The Stars Beneath Our Feet

by David Barclay Moore

  Ma swung open my door. She stood there for a minute, smiling at me. She was as excited as I was. I flicked the dead bug into the wastebasket and fell back onto my bed.

  “You tired, sugar?” she asked. “I know I am. Somebody better catch that rooster running around here. All that cock-a-doodle-dooin’ at the crack’a dawn is messing with my rest.”

  Yesterday I saw a bunch of the building janitors chasing that scrawny red chicken around with nets. They couldn’t catch it. That skinny little bird was a sprinter.

  Our door buzzer rang. I sprang up. Ma held up her hand. “Sit. I’ll get it.”

  She answered the door and it was the TV news crew right on time. A Spanish reporter from one of the local news shows wanted to interview me because of my Lego city and all of the attention it had got online.

  When the cameraman was ready, I sat on my bed with lots of my Legos behind me, and me and the reporter, Connie, basically had a convo about what I had been doing.

  Nervous, I rubbed the bruise above my eye. Ma had covered it in makeup. I stared down at my fingers that had just touched there; they were flaked with tan powder.

  “So, Lolly, you have almost a quarter of a million followers online now,” Connie the reporter announced.

  “I’m more surprised than anybody,” I answered.

  “Why Legos, Lolly?” she asked.

  I wanted to answer her, but I couldn’t think of nothing. My brain had froze. It felt like I had been sitting there for an hour, silent, before Ma spoke up.

  “Say something, sugar!” Ma yelled. She was leaning in my door, behind the cameraman.

  “Can you edit her part out?” I asked Connie, not wanting to look dumb on TV. I could hear Sunny and Vega dissing me already.

  “Oh, honey,” Connie said. “Don’t you worry yourself. We will edit this to make you sound like the absolutely brilliant young man you are.” She smiled. Her teeth were the whitest. “You’re in good hands!”

  “Why Legos?” I said to her. “Um…”

  To be truthful, it had been a long time since I had really thought about why I loved building with Legos so much. Daddy had bought me my first Lego kit. A tub of regular-looking Legos.

  Then when I was older, Jermaine had bought me an outer-space Lego kit for Christmas. A moon landing. I remember that Christmas because it was the first time my brother had used money that he had earned himself to buy us our Christmas gifts.

  That was a big deal.

  He had made that money from sweeping up the loose hair from that barbershop that used to be on St. Nicholas Av’. Years later, it was the shady dudes in that same gang that had recruited Jermaine to become a “street pharmacist.”

  He changed fast after that.

  But that Christmas he had used his sweep-up money to buy us presents, and he was so proud. Daddy and Ma were too. Back then, we had all been expecting him to do excellent things later in his life.

  That Christmas I think he had been feeling rotten about having told me to not hang around him no more. So he bought me a good present to make up for that.

  Funny…

  Last summer, before Jermaine got shot, he was lying on his bed over there. He was complaining about me having too many Legos all over our room. I listened to him, and then I asked him if he remembered buying me my first outer-space kit.

  His face was blank. He couldn’t remember.

  I was shocked because, for me, it had been such a major deal. It stuck out in my memory; it was the reason I had got interested in telling space stories. But to him, he had forgotten it all.

  That was how Prince Stellar, King Blaze, Queen Misteria, the Star Drivers and the Swarm and all of them had been born.

  “Why Legos?” I repeated to Connie the reporter. She flashed me the whitest, teethiest smile. I took a deep breath and dove in.

  Another nice day in April, and me and Rose were out. I tried to tell her about my TV interview yesterday, but she didn’t act concerned. Some things she cared about—other stuff, not at all.

  Today’s trip was the middle of the week because we were on spring break. We’d been scouting for new buildings for me to sketch around the Meatpacking District downtown.

  This part of town felt different, like we weren’t in New York anymore. The streets under our feet were made of cool cobblestones. But on Washington Street we found a diamond.

  For real.

  Sitting on top of this normal brick building, there was the most amazing glass…thing. It was mostly made of windows, all jagged like the sections of a gigantic jewel, with what looked like steel beams holding it all together.

  Somebody lived in that thing, I realized.

  They had built themselves a crystal house on top of this ordinary building.

  I was just about to take a picture of the diamond when I remembered that my phone had got stolen. And my tablet didn’t take photos. It was lucky that Rose had her camera with her.

  An old couple came out of a door on the building’s street level. We asked them to snap a pic of us with the weird glass penthouse behind us. The old man was tall and bald and wearing a gray suit. His wife was real old too, but also pretty.

  Her eyes were the biggest I’d ever seen and she had long brown hair. She pointed at my head and said, “I love your hat!”

  I reached up to touch my African hat and straighten it. The tassels on top had started to frazzle.

  “That’s a nasty bruise,” the old woman said, frowning at my forehead. “Do you like my tree house?” she asked us. She snapped our pic on the cobblestones. This lady had a funny accent, like she was from somewhere else.

  “You live up there?” I asked.

  “Live, work, love, make art,” she said, and smiled. “It’s my oasis. What do you think?”

  “It’s like a diamond,” Rose blurted out, then gazed at the stone pavement. I was surprised she had spoke to a stranger.

  The lady laughed. Her husband said to her, “You certainly have enough of those.” The woman looked at Rose like she was curious about her.

  “You’re interested in architecture, dear?” the wife asked.

  Rose and I both nodded.

  “Well, walk our High Line,” the lady said, pointing behind us.

  The husband then said to her, “Diane?”

  She handed Rose back her camera and the couple were gone, hopping into a long black limousine.

  The place where she had pointed was a city park hovering in the air. The High Line was not like any park I’d ever seen before.

  The whole thing used to be an abandoned set of train tracks that ran through the Meatpacking District. The park was basically a straight line with a boardwalk and plants to make it pretty.

  The coolest thing was that the whole park floated in the air!

  Columns that reminded me of Lego blocks supported it. We had to climb up about two stories of steps to get to the High Line, but when we did, we had the most special view of the city all around us.

  A high-class view.

  And it was more peaceful up here than down on the street. Suspended up two stories made all the city noise disappear. No motorcycles roaring or car horns. This could’a been somewhere in Harmonee, I thought.

  It was the best.

  I couldn’t believe there wasn’t a page on it in A Pattern of Architecture. I had started to wonder about how many other nice things we were missing that weren’t in that book.

  “We need more books,” Rose said.

  The two of us had sat down on one big wooden chair beside the boardwalk. I had bought each of us a bottle of water at a fancy food stand up here. I had wanted to buy some munchies at the stand, but all the food they sold was high.

  I unpacked my sketchbook and looked around. There were lots of wild plants and interesting architecture here. It was like one big, long garden museum.

  But I didn’t think any of this had been built for me. I could imagine Diane and her rich husband strolling around up here, close to the clouds, but Rose and me were out of place
.

  “We do need more books for research,” I said to Rose, after thinking on it for a while. “I want to make art. Like that woman Diane said. For the rest of my life. Until I’m old like her and still making art.”

  “That’s good,” Rose said, nodding. “I do too.”

  “Even if we don’t know how to make it happen,” I said.

  She had spotted something. It was the head of a man made out of metal. I had noticed a bunch of them scattered along the High Line. I guessed the metal heads were art, on display.

  Yeah, they were definitely art, I decided.

  This little redheaded girl was touching a metal head while her mother watched her. I wondered how different I would be if I’d grown up like that, surrounded by art all the time instead of Ma’s Pez holders.

  Were Pez holders art?

  After that little girl had left, I touched the metal head too. It echoed when you knocked on it. I wondered how it was made, exactly.

  Rose glugged the last of her water and asked, “You gonna make art out of Legos for the rest of your life?”

  I paused, deep-thinking on this.

  “I don’t know,” I said, moving my fingers over the metal.

  Rose and me walked into my place after a long day stumbling around town. This was her first time over. It was weird having a girl in here.

  I hoped Ma wasn’t at home. Not because I wanted to try anything with Rose—she was just a friend—but I knew that if my mother saw that I brought a girl home, her and Yvonne would act all crazy.

  “You want a fruit pop?” I asked Rose.

  She shook her head. I could hear Michael Jackson singing “Got to Be There.” It was coming from inside Ma’s room.

  “Well, let me show you my Lego shelves,” I said to Rose. Rose started to follow me back to my room when I heard Ma yell out.

  “Lolly!” Ma roared. “Sugar! I been waiting on you!”

  Dressed in her pink fuzzy bathrobe, Ma came rushing out. She clenched one of her mystery novels under one arm. When Ma saw Rose standing in the hall, Ma stopped and clutched her bathrobe like she had just seen a mouse.

  “Hello, Rose!” Ma said.

  “Hello,” Rose said. She smiled at the floor, looking embarrassed.

  Ma looked at her strange, then snapped out of it. “I am so glad you are here, honey,” she told Rose. “I got news for the both of you! You will never guess who called this afternoon!”

  I stared at her, blank.

  “Well, you ain’t gonna guess?” she said.

  “You just told me I could never guess who called,” I said.

  Rose giggled at this. My mother rolled her eyes.

  “Stop being smart, funny boy!” Ma said. “Tuttle’s! Tuttle’s Toys!”

  “Tuttle’s?” I asked her. “The one at Rock Center where Yvonne works?”

  “Mr. Tuttle!” Ma yelled. “The owner, Harold Tuttle himself, called here today. He said he saw you and your Legos on the news last night.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “He was so impressed with what you and Rose built that he wants you two—both of you, Rose—to build him something for Easter, for the front window of his store! The big one down at Rockefeller Center!”

  “Oh snap! We was just down there.”

  Ma went on, “And he’s gonna pay you to do it! I bet Mohawk had something to do with this. That Yvonne probably got him to call you. Lolly! What do you think? You gonna do it? What you think?”

  All I could do was smile. Rose was grinning at the floor. After a second, she covered her face with her hands.

  “What you think, Ma!” I said.

  Earlier today down at the High Line I had fantasized about living a life making art. And doing only that. But neither Rose or me knew how we could even start.

  Now, without us even asking, somebody was gonna pay us to be real artists. It was just what we had wanted. Just what we had dreamed about.

  I was sorry Vega wasn’t here. I had asked him to come with us today, but he hardly ever came out of his apartment anymore.

  But wait till I told him this!

  I couldn’t believe it.

  I leaned back on Vega’s bed and listened to him play his instrument. Closing my eyes, I pressed the ice-cold Snapple Apple bottle to the tiny bruise above my eye. I unscrewed the bottle’s cap and swigged.

  Out of all the sweet drinks that I liked, Snapple Apple was my all-time fave.

  It tasted just like a real apple.

  I sat my half-full bottle back down on Vega’s nightstand. He was sitting on the edge of a chair, near his bedroom window, running the bow over his violin’s strings. The book on violins that Steve had got him for Christmas was lying behind him on his windowsill.

  It was good to be hanging out with him again.

  Here it was, almost Easter, and so much had happened since Christmas.

  I asked Vega if he would be spending summer down in DR—his favorite subject—and he didn’t say nothing. Just shrugged and kept playing his violin.

  This was something I had to get used to. Vega being quiet. Hardly saying nothing at all.

  It was just freaky.

  And very un-Vega.

  He looked lonely and dejected.

  I almost had to force my way in here today to see him. I should’a been more forceful about it sooner, but I guess I’d been so caught up in my own drama that it had been kind of hard.

  Oh! I spoke to that dude Tuttle the other day. Me and Rose had called him back and talked with him. Well, I spoke to him, at least. Rose just sat next to me and listened, not saying nothing as usual.

  Anyway, Tuttle went on and on about how much he loved seeing the videos and photos of our Legos and about how much talent Rose and me had.

  I liked hearing that and liked talking with him. He seemed like a real chill dude and we spoke for a while.

  I asked him if he knew Yvonne and he said yeah. He was surprised that I knew her.

  And then, like Ma had said, he asked if me and Rose would like to come down to his store and build versions of our Lego cities for the front windows of Tuttle’s Toy Emporium.

  I swear my heart jumped.

  Grinning like a little kid, I said yeah we would do it! Though Rose still had to ask her grandmother. Tuttle said he wanted them built in time for Easter Sunday, and I told him that was plenty of time.

  “We work fast, Mr. Tuttle!” I said. “Especially Rose. We’re professional.”

  “I just bet you are, Lolly,” he answered back over the phone. “You two young people have crafted beautiful thingamajigs. Just lovely things. We’ll work out the payment details when I see you.”

  “That’s no big deal, Mr. Tuttle. Rose and I’d do it for free!…Ow!”

  Ma had poked me in my side after hearing me say that. Tuttle just giggled. We agreed that we’d come down next Saturday to get started, once Rose had talked to her gran.

  The first thing I did today when I saw Vega was tell him all about it. He listened about Tuttle’s Toys and Rock Center and new Lego cities and becoming real artists, and then he gave me a weak smile and said, “That’s smooth, manin.”

  And then he had started playing his violin. He had been playing up until now, when he had finally finished his song.

  I clapped loud, thinking about what kind of city we would build at Tuttle’s.

  Maybe Harmonee?

  Or something new?

  Maybe we could build something together again….

  After I had finished clapping, it was quiet in his bedroom for a minute. I watched him stare at ’Ye. He seemed to see something stuck to the back of it and picked at the spot until it rubbed off.

  “Casimiro Vega!” I shouted. I felt myself trying to give him some energy, a good mood. Just like he does for me whenever I feel down about Jermaine.

  He continued to weak-smile me. I sat up.

  “You can keep a secret?” Vega asked.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  He carefully leaned his violin against
the wall and stood. ’Ye slid to the side and plopped to the floor.

  “¡Coño!” Vega shouted. He grabbed his instrument and lightly placed it beside me and knelt down on his rug to pull a shoebox out from under the bed.

  Inside that box was a black Glock. At first, I thought it was a toy gun, but I could tell by the way he handled it that it was real. Without saying nothing, he passed it to me, handle first.

  In my palms, it weighed heavy. And it was real cold.

  I didn’t know what Vega wanted me to do with this gun. I was wondering what he had planned to do with it when the idea suddenly popped into my head.

  He had been acting funny ever since Harp and Gully had jumped us at Manny’s bodega. Plus they had already ganked Vega’s new coat that he had loved so much.

  “They need to feel this,” Vega said toward the gun in my hands. He looked at me. “They need to be scared.”

  I quickly handed the heaviness back to him. I had suddenly felt like that Glock had infected me with something.

  Or maybe it had been Vega?

  Before I had come up here to visit him, I had felt better. Hoping for a life maybe making art.

  Now, watching him stare at that gun…Something had tickled at the center of my chest again. It was still tiny, the size of a speck of sand, but I knew it could grow as heavy and as mean and as cold as that gun.

  We both sat there, hypnotized.

  “I got it from Frito,” Vega said, whispering. “For Harp, Gully.”

  I massaged the bruise above my eye. It had almost disappeared, but had started to throb again. Or maybe I had just started to concentrate on it.

  “You crazy,” I said. I shook my head. “You really think we could do that? We ain’t Frito.”

  “I could,” Vega said. “I guess.”

  “Hit Harp and Gully?” I shook my head, not because we couldn’t do it, but I had trouble actually picturing us doing it. But Jermaine had told me once that anybody could do anything, if they had a weapon and a reason to use it.

  “Mira,” Vega said. “I been thinking all over this. Plus Frito told me if I get Harp and Gully, we won’t have to worry then. His crew will protect us, manin. And Frito takes over their crew. Because Harp and Gully wouldn’t…well, you know…well, that’s what Frito told me.”