he goin, right?”

Kenny turns, looks at the guy—who looks passed out—and the hopelessness of the situation registers on his face. Shaking his head he walks back to where I'm sitting. “Don't worry, don't worry, I'll look out for you.” He sits next to me. “I know all about this place. I been in jail, I been in prison, I been in the shelters, I been in protests in the street, but this place, man, this place is …” He shakes his head. “You know what happened here?”

I shake my head.

“I'll tell you. This place used to be marshlands, right where you standing. That's right, marshlands. This was like in the sixteen hundreds though. They had—whatchu call it—fur trades. And this one cat was trying to get to Staten Island, what's Staten Island now, trying to unload beaver skins. Everyone wanted skins back then. So, this cat's with his nephew, right? And on this spot where we sittin now, he was supposed to get a boat to cross the river, but while he was waiting they knifed him. Mufucka died. But the nephew gets away, ah-ight? So then, fifteen years later, nephew's all grown, he's running his own trade and what-not and he sees the same guy in the marsh that killed his uncle …and what's the nephew do? He kills that guy. I mean, I get it. I get revenge. I've thrown down in my day. Shit, I'd be happy if it was me killed my uncle stead of my father—I'd be damn happy. And I got more reason than beaver skins.”

This guy was making me feel a little better a second ago, but now he looks like a war vet having a flashback and I don't want to be a stand-in for the enemy.

“I ain't gettin into all that. Anyway this kid done killed that guy and they was even. But there was something in that marsh. I'm sayin it put a spell on itself cause the killing kept goin on and on and on. Listen to this now. A hundred years later, same spot now,
same spot
, right before the Revolutionary War, the British set up gallows. They was hangin people left and right for being traitors and spies and enemies and whatever. But then, check it, after the war
in the same spot
in the eighteen forties, Americans filled up the marsh and built a prison over it. They designed it from this engraving they found of an ancient Egyptian tomb. Right, a tomb?” Kenny looks into my face. “Hey-yo, you can respond to any of this if, you know, you want to.”

He says it with such irreverence, like if I don't I'm not righteous anymore and he won't have my back anymore. “I'm just listening to—”

“But wait, wait, wait, this the funny part. Five months after they built it, the shit started to sink. I mean you on top a marsh, you gotta think your jail's gonna leak. Water was comin in through the floors, everything was crackin … The architects said, fuck this, start over, let's dig down this time. So they built another prison underground. Four floors deep. It was really two prisons. One building for men, one building for women. And they connected them with a bridge they called the bridge of sighs. That was the bridge prisoners walked over when they was going to get hanged. And if you looked down from the bridge, you could see four floors below to the gallows. They hung over fifty people here. There's been riots here … the guy who invented the Colt revolver—his brother killed himself here. No shit. And he burned down the place too.” He pauses. “Heyyo, you feelin me?”

I nod my head.

“Yeah I see you feelin me. This shit is true. All one hundred percent true. Been going on and on. And you can feel there's something about this place. You feel it? Something in stones or the bars. All these years and we still callin it The Tombs. Hey-yo, I ain't funnin you. I know you thinking like this guy's crazy he don't know what he's sayin, but it's all for real. I had a lot of time on my hands alone in the cell at night—I started reading history books and I started seeing where the righteousness is. That what Malcolm told us to do. Know where it is, know where it isn't. Know what I sayin?”

This guy smiles a lot like he's used to and somehow happy with his life, even if it keeps bringing him back to places like this.

But I'm not smiling. “I hear you.”

 

Hours after eating a breakfast sandwich that might have been baloney, they put me in front of a judge who set bail at $1000. That's because of my prior arrest. Without it I probably would have walked on my employment alone.

They sit me down next to a cop, in front of a phone. I'm stuck on who to call to post bail. I can imagine getting Stephanie on the line saying, yeah, listen, I know I'm in here for beating on your boyfriend, but you got an extra grand lying around? From my end that conversation would be all dial tone. I'm really wishing I had taken Brian's number when I gave him mine. On the cop's desk his late-morning coffee vibrates in a paper cup. Phones ring and cops pass papers all around me. My heart is on mile twenty of a marathon, my tongue is swollen, and I know it's gonna be hard to talk.

I pick up the receiver and hold it to my ear with my shoulder.
I see my finger hit the right numbers on the pad, but in the little screen on the phone the wrong numbers come up. I hang up, get a new dial tone, hit the same numbers and the wrong ones come up again. I hang up, try it once more and the same thing happens.

I put the phone back down, and now I can see my hands are shaking. I make fists then stretch them out, trying to get them under control. I pick up the receiver and it slips out of my hand. Jesus Christ. I make eye contact with the cop sitting next to me. “Yeah,” he says like the world has been personally annoying him forever.

“Could I tell you the number, and maybe you can dial it for me?” He looks at me like I'm the most boring stand-up comedian he's ever seen. Pulls the phone to himself, hands me the receiver, holds his fat and annoyed finger over the numbers and says, “Ga head.”

It was almost a month that I told Nokey about the Dad and Dani thing, and it thickened between us as silence. We hung over the wooden rail of the bridge, beers in hand, another four chilling underwater at the end of the rope. Overgrown green surrounded us and hints of autumn blew on our backs. Dani sat on her rock below us and we watched the falls kick up what little white water they could, its sound drowning out our conversation.

“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “Did I tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

 

Sabrina. She's a minor player. Sort of.

She and I walked down the path next to the river acting like the bumping of each other's hips and brushing of each other's arms was an accident. Talking about what? We didn't care: what parties we'd been to, how her brother was in college. Soon as we got to the bridge we threw a kiss on each other like satisfying a script. I put my hands on her back and pushed her tits into me. I liked feeling her ribcage expand under my hands, and the taste of her tongue. Soon as we broke the kiss we
smiled at each other and I said, “You wanna go somewhere?” She smiled and nodded three fast yeahs.

 

“Let me get this straight. The whole time you had a plan to meet?”

“Yeah.”

“You set a time?”

“Yes.”

“You know you didn't tell me about this, which you're supposed to do beforehand, but I'm letting that slide for now, because more important did she know
why
you were meeting?”

“Yeah.”

“No chance she thought maybe you were supposed to do homework or something?”

“That's funny.”

“So she was in it for the same thing you were in it for?”

“Well, yeah.”

“So everything was on the level and no one was getting fucked over by anyone else, right?”

“Right.”

“Aaaand … soooo …
why
didn't you like it?”

 

We walked down a hardly beaten path, which was more like an indentation in the grass, until trees and bushes became thick camo. Everything was summer green. I took off her yellow t-shirt and white bra, then we laid down—which, in the bushes, isn't exactly comfortable. You got pebbles and twigs sticking you in the ass, grass itching your skin. She made a playful ouch sound and rubbed some dirt off her thighs. So I took off my shirt and put it under her. She laid back down and on my lips I could feel the little blonde hairs around her
nipples. When I pulled Sabrina's shorts and underwear to her ankles, the smirk on her face said that that was no big deal; it's just what she was gladly going to do. And I believed all of what I was seeing.

 

“So where I'm still confused,” Noke said, as he hoisted the rope up for another beer, “is why you feel bad about a mutually consensual blowjob.”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Because …” He shook his head like he couldn't believe. “I mean … Did she swallow?”

I didn't answer.

“Did she?”

I still didn't answer.

“I'll put you down for a yes.” As he cracked the beer can.

“OK.”

“And you didn't think it was any good?”

“It's not like that.”

“Well what the hell's it like?”

“It was like … She was cool. I was just … thinking things.”

“Which brings us back to my most burning question: What the fuck were you thinking?”

 

Sabrina breathed in with a shiver when I put a finger in her. I never felt a girl's insides before and didn't know what direction I'd be headed. I thought my finger would go straight in towards her back, I didn't think I would be going up into her. Up toward her intestines, lungs, heart. The surprise of the direction and of her shivering kind of spooked me, I didn't know if she liked it or not, so I took my finger out fast. She grabbed my wrist, guided me back in and up and she shivered in another breath.
Then I figured she did like it. I took my finger out again, and again she breathed normally. I went back in and she shivered in again. I thought I found a spot inside her that controlled her lungs. If I wanted her to shake I slid in. If I wanted her to calm down I pulled out. I did this for a while. It worked every time. After I figured I had that mastered, my other hand made its way up to her face and I put a finger in her mouth. She wrapped her lips around it and breathed through her nose. I moved faster in and out of her and her breathing got heavier. It was weird that I could have such an effect over her with two fingers. Like she could suffocate if I kept going. I don't know if I liked that or not. My mind was going in all different directions—pictures I didn't want kept showing up.

 

“Wait a minute,” Noke said. He turned his back to Dani and leaned on the rail. “You sayin what I think you're sayin?”

“I'm not sayin anything.”

Noke rubbed his hand down his chin like he was matting down an invisible goatee. “You ever see Dani and your dad—”

“NO, ya sick fuck. Shut the hell up, and stop talking.”

“OK, OK, OK. I'm just trying—”

“Why you gotta say shit like that?”

“Forget it, forget it.”

“
You
fuckin forget it.”

“I will, I did, I'm just trying to tie some logic onto this. Pipe down. So what did you do after? I mean, you're laying there feeling bad about getting your dolphin waxed and you just say what, ‘Sorry, gotta go'?”

“No. I'm not a scumbag. I walked her back to her car. Held her hand too.”

“Well that's sweet,” he said sarcastically. “And she just left?”

“Yeah.”

“No ‘I'll see you soon'?”

“Nope.”

“No ‘wanna do this again'?”

“No.”

“No ‘thanks for the package'?”

“Definitely not.”

“Forgive my incredulousness. But for once I'm not feeling like the sick fuck of the conversation.”

“It's amazing how horny and unhorny you could feel in such a short amount of time.”

Noke took a huge swig then hit himself in the head repeatedly with an open palm. “I'm an idiot, I'm an idiot.”

“Keep hitting yourself. I'm done talking.”

“Jesus fuck.” He shook his head. “You wanna swap problems with me?”

“Since when do you have chick problems?”

“I got problems. Believe me.” At the beginning of this summer Nokey started up something with this chick called Lanie. They would disappear like me and Sabrina did from the footbridge into the overgrown greens at dusk while the rest of us made our way home and there was still enough light for them to do whatever it was they wanted to do by. But Lanie stopped coming around, a tough one for Nokey's ego. “Girls are always making like they're into me and then in like a week they cut out on me. Maybe I'm a freak.”

“
Maybe
you're a freak?”

“Fuck you.”

“Only if Lanie won't.”

“This guy's a real dickhead. You know you're a real dickhead?”

“I might be.”

“Look, don't beat yourself up about Sabrina, man. It's not worth it. And don't fret, little fella, I'm sure you'll find a meaningful relationship and all that crap.”

Which actually got me thinking. “How do you know?”

“Because … I don't know. Because you're un-weird. And you got the sensitive routine goin. Chicks dig sensitive, JT.”

“Yeah, but you got looks, good looks trump weird.”

“Well apparently some girls can't see the good looks through all my layers of weirdness.”

“Noke, you're not that weird. I mean you're fuckin weird, but …”

“You don't even know the half of it. You wanna hear weird, I'll tell you weird.”

“Go head.”

“I'm gonna say this, for two reasons. One: I'm drinking and two: who really cares. Ready?”

“Yeah.”

“No laughing?”

“No.”

“OK. Here goes.” He took another gulp and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I like armpits.”

“Who?”

“Armpits. It's not who it's what.”

“What armpits?”

“Chicks' armpits. I like them.”

“Say that last sentence again.”

“I like the armpits of the girls.”

“You're a fuckin bone-on.”

“I know it. But hey, I gotta be me, right? I like pits, so shoot me. I mean, there's weird and then there's
weird
. It's not like I go to grocery store parking lots sticking my dick in tailpipes.”

“Yeah, that'd be crossing the line from weird to deranged.”

“You think?”

“Definitely.” I took a long sip and finished my beer. “Why, you do that too?”

“I'm not even gonna answer that.”

“Well, I'm not sure I believe you, but I'm not checking for burn marks.”

“I'm not deranged. Don't you smell a girl's pits—not that girls' pits smell as much as guys'—but don't they smell like sex to you?”

“Um …
no
.”

“Why not?”

“I don't know, when I think of sex smells I think of normal things like breath. Pussy. You don't?”

“Well, kind of. Not so much. Actually, no, not at all.”

“Listen man, I don't know what you're into, but whatever it is, it sounds safe. Unless you run into some hard stubble.”

“Yeah, that would hurt.”

Then I cracked up at how ridiculous this kid could be and how I could still love him for it. “Noke, you're killin me, man.”

“Enjoy the trip.” He spit over the rail and I watched it float until it mixed in with the rest of the white water. Dani was being quiet, sitting on her rock like usual. It got to the point where she looked like she belonged there as much as the trees and the grass only she was undergrown in comparison. Nokey saw me looking at her. He said, “She's a good kid, you know?”

“I know.”

He cracked open another beer for me. “Here.”

We drank.

“Your mom's got some pair walking out like that. She doin OK?”

“Fuck knows. She's not saying much. Nobody's saying much. I don't know … Am I the only one who thinks that people will tell you everything but what they're really thinking?”

“It ain't just you. Trust me.”

“So I don't know what to tell you. It seems like it sucks for her and it's also great for her, but what do I know?”

“You feelin cool with it?”

When he hit me with that question I suddenly thought that the reason people don't tell you what they're thinking could be because they have no idea what they're thinking. “Noke, you remember we used to put quarters on the railroad tracks and let the trains run over them?”

“Yeah.”

“And when we'd peel them off the track we couldn't tell if there was a face on them anymore or if they were worth anything?”

“Uh huh.”

“I feel like one of those quarters.”

Nokey looked at me for a second like he was impressed. “See I told you you got the sensitive routine covered. I mean that's poetry, Jake. You should be getting laid like a rabid bunny.”

“Thanks. I feel wonderful knowin you think I should.”

Then we sipped at our beers for a while and let the sounds of the river take over the conversation.

“JT, I gotta tell you what I been thinking?”

“Go head.”

“It's about your dad.”

“What about him?”

“About the Dani thing.”

I already didn't like where it was going. “Yeah?”

“Well, I got an idea about what we could do?”

“Noke—”

“It doesn't involve telling anyone about it.”

“What doesn't?”

“All right. I'll tell you. Your father's Cobra.” He looked at me like I should've known what he was going to say next.

“What about it?”

“Well, I was thinking … the guy just lost his wife, both his kids, his leg, his job, and is probably gonna have to sell the house. I mean look at him, he's all fucked up. Now is the best time to
kick him. And what can we kick him with? What's the thing he gives the most amount of shit about? You following me?”

“Keep going.”

“How would you feel about selling the Cobra out from under him and keeping the money?”

Right there is where I could have put the kibosh on it. Considering Nokey is Nokey and has fuck-up tendencies like no one I ever knew, I might have killed it. But sometimes you hold things for so long, you'll unload them at opportunity one. So I didn't say stop. I asked for his whole plan.

“All right … We put an ad in the trade. The classics section. '65 Mustang 428 Cobra. It's a muscle car man, those things sell. That's how my dad got rid of his GTO. You don't need ID to take out the ad, and if you pay cash there's no paper trail.”

“What are you gonna do, mail them cash?”

“Yeah.”

“You're gonna put money in the mail?”

“Listen, everybody says you can't mail cash, but why? What's the big fuckin deal? Would it get lost? It's a letter. It'll get there the same way a check would. You wrap it up so no one knows what it is, they open it and it's done. And we don't have to bullshit on the specs. If there's one thing your dad took good care of it's that car. It's a hot commodity and anyone who's looking to buy will know that.”

“Whose number do we put in the ad?”

“I thought we would use my cell phone.”

“Come again.”

“I'm kidding, prick. We use the payphone at my dad's garage. Nobody ever answers it, and I'll be there every day from now till the end of the summer.”

“Who's gonna handle the calls? You?”

“That's right, me.” He saw in my face that him taking the calls was almost a dealbreaker for me. “What was that look for?”