by Jake Coburn
“Like the Road Runner,” Danny finished.
“Stay by me,” I said, taking another step.
“You stay by me,” he said, turning around.
And then we bolted. We sprinted back around the corner toward Lexington.
“FUCKING HERBS!”
Danny ran in front of me down the side street and I knocked trash cans over behind us. Two couples turned the corner on Lexington and nearly clotheslined Danny. He jumped onto the hood of a parked Saab and leapt into 75th Street. A Ranger screeched to a stop in front of him and I sprang off the Saab, onto the hood of the Ranger, and then onto the other side of the block.
“Oh, Danny boy,” a voice sang out.
Danny and I spun around the corner onto Lexington, shoes squeaking behind us, and collided with a woman walking her five dogs. Danny hit the leashes full force and tripped into a broken parking meter. I bounced off the metal shutters of a shoe store and fell into a lab that was pretty happy to have someone to play with. Leaping over the rest of the leashes, I grabbed Danny by the collar and pushed him forward.
The dogs started barking again when the hoods turned the corner and I pointed toward the bodega in the middle of the block.
“Come on,” I said, running down the aisle of the outdoor display and into a woman carrying two boxes of paper towels. I rolled off of her and knocked over a bed of ice and Florida grapefruits. One of the hoods grabbed my sleeve and threw a punch into my back. Tripping into the bodega, I slid across the linoleum and crashed into the cashier’s counter. My hands broke the fall and I could feel scalding scratches on my palms and fingers. Two middle-aged guys carrying cases of Milwaukee’s Best and Fritos stared down at me.
“Officer Zucker!” I shouted up to the two guys. I didn’t know what else to do.
The Double RL hood froze at the door to the bodega and his three friends appeared behind him.
“Officers—” I gasped again.
The guy holding the Fritos studied my ice-covered face and my bleeding hand. The hoods smiled at each other.
“Son,” he said, shaking his head, “you’re always playing too rough.” Then he turned to the hoods still perched at the door. “Get on home, boys.”
They laughed and turned back to the sidewalk. “Later, pussies,” one of them shouted. “You’re mine, Thet.”
I dropped my head to the cold, red tiles of the bodega and felt my bruised rib.
“Are you okay?”
This was fucking bullshit. I didn’t care if MKII wanted to play cops’n robbers all around New York City, but leave me the hell out of it.
“Are you okay?” the other guy asked again. “Do you need—”
“I’m fine,” I said, standing up. “Thank you, guys.”
They nodded and slammed their beer on the counter. “You know, I thought about applying for the academy.”
Danny walked up from the back of the bodega and put his hand on my shoulder. “Thanks for grabbing me back there.”
“No problem. Were those Conformists?” I asked, holding my hand to my side.
Danny sneered and rubbed his forehead against his shirt-sleeve. “How the hell did they know where I was?”
“Jerry,” I wheezed. After I left Sara’s party, Jerry probably told Derrick’s friend that I used to write DOA, that I was in his Spanish class at Daley, that I was best friends with Kris Conway.
“What the hell are we gonna do?” Danny asked.
I didn’t know who else to call. “Can I use the phone?” I asked the store clerk.
He slid it toward me and I punched in Greg’s cell. It rang once.
“It’s Nick.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Greg said, in his most professional tone. “I don’t know a Nick.”
“Greg, we just got jumped outside my building. They were fucking waiting for me,” I said, trying not to sound freaked out.
“What?” Greg shouted. “Why the fuck would MKII track you?”
“I—”
“Wait,” Greg interrupted. “Where you at? I’m sending some boyz there.”
“Greg, you—”
“Thet, give me your fucking digits.”
“Seventy-fifth and Lex,” I said. “In the bodega halfway down the block.”
“Coolio. It shouldn’t take these heads that long. Wait for them and then get the hell up to Riverdale.”
“Did you talk to Derrick?”
“For a sec. They won’t mess with you guys if you’re rolling with Diggs. Shit’s a cease-fire.”
“Thanks.”
“No worries.” Greg laughed. “I always liked protecting your ass.” Beep.
I hung up the phone and studied the cut on my hand. The scrape ran across my palm and onto my wrist, and it stung like crazy. “Greg’s sending a bunch of guys.”
I grabbed a stack of napkins off the counter and pressed them against my cut. I was a wreck. Walking to Kris’s last night, there’d been one thing on my mind, and now I had a million fucking problems to deal with.
An elderly woman picked up her brown paper bag. “You boys need better goals.”
“I want to go to film school,” I said, holding the napkins against my hand. “I swear.”
A tremor ran through the field hockey player’s right leg, and I felt a beeper in her jeans pocket. I pulled away from our kiss—my eyes struggled open. I had no idea how long we’d been kissing.
“It’s my friends,” she said, checking her pager. “I’m supposed to meet them.”
“Oh, shit.” I looked at my watch. “I’ve got to go downstairs for a sec.”
“All right.” She kissed me on the cheek and reached for her purse. “I’m going to go find a phone.”
As soon as I stepped out onto Central Park West, I knew something was wrong. Hoods were piling into the street and stopping traffic. Car horns were barking at each other. I noticed a group circling the park side of the street, but I didn’t have a clue where Greg and Kodak were.
I walked in between two parked cars and headed for the crowd. A girl ran away from the group, crying into her cell phone, and bumped into me. I caught her as she fell. She looked up at me. “Call the cops,” she gasped.
I stepped past her and sprinted across the street toward the crowd. I shoved my way to the center of the circle.
Kodak was pressed up against the body of a taxi. Two hoods I’d never seen before slammed his forehead into the windshield—I froze. Greg grabbed one of them by the collar, but three other hoods threw him to the ground and smacked their Timberlands into his side. Greg’s body convulsed, and he curled into a ball of obscenities.
I tried to shout something but my throat clenched. Stomach acid burned the roof of my mouth. I couldn’t move. What the fuck was wrong with me?
Danny waited in Elliot’s lobby with three Diggs while I ran upstairs. I turned the doorknob to the apartment as quietly as I could and pushed the door open. If I turned the knob just right, the metal piece didn’t click and then I just had to pray the hinges didn’t squeak.
I tiptoed down the hall but they spotted me from the living room. Elliot. My mother. Mr. Roberts. Mrs. Roberts. Mrs. Roberts’s dog, Dee-Dee. They were all dressed like they’d been out on the town, and there was a half-empty bottle of Chivas on the table. Bad sign.
“Nicholas,” Mrs. Roberts said, standing up and walking over to me for a kiss.
“Hi, Mrs. Roberts.” I stuffed the bloody napkins in my back pocket. I felt like sprinting into my room.
“Hey, your voice is still getting deeper,” Mrs. Roberts said, smiling. “Isn’t it, Michael?”
Mr. Roberts laughed. “Leave the poor boy alone.”
I reached over and used my left hand to shake hands with Mr. Roberts.
My mother stood up and looked at my clothes. “You need a shower. Really, Nick, this is embarrassing.”
“I know,” I said, pretending to give a shit.
“Sit down for a second, Nick,” Mr. Roberts said.
“I’m exhausted.” I had to get
out of there.
“Give us a second,” Elliot began. “He’s so busy these days.” He tossed Mrs. Roberts a large wink.
“I really—”
“Nicholas,” my mother interrupted. She gestured toward the empty seat.
“Let me just wash up and I’ll be right back,” I said, edging toward my room.
Elliot laughed. “He’s harder to get on the phone than my lawyer.”
I locked my door and ran over to the closet. Falling to my knees, I threw all of my old shoes into the middle of the room and then rolled two ten-pound weights to the side. I felt for the back edge of my rug and grabbed at the loose strands. Tugging at the seams of the rug, I searched for the loose floorboard. It rattled in place and I got a splinter prying it off the floor. I threw my arm into the hole and pulled out my black backpack. It was covered in dust but I could still read all our tags inked on the canvas. I tossed everything back into the closet, slammed the door, and ran into the bathroom.
I brushed the dust into the bathtub and unzipped the backpack. The unmistakable odor of Krylon slapped my sinuses and, for a second, I felt like I was writing again. Everything was still there. I didn’t know where I thought it would go, but I had to be sure. My trusty CD player that had taken more hits than I had. A cheap bowl that I’d scraped the resin out of. A couple of fat-tip markers that had probably dried out a long time ago. Two cans of Krylon and a handful of spray caps. My beaten-up red Yankees cap that had been through everything with me.
I kicked off my loafers and found my Timberlands. They were scratched up but they were the best I had. I grabbed an old hooded sweatshirt and threw it on, and then ran over to my desk and pocketed about two hundred dollars in cash. On the phone, Greg had asked me who he was talking to and I’d told him what he wanted to hear, but standing there in my old boots, I remembered what it actually felt like to be Thet. Thet, the artist who could get up on any wall or highway for miles. Thet, the sophomore who girls always wanted to meet. Thet, the guy who failed his friends.
I dropped my backpack against the front door and walked casually back into the living room. I was nervous they were going to notice my change of clothes, but they were pretty toasted.
“Good night?” Elliot said. “You had fun I trust?”
I sat down on the couch next to Mrs. Roberts. “Yeah.” I nodded. Not that Elliot really cared.
“So I hear you might be working in finance this summer,” Mr. Roberts said.
“I’m not sure yet.” I felt like telling Mr. Roberts that I’d rather clean a Wall Street office than work in one, but I was polite. Danny would’ve been proud.
“I can’t imagine having those opportunities when I was your age. I think I would’ve jumped out of my seat,” Mr. Roberts said. “You’ll really get to see what goes on.”
“Well, we’ll see,” I said, trying to sit on my hand.
“So, how’s Daley?” Mrs. Roberts asked. Dee-Dee was curled around the leg of her chair.
“It’s fine.”
“Ben’s loving it these days,” Mrs. Roberts said. Their son was a junior.
“That’s great,” I said. Their son was a fucking tool.
“You’ve started the big college search?” Mr. Roberts asked.
“A bit. Applications aren’t due for a while.”
“Well, you must’ve taken the SATs,” Mrs. Roberts said.
“He got a fourteen-twenty,” my mother said, smiling.
“Wow.”
“Elliot, let Nick have a drink with us,” Mrs. Roberts declared. “He’s old enough.”
Elliot looked to my mother for the nod. My mother paused, then gave it.
“Fourteen-ten, you said?” Mr. Roberts asked.
Elliot walked over and picked out another crystal highball glass. He poured me a double and refilled Mrs. Roberts’s.
“That’s a great score.” Mrs. Roberts reached into her cigarette case and picked up her engraved lighter. She was the only one of my parents’ friends who smoked, and I liked her for it.
“That’s where Ben’s hoping to score, too.”
“We were very pleased,” my mother said.
“You could go to your father’s alma mater with a score like that,” Mrs. Roberts said, sipping her drink. “You loved Princeton, didn’t you, Elliot?”
“My father didn’t go to college,” I said, picking up the scotch and throwing it back in one long gulp.
Mrs. Roberts’s drink hung in midair. I reached down to her cigarette case and pulled out a Dunhill. Standing up, I lit the cigarette and then walked out—it felt fucking great. The only noise I heard as I slammed the door shut was Dee-Dee barking.
In the lobby, Danny was swapping stories with the Diggs. I’d met the two older hoods at a party in Southampton last year, but the young guy was a shiny recruit.
“You guys mind escorting us to the subway?” I said, tossing on my Yankees hat.
The three Diggs nodded.
Danny smiled at my new outfit. “I barely recognized you.”
“Shut up,” I muttered, walking outside. I knew I’d have to face Elliot and my mother eventually, but I just didn’t give a shit.
There were five people waiting on the uptown platform, including a couple leaning up against the tiled wall sharing a box of Dunkin’ Donuts.
“You should call your sister and let her know where she can find us,” I said. “She’ll need to call a cab when she gets off the train. I mean, if she’s even free,” I added, as naturally as I could. I wasn’t sure I could handle seeing Kris right now.
Danny walked over to a pay phone, and I sat down on an empty wooden bench. A stale breeze sped through the station and sent ripples across the dark puddles spotting the train tracks. The train was coming. In New York City, you can smell the train before you can see it.
Danny sat down next to me and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I left her a message.”
“So how’s school been since you got back?” I asked, trying to skip over Kris and Luke.
“Not bad. I’m still on probation.” Danny leaned back against the bench. “Which kind of sucks. What about you?”
“Up and down. I’ve got to write this five-pager on germanium for Monday.”
The approaching train rattled the metal signs in the station and spread light across the tracks.
Danny stood up. “The semiconductor?”
“Yeah,” I said, surprised.
“You know the great story behind it, right?”
The fourth car screeched to a stop in front of us, and the doors slid open. We stepped onto the subway, and Danny and I sat in two seats facing each other. There were a dozen people scattered around the car, but I didn’t make eye contact with anyone.
“For real?” I asked, staring at an ad for acne treatment. The train smelled like damp newspaper.
“I swear. When Mendeleyev created the periodic table, he knew about germanium before it was ever, quote, ‘discovered.’ Hell, he knew stuff about germanium before anyone had ever set eyes on it. Isn’t that weird?”
“How could he do something like that?”
“It’s hard to explain. It’s like since he knew there was a plain donut,” Danny said, nodding to the couple at the other end of the car, “and a chocolate glazed, he knew there had to be a plain glazed. It just had to exist, even though he’d never eaten one. It’s kind of spiritual that way.”
“How do you figure?”
“Well, to believe there’s this piece holding all the other elements together. To believe without actual proof.”
“Do you believe in God, Danny?”
“I don’t know,” he said, smiling. “I believe in Bruce Spring steen, though.”
“Come on. I figured you for a theory.”
“I go back and forth. I’m all over the place. Descartes never counted on manic-depressives.” Danny laughed. “What about you?”
I shrugged. “There’s no God on Park Avenue.”
The train rattled down the tracks, revealing sleepin
g buildings and abandoned parking lots. A little after 1:00 A.M., the subway came to a slow, skidding stop. The moon had been running alongside the train since we touched the Hudson, and now the soft, blue light wrapped itself around a sign that said WELCOME TO RIVERDALE.
Danny and I walked the platform of the elevated station and headed down a metal staircase. Stepping onto Broadway, I found a string of beaten-up pay phones. Greg’s cell went straight to voicemail, and I left him a short message saying we were at the station.
Danny sat down on the first step of the staircase, and I reached for a cigarette.
Fieldston Road was the Beverly Hills of the Bronx. Sitting between Westchester and the projects, the only thing urban about Fieldston was the street numbers. Otherwise, Fieldston was about tight lawns and SUVs with all the toppings. The Diggs went to the largest of the three prep schools in the area, Melville, but they spent all their time in Manhattan. Prep-school hoods wouldn’t be anything more than bait in the rest of the Bronx.
By the time I was halfway through my butt, I heard the distinct whine of a bike engine. Two yellow motorcycles rode down the hill toward us. The front bike seemed to wobble in between bursts of speed, but the back one rode comfortably through the angles.
Danny stood up and walked over to me. “Who are those guys?”
The first bike skidded up to the curb in front of us. It was a bright yellow Ducati. The frame extended awkwardly into the body of the bike but it looked like it weighed less than I did. The front rider took off his helmet, brushed his shaggy hair from his forehead, and nodded to us both.
“S’up. I’m Dave,” he said, extending a hand. “You Thet?”
“Yeah,” I said without hesitating. “Nice bike. Yours?”
“It’s the Prescotts’,” Dave said, softly tapping the handlebars. “Ducatis are crazy temperamental. They’re chill in the Hamptons, but that’s it.”
“I’m kinda partial to four wheels,” Danny said.
“This is Jarvis.” Dave tipped his head as the second Ducati pulled up. “He’s my Brit cousin, but he likes NYC. Boy’ll hustle you out of your fucking dice and give you a new accent.”
Jarvis gave a lopsided grin.