August and Then Some (2 page)

“That would be so great. Where's the office?”

Turns out that deadbeat's lease wasn't up for another year-and-change, and they didn't have plans to renovate. So between the letter from my boss, Frank—who I fuckin love for being cool enough to say I made a lot more money than I actually did—and Ralphie's recommendation, I got in.

I think Ralphie likes me; he sees me leave for work every morning and knows I wasn't lying about the job, but I understand why he's keeping an eye on me. I'm still a shaved-headed wildcard kid who dresses like a derelict.

Now he watches me closely as I lift the slate from the wall and stand it upright. It starts to fall toward me; I brace it. Ralphie pulls off his baseball cap, which has probably been on his head for a decade now, and with his palm, smoothes back his already matted gray hair.

“You need help?”

“No, it's OK, I got it.”

Two little kids pop their heads out of the door behind him. A girl with her finger in her mouth and a miniature boy version of Ralphie, hat and all. All three of them watch as I pick up the slate and lay it on my foot. In unison they all cringe.

“You want no help?” Ralphie asks again.

“No, I'm good.”

“You loco, you know? Crazy.”

“Yeah, I'm starting to see the full-sized picture.”

“Be careful, OK? Don't hurt nothing.”

“I won't.”

He turns to the kids, “Ivamos.” They scurry back inside.

 

My studio is part of a railroad apartment that was broken into smaller spaces. It has exposed brick on one wall, and a curtain—not a door—separating the bathroom from the rest. I get a laugh out of the wood floors. Lay a marble anywhere and in ten seconds it rolls to the south-east corner. There's more paint on this radiator than there was in my mother's Yonkers apartment. So many coats on the walls I think the place has lost a few square feet since it was built. A futon lies against the side wall. No frame, just a mattress with a sheet that's got little holes worn through it where my toenails rub while I'm on my stomach. Next to the bed are two cardboard boxes. One's got my clothes in it and the other is filled with books and paperwork—things I'm using to get my GED. There's also an alarm clock I never have to use.

All by itself on the floor is a black spiral notebook. I write in it sometimes about things that I'd rather not get started on right now.

The milk crates are waiting for me. I guide the slate down onto them and step back for a better look. It's … it's a table. Dark. About a foot off the ground, covering more of the apartment than it felt like it would. I sit on the floor facing it and cross my legs. It's perfect eating height that way. I stand up and look at it like it's supposed to do something.

I'm hungry.

 

Out the front door Stephanie's gone from the stoop. I walk across Tompkins Square Park. Low sunlight stretches tree shadows over benches and heavily pierced and tattooed squatters who set up beds in the grass. With dreads past their shoulders, they huddle behind a cardboard sign that says they need money for their dog, who also has dreads.

I sit on a bench hoping to get tired. I say no to people who ask me if I got a light. Make split-second eye contact with a few dozen people who walk by then watch them go their way. I stay put until streetlights come on, and memories of living here creep back in. My apartment isn't great shakes, but it beats this park, and this park, as a transition to sanctuary, beat the shit out of Yonkers.

A guy and girl who may or may not have another place to sleep tonight walk by me with their arms latched like the safety pins that hold their pants together. I see Nokey putting his hand on my sister. I wonder if he hadn't done that would anything else have even happened. I get off the bench, head to my apartment, and try to leave that thought in the park.

Yonkers is bookended by two strips of water—the Hudson River and the Bronx River—and if you stay in the middle of the city long enough, which I definitely did, you can actually feel them pulling you from both sides, wanting to take you down south past the boroughs of New York City into the Atlantic. The waters start to feel like tarmac, runways for take-off. And if you give over to the pull, let the river take you, you get a ticket to Europe and beyond. I've seen this done. Somebody's brother or sister from the neighborhood just took off downstream and we never heard from them again. In some places, to gain legend status, all you have to do is leave.

The Hudson River, the bigger of the two, belongs to the downtown crowd. From their apartment windows they see the sun dip behind it, watch cargo ships and sail boats leave wakes in it, and hear trains run parallel to it before it dumps commuters onto their front lawns farther up-county.

The Bronx River, which is two blocks from my dad's house—which until last summer was also my house—belongs to the city's northerners. We rode our bikes on the footpath next to it when we were little and drank beer on its banks
when we were a little bigger. Some nights, Nokey and me used to lay down on the damp dirt that lines it, tell stunningly and embarrassingly stupid teenage jokes, and look for faces in the stars. At night if we drank enough beer and the breeze hit just right, the tree branches looked like they were rotating, cutting spirals upward into the dotted sky. So we stayed put, let our backs get muddy wet, and fell into the sky with the help of nature and alcohol.

After a few days of rain the water would get higher, faster, and the ripples louder—I could hear them two blocks and two stories away from inside my dad's house. And let me tell you straight up: that was a tempting sound to hear trying to fall asleep in a house I had every desire to leave.

If you wanna get away from Yonkers by riding the Hudson River it's pretty much a straight run to the Atlantic. But if you're taking the Bronx River you'll have to be a strong swimmer.

You gotta cross the Westchester County line into The Bronx and swim past Hunt's Point and the Bronx Terminal Market, where they plunk the rotten produce in the water. Past that the Bronx River becomes the Harlem or East River where if you catch a stray current you can crash into Riker's Island or get sucked into Flushing Bay and spend the rest of your days lapping at the shore near LaGuardia Airport. But if you drift west a bit, you wind up kissing Manhattan at East Harlem which, like some first kisses, feels smooth, promising and lasts for about ten minutes, then you slide down to Hell Gate somewhere near 96th Street. Clear that and you still might get snagged by Brooklyn's Red Hook, a piece of land that sticks out like a dockworker's tool; it can keep you flapping there like a soggy piece of toilet paper. After the Hook you're at the place where the East and Hudson Rivers become one. There you have to dodge the anchors of the Verrazano Bridge and make sure you don't get thrown into the dead end of Jamaica Bay.

Understand—we didn't swim in the Bronx River. The geese didn't even go for a dip. They only came to shit. Sometimes you couldn't tell if it was a big piece of water with a little shit in it or a big piece of shit with a little water in it. But there was a highlight. About a half mile south of my dad's house the river stretches fifty feet wide, and a wooden footbridge connects the banks. Fifteen feet below the bridge is a waterfall—if we can call it a waterfall. The water crashes from about a foot and a half up. And give me a break, this is Yonkers I'm talking about, not Canada or South America, we run a deficit in the claim-to-fame department, so I'm calling the little shittin thing a falls. Thank you.

In the hot season the sun stayed around longer and the clothes came off quicker. I don't think the girls in the neighborhood knew they'd been helping me mark time by stripping down to their bathing suits. Their bodies differentiated the identical school years. Between sixth and seventh grade Colleen Burke grew boobs and Lanie Raniolo started shaving her legs. Between ninth and tenth grade Katie Ryan's thighs got big and Julie DiMatteo started lifting weights.

Below the footbridge, just past the base of the falls, rocks scatter like grey turtle shells spaced so that someone with long enough legs, like my sister, could step from bank to bank without getting their feet wet. But Dani didn't usually cross the river. Mostly she hopped herself to the middle, sat down and hugged her knees to her chest while the rest of us got drunk and loud, while couples sat with their legs dangled over the side of the bridge, backs to chests. The water split apart at the back of Dani's stone island and came together again at her toes, swirling up a little force field around her.

Dani had been on the swim team since she was small. It was weird looking at her surrounded by all that unswimmable water—like an actor in an empty theater—you'd think she'd
have wanted to go in, but she was a quiet kid, you know? And quiet people, it's hard to know what's in their head.

 

We were hanging out on the bridge over the falls—the whole crew of us—we tied our six-packs to the bridge on a rope long enough to reach the river, to keep them cold and out of view. That day on the footbridge, Nokey was scoping Dani's just-turned-thirteen-year-old chest and body that really did look like a woman's. Being my younger sister or being someone Nokey's known since before birth didn't mean she was out of the game.

(Nokey's not his real name, by the way. It's short for Gnocchi, which still isn't his real name. It's Eugene Cervella. But since the third grade, people have been calling him Gnocchi Cervella—in English it roughly translates to Potato Head. He hates the name, but he always acts like he's got something else in his head besides brains, so he can't shake it.)

He went up to my sister and started with: “Listen, Danielle. I don't want to be a rock in your shoe …” and followed with a hand on her shoulder.

Whether he's hitting on girls or not, he's always working his hands. They're big and heavy enough to separate at the wrists. His pinky is the only finger thin enough to fit in the neck of a beer bottle, and his nails are too thick to bite through—he has to use a scissor. His hands are smart, and make him a good mechanic. His father only had to show him how a torque wrench worked once like three years ago and it stuck—he never stripped a thread. It's like his fingers memorize things on contact. When we worked at his father's garage together, he'd handle customers and in the prints of his fingers record where and how they could be touched. This practice made repeats
out of first-time customers and kept the regulars revolving. Some guys he'd give the one-hand shake with a matching slap on the shoulder. Or the classic two-hand shake, grabbing their entire hand—or just tapping the tips of his fingers on the back of theirs. For the ladies it's a hand on the back when he'd lead her to the office to pay her bill. With the older ladies, he would link his right arm with their left and lay his free hand on their wrist.

He wore his mechanic's coveralls cut off at the shoulders and below the knees, so all the married rich chicks could get a good look at his arms and cobra-tattooed-calf busting through the ragged edges. He was good for his dad's garage business and swears that's why his dad bought him the weight set. And this kid is a great wide receiver; he catches long passes like his palms are made of flypaper. He might even be scholarship worthy if he'd join the friggin football team already, but he has no time for organized anything; he'd rather set records hardly anyone will ever hear about.

Two summers ago he decided to jump in the river from the footbridge, which nobody ever did before because at about fifteen feet high and with no running start it looks like you could never clear the rocks to the water—which is maybe five feet deep on rainy days. Well, he
almost
cleared the rocks. He fucked up his ankle pretty good, bruised his back and got seven stitches on his ass. You would think that might have been a sign, but he didn't see it that way. When the cast came off his ankle and the stitches out his ass, he tried again. This time he didn't do it on a whim. He told people he was gonna do it on a particular day so we could all see him jump off the bridge again and possibly bust his head or slice his butt open. Thankfully, that time, he cleared the rocks. He came out of the river wet wearing only a pair of cut-off denim shorts with not so much as a scratch or a hair out of place. Everyone applauded. See, that's
the tricky thing about Nokey—just when you're convinced all he's got in his head are potatoes, he makes you believe he can do anything.

 

Me, because I've known him so long, I look at him do his thing and it's like watching a third-grader in a teenager's body. I half expect him to call me from the back seat of his GTI after he's just finished with a girl and ask me if I want to go put quarters on the railroad tracks like when we were eight.

For as long I've hung around the cheeky fuck, it's been easy for me to love him. Except that day on the bridge when he said, “Listen, Danielle, I don't want to be a rock in your shoe, but I must say you're looking very cute these days.” If he had stopped there, with the lame fuckin line, I might have been cool with it. But the goddamn hand on the shoulder bit. Maybe that's the curse of knowing what someone's capable of. Knowing how skillfully they can disguise their agenda in charm.

Danielle didn't look as bent as I was. She deadpanned him right in his face and said, “I'm not wearing shoes.”

Now, from where I was standing, Noke should have backed up—made light out of the rejection. But the fucking guy kept coming.

“Yeah, I can see you're barefoot.
Rock in the shoe
is just an expression. It means a pain in the ass. Like I don't want to be bothering you. Be annoying like, you know, like how having a rock in your shoe would be annoying.”

Dani stayed quiet and let his joke sprawl flat on its back. This was flag number two signifying a dead end. But that didn't matter to Nokey Cervella.

He said, “I don't mean a real shoe. I mean a make-believe shoe. A hypothetical shoe.”

“I don't have any hypothetical shoes.”

That may have given me the first laugh of the whole thing if I wasn't feeling so ready to pounce.

He said, “You're not gettin me,” and his smart-ass hand ran down her arm and landed on her wrist that was covered with a dozen silver bangles. Dani flinched, and pulled her wrist away. “No, Nokey, you're not getting me.”

Finally he was ready to lay off. He held his hand out in front of him like a stop sign and said, “I'm getting another beer now.” He turned around and walked to where I was standing, grabbed the rope and lifted the six-pack from the water. “What the fuck?” he said. “Was I not being nice? I thought I was being nice. JT, what was I being?”

And Dani, who had been standing still watching him the whole time, finally climbed down beneath the bridge, hopped to her favorite rock and sat down.

Noke goes, “That's a weird chick, man. I mean I know she's your sister and all, but don't you think she's gettin a little weird?”

“Now she's weird cause she's not into you?”

“What's wrong with me?”

“You want the short list?”

“Fuck off.”

“Hey, take a walk with me.”

“I'm good here. You go for a walk.”

I had to get serious and loud: “Fuck knuckle. Take a walk with me.”

We walked on the path next to the river, moving away from everyone.

“I hardly even touched her. And I'm a good guy. Like you don't know I'm a good guy? Aren't I a good guy?”

“Listen, maybe it's better you don't hang out here for a while. Let's say we split the river for a while? I mean we work together, we gotta spend every day?”

“We were getting laid at her age and now you don't want her
to because why? She's a girl? Does the term ‘psycho brother' mean anything to you?”

“It ain't that.”

“Oh, come off it. You haven't been able to bullshit me since kindergarten, so stop it. Your stubborn wop's starting to show.”

“It ain't that.”

“Then it's your stubborn mick.”

I looked back to see if we were out of shouting distance from the rest of them yet. Not quite, so I lowered my voice and picked up the pace. “She's thirteen.”

“Thirteen's not a disease.”

“You're seventeen, that doesn't bother you?”

“Should it?”

It's hard to reason with ignorance. “I don't like guys messing with her,” I said.

“Look, she gave me the brush off. So I consider myself brushed. I'm off the case. But here's some news tough guy, I'm not the only one who's gonna try to wet my luck with her so get used to it.”

“I don't want guys messing with her.”

“Yeah, I heard you.”

“I don't want it,” I repeated. Every smart piece of me said to keep it all to myself, because this guy could bad judge a situation to death and the last person I was gonna let him do that with was my sister. But another part of me wanted to tell him everything, and that's why I kept repeating myself, hoping he would read my whole mind, and finally everything would be out without me actually having to say it. If we didn't know each other so well, he probably would have thought I was autistic, but he caught on that there was something else I was getting at. His voice got real deep, like it does when he's getting serious with you.

“JT, what the fuck?”

“I don't like it.” I picked up my pace even more and looked over my shoulder.

“You're freakin me out, man.”

“I just don't like it.”

He stepped in front of me, put one of his heavy hands right under my throat and stopped me from walking. I could have cut off his hand and ate it. “Quit saying that. Stand the fuck still and tell me what you're talking about?” I was trying to speak but I couldn't. “Come on, it's me for Christ's sake. Tell me.”