How Are You Going to Save Yourself

by JM Holmes

  “And why do you roll your money like the Declaration of Independence?”

  He ignored me and we walked onto the patio, staring out over the rooftops that dotted Midtown with Babylon gardens.

  “So this is how you’re living now?” he said.

  “I don’t own it,” I said.

  “No shit. When you coming back to reality?”

  “When I find a job,” I said.

  “I got some work for you.” He lifted the backpack.

  “Funny. I’m not built for that anymore,” I said.

  “Anymore? Nigga, you never were.”

  He tapped the top of his bag so it shook like a rattle. We didn’t need to recap my corny attempts to get in the game.

  “How’s my goddaughter?” I asked.

  “Good, man. Shit’s crazy.”

  “You get the Js I sent?” I hadn’t been able to find the grape Jordan Vs in a small enough size but figured she’d grow into them.

  Rye was watching the sun set behind the skyscrapers when Blake came back out with beers. “This place is crazy,” Rye said.

  “Thanks,” Blake said.

  “I never met a black man named Blake,” Rye said.

  “Well, that’s my name,” Blake said.

  The sun dropped completely out of sight, leaving only an orange strip diffused by the haze of the city. We drank our beers.

  “You never answered me,” I said.

  “Jersey is crazy for this shit,” he said. “But it’s all Stars and Stripes after this.”

  “After what?” Blake asked.

  Rye took the blues from his bag again.

  “My ’rents are home,” Blake said.

  Rye tucked them back in the bag. He leaned over and slapped my shoulder. “I remember when you used to sound like that—My mom’s home, my mom’s home.”

  “Fuck you,” I said.

  “You don’t know me,” Blake said.

  “Yeah, this nigga always got jokes.” I tried to defuse shit before it could heat up. I thought back to the first night we ever picked up, the way Rye searched the street up and down for cops. Not nervous, just vigilant.

  “I heard there was a stranger in my house,” Mr. Holland said, stepping out the door all of a sudden. He wore a beige robe and had a clear plastic cup in hand. It was 6:00 p.m.

  Rye sized him up quick, then stood, and I took a deep breath. “This place is real nice,” he said.

  “As long as I’ve been working, it better be,” Mr. Holland said and held out his hand. “I’m Blake.”

  I pictured Rye rolling on the terrace laughing at the name. Like for real—Blake One and Two? Giovanni and Blake. All we needed was a Winslow.

  “Rydell,” he said. They shook hands.

  Mr. Holland pulled out a chair and sat with us on the terrace. He didn’t take small sips like the refined man he was. I waited for the wisdom. He was known for drinking whiskey and dropping knowledge about civil rights and carving out your own space. None of that liberal, kumbaya bullshit. And none of that Marcus Garvey give-us-our-own-rock talk. I wanted Rye to be impressed by him the way I was.

  Mr. Holland asked how we knew each other.

  “Grew up together,” I said.

  “Went to high school together,” Rye said.

  The can felt warm in my hands.

  Mr. Holland could sense the heat in the comment but only nodded.

  Blake and Rye stared at each other. It didn’t shock me that Rye cashed in on his courage again and again. Even in a place like this. I’d watched him do it enough growing up.

  “Be a better host,” Mr. Holland said, and glared at his son.

  Blake looked at his pops, then away.

  “And don’t bring trouble in my house,” Mr. H said to Rye.

  I waited for Rye to say something out-of-pocket but he stayed silent.

  Mr. Holland stood up. “Good to see you, Gio.” He smiled. “And nice to meet you, Rydell.” He began to walk toward the sliding glass doors. “Oh, and you know there are women in this city, right?” He laughed his way into the house.

  Minutes later, Blake got up and looked Rye over. Even seated, Rye’s frame cast a cannonball shadow.

  “Who you mugging?” Rye said. “Sit your ass down.”

  “You better talk to him,” Blake said to me.

  Rye stood, but Blake stayed put a few yards from him.

  “Aight, Blake,” Rye said.

  I stepped in the middle. Rye inched closer and I had to lean my weight into him. “Really?” I said.

  He had the same level look I’d seen before. His phone rang and he let it go. He still had the same ringtone from high school, J. R. Writer.

  “You’re a niggerish motherfucker, huh?” Blake said.

  Rye kept his chin up, but his eyes widened. We knew the Kool-Aid.

  Blake retreated a few steps toward the door, then spoke again. “Do you even know where you are?” he said.

  Rye checked his phone and let the sliding glass door close behind Blake without saying anything.

  “Fuck was that?”

  Rye threw his beer can off the balcony and sat back down. “What?” He read a text and put his phone down.

  Lights glowed in the windows around Midtown.

  “You still serving Jason?” I nodded toward his phone sitting on the table.

  “Money’s money,” he said. Jason was a regular.

  We were silent for a bit.

  “Fuck’s wrong with you?” I said again.

  “Don’t talk tough.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “I’m just trying to introduce you to—”

  “You the fucking president?”

  I glanced at the door. “You know you gotta go now, right?”

  “’Cause of that candy-ass nigga?” Rye said.

  He didn’t move and my face felt hot.

  “He’s my boy,” I said. My voice came out too light. I waited for the glass door to open. I imagined Blake’s pops walking out and Rye flipping the table and swinging on him without warning. Just whaling on the old man. I saw the headline: “Prominent International Lawyer Assaulted in His Own Home.” I saw the call he put in at Phillips prep school evaporating into thin air, undone by an appearance of family. I pushed the memories of Rye backing my ass up out of my mind.

  I must’ve looked like I shit myself ’cause Rye broke into that I’m-fucking-with-you smile and laughed. “Take it easy,” he said, and tapped me on the chest.

  “I’m cool,” I said. Down below, a mob of pedestrians crossed in front of the sandwich shop on Fifty-Fourth and Second. “Why are you fucking with pills anyway?”

  “Lotta money in PKs.” Rye spat off the balcony. “Kids ain’t cheap.”

  “Way to be a stereotype,” I said.

  Rye got up and started for the front door without a word. He didn’t yell or break anything. A courtesy. Near the door there was a picture of Blake’s pops standing next to Nelson Mandela on a podium somewhere. Rye took in the picture, then turned back to me.

  “For real?” he said.

  “Crazy, right?”

  Rye paused, taking it all in like he was coming into my world of wonder.

  “He knows Morgan Freeman?” he said.

  I thought about correcting him. I didn’t. A courtesy.

  “Come check me out soon,” he said. “I’ll show you the station.”

  “Yeah, for sure.”

  I dapped him up and he was gone.

  A FEW WEEKS after I saw Rye in New York, my mom called to tell me about the Hazards’ fire. Stovetop turned serious. Oil and water don’t mix.

  It happened on Rye’s shift, his first fire. I imagined him in his gear, sweating in front of the smoldering structure, a three-family home that looked as if some blaze-toothed mammoth had taken to ripping the place down but had tired or eaten its fill and moved on. Too much smoke came from the hole for Rye to see the remains.

  Rye was outside, adjusting the salvage covers in his hands. We’d known the Hazards forever. D
own the sidewalk, Rhonda stood holding her baby. Dre Hazard draped an arm across his mother’s shoulder and Rye turned his eyes away from it all.

  “BC!” Babe yelled from the doorway.

  Rye was thankful for the abbreviation. “Beige Cloud” was a shitty nickname, an image like a cartoon fart or Pig-Pen’s dusty ass. In a city of Portuguese and Boricuas, he clung to his blackness like a damned Panther. He hadn’t even been out on a call yet to earn his own, but nicknames were thrown at all probies.

  The second floor drooped, disemboweled, and Rye couldn’t block out the baby crying.

  Lieutenant Moss came out the front door, down to where Rye was on the sidewalk, and clapped him on the chest. “What if this was active?”

  Rye imagined the house in flames and felt himself shrinking away from it, freezing.

  “The fuck were you waiting for?” The lieutenant pulled his mask off—his skin hung like the fur on a pug’s face. “We need those covers.” Moss grabbed the tarps from Rye’s hold. “Does this look like a goddamned bachelorette party?” Moss kept barking.

  Rye envisioned the weak spots on Moss’s jaw, below the ears and the soft neck under.

  “Strike one.” Moss spat. “Probies don’t last long if they’re slow.”

  Moss reentered the building. Rye pulled his own mask down to protect his lungs. Sousa, another fireman on the crew, told him, the gear, wear it, always. Then Rye relaxed his shoulders in the face of duty like only a man of service can do.

  “Please cover the crib,” Rhonda said.

  Rye didn’t turn, held his breath, and followed Moss into the home.

  Back at the station, after the salvage operation at the Hazards’, the rest of his shift passed uneventful. I imagine the next morning he washed the engine until it gleamed, raised the flags, put the dishes away in the new wooden cupboards that closed sloppy, a hack job the city was supposed to fix, and then forgot to put on coffee for the incoming crew.

  Moss cussed Rye out again and he put the coffee on, then walked out calm, trying to keep his job.

  Babe caught him in the hall. “Whoa, Cloud Man, why so stormy?”

  “Fuck the cute shit,” Rye said.

  Babe was two hundred and forty pounds. They used to call him Ox until he said his dimples made him too pretty to be an ox, so they took to calling him Babe.

  “Moss fucking with you?”

  “I’m just tired,” Rye said.

  “You know he just wants you out before the vote.”

  “I’m doing everything by the book, man,” Rye said.

  “Moss is a motherfucker. But it’s all family. Take your lumps.”

  “Yeah, but damn.”

  Babe looked him dead in the eye. “Moss is just an old fuck,” he said. Rye turned back and Babe lowered his voice. “He’s over the hill—busted-ass knees and shit, flat feet, pumped full of Lipitor, inhaler puffing, hay-fever stricken, peeing twenty times a night, prostate big as a beach ball, Dick Cheney heart having. That motherfucker is the Life Alert spokesman.” Rye cracked a smile. Babe winked and headed down the hall.

  Rye watched him all the way into the kitchen. From around the corner, he heard his voice—“Hey, Cap! Fabulous morning!”

  Rye missed being his own boss. I’d never seen him take shit, probably why he got fired so often. We laughed about the first few jobs because they were bullshit anyway, like the nursing-home security gig, where he got fired for inviting our boys to use the Ping-Pong table in the lounge, and then from the PriceRite for ringing up all the produce as green peppers ’cause he didn’t want to look it up.

  I’d told him sometimes you just had to kiss ass and play by the rules. That’s how I’d gotten an offer from Phillips Prep, north of Boston, ground zero for ass-kissing.

  In the car after his shift, Rye sighed and checked his phone. He had another text from Jason. He said he’d pay two dollars a milligram for some Perc 30s, and he wanted a lot. Jason even had that sucker hair that fell in his eyes, which were made for crying, too round and wet. He said “brother” and “fam,” and Rye pictured his daughter growing up to pour chocolate milk all over a lame like Jason. I didn’t like the motherfucker either. He used trust-fund money to get high. He played lacrosse.

  MARISSA’S CALLS BECAME more frequent after Rye started at the station. She was worried about his double life. She couldn’t understand why he kept at it. All I could think about was when Rye was first getting his weight up. We were seniors in high school. He would grab the front of my shirt and twist it in his fist like those white mobsters in the movies. Then he’d sing These penitentiary chaaances that I take. Should be able to get the maaaaansion by the lake. I would push him off and tell him to stop fucking around. That’s when he loved to pull his money out. He’d smell the stack, thick as a textbook, and ask me about my AP classes, stressing the words like an asshole. He said money was freedom. He had plans.

  DURING OUR PHONE calls, Marissa would ask about me, but her heart was never in it. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t give her much about Rye. We had stopped talking after he popped up at Blake’s.

  I still picture him coming home late the morning after his first call at the Hazards’. Jr. cried and kept crying. Marissa Sr.’s mom said that the baby had an ear infection and needed her head held up vertical.

  “Take her,” Marissa said to Rye. “She hardly slept last night.”

  Rye wanted a nap. He didn’t sleep well at the station. He took Jr. in his arms and tried to maneuver the putty gently, always afraid of hurting her. In pictures Marissa sent me, Jr. looked like chewed caramel in his arms. They lay down awhile in the room Marissa and Rye were staying in. Sr.’s mom insisted they stay until Jr. got old enough to sleep through the night. Rye wanted them to get their own place. He positioned himself so that his chest was angled enough to prevent Marissa Jr.’s ear from hurting, but she carried on. He tried peekaboo and the smile game, which consisted of him smiling until he felt like an idiot and stopped. He flipped on SportsCenter and Jr. kept crying.

  “You gotta help me with her!” Rye yelled.

  Sr. entered the room. “Help you?” she said.

  “I don’t know how to do this. I’m trying, baby, really…Where’s your mom—”

  “My mom has seen more of your child than you have.”

  “I’m exhausted, Cocoa.”

  “I have to study,” she said.

  “I just got home.”

  “Well, figure it out,” she said, and left.

  Rye tried tilting Jr. this way and that to make her comfortable, but she screamed on. He bounced her on his knee and played rocket ship and wondered where the hell all her air was coming from. He contemplated walking into the family room and just handing her to Sr., but then he thought of the Hazards’ baby boy wrapped happy and tight, safe and at peace despite the fire that had torn down the life around him. Rye rocked and rocked Jr. as she wailed. The Not Top Ten came on and he laughed at the bloopers.

  “That coulda been Daddy,” he said and pointed to the football highlights as a player dropped the ball a yard before the end zone to celebrate early. “Well, not the whole acting-a-fool part,” he said, and Marissa Jr. burped loud, giggle-hiccupped, and started laughing.

  As they were falling asleep, Jason called. Rye shook his head—fiending, he thought. He looked at his baby girl with her pursed lips like she was trying to blow bubbles. He ignored the call and then they both fell asleep like wolves in a den. They slept past lunch.

  Rye woke up and slid Jr. gently off him. The room was bright and she was still sound asleep. The collections of a life were loud in the light—mobiles for the baby, his sneakers toothbrush-cleaned fresh and set in neat rows, Marissa’s nursing-school study guides hurricaned across the floor; clothes, clean, dirty, and questionable, a fuzz-covered binkie, some cords tangled like vines. He managed to reach the closet, stepping carefully, and searched it for the shoe box that had no shoes. He swept the weed crumbs to weigh out a few bags, took some of the smaller nugs to weigh out a few sl
ices, then opened a fresh QP and weighed out two ounces for some up-and-comers. He packed a bowl from the dregs and hit it while Jr. slept. It felt like she was so close. The room felt like a fucking shoe box. Everything was cramped with junk. He texted Jason back. Gimme a week.

  “She could break her neck,” Marissa Sr. said, in the room all at once. She kept her voice down. “She could fall and die and you don’t even give a fuck. All you had to do is put her in her crib.”

  “She’s asleep,” Rye said.

  “Babies roll.” She picked Jr. up gently and left the room before he could respond.

  He knew better than to argue his case, it would only make things worse. The bed was soft and hot where they’d been lying together. Before he knew it, he was knocked out again.

  When he woke the second time, Rye stared out the window into the orange of the street lamps, heated that he had slept so long. He took the bowl from the night table and hit it until it was resin. The lights hummed like hives. He imagined the electric boxes sparking and setting everything in the room ablaze.

  Rye slid on his Jordan 11s—they were lucky, the Monster Jams—threw his work into a backpack, then walked slow down the stairs. Marissa was in the kitchen, tight-faced and ready to fight. He poured a cup of coffee from the maker, which was still hot, and unplugged it.

  “You’re so fucking stupid sometimes.” Marissa moved slightly in the doorway, cocking her hip. “You burnt?”

  “I put out the fires, baby. I don’t start ’em.”

  Marissa sucked her teeth. “Cornball.” She tossed him a packet of sugar stolen from the 7-Eleven.

  Rye mixed it into his coffee, stirring with his finger until it got too hot. He checked the stove burners. They were caked with oil. “Your mom cook again?”

  “Yeah, you want some rice?”

  Rye took out a sponge and degreaser and began scrubbing. After a few minutes, he ran his finger along the metal to check. Then he went into the living room and put his hand on each outlet.

  Sr. followed him in. “Stop,” she said.

  He looked up.

  “You’re high,” she said.

  Still, he made his way around the room, inspecting cords for frays and rodent teeth marks. Sr.’s laptop was burning up. He shut it down.