I
t’s worse. Like it knew we were coming. Or maybe each new ngk builds on the strength of the previous ones. The second certainly came in fiercer than the first. Whatever it is, I seriously doubt anyone’s gonna make it seven minutes, let alone ten. Five would be impressive.
This building’s a littler cleaner and better kept than the other two. There’s a newly installed door-buzzer system and fresh doormats. But the noise, the feeling of fast-forward deterioration deep down inside, the utter degradation of being near that little screeching, panting monster . . . It’s almost too much to bear as soon as we walk in.
“Jesus,” Dro says, throwing his hands over his face as if that would do anything to relieve the feeling. “What the hell?”
“I know.” Riley’s playing the reluctant lieutenant, stifling his terror through gritted teeth. “Let’s get this . . . the fuck . . . over with.”
The ngk is in a shadowy corner of the basement, cackling and panting away on his little bike just like his brothers. Again I have to stifle the urge to draw and slice the damn thing into a million pieces.
“I gonna make a grab for the machine,” Riley says.
“You two cover me.” Better him than me. Dro and I draw our blades, mine vividly steel and solid compared to Dro’s shimmering ghost blade. I don’t even know what we’re preparing for, since we can’t . . . whatever. The screeching had stopped for a minute, but as Riley goes in, it comes back strong, almost knocking me to my knees. The ngk, ever focused, keeps its squinty little eyes straight ahead as it pants and chuckles to itself on that stupid stationary bike. Little patches of hair dot its pale shriveled body like weeds on a vacant lot. I steady myself and watch out the corner of my eye as Riley reaches for the bike. The shriek gets noticeably worse as he closes in. I check the stairs, squinting through the pain to make sure no one’s coming.
When Riley gasps, I swing back around, blade poised to strike. There’s no one to strike at though. Riley’s skidded away from the ngk, shaking his hand like he wants to fling it into a corner. “Fuck! The thing burned me!”
“You okay?” Dro yells.
“I think so,” Riley says. Then he collapses. He’s lying there, flickering and fading like ghosts do right before they cease to be. I go to grab him, but Dro gets there first. Only instead of getting Riley, he lunges at the little grinning creature in the corner. I open my mouth, but the words haven’t come out by the time Dro brings his sword down full force on the ngk, slicing a clean, maroon laceration into the thing’s head.
For maybe a half second, nothing happens.
We both just stand there, staring like idiots at the ngk as its dark blood pours freely from the brand-new gaping mouth Dro made in its forehead. Then it falls over itself like a sack of potatoes that just realized it was an inanimate object. There’s a moment of peace; the screeching stopped the second Dro’s blade hit its mark. Relief flushes
through me. I’m reaching down to grab Riley, who’s looking slightly better, when the screeching returns in force. Not only is it twenty times worse, but it’s coming from all around us. Carrying Riley’s trembling, barely there form, I turn and stumble toward the stairs. It takes all my inner strength not to come crashing down and give up, but I can’t. There’s no Moishe to call nine-one-one this time, and Riley’s unconscious ass is depending on me.
I’d figured Dro was right behind me, but then I hear him scream. At least six ngks are on him. I have no idea how they moved so fast or where they came from. All I know is, they’re swarming over Dro’s translucent body like maggots on meat. I take a weary step toward him, almost pass out, and then realize it’s useless anyway. What am I gonna do—slice them and get myself eaten too? If that’s what they’re doing. I see one reach a tiny hand
into
his ghost flesh and twizzle its fingers around. Dro screams in agony, but I can barely hear it beneath the ngk shrieks. And then he’s quiet. Because he’s gone. The ngks finish whatever sick cleanup ritual they have and then turn their hungry eyes to me.
And I’m gone. I don’t know if I’ve ever moved so fast in my entire short, weird half-life. The stairs are a blur beneath my uneven legs. The door slams behind me. I’m through the hallway out onto the street, Riley a quivering pressure against my back. I’m surprised I didn’t go straight through the glass windowpane on the way out. I keep going, tearing around the corner in an oblivious frenzy, up the block, ’round another corner, and then straight on into the night.
I pause at Eastern Parkway, where cars are still bustling back and forth. It’s a comfortingly large thruway. There’s trees, big apartment buildings. A little up the way, I can see the Brooklyn Museum, brightly lit on this
cold, cold night. I collapse on one of the benches lining the shadowy jogging path beside the service road. Every breath reignites the fire into my chest. Riley lies flickering beside me: still there but only barely. He doesn’t have much left in him.
There’s only one place I know where he’ll be sure to heal, and unfortunately, it’s back in the direction I came from. I exhale a frosty curse into the winter night, hoist Riley on my shoulder, and slump back down Franklin Avenue toward Mama Esther’s.
At the crossroads
where her spirit shocks
she comes sweeping
through the night,
spirits and hounds
baying behind her.
her wings keep me warm.
three jackals
watch with me.
I am the gate
demons and vanquished gods invade
then pass into this world to get to you.
—Gloria Anzaldúa
“Canción de la diosa de la
noche”
A
fter the sounds of the city night faded to ambience, the predawn creaks and cracks of this old house kept me company. Some plaster would crackle above me and to the left; then a few dozen seconds would slip by and a clack would sound out across the room. I used to trace imaginary lines between each tiny beat, draw constellations in my head from pop to clank. Then an old engine somewhere would sigh to life, fans spinning, belts whirring past. Its entrance was always a grand pronouncement, but in a few minutes it would blend with the scattered night orchestra.
The best, though, my all-time favorite, was when someone in the adjacent building would take a shower. The piping was connected to Mama Esther’s, so as soon as they turned on the faucet, you’d hear the torrent of water race up one wall, across the ceiling, down another side, and then rush off toward the neighbor’s. You could imagine the water joyously swooping across the building, up and down pipes and finally exploding out of someone’s silver faucet. I thought about how the building was very like a living thing, how a whole system of ticks and tocks and whirring sounds and circulating fluids kept it all in working order,
flushed out the garbage, spread life through the pipes. The clicks and clacks and murmuring rush of water became a song, a call-and-response with my own slow-beating heart and the fluid rushing through my pipes, and the song was about life.
But now I’m too worried about Riley to fuck around with found-sound symphonies. Mama Esther plays her part, the old ghost, carrying on and dithering over Riley’s depleting shadow. I play mine too, waving off her concern for me, slumping glumly in the corner while she works on him. I gaze on with dazed interest as those huge, see-through hands slide over my partner, working that ancient magic, pulsing life back into him.
And Dro. Dro is gone. I can’t linger in that emptiness too long or it will swallow me.
At some point in the night, Mama Esther rouses me from a half-assed nap to send me on my way. “There’s nothing else that you can do for him, Carlos. You already saved his life
.
” A flicker of doubt in her old eyes:
provided he lives . . .
And it’s true. After she leaves, I just stand here in this room that I know so well and try to chart the odd progress of my life up till this point. It’s mostly been a series of encounters with the dead, a few wild drunken nights, and many long walks across Brooklyn. And now the man who pulled my mostly dead ass off the street and brought me here to become whole again is on the brink. And all I can do is pace the room. “Go home, Carlos
,”
Mama Esther had said. “Rest yourself. You’ve had a long and terrible night.”
* * *
She was right, of course, but I don’t go home. I’ve had a long and terrible night. Home means nothing to me. I
have no interest in wallowing, and I know Herodotus and the poets will never eclipse the image of Dro falling to the ngk swarm. And then the ngk swarm turning to me as one, those myriad hungry eyes glaring through the darkness of the basement.
No.
Home is not the place for me. My mind knows where it wants to go, but I let my feet carry me on their own. It’s easier that way, not allowing the conscious desire to surface. Do what you have to do, feet, and soon we’re ambling through the park, and the thousand late-night spirits and birds howl their creature songs and the songs mingle with my crooked heart and its off-tempo scampering, my swirling fears and the regrets and wonders, my aching head. I’m just a park spirit too, at the end of the day. Housed in this crooked body with its crooked heart, off-tempo gait, and deathlike swagger. But inside, I’m just a ghost like the rest of them. Don’t be fooled.
It’s so dark here. I’m sure I’m a holy terror to any late-night sojourner, this limping half phantom fleeing from a long and terrible night into the arms of some unknown disaster. Fuck. I haven’t even drunk anything and my mind’s moving too fast for its own good. I forsake the path for those blessed with the full breath of life and trundle through the underbrush, upsetting a family of birds. And then I’m out in the sudden clutter of Flatbush and then I’m on Ocean Avenue and my finger’s on the buzzer of her door and I’m slumped against the wall, waiting, trying not to think too hard.
“Carlos?”
She’s in pajamas. A light. She’s probably not really glowing—I just haven’t seen anything that could make me smile in what seems like years but is really only hours. I find I don’t know what to do with myself, how to carry
this strange body. Fortunately, my face says it all. Sasha takes one look at me and opens the door. It’s startling, how instantaneous her decision is. I see it flash across her face. It’s not that she didn’t think about it at all, but . . . she brings me inside, leads me to an elevator, down a hallway, into a cozy little dim one-bedroom. She helps me out of my jacket, collapses me into an easy chair that seems to have been waiting there just for me, and puts on some water to boil.
I’m doing everything I can not to look like a complete zombie when she comes back in the room. “Do you want to talk about it?” she says very softly. I have no words for what happened. And I’m not in a storytelling mood. And the more I say, the more likely I’ll fuck up, and this night will come crashing around me even more than it already has. I shake my head. She nods and goes back in the kitchen to fuss with the tea.
“Milk and sugar?”
“Uh-uh.”
She returns with two steaming mugs. “I hope peppermint’s okay. It’s all I got.” She’s wearing flowy pajama pants and a tank top. You can just make out the shadow of her nipples through the shirt. Her clavicles slide beneath the straps and meet at her neck, where the tiny shadows of her jugular veins triangle up and away toward her ears. I stand and take the teas out of her hands. She reads my expression and, with the slightest of smiles, says: “No.” I give one of the teas back to her and sit.
“You can show up at some ridiculous hour of the morning with death etched across your face and I’ll lend you my couch. I don’t even know why I trust you that much, but I do. But don’t overplay your hand, Carlos.”
“Fair enough.” I’m elated just to be here and not in some delirium of sorrow. I sip at the tea, which is pretty
bland, and allow contentment to displace confusion. I don’t know how we settled into a conversation, but we did. She knew I was lost and took the initiative, talking about the park and how different it was at various hours of the day. I was quiet at first, but she ignored it like a pro. We stick to larger universal topics—the smell of coffee, waking-up routines, and soon it feels natural, like what normal people do. Our eyes say plenty more, but soon even all that gets lost in the winding conversation. And then I find I’m fading; the night with all its longness and terriblosity, has caught up to me. I’d’ve been perfectly happy sliding into unconsciousness on this comfortable-ass easy chair, but instead Sasha lays me down on the couch—me mumbling total nonsense like an old man and her cooing and shushing me, covering me with blankets till everything becomes dim, and then there’s nothing at
all.
I
t’s snowing when I wake up. I have no idea what time it is, a few hours from dawn maybe. The heater’s clanging incessantly like some angry troll got trapped in there on the way to his cave. Sasha is apparently quite the movie buff; stacks and stacks of videotapes and DVDs crowd around her television like a fragile entourage. Besides that, you’ve got your standard van Gogh coffee shop painting, a portrait of Frederick Douglass looking surly, a few dangly plants and some framed photos that might very well be the same sample ones they use in picture frames all over the place. It’s a nice spot, altogether, and seems to be keeping my demons at bay.
Something moves in the corner of my eye. She’s standing in the doorway to her bedroom, watching me. I have no idea how long she’s been there, but what’s important is she’s still wearing those flowy pants that look like they could be gone with very little effort, and her nipples are still insinuating themselves through that tank top. That’s what’s important to me anyway. Her mouth is frowning, but somehow I can tell she’s smiling in some deeper place. Her eyes meet mine and she nods her head. It’s the smallest of gestures: Point Zero. I send up a brief silent prayer
of thanks to whatever omniscient force has guided my life to this point and a quick silent shout-out to Riley for a speedy recovery, my dear brother, and then I stand, let the sleep slide off me as I rise out of the covers, and follow her into the room.
* * *
When I was lying completely still in that room in Mama Esther’s house, life tiptoeing back into my body, I heard the flutterings of a coupling. Through all that back talk and smack talk, all the tiny and gigantic legends that unraveled, there was one that you could pick out above the rest. A singular, crisp ray of emotion: unmistakable. It was a simple thing—two teenagers. A young dark-skinned girl with big eyes and a Dominican kid, all shiny curls on his head and baggy pants. The other kids’d be rollicking through the motions and these two would join the fun, but there was something else going on. I don’t think it was just me who could sense it; the other young’uns picked up on all that electricity too, with that unerring adolescent radar they have.
He lived in Bushwick, a few neighborhoods over, but they went to the same school and he started showing up on the block and fell in well with the other kids. You could tell he wanted her by his quietness and his stupid boy teasing. In my room, I imagined her shy smile as she punched his arm for saying something stupid and him contorting with joy at the attention. I couldn’t tell you what separated it from any of the other flirtations that played out up and down the block that summer. It was just something you could taste in the air whenever they got within a block of each other. It was easy: a force greater than either of them wanted that union to happen, and the world sent that great magician of the inevitable, gravity, to make it so. Once
gravity enters the picture, all bets are off. Those kids were hurtling toward each other like two asteroids that traveled bajillions of light-years just to cross paths at that one fatal instant. Who knows what endless cause and effects spiral out of those gravity-inflicted collisions? There’s something different about them though. They burn harder, and the fallout can shake the whole city on its foundation.
The day they finally did it—a rainy afternoon toward the end of summer—the shit woke me up from one of those deep-as-an-abyss type naps. They were quiet; don’t get me wrong. I think her old grandma was only a few rooms away in her rocking chair, so they had to keep it down. But the vibrations. You could feel ’em tumbling through the air like tsunami after tsunami, a relentless, joyful series of explosions that momentarily collapsed the natural order of things. A giddy kind of chaos burned among the exploding molecules around me. I knew it was happening and smiled. I’m sure even Grandma’s dreams simmered with those colliding, gravity-stricken teenagers. I’m sure she woke up smiling and confused, hopefully none the wiser.
The drumbeat kept up all through the afternoon—I was impressed, actually—and simmered into a gentle caress as night fell. The whole block burned with it, pulsed with it, and when the lights came on to fight off the coming dark, they glowed brighter for the ferocity of that loving, that true sheet-grabbing throb that emanated from the sweat-soaked room on the third floor.
Gravity.
* * *
Outside, the snow keeps falling. I take the back of Sasha’s neck in my hand and put our faces together. The sky is dark blue and flecked with white. I’ll move slow, because
I feel the momentum as it wraps around her. The promise of all that’s about to come slides up her legs, weakens her knees, caresses her thighs, and really—there’s no rush.
We have arrived.
My other hand is on her cheek; her arms reach up, encircle my neck. She brings her face up to mine, her lips up to mine. Her skin is cool; my skin is cool. The place where our lips meet is on fire. I’m taller than her and broad where she’s slender, but still: we mirror. The word
finally
swims through my mind, and then our tongues find each other and do battle and there are no more words. Her hips find mine. I’m rock-hard and let her know with a nudge. Her legs spread and I lift her up into the air, wrap her around me.
The snow’s in no hurry. It’ll always get where it’s going. When it moves fast, clamoring over itself to cascade in all those frantic rivulets, it’s not rushing, just following the pattern the wind has set for it. Teasing gravity, and gravity plays along because they both know, in the end, gravity always wins. Her skin is off-brown against white sheets as she lies back and slides easily out of her clothes. My arms are on either side of her; I’m a shelter above her. I press forward against her and stop, allowing the gravity to collect around us, the sheer, impossible joy of standing on that precipice, her juices flowing, inviting me inside. I wait for her to moan with blissful impatience and then inch forward, and she plays along because we both know, in the end, gravity always wins.
* * *
“You want to hear a song?”
I do, but I’m still groggy and delicious-feeling from those two rapid-fire orgasms that blew through my body like nuclear explosions. I rub my eyes and say, “Yes,
please.” She grins, excited like a little kid, and shuffles out of the blankets, reaching across me to the stereo beside her bed. It’s one of those old-fashioned deals with a record player on top and a million buttons. The bedside table actually is one of the speakers, I realize. It’s huge.
A sad piano progression chimes out over some rumbling bass notes. It’s got an old barroom blues feel, all jangly and almost dissonant, and then the drummer kicks in with a modern march, smooth but insistent, and the whole thing comes together: a rickety old soldier stumbling through the rain. It’s just a pretty song until the singer starts. Then something happens. I don’t know shit about music, so I couldn’t tell you if it’s the key she’s singing in, or the way her voice slides in between the notes like she’s flirting with them, or just the simple truth of her sorrow, coming straight out of her mouth, but whatever it is, the song lays me down and eases all my blissfully aching muscles. It creeps inside my heart, circulates into my bloodstream.
“You like it?”
Apparently I do, because I’m smiling pretty hard and I don’t really do that a lot. “What is it?”
She shrugs. “I dunno. Trevor brought it home one time, something he dug up in some archival library when he was researching some shit.”
“There’s no label on the tape or nothing?”
“It’s hand-written. Just says ‘PLEASE’ in all caps.”
“That’s kinda sad.”
“Or beautiful.”
“Both.”
Then we shut up, because the woman’s voice hits this particular note that is everything and just hangs there while the band trundles their cool blues beneath her. You can tell they all know they’re making magic, got that
divine swagger like nothing matters but each single note as they play it and then the phrase and how they all wind together and become one.
Halfway through the song, the woman drops out and a trumpet takes over. Sasha puts her head on my chest, and I can feel my slow heartbeat against her face. The trumpet blurts out a note, stops, blurts another, swings into a melody something like what the woman was singing and then takes off into a wild, burgeoning improvisation that leaves me breathless. “Damn,” I whisper.
“Right?”
“Mm-hmm.”
The woman comes back, resanctifying the space, and Sasha’s moving against me. I’m hard again, and I know if I just lie here, her slowly gyrating body will find what it’s looking for.