Safelight

by Shannon Burke

  “I dying? I dying?”

  Burnett put on a solemn expression.

  “Prepare yourself for death,” he said, and stepped out as the kid wailed. The gathered cops practically fell over one another laughing. I was laughing, too. We saw people shot every day. The kid was lucky. We couldn’t understand why he was crying. I shut the door and a minute later Burnett got up front.

  “Dying man, I’m fucking dying,” the kid cried.

  “You’re fine,” I said. “Calm down.”

  “Dying. I—”

  “No, you’re not. Be quiet. You’re fine.”

  He went on crying.

  “You’re not dying. No die. No muerta,” I said.

  “No muerto.”

  “Calmate. No muerta. Esta bien.”

  The kid calmed and Burnett sat up front with his head at an angle, listening. We brought him into the hospital and gave the report and afterward I saw Burnett at the ambulance, talking with Hock. They both turned and looked at me as I passed by.

  “Frank,” Burnett said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why’d you tell the kid he wasn’t dying?”

  “I felt sorry for him.”

  “For the drug dealer with the handgun? For the kid who pretends he don’t know English but can understand me telling him he’s dying?” Burnett frowned at me. “He wouldn’t feel sorry for you. You know that, don’t you?”

  “So what?”

  “So you ruined a joke.”

  “He’s got a point,” Hock said, gesturing with his cigarette.

  “I can still feel sorry for him,” I said. “Even if he wouldn’t feel sorry for me.”

  This seemed to confirm something for them. Burnett just looked at me. And then Hock and Burnett looked at each other.

  39

  The courtyard behind Emily’s apartment was surrounded by a vine-covered brick wall topped with broken glass embedded in the concrete. The surface of the courtyard was brick, with two trees growing up in circular patches of dirt. Norman stood along the far wall against the leafless vines, waving one of Emily’s foils, making it flop elastically.

  “I can fence,” he said. “Come on, Emily. You scared?”

  He’d been there about an hour. Already he was joking with her, playing around. He waved the foil erratically.

  “Let’s see what you got.”

  She grabbed her foil, adjusted it in her hand, and faced off against him.

  “Guess you better be ready for some whoopass,” he said.

  “Wow, you’re dumb,” I said.

  Norman held the foil up. Without further warning, he lunged at her. Very calmly, Emily stepped to the side, and, making a twisting motion with her hand, swept the foil, which rose in the air and spun off in an oblong flight. It fell, handle-first, clattering on the pavement. Norman seemed very surprised. He looked at the foil lying there, then snatched it up and said, “En garde,” and made a very obvious feint. Emily didn’t take the bait at all. He lunged again. She stepped to the other side and did the twisting thing. The foil went sailing into the air again. It struck the top of the wall and fell back.

  “Jesus,” Norman said. “You weren’t kiddin, Frank.”

  He was glad to play the clown. He wanted Emily to like him. Norman retrieved the foil from coils of vines. He brushed dirt from the handle and Emily held her foil out to me. I looked at Norman to see what he thought.

  “Take it, Frank.”

  “I’ll do it,” I said.

  “Course he’ll do it,” Norman said to Emily. “This is his big chance.”

  I took the heavy white pad and the mask. I gripped Emily’s foil and faced off against my brother.

  “Frank and I do it all the time,” Emily said. “He helps me.”

  “Like I was helping you?” Norman said.

  “Like that,” I said.

  “Well then,” Norman said. “En garde.”

  I got in position. Norman saw that I at least looked like I knew what I was doing. Emily had taught me a few things. After losing his foil twice, Norman wasn’t going to make the first move. I lunged in and got him in the belly, the foil bending against the white pad.

  “Aw fuck,” Norman said.

  He came at me. I parried, then went in, scoring another touch.

  “Damn,” he said. “You’re good, Frank.”

  “He’s a natural,” Emily said.

  He lunged again. I parried. I scored another touch. For fifteen minutes we jumped around each other, stabbing harmlessly into the white pads. Norman got me a few times, but most of the time I got him. We had fun, all three of us. Afterward we walked along East Broadway into China-town. We ate at a little restaurant with round tables, free soda, and waiters in black pants and white shirts hurrying back and forth. Norman was fascinated by the fencing. He questioned Emily endlessly.

  “So you stand in that crouch? The least amount of your body exposed?”

  “That’s right,” she said. “And from that position you can jump forward and back.”

  “And it’s good exercise?”

  Emily touched the top of her legs with her palms.

  “It’s the thighs,” she said. “And the forearm.”

  She held up her right and left arms. Her right forearm was significantly bigger.

  “And the palm,” she said, holding her hands face up. “It’s hard on that.”

  A line of yellowed calluses across the base of the fingers, and also on the knuckle of the index finger. I showed Norman my index finger, which had the beginnings of a callus. Norman looked at his own hands, which were soft and white. Surgeon’s hands.

  “We know who the rookie is,” he said.

  For an hour he talked good-naturedly, and I had a good time. I was glad we were together. But when Emily went to the bathroom Norman turned to me, and, in a different tone, the older-brother voice, he said, “You gotta be careful with her. You know that, Frank. It’d be easy to forget. You gotta use protection.”

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  “I don’t think it hurts to say it.”

  I frowned.

  “Don’t get sensitive about it,” he said.

  “I’m not sensitive about it. But you don’t have to say it right in the middle of lunch. While we’re talking. Like it was even a subject we were discussing.”

  “Well, don’t go crazy cause I mentioned it,” he said. “Anyone else does anything and you just sit there like whatever. I say one thing and you go crazy.”

  “Have some fucking tact, Jesus,” I said.

  Emily was coming back and we were both quiet. She could see we’d argued, but didn’t know about what. Norman turned to her, and, in a completely different tone, went on asking her questions.

  “And you teach, Emily?”

  “I coach and I compete. I do both.”

  “Well, I can see you’ve taught Frank,” he said generously, glancing at me. That was an implied apology, but I didn’t acknowledge it, and the rest of the meal was awkward. On the way back to her apartment, Norman saw an old sword outside a thrift store—a long, dull blade from Pakistan. He paid ten dollars, then came out gripping the sword with two hands, swinging it around, making high-pitched attack noises like in martial-arts films, saying, “Now I’m ready, now I got you.” We all laughed and then his beeper went off. We stopped at a pay phone and when he hung up he said he had to go.

  He shook Emily’s hand.

  “It was good meeting you, Emily.”

  “It was nice meeting you, Norman.”

  He said good-bye to me, a little reservedly. Before he left he gave Emily one of his cards, then held a hand up and got in a cab. I didn’t like Emily having his card. I was quiet. The two of us walked into her building and up the stairs.

  “He’s a good guy, Frank.”

  “He was today.”

  “He asked a lotta questions.”

  “That’s the way he is.”

  “I bet he’s a good doctor.”

  “He’s goo
d at most things he does and he knows it. It’s kind of annoying.”

  “He talked about your dad a little,” she said in a self-consciously casual tone, and I slowed. They’d been alone together before I arrived.

  “What’d he say?”

  “He talked about how it was. How he acted. He said he got so he just lay there. Wouldn’t talk to anyone.”

  “Did he say he thought I was the same as him?”

  “He said that you were the one who took care of him. And that you were the one who found him. That it was in the bathtub.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “He said that you were alone with him, looking at him, for like an hour.”

  “It wasn’t that long.”

  “And that afterwards you couldn’t see any gunshots or anything on the TV. No violence at all. For like six months. He said you kept getting worse and worse. And then . . . you decided to be a paramedic.”

  I was silent. She looked at the plank her foot was on. I was holding on to the ridged peak of the newel post.

  “Are you mad?”

  “I’m not mad,” I said. I let go of the newel post and started up the stairs. “He’s got a big mouth. And the way he talks about it, I sound like a freak. But I’m not mad at you.”

  “I think he wanted to talk about it.”

  “He wanted to blame me,” I said. “I was with him when it happened, so he blames me.”

  “I don’t think so, Frank.” I was quiet. “Have you talked to him about it?”

  “I don’t have to. I can see what he thinks,” I said.

  We walked up one flight in silence. When we neared the top I felt her hand on my back. She said, “It wasn’t only about you, Frank. We were talking about everything. About him. About me, too. Did he say anything about me? About me being sick?”

  “No,” I said. I think she knew I was lying.

  40

  There were some kids about two hundred yards away, playing a game with thrown sticks in the sandy area near the water, but there was no one else around. The wooden pilings in the harbor were empty, no boats attached, and I noticed they had moss on them at a level higher than the water. We smelled salt. Hock and I saw Burnett leaning against his car at the far end of the parking lot. Hock nodded to him and said quietly, “I didn’t wanna bring him in.”

  “I don’t care.”

  He gave me a look.

  “That’s why I brought’m in,” he said.

  Burnett shook our hands, then looked around theatrically and said, “Where the fuck are these guys? I been here a half-hour. I didn’t see no one.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s probably the way they wanted it,” Hock said.

  We walked single-file on a path that went along the river, Hock’s wiry figure sliding along first, Burnett and I following. This was in Fort Lee, along the Hudson. It was six o’clock, the sun already behind the palisades, but shining palely on the east side of the river. It was late winter and every once in a while debris floated by. A mud-covered log. A tire. There was a pavilion to our left, and beyond that, the palisades. To our right, the Hudson. The faster current in the middle of the river reflected light. We curved around a rocky point that jutted out, and then the land opened up into a grassy area with large, bare trees and three picnic tables that were dark brown from recent rains. Two men leaned against the nearest table—one was white and lanky, the other was stocky and Hispanic. The white guy had a thin mustache. He wore sunglasses, a North Face jacket, and, beneath that, a sweatshirt with a hood. The Hispanic guy was shorter, dressed in a black leather jacket and wearing a lot of gold jewelry. As we approached, the Hispanic guy stepped out.

  “Gil,” Hock said to him.

  He shook Hock’s hand. Hock then shook the white guy’s hand.

  “These’re my boys,” Hock said, tilting his head to us.

  I kind of looked away. My boys. It sounded corny. Burnett stepped up eagerly and shook the Hispanic guy’s hand.

  “Jack Burnett,” he said.

  Tiredly, the Hispanic guy turned on Hock.

  “We don’t need to be tellin our names, do we?”

  Burnett looked embarrassed.

  “You can call him Jack,” Hock said.

  “Call me Rivera,” the Hispanic guy said.

  Burnett reached over and shook the other guy’s hand.

  “Jones,” the white guy said in a bored voice.

  I just stood back the whole time. Rivera studied me.

  “Guess you don’t wanna shake our hands?” he said. By the sound of his voice I could tell he’d grown up in Brooklyn. “What’s the deal with this guy?” he said.

  “I’ll shake your hand.”

  I stepped over and shook his hand, then I shook the white guy’s hand. We were all in a sort of circle. Just the sound of the cold water lapping the rocks at the river’s edge. Hock took a piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. It was a hand-drawn map of the loading bays at Harlem Hospital. Hock had drawn arrows indicating where the delivery truck would park and where the van would park. He laid it out on the picnic table and we weighted the edges with rocks and an empty beer bottle and we went over the whole thing. Hock thought it would take between five and ten minutes to do the loading and unloading. Rivera put a foot up on the bench and said, “Just so we don’t get anybody bitchin later on, it’s Gil who takes care of everything afterward. It’s Gil who pays us out.” He nodded toward Jones. “The two of us, we get the flat rate. That’s agreed. It’s more’n you two’ll be makin.” He nodded to Burnett and me. I didn’t say anything. Burnett made a face. Rivera ignored Burnett and went on talking. “I’m sayin this now, gettin it up front, cause I don’t want any bullshit later on.”

  Burnett muttered something to himself, then said to Hock, “Why do they get more?”

  Hock began to answer but Rivera answered for him.

  “Because we take the risk is why. Because we’re the ones protecting you.”

  He reached beneath his jacket and took out a black revolver.

  “Cause we do the hard part,” he said. “You two’re just movin a couple boxes.”

  “Lemme see,” Burnett said.

  Rivera checked with Jones, who shrugged. Rivera handed the gun to Burnett. Burnett looked at it critically, then pointed it off at the water.

  “I could do this,” he said.

  “Yeah? You think?” Jones said.

  Hock tapped Burnett with the folded map.

  “Don’t be playin with that.”

  Burnett offered the gun to me, but I shook my head. Burnett gave the gun back to Rivera, who shoved it in his pants and pulled his jacket over it, straightening the jacket by putting his hands in the pockets. Jones looked me up and down.

  “What about you? You got something to say?”

  “Not to you,” I said.

  Rivera laughed once and looked away.

  “I like the attitude. Might look like a student. But the guy’s got an attitude.”

  Meanwhile, Burnett puffed himself up. He pulled out a four-inch knife. He opened it up, locking the blade. Jones was smiling.

  “That how you’ll defend yourself?” Jones said.

  “Fuckin-a,” Burnett said.

  With an abrupt motion, he threw the knife at the bench. It struck a bolt on the side and bounced off into the grass. Everyone was laughing. Hock rolled his eyes. Jones clapped sarcastically.

  “Impressive,” Rivera said.

  Burnett retrieved the knife.

  “Put that fuckin thing away,” Hock said.

  “Are we done?” Jones said, totally bored.

  “Where’d you get these guys?” Rivera muttered.

  Hock frowned at Burnett, then took Jones and Rivera to the side, speaking to them quietly for five minutes. They nodded their heads, and when he was through they seemed somewhat placated. Burnett and I were standing to the side. We didn’t talk to each other.

  At one point I heard Jones say, “You really sure of these guys?”

  “I
’m sure.”

  “Are you sure of him?”

  He pointed at me and Hock glanced back a moment. He said something. I don’t know what. Before we left we all shook hands. Then the three of us walked back together. As soon as we were out of earshot Hock turned on Burnett and said, “You did a great job, Jack. They loved you.”

  “Oh, fuck them.”

  “Really professional. You made me look good.”

  “I don’t give a fuck.”

  “Just do me a favor. When we see’m again, shut the fuck up.”

  We walked along the river silently after that. When we got back to the car, Hock said, “It’ll be two, three weeks.”

  “Whenever,” Burnett said. “I need the money.”

  “Yeah yeah. I know. For the kid.”

  Burnett got into his car and sped away. Hock and I walked across the parking lot together. It was dusk now. The lights on the George Washington Bridge were coming on.

  “What’d they think of me?” I asked.

  “They thought you were offhand,” he said. “Slack.” He tilted his head. “That might be good. Might not be. I’m not sure.”

  “What’d they think of Burnett?”

  “They understand Burnett,” he said. “They think he’s a joker, but they understand him.” He looked away. “They don’t understand you. Don’t understand why you’d do it. I don’t, either.”

  The two of us were standing near the water.

  “Is it about your girl? You’ll make a little money. You can buy her something. Do something nice for her.” He paused. “Is that why you’re in? Is it for her?”

  “She doesn’t care about presents,” I said.

  “And you don’t care about anything. I know that.”

  A fishing boat passed with its lights on and poles out at angles. Some old guy on deck, feet up on the rails, smoked a pipe. The faint scent of tobacco drifted across the water. The boat passed slowly.

  “She’s not gonna be around forever,” I said.

  “You can say that about anyone.”

  “Particularly about her,” I said. I watched the boat sliding by. “And whatever happens after, it doesn’t really matter.”

  Hock stood with his head at an angle, eyeing me.