Painted Cities (5 page)

“Yes,” I said.

“Ha, I knew it!” he said. “No one else knows how to get up here. Just you and me.”

I thought about this. In the end the climb hadn’t seemed that difficult.

“Yeah,” he said. “No one knows…”

He sat down next to me. He scooped up a handful of rocks. He had blue eyes. This was strange. He was Mexican, just like me; he had dark skin, dirty
summer
skin, but he also had these almost pastel-blue eyes. His face was lit up. He was smiling.

He shook his handful of rocks, loosing a couple. He looked down to the street. The noise of the basketball players came to us. “Center. Ball!” His eyes moved to the kids on the court.

“That’s my cousin over there,” he said. “Right there, see, the one with the ball.” He looked down to his handful of rocks, shook another couple free. “His name is Junebug. He’s a D. He’s a little crazy.”

I studied the kid with the ball. I’d seen him before. He looked like the type that liked to corner younger kids against the walls and ask them, “
What you be about
?” I avoided kids like him, crossed the street when I saw them coming.

“He shot me with a BB gun,” Buff said. “Like three days ago.” He pulled up his T-shirt and showed me. On his belly were three small welts, each holding a tiny, deep, dark pit in its center.

“He shot you?” I said.

“Yeah,” Buff said. He laughed. He let his shirt down. “Ha ha, it
didn’t even hurt!” He looked down to his handful of rocks, shook out another two.

“You should go to the doctor,” I told him.

“I should, right?” he said. “Aaaa.”

Buff looked out over the ledge. By this time there was only one rock left from his handful. He looked far down the street.

“All right, bro, here it comes,” he said. And then, in a split second, Buff jumped to his feet, fired his rock over the ledge, and ducked back down. I followed him, ducking too. I heard a loud
POP
, then a long screech of tires.

“Damn, bro, that was a cop car!” Buff said. “I got them, bro! I got the Law!”

I stayed low. I didn’t want to see.

After a few moments I couldn’t help it. If it
was
the cops, I thought it might be better if I turned myself in. I peeked over. Down on the street, a fat man wearing a red baseball cap was inspecting the shattered windshield of a rusted green station wagon. The man was dirty, sweaty, like he’d been working all day. His car didn’t appear to have any backseats, only chunks of concrete filling the space from the driver’s seat all the way to the tailgate. Stuck out of the back window was a bent metal pole with a red bandanna tied to its end. Two other people were down there, a couple. “
Pinche cabrones
,” the man said. He shook his head and took his cap off. “
Pendejos
,” he said. He rested his forearms on the roof of his car and then brought his head down. The couple walked away.

I tucked back down behind the ledge.

“It
was
the cops,
wasn’t
it, bro?” Buff asked.

“Yes,” I told him. “I think it was the narcs or something.”
I swallowed hard.

“I knew it, bro,” Buff said. “I knew it was the cops. My name is Buff,” he said. He sucked spit.

“Jesse,” I told him. I shook his hand.

That summer we were inseparable. I found out Buff was ten, the same age as me, although he looked like he could be a year younger, maybe even two. I found out that he lived on the North Side, but that he was spending the summer with his aunt on Twenty-Fourth Place because “people” were after him. I asked who the “people” were but he didn’t want to tell me. He said: “Maybe you know them. I don’t want to start any shit.”

I also found out that Buff was going to be a father. That he had a girlfriend named Letty who occasionally visited him. She was seven months’ pregnant, Buff said.

“Isn’t your family mad?” I asked him.

“Yeah, but what are they going to do?” Buff said. “Besides, we’re in love.” I nodded like I knew love could be the reason for anything.

One afternoon we were up on the roof drinking some Cokes I had bought from Midwest corner store. I was staring up into the sky, listening to the traffic. Buff was looking over the ledge. We were talking about cars, maybe, or what prison was like. And then Buff said: “Look, there she is. There she is, bro. That’s Letty.” I turned and looked over the ledge. Across the street a group of girls were talking to some of the basketball players. “The one with the white shirt,” Buff said. I looked to her. She was pretty. In fact, to me, at my age then, she was beautiful. She was thin, tall. She had short,
dark hair. She looked like an older girl, like she was in high school. She smiled a lot, seemed genuinely happy about things. When she talked she moved her hands. When the boys spoke to her, she rolled her eyes. She did not look pregnant.

“That’s Letty?” I asked Buff.

“Yeah, bro,” he said. “I forgot to tell you she was coming down here today.”

“She’s talking to all those D’s,” I told him.

“I know,” he said. “That’s her cousins. Most of those guys down there.”

I watched the girl move. I watched her pull back her hair as if she could put it in a ponytail. I heard her laugh out loud once. It was a deep laugh, like she had never been unhappy.

Finally, she and her friends walked away. When they were in the middle of the block Buff yelled out, “
Let-ty!
” He tucked down behind the ledge. “I don’t want her to see me, bro,” he whispered. “She doesn’t like it when I call out her name like that.” I lowered my head but continued to watch. The girl turned and looked behind her. In the playground the boys were already back to their game. She looked in front of her, across the street. She looked to her friends. They all laughed together.

“Did she look?” Buff asked.

“Yes,” I told him.

“Damn, she knew it was me,” he said. “She’s going to be pissed later.” He shook his head.

I rested my chin on the ledge and watched as the group of girls walked away. Buff came up and watched as well.

“Those girls are bitches,” he said. “They talk too much.”

This is how we spent our time. Sometimes throwing rocks, but mostly just talking. Buff showing me things, telling me what it was like to sniff cocaine. In truth, I don’t think I believed much of what Buff said. I simply went along with it.

One afternoon he asked me if I’d ever smoked angel dust. “Yes,” I said. “It’s crazy, right?” Buff asked. “Yes,” I answered.

I often wonder if Buff knew I was lying. But up on the roof, between the two of us, it didn’t seem to matter. Sometimes I even question whether I actually spent a summer on that gravel roof, but then I think about what happened, and I know that I did.

The idea came to us at night. Back then my rule for coming home was the streetlights. When the streetlights came on I was to start heading home, no matter where I was. I followed the same rule when I was up on the roof, but I dawdled. I was only a block away from home. When I arrived and my father asked where I had been, I told him that I had been at Harrison Park, or some other place that took equally long to return from.

It was during the time the streetlights came on that we devised our plan. This was always quiet time. The time when the traffic changed from hectic shoppers and those returning home from work, to those simply cruising or heading out to parties. From the pierogi factory roof we could see clear over to California Avenue, where the mirror-windowed court building was lit up with the orange of the setting sun, the same color orange as the streetlights, which within minutes would flood up at us, shining over the ledge.

We lay there silently, on our backs, absorbing the heat of the day
as it rose off the roof.

“Hey, bro,” Buff suddenly said. “Wouldn’t it be cool to live up here?”

I took a deep breath. I had my eyes closed. I felt as if time were holding still. “Yes,” I answered.

“I was thinking maybe we could build a house up here,” Buff said. “Like no one else would know. It would just be our secret.”

I heard Buff move against the gravel, switching positions. I opened my eyes, looked up into the deepening purple sky.

“Maybe you and Letty could live up here,” I told him. “Maybe we could even put a crib up here for your baby.” I looked to Buff. He was leaning on one arm, looking down at me.

“Damn, that would be straight, right?” Buff said. “It would be like an apartment. We’d share it with you too. Like if you got a lady or something. I’d just tell Letty we had to go. You could have a dinner up here.”

“Like candles and everything, right?” I asked him.

“Yeah, bro, just like that.”

“But we’d need a table and chairs…”

“I know,” Buff said. “And a bed, maybe a small table for the living room, some carpet or linoleum.”

“Walls,” I said. “And what about a roof…?” I considered the impossibility of the idea. Buff turned and looked out over the ledge. The streetlights were full power now; his face was bright orange. I closed my eyes. I thought about the hobos who lived under the bridge on Western Avenue. I thought about their homes, built of old doors, scraps of wood, sheets of metal. I opened my eyes again, looked into the nearly starless sky, the type of lonely sky one sees
only in the city.

“Maybe we could find some wood,” I said. I turned onto my side. “I know my father has a piece of metal, like a big tray. Maybe we could use that as a roof.”

“That would be perfect, bro,” Buff said. “I saw some wood the other day by the A&P.”

“I could bring nails and a hammer,” I said.

“I got some rope,” Buff said.

“Cool,” I replied, even though I wasn’t sure what we’d need the rope for.

“Tomorrow,” Buff said. “We’ll start tomorrow.”

I agreed.

That night I went home thinking of possibilities. When I walked through my door it was easily an hour and half after the streetlights had come on.

“Where the hell were you?” my father asked. His glare was familiar.

“At the park, playing basketball,” I told him.

I felt a shift in his breathing. He was trying to keep himself from exploding.

“Did you win at least?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, and I quickly went to my room. I felt as if that was one of the last lies I’d ever tell my father.

The next day Buff and I met in the alley behind the factory. It was so early the neighborhood was still asleep, so early that what little traffic there was had time to echo between apartment buildings. Buff was holding a coiled-up line of dirty yellow rope.

“You want to get the wood first?” he asked.

“We should get that tray,” I told him. “I don’t know when my father will wake up.”

“All right,” Buff said. He put the rope around his neck like a sling, like a mountaineer ready for a climb. We walked the block back to my house. I let Buff in through the back gate, down into my gangway. The screen door that had fallen off last winter was up against the building next door. The front gate that had rusted free two summers ago was leaning against our building’s back wall. Used tires that my father had plans to sell were stacked around the sewer cover. I unlocked the back door, then gave it a jolt with my shoulder—the only way the door would open. I led Buff down the stone steps into the basement. Led him past the furnace, past my bedroom, around the corner to where the tin sheet was.

“That’s it, bro?” Buff asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“That’s perfect,” he said.

He grabbed one side. I grabbed the other. We carried the piece of metal through the basement, our feet occasionally knocking against a corner, making a deep gong sound that I felt sure would wake my father upstairs.

When we got to the gangway I turned to shut my door.

“You got a nice house,” Buff said. “Two floors and everything.”

“It’s not that nice,” I said. “You should see the upstairs.”

We walked the piece of metal back to the pierogi factory, leaned it against the cinder-block wall of the gangway. “I’ll let the rope down,” Buff said. And in a few minutes, above me, I heard Buff’s voice.

“Ready?” he called down. He sucked spit like he always did. He
tossed the yellow rope over the ledge. I took the end and wrapped the sheet metal as best I could.