Without saying a word, once he considered me to be re-bundled appropriately for the cold weather, he held the door of the building open for me.
Had there ever been a more perfect boy, in the history of the world?
As we walked to the subway and waited for the next train, he asked what I was doing on Friday. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I had no idea what my life would be like by Friday. It was just two days into the future, but my life had become so unpredictable in the last few days, I had come to believe that anything could happen by Friday. I promised him that if I didn’t have any Christmas-related plans, we would hang out.
“How long have you worked at the art store?” he asked me.
I couldn’t control the expression on my face when I attempted to answer his question, so instead, I just confessed to him, in detail, exactly what had happened at the store. It all gushed out of me… catching Mark stealing gold leaf, keeping silent, hoping nothing bad would come of it, then being accused. Surprisingly, I didn’t cry, even though I became really angry just by retelling the story. My pulse was racing and my face felt hot by the time I got to the part where I stormed out of the store.
“That’s terrible,” Felix said. “I’m never going in there again. What a bunch of jerks.”
“What about the wall you were going to paint?” I asked, having forgotten about his project until then. “How did it turn out?”
“I haven’t painted it yet,” he said with a smile. “I’m waiting for the right time. Maybe Friday, if you’re interested. You could help me.”
“I’m glad we ran into each other on the train,” I told him when we were one subway stop away from mine. “Thanks for inviting me over for dinner. It was really nice.”
“Thanks for not thinking I’m weird for living with my mom,” he said. “My older brother thinks I really need to move out and start my own life, but it’s just too soon after my dad… she’s not ready to be alone yet.”
“I don’t think it’s weird,” I assured him.
He got off of the train to accompany me up the stairs and walk me to my front door since he had to switch trains to go home in the opposite direction anyway.
There was a three-block walk between the entrance to the subway station and our apartment building. The night had become unbearably cold, so cold that if I hadn’t been with Felix, I would have simply run home. But when we reached the top of the stairs and stepped onto the sidewalk, he reached for my hand and held it in his as I led the way to our apartment building, and I probably would have agreed to spend the entire night out on the freezing cold sidewalk if he was there to hold my hand.
“This is it,” I said when we reached the front door to my building. It felt like we were standing under a weird spotlight as the light from my building’s hallway spilled out onto the dark street. Chinatown was oddly quiet, and our breath escaped our mouths as gusts of steam.
We had already traded phone numbers and e-mail addresses on the train, so it was official: we were no longer strangers.
“So, Friday…” Felix said, trailing off.
“Yes,” I agreed.
He shuffled his feet, looking uncomfortable for a second. “There’s something between us, you and me. It’s kind of magical, how I keep seeing you in odd places.”
“Like fate,” I added.
“Exactly. Like fate.”
He put one hand on my hip, which I could barely feel because of my two layered sweaters and pink denim jacket. Then he leaned forward, and kissed me softly about an inch away from my mouth, on the cheek. His lips lingered on my skin for a moment before he pulled away and I felt the cold metal of his lip ring. I wondered if he was going to move in for a real kiss on the mouth, but then he smiled shyly, took a step backward, and adjusted the knit hat on his head.
He pressed his thumb to the middle of my lower lip, while cradling my chin in his hand, studying my face. And then, finding in my expression whatever it was he had been looking for, he smiled and waved goodbye.
It took a second for my legs to start working again so that I could enter my building. I think it took me an hour to climb all six flights up to our apartment; I was in such a lovesick daze. If Felix was Jewish, I didn’t care. If he had so many tattoos that my mother would probably shudder if she ever saw him on the street, I didn’t care. If he was twenty, I didn’t care.
I couldn’t wait to text Jacinda and tell her that I kind of had a real boyfriend. By the time that I got up to my room, however, the harsh reality of having lost my job and being short on rent money dampened my excitement over being kissed by Felix. I had less than a week to pull together the rest of the eighteen hundred dollars we would need to stay in our apartment for the month of January. Without it, I wouldn’t have much of a choice other than to reach out to my parents, entwine myself in their financial and moral disaster, and spend the rest of my life wondering what might have been with Felix.
Chapter 14
“Girl, you better not let that freaky guy put any tattoos on you,” Jacinda warned me on Friday evening as we walked across the Village from her hair salon, toward the East Village, where I had agreed to meet Felix at the Blue Phoenix. “You’re too pretty to go messin’ yourself up with some cheesy seahorse or dolphin on your back.”
“Relax,” I assured her. “I’m not getting a tattoo. I’m just meeting him there because we’re going out.”
“Yeah, just keep your wits about you, is all I’m saying. You never know with boys. First you’re sharing a Diet Coke, then he puts his arm around you, then you’re walking around with the Star Spangled Banner tattooed on your back,” Jacinda continued.
Jacinda had Orlando’s named tattooed on the back of her neck and had often commented, when they were fighting, that it was by the grace of God that at least it was in a place where she didn’t have to see it. We had just met at the salon and she had cleaned up my disastrous rainbow with a bright shade of pink after a lengthy discussion about whether or not I should just go bleached blond to better my chances of finding a new job. We had decided on “normal” and then I practically had a panic attack. I had started to identify myself so much with having a wild shade of hair; it was too late to turn back.
I was expecting that the Blue Phoenix would be dark and gross, kind of like a dive bar or a motorcycle repair shop. I had never been to a tattoo parlor before, so I thought it was reasonable to assume that it would look like other places where people with lots of tattoos hung out. I was wrong. It was immaculately clean and looked more like a doctor’s office than a tattoo parlor.
“Hi, I’m here to see Felix,” I said when I entered.
The man behind the counter was huge, probably six foot five, with an eyebrow ring and brown goatee. He was old – by my standards, at least – either in his late thirties or early forties. Every part of him was hairy, from his forearms to his neck to the little hairs peeking out of his ears. He was like a jolly giant, surprisingly soft spoken for such a large man.
“You must be Gigi,” the man said, extending a hand. “I’m Andy.”
I was kind of surprised that my visit had been announced. I shook the man’s hand, feeling a little like a rag doll as he took my tiny hand in his huge fist and pumped it up and down.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said. My eyes fell to the glass countertop, showcasing body jewelry. The shop also had piercing services, which explained how Felix had a pierced lip.
“Felix showed me your portfolio,” Andy said. “Very impressive stuff. What are your rates?”
I had no idea what this guy was talking about. Rates for what?
“I’m sorry,” I began, when I saw Felix approaching from down a hallway that presumably led to the back of the shop. He was wiping his hands dry on a paper towel.
“Hi!”
He lifted a section of the counter that was on hinges, and joined me on the other side to peck me on the cheek.
“This is the girl I was telling you about,” Felix told Andy. “The line drawings.�
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“I know, we just introduced ourselves,” Andy informed him.
“Andy might be interested in bringing you on to do some custom work,” Felix said.
“Yeah,” Andy agreed. “Your work is real original. I’d love to add it to our catalog. Do you do any inking?”
My head was spinning. I felt like I needed to ask Felix for a time-out to ask what in the world they were talking about.
“She’s not licensed yet. She’s studying for the state exam,” Felix told Andy.
“Yeah,” I chimed in, catching on. Whatever Felix was doing, I was going along with it.
Andy looked me up and down, and I could tell from his expression that he wasn’t making any negative judgment calls about my size, age or freshly-dyed hot pink hair.
“Well, we could use more part-time help around here working the counter until you pass the exam. And if you’d want to add your work to our wall, I’m sure you’d have plenty of takers.”
Outside, Felix was beaming. He pecked me again on the cheek, this time with an arm around me pulling me closer to him.
I had never expected to meet him at his workplace for our date and walk away with a new job. But it had happened, just like that. The best part was that the tattoo parlor was open fourteen hours every day, from noon until two a.m., seven days a week, so I could take part-time hours managing the front desk across a broad variety of shifts. Andy had asked me to come in the day after Christmas to train with him and learn all of their clean-up procedures.
“I don’t know anything about tattoos,” I confessed to Felix as we walked toward the subway that would take us to Brooklyn.
“You don’t have to. All you have to do is keep drawing the way you do. Everything you need to know about tattoos, I can teach you. When I first started working there, all I could do was draw, and I had to intern with Smokestack for almost a year before they let me touch the needles.”
“Who is Smokestack?” I asked.
Felix grinned from ear to ear. “You’ll see.”
I was restless with excitement on our Q train ride all the way to the Coney Island area, a few blocks away from Felix’s building. He opened up his sketchpad and showed me his notes for the mural. He tried to explain his vision for what the final piece would look like, but it was hard for me to imagine it based on the collage he’d taped into place on the sheet of graph paper wedged into his notebook. There was a girl at its center, her head on her hand lost in thought (in the collage, this was a cut-out of a gorgeous model in a pose from a fashion magazine). Above her head was an enormous thought bubble with a jagged black stroke around it, and within the thought bubble was an explosion of color, scribbles and letters. I didn’t ask, but I guessed that this mural he had in mind was completely unsanctioned graffiti.
Grace Mathison would have been terrified of accompanying a graffiti artist to spray paint a wall. Gigi Martin was thrilled about the idea.
We stopped at a coffee shop for donuts and coffee and then walked a few blocks toward a children’s park, not far from the beach. The park had a series of cement slopes and ramps for skateboarders, and there were numerous skateboarders my age in attendance practicing tricks even though it was cold outside. The sun had gone down, the park was illuminated by street lamps, and while it was only six o’clock, it was still late December. The park was devoid of parents pushing little kids on the swing set. We crossed the park to its far edge, where a red brick wall, the windowless side of a stationery store, awaited Felix’s paint.
“Yo, man,” one of the skateboarders greeted Felix.
He clearly knew most of the skater guys and I was impressed that Felix hung out with such cool company. One of the guys, tall and dark-eyed with blond hair, looked familiar, and Felix introduced him as Jake, the guy who had been spinning at the club the night we had run into each other in Williamsburg.
“Hi,” Jake said, tucking his skateboard under one arm to shake my hand. He looked a lot younger up close than he had the night at the club, when he had been up on a stage. It was weird to me that he seemed to be close in age to me, but then again, I lived on my own with my brother, so maybe it wasn’t so weird at all that he was a professional DJ.
“Nice to meet you,” I said politely. In my own head, I reprimanded myself for being so totally uncool. Manners were not requisite around skateboarders.
As Felix organized his painting materials, Jake told me that he was in the process of moving from Michigan to New York and was crashing on another skateboarder’s couch, a guy named Mark, who had just gotten his own studio on the Lower East Side, not too far from my apartment.
“Jake is an awesome DJ,” Felix called from over his shoulder, spreading out his drop cloth over the blacktop of the playground. “He’s the future of dubstep, as you heard with your own ears.”
I had no idea what dubstep was and vowed to text Jacinda for an answer as soon as no one was looking. Instead of sounding like an idiot, I just added, “Totally.”
Felix shook a can and sprayed a cloud of gray as his canvas against the brick wall. He talked to me continuously as he painted, asking for my opinion, requiring me to keep checking his sketch for reference. I was thankful that he involved me in his work, or else I would have felt useless standing in a cold park after nightfall, watching him break the law. The image he had developed was still a rough work in progress, and it was fascinating to me as I watched it take shape. I had seen the collage and therefore knew what was coming; but Felix worked in large color blocks, and then returned to them to add detail. I was the opposite in my approach to my art. I started with details like the irises of eyes and the curves of nostrils, and then went back in and shaded in chunks of skin, hair, fabric.
“Yo, Felix. Boy, that is gonna be tight,” Mark told Felix in admiration.
At eight p.m. we bundled up the cans of paint and the drop cloth and Felix said we had to take a walk before finishing the piece. It felt strange leaving the painting in the state it was in; the thought bubble was fully formed but filled only with bursts of color, the white forms of the girl’s head and hand had been shaped, but the facial features and the details of her fingers were still missing. There was also a white blob in the lower right corner that wasn’t in the sketchbook, and I had no idea what Felix had in mind for that.
“We’ll come back in an hour,” Felix assured me, noticing my apprehension about leaving it.
We walked to the far end of the park as the skateboarders continued practicing their jumps and flips of their boards, and I stopped once we were a safe distance away to look over my shoulder. From where we stood on the sidewalk, and the angle of the light spilling from the street light, Felix’s work could barely be seen in the shadows against the brick wall.
“Keep walking,” he urged quietly, slipping his arm through mine and leading me onward. Behind us, a police car rolled up, and I could hear the static-strewn chatter on its radio through the driver-side front window. The car pulled over alongside the curb and idled, its engine running.
“They stop here every night at eight forty-five and rest just long enough to eat a hamburger and French fries from the diner on Neptune Avenue,” Felix told me conspiratorially as we walked. Around us, I could hear the rolling and clapping of the skateboarders’ boards against the pavement, and the quiet murmurs of ocean waves just a few blocks away.
“How did you know they’d be here?” I asked.
“I take this very seriously. I don’t have any interest in paying fines or serving time for my art,” Felix said. “I’m an artist, but I’m also a private investigator. And an amateur attorney. I know that if I get caught for what would be considered vandalism, the first-time offense is a three-hundred dollar fine. If the cops determine that I’ve damaged property in excess of fifteen hundred dollars, I’d be guilty of criminal mischief in the second degree. That’s no joke.”
“A criminal mischief-maker. What else are you?” I teased. “A lover? A fighter?”
“Both,” Felix said with a smile. “And
what are you, if I may ask?
We reached the boardwalk and sat down on a bench. I looked out across the empty, cold beach at the black waves rolling in under the night sky.
A liar, was the first thing that came to mind.
“I don’t know what I am,” I confessed. “A sister. A worker. I used to be a believer, but lately, I’m not too sure what there is to believe in.”
I thought of Mama, and wondered if she, too, was sitting beneath the night sky in Argentina somewhere, presumably at the ranch of Don Fernandez. Did I believe in her anymore? I wasn’t sure. I thought of Quian, hooked up to a respirator in midtown Manhattan, where she had been moved to the larger branch of the NYU hospital, where more specialized pediatricians could supervise her care. Did I believe in miracles? I didn’t know if I believed that God took care of innocent children anymore. I thought of my brother, who had refused to write a letter to the judge in Arizona even when I told him about Tony Michaels and begged, and I wasn’t sure if I believed in the notion of pride or in protecting the best interests of other people anymore. My entire experience of the last two months had suggested strongly to me that it was the best survival technique to look out for number one.
“Oh, come on, Gigi,” Felix teased me, nudging me in the ribs. “There’s so much to believe in. Your potential as an artist. The future of this great city. That the tide will roll back out tomorrow and then back in again tomorrow night, just like it does every day, no matter what kind of trouble we get into out here on the shore. There are a lot of things to believe in.”
I leaned back, and looked up at the sky, straining to see stars, which were dimmed by all of the bright lights from Manhattan so many miles behind our backs.
“That’s not what I mean,” I said, daring to share with him a little about my past. “I was raised to be very religious. My parents take their commitment to God quite seriously. I thought I did, too, but lately I am questioning all of it. I just don’t know if it’s real.”
Felix fell silent.
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