Manhattan Grimoire

by Sandy DeLuca

  We literally run to the door and slam it shut behind us. We laugh nervously as we climb the stairs, clinging to each other until we’re safely locked inside my apartment.

  Tony’s easel isn’t in the hall and his coat isn’t hanging on the door. I look around. Things are different. “Take off your coat,” I say to Rico as I go from room to room. Tony’s clothes aren’t in the bedroom closet, or in bureau drawers. His canvases aren’t in the studio and his whiskey bottle isn’t in the wicker basket by the sink. I get drinking glasses out of the cupboard and notice that his oversized coffee mug isn’t here. It’s as though he never lived with me, as though he was a wish that floated away with the drift of snow tonight.

  The hurt is unbearable. He could have told me he wanted to leave. He didn’t have to split like this, didn’t have to be such a creep about it.

  I can hear Rico talking to God, saying a Hail Mary, singing a song from Sunday school.

  I walk slowly through the hall. Tony’s paintings once hung there and above the bookcase. Now only my sister’s painting hangs above my volumes of esoteric books, above secrets written by dreamers who saw beyond the veil of life. Tony had this planned all along. He must have found another chick to live off of, to chisel meals and money from. I tell myself I’m probably better off. It’ll hurt for a while, but I’ll get by. I always do.

  I go back to Rico. He’s not praying anymore. There’s pizza sauce on his chin. He’s holding a bottle of wine, his old coat is on the floor and his shoes beneath the coffee table. “Want to start with the red?” He smiles, but I can tell he’s still jittery.

  I sit across from him. “Tony’s gone, he just split.” My voice seems far away, like it’s not even me speaking. “Pour me some red.”

  “Want me to leave? Wanna be alone?”

  “Hell, no. Don’t go.”

  Rico looks at his hands. They’re shaking a little. His voice is husky. “My boyfriend left too. He woke up one morning and decided he wanted to move to California without me.” Rico shakes his head. “It’s tough to find somebody you can trust. Not much I can do now.”

  “We’re a forsaken duo, aren’t we? At least we’re not alone tonight. At least you’re not freezing to death out in the street. Let’s get to that wine.”

  “OK.” He opens the bottle. I hand him the glasses and he pops the cork. I watch as red liquid pours from the bottle. He reaches over, places the long-stemmed goblet in my hand.

  “Cheers,” he whispers to the night, to swirling clouds of white and to our broken hearts.

  We drink in silence. One glass and then another. I feel warmth touch the pit of my stomach and then flow through my body. Who are we? Are we people lost and lonely on a snowy night? Adults who are still afraid of the dark, of monsters lurking in shadow? Will we survive? And if not, will it matter to anyone? Will we end up some footnote, a news story, or dead on a sacrificial altar, our hearts sacrificed to the darkness?

  I decide to call in sick tomorrow. I haven’t done that in months. I need a friend tonight, someone who can help me unravel the mystery of Allie’s disappearance, and I know odds are we won’t get much sleep. We’ll probably talk until the sun comes up. I want to know more about Rico, his past, why a bright and sensitive man ended up hustling knockoff bags on Canal Street. The wine makes me bolder, makes me ask questions I ordinarily wouldn’t. “Are your parents in New York? Are they alive?”

  “My parents were gypsies, moving from place to place, stealing what they could then running. I think my father hurt people for money, conned the elderly and shit. I think he might have killed somebody. They took him away when we were living in Memphis. Me and my mother came north. She abandoned me when I was ten. I just drifted from foster home to foster home after that. Sometimes I feel like I was born from rot. I mean, sometimes you gotta hustle, gotta hook, gotta steal to get by, but when you have no regard for life, no respect for the weak and vulnerable—not even your own kid—then that’s fucking evil.” Rico wipes his mouth with his sleeve, looks toward the window. “I’m not stupid. I might have been something if it wasn’t for that, you know?” He hangs his head. “I was born from rot. Maybe that’s why those things are after me.”

  I think of my mother, of her screams. Maybe Rico and I are suffering from incurable madness. Maybe it’s all that simple, we’re just fucking crazy. “You’re not a bad person,” I tell him. “You can turn your life around.”

  “Too late for me.” He laughs, but it’s forced.

  “Never too late.” I want to believe people can make it despite odds stacked up against them.

  “It’s way too late. All I know is hustling, dealing. I’ll probably end up in a bad place sooner or later. I got no high expectations.” He puts his feet up on the table. I don’t care. I’m just glad for the company.

  “You said something about things we shouldn’t be seeing. What did you mean?”

  “I was on a bus coming back from somewhere, maybe going somewhere, we were going south I think. I was a kid, wrapped in my mother’s arms. My father was asleep in a seat behind us. We were always moving around, like I told you before.” He takes a sip of his wine, his eyes turn moist. “I was half-asleep myself. There was a woman, old, frail, sitting across the aisle from us. She was talking about God to the guy sitting next to her, about how this great white light exists high above us, about how we can draw it down, use its power for good.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  “Yeah, she said she was coming back from some meeting where all these good people get together from all over the country a few times a year to bring the light down to Earth. She said that other beings are here with us. There are good and bad things, dark and light—but we can’t see them, that it has something to do with how fast they vibrate or something. Sometimes the vibration slows and that’s when we can see them.”

  I pour myself more wine, allow Rico to go on uninterrupted.

  He stretches then looks toward the window. “Driver stopped somewhere for a pee break. The woman excused herself and walked off that bus with a dozen other people. She stopped at a soda machine and reached into her purse for change. I can still hear the clinking sound when she put her money in the slot. She stopped short. The light on the soda machine was blinking. Poor lady never even pressed the button, to choose either a Coke or an Orange Crush. She stopped short and looked over her shoulder like she heard something and then turned around real slow. Her face was white and her hands started shaking. She was looking at something, mouthing words, but I didn’t see anything—or anyone. She was there one minute and the next she wasn’t, like she never existed. The other passengers came back and took their seats like everything was normal. The driver just pulled away and nobody fucking said a word, nobody missed her.”

  “Maybe it was all a dream.” I want to believe that Rico’s imagination ran away with him, that he was somewhere between a dream and the real world.

  “No fucking dream. That guy wearing the hood—I swear—I know it was him sitting beside her on that bus.” Rico’s voice is somber and he’s scaring the shit out of me.

  “Didn’t I see you once on a bus going south?” I see the hooded street punk leaning close to Rico, saying those words. Why would he say that to him unless it was true—unless he was there—on that bus—the night the old woman disappeared?

  “It’s a nightmare. Tell me it’s a nightmare.” I drop my glass and it shatters, leaving a red puddle at my feet.

  “Why’d they never find Allie’s body?” Rico asks me, fear etched across his face. “You ever think about that?”

  “I think about it all the time, but she’s dead. You don’t believe...”

  “I’d believe just about anything after all the shit I’ve been seeing.” He reaches into his pocket, pulls out an old wrinkled photograph. “Here’s the photo I told you about, one that was in Allie’s pocket.” He puts it on the table. A beautiful black woman lies on a rose-covered altar. Her dress looks as though it’s from the late 1800’s or early 1900’s. Her
hands are folded over her chest. Her throat is cut and it looks as though her heart has been carved out. I’ve dreamed of her hundreds of times, spoken to her in the street. Rico begins to cry. “I see her all the time, walking down Canal, a ghost, a victim. Now, you tell me what your sister was doing with this fucking picture?”

  “I don’t know, Rico, but I’ve seen the woman too. I dream about her.”

  He folds his arms. “Get another glass. Get a little high, girl.”

  I go to the kitchen, get a clean glass from the cupboard. I wonder where Allie’s body is, if they did to her what they did to the other woman, or worse. Lights flash outside. I know it’s just Daniel watching. I hope he’s safe in the night, in the storm. I wonder if Tony is out there somewhere, making love to somebody new. It doesn’t matter. I’m not alone. That’s all that matters here and now.

  12

  It’s four in the morning. Rico’s asleep on the couch, and I sit thinking about angels in the city, the gentle people, the vendors, craftspeople and artists who sell their wares on the street. They are the minority, a subculture that goes unnoticed by those who have reign over this city. Yet they are shining threads within its fabric. Poor souls, but mighty angels amidst the working class who go uptown, downtown and everywhere in between to buy their wares and share early morning greetings. Greetings like prayers to transcendental beings watching and keeping the city from falling off the Earth. Nonetheless they are shunned by the power-driven living for the almighty buck. The rich are the ones who have taken this city hostage. It doesn’t matter whether they sit in plush offices on Wall Street or peddle dope to children outside schoolhouses. Greed and self-gratification is their motive. They don’t give a damn about the angels who greet you on street corners with invitations to warehouse sales, with sample soaps and bright postcards announcing art shows in DUMBO (down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass) where a new breed of artists reside. Others hang their paintings from wire on the streets of Soho or tend small stands chock full of costume jewelry or handmade leather on Canal. They smile, tell you you’re pretty, that you should dress warmer and they touch your hand as though they’re spreading magic on your skin. It’s often like a dream, walking down Broadway in Soho, through downtown, on Saturday or Sunday—or Times Square during rush hour. People drift in and out of the landscape. I’ve taken their photographs and sometimes there are halos above their heads. I know it’s the sun or a neon light at dusk, but I like to imagine that part of New York must be a slice of Heaven and there are angels there.

  * * *

  Allie loved to shop even more than I do. There were clothes in her closets, in her drawers, with price tags still on them. She’d stack sweaters and jeans in piles on her floor, keep shoes in storage bins under her bed. She had jewelry boxes filled with silver rings and bangle bracelets. It was an obsession, going downtown once a week, and weaving in and out of the shops on Broadway. I don’t know how she paid for the stuff. No one would issue her a credit card, not since Chase cut off her Visa, not since her car was repossessed back in Boston. She didn’t work steadily either. She served drinks a couple nights a week in a strip joint on Prince Street. Maybe she hooked. I wouldn’t put it past her. Bottom line is she could afford the things that were cluttering her apartment.

  I cleaned her apartment after she disappeared, put her things in storage. Although I know it’s probably just wishful thinking, I still tell myself she might one day come back to claim them. I don’t have the heart to take them for myself or to give them away. Months ago Allie decided to get rid of some of the shit piling up at her place. She called me, asked if I wanted a red leather coat and a couple of mohair sweaters she claimed made her itch. I gladly accepted and told her I’d go by after work. It was a Monday night.

  I arrived at my sister’s around the same time as her friend Lisa. Allie always suspected Lisa as a closet lesbian because although she often spoke about men she rarely dated. She’d flirt a lot but always made excuses as to why she couldn’t take things further. Whatever the truth was, she struck me as a sad and insecure soul with virtually no life, hiding from secrets she was afraid to admit even to herself.

  That night Lisa stepped into Allie’s studio apartment, took off her coat and immediately began telling my sister about a guy she’d just met. “His name is Rich. He just got a job in my building, in the office. We talked last night. I got this vibe off him, you know. I asked around about him. They said he’s single.” She ran her hand through thick dark hair that always looked a bit greasy and unruly.

  Allie smiled slyly at her. “Lisa, go through the clothes I’ve piled up on the bed. Take whatever you want.”

  “Thanks!” Lisa’s face lit up. “I’m not sure if your stuff fits but I’ll try some on.”

  Lisa chose several pairs of pants and a couple sweaters, put them over her arm and went to Allie’s bathroom. Every now and then she’d walk out timidly and ask, “What do you think?” Of course she’d never look like my sister in those clothes. Lisa was petite, but her waist was thick, her thighs wide and she had almost no bust.

  Just the same, Allie would nod each time and say, “Looks cute on you.”

  Lisa would blush.

  My sister turned to me once when Lisa ducked back into the bathroom. “Those clothes, they smell of my perfume, they smell of me. I can imagine her going home and spreading everything on her bed, masturbating with the smells, the textures consuming her.”

  “You’re cold.” I smiled when I said it, but Allie’s comment bothered me.

  What bugged me even more was when Allie grabbed a camera from a shelf and began photographing Lisa each time she put on a new outfit. Lisa began to loosen up, trying clothes on in the open. She looked at my sister as though they were lovers.

  “I’m going to make a photo album of you, sweetie,” my sister said. Her voice was husky, sexy.

  Lisa’s face turned bright pink. “Thanks so much for the clothes.”

  Completely unaware that Allie was making fun of her, Lisa stood there in her underwear, enthusiastically stuffing pairs of pants and sweaters into a shopping bag my sister gave her.

  I felt sorry for her but said nothing, did nothing to stop Allie or to protect Lisa.

  I wish now I had.

  Allie continued to photograph her. Lisa tried to look seductive but it came off as comical.

  My sister was being cruel, a tease, and I didn’t want any part of it, so I made some excuse as to why I had to leave and took off.

  Later that week, I asked Allie what had happened between them after I left.

  “Nothing,” she told me. “She got dressed and went home. She’s way too shy to say what she really wants to. Bet she couldn’t wait to do herself, though.”

  Now I wonder what my sister did with those photos. Were they mixed in with the ones Rico found, with images of dead people? If you attempt to kill someone’s soul, isn’t it the same, if not worse, than killing their flesh?

  I suddenly remember the shot I took of the black woman down on Canal and Broadway, and it brings me back to the present. “Shit, my camera.” My coat is spread over my legs. I reach into the pocket, remove the digital camera then kick the coat aside. Scrambling over to the desk beside the bookcase, I boot up my computer and slide the memory card into the drive. It was the last shot I took. I click open the file. There’s no beautiful black woman in the photo, just a small Asian man holding a necklace, rows of jewelry on hooks behind him.

  But Rico said he’d seen her too.

  “Rico, wake up.”

  He rubs his eyes, stretches and yawns. “Snow stop?”

  “Yeah a little, but it’s bitterly cold now.” I bite my lip. “I photographed the black woman, but…” Is she an angel or a demon? Is she part of some sickness I’ve inherited from my mother? No, Rico saw her too.

  “What black woman? I know lots of black women being a black man and all that, you know.”

  “The one in the photo you got off Allie, the dead chick.” I fold my arms and slide
down against the back of my chair.

  Rico sits up. “We’re on the same wavelength here, two people who never quit believing in ghost stories. We’re like kids, scared shitless in the dark, afraid of things other people don’t think about anymore.”

  “Yeah, I’m still ten, still hiding under bed sheets with my best friend, still talking about it because I know it’s true.” This feels natural, as normal as two people discussing photos they’ve taken of the Brooklyn Bridge beneath a full moon or of the cathedral on Fifth when the sun is setting. “Well, what do you think? I mean, she wasn’t there, just the Asian dude and his stash.”

  “Not sure if she’d photograph that well, being dead and all. Makes sense, there’d be nothing there, no?” He scratches his chin absently. “She just sorta floats down the street. At least she talks to you. She disappears if I take a step towards her—weird—but I’m not afraid of her, not like I should be of a fucking ghost. Anyway, I think you need special film, you know?”

  “I guess. I’ve read books though, sometimes shit like that shows up—like mist—or all blurry—stuff like that.” He’s right. Shouldn’t we be afraid of a dead woman?

  “Maybe we’re both crazy.” He lays down again, closes his eyes. “It’s probably my scumbag genes and all the booze and dope. With you it might be grief, plain and simple”

  I roll my eyes, but Rico doesn’t see. “Never mind. Do you ever think that Heaven and Hell, parts of it anyway, might be right here?”

  “What kind of jive you talking to a man who’s still drunk and half asleep?”

  “Come on, Rico, I’m serious.”

  “I’ve always thought that,” he says groggily, “ever since that bus trip when I was kid.”