The Painting of Porcupine City: A Novel

by Monopoli, Ben

  “I don’t like how it makes me feel to paint on stuff like this,” I told him, lowering my can after just a couple of strokes, the metal rim clinking like a reholstered gun against a rivet in my jeans. “It makes me feel like a vandal.”

  “Don’t be silly. It’s all the same. You don’t like to paint on private property, so we try to stick to public. Now you want to cut out half the public stuff too?”

  “But what gives us the right to—”

  “We’ve talked about this. No one gives us the right. We take it.”

  “OK. But this is a public thing. Consensus demands this truck be white, not covered with”— I looked at his work— “yellow people in postal caps.”

  “Consensus is bullshit,” he said without looking at me. White clouds of his breath billowed out from his hood. The angle, which revealed only his lips and the tip of his nose against the black fabric of his hood, made him look sinister in a way that would never actually suit him—but perhaps it was my glimpse of him that way, however unfortunately wraith-like, that made me realize the level of his dedication. In the face of it I felt lonely, second-rate. “If everything was decided by consensus,” he went on, “everything would be white because no one could agree on any other color. Every building would be a cube and have X number of windows with X type of awnings. The world would be fucking boring, Arrowman. There’s no reason or need for anything to be uninter—”

  In a split second we knew we were spotted and had to run. And we were moving. The sudden jingle of keys, the bouncing flashlight beam playing over us—these were familiar and at first we reacted on instinct, on that old refrain: Don’t get caught. I’d gotten pretty good at not getting caught.

  But this time things happened differently, because things went wrong. I’d entered the parking lot carrying Mateo’s backpack, had put it down somewhere, and the black of it on black pavement in the dark made it practically invisible. We wasted valuable seconds looking for it.

  “It was right around—” I was saying, right before my hand snagged one of the straps. I flung it on and Mateo stuffed his cans in. Just then a second flashlight beam lit up a truck near my face before searing my eyes—there were two guards. And then three. Had they seen us on a camera? Had they rounded up a fucking army?

  “It is them!” I heard one of them say, one who must’ve seen Mateo’s work on the truck and recognized the yellow people. “Shit, it is them!”

  And I thought, It’s them? And not, It’s him and some other guy? As in, the guards thought we were a crew? As in, they thought I was equally responsible for the Facts? I didn’t know how that made me feel, and now wasn’t the time to think it over.

  They gave chase with a lot more doggedness than guards and cops and citizen vigilantes usually did, because they knew we were them! (Them!) And we ran, weaving between boxy postal trucks—I didn’t know to where, not in the direction we came—and I followed Mateo hoping he had a plan. Because it was closer and because they were on us, he brought us to plain fence. No door. Just plain fence.

  “I can’t make that!” I blurted.

  “Yes,” he said, and he was grabbing my jacket and was beginning to scramble up the fence, as though his plan was to haul me up along with him. Hands were laid on his hip and his leg by the first guard, and a moment later by the second.

  “Stop, we want to talk to— Stop!”

  “Hey— You guys are— Wait—”

  I didn’t even know where the third guard was.

  Mateo’s sneakers, despite the pull of the guards, were going up the fence as though it were stairs, while mine slid off as though it were greased. I heard my jacket rip and then Mateo was pulling my backpack strap instead.

  If he’d been doing a Dedinhos rather than a Fact, I think he might’ve stopped and faced the music; Dedinhos was a small-beans writer. But he’d been doing a Fact and the Facts were big-time. These guards knew it too. They’d gathered an army.

  “Go,” I told Mateo.

  “You can do it.” Pulling me harder.

  “You guys are— Stop!—”

  Adrenaline surging, I saw Mateo’s panicked eyes the moment he knew they’d gotten a hold on his belt and started pulling him down off the fence. I saw one of the guards readying a zip-tie. I saw the many opportunities Mateo didn’t take to land his heels in the guards’ teeth. And I saw the hands on him that were not my hands and that didn’t belong there, trying to get Mateo’s second wrist into the zip-tie.

  “Don’t you fucking touch him!” I screamed at the guards, probably the only time in my life I full-on screamed. And then like a thug I shoved the son-of-a-bitch zip-tie guard hard, his belly and shoulder soft beneath my hands. “Fuck off!” He was older than I thought at first, less steady—my decision to fight him dropped a curtain in my mind that revealed him to be an old man, a desk-jockey night watchman with a loop of ribbed plastic. I pushed him again as he was going down, and he collided with the other guard hard enough to make the other guard stumble backward and lose his grip on Mateo. Before I knew it Mateo had me by the sleeve and we were running again. With a rattle of chain-link he got the gate open and we escaped through it, chased only by a single flashlight beam (the third guard?) that bobbed around at our feet, then faded, then disappeared.

  Mateo walked with wide eyes afterward, running his hands through his hair again and again.

  “I have my wallet,” he said, feeling himself over. “Nothing fell out. I have my wallet.” He clutched at his pants and it made me think of the key-touching guy, who was probably in bed right now asleep, warm and dry. “I have my keys. I have my phone.”

  “I have your backpack,” I murmured, slipping it off and holding it out to him by its worn nylon straps. But I knew and he knew that my ultimate success in locating it barely made up for misplacing it in the first place.

  The near-miss could’ve happened anywhere—had happened a lot of places—but usually it was just unlucky timing. And although we had to run all the time, we’d never had to fight until tonight. And that was my fault because, first, I’d been yammering on, forcing him to mount defenses of street art that distracted his special danger sense until it was almost too late—and then all the seconds we spent looking for his backpack, full of items covered in his fingerprints. So I said nothing, even when we were many blocks away and my heartbeat was back to normal and we were sure the sirens in the distance were not for us.

  I couldn’t stop thinking of that guard, though, and of the way he yelped when first his knee and then his shoulder hit the pavement. I still had a can in my pocket and I took it out and set it down on the curb.

  Mateo leaned against a parking meter, tapping a clump of frozen snow with his sneaker. “That sucked,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault.” But he didn’t look at me when he said it.

  A close call, the stuff of nightmares—but it was a good excuse to limit my nights out with him. A few days later I told him it was too much, too often, that I was too cold and too tired to keep going out every night. Fridays and Saturdays were the best I could do. He didn’t try very hard to talk me out of it.

  And he didn’t tell me so, but he’d been thinking that one of the reasons for the close call, and for the near-miss with Mako in September, was that graffiti had grown too comfortable. With me along it had come to feel more like hanging out than robbing a bank, and the second it stopped feeling like robbing a bank—the second that sense of danger and hyperawareness mellowed to chillin’—he was in trouble. He could never be at ease doing this, could never get sloppy. That was Rule #1. He’d figured that out with Vinicius years ago. So it was OK that I didn’t come out every night anymore. He needed no crew.

  Thanks to his electric blanket

  his bed was always warm when I climbed in. Although I was feeling increasingly alienated from him out-there, being in bed with him always felt like a reboot, a recalibration of my feelings to their most tender and affectionate and confident. I always kne
w what to do in-here. We still fit into each other perfectly and when we were done I could tell he was satisfied.

  I breathed in deep and let it out, pulled the blanket back up and rolled onto my side, facing the middle of the bed. He got up to clean up and then got back in. His skin was chilly but warmed quickly.

  “Did you get that office email?” he said, his voice in that place between normal and whisper. He smoothed back his hair and I could smell the remains of deodorant under his arm. “The one about the holiday party?”

  “Sure.”

  “We’re supposed to bring a grab gift? Have you done this before?”

  “The past couple years I bought books I wanted and then grabbed them myself.”

  He smirked and was quiet a minute. “Think I’ll try to skip it.”

  “Don’t skip it, it’s fine. I’ll be there.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Quiet settled in around us. He put his hand on my hip and nudged me, which I knew meant he wanted me to roll over so he could spoon me. I did. His São Paulo arm came around and then his thumb went back and forth in my chest hair.

  “We haven’t talked about Christmas,” I whispered. “Do you have plans?”

  “Not really,” he said against my head.

  “You’re not going to SP?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Oh, I was thinking you’d go.”

  He turned his face so he could speak. “When I go home in the here-winter I don’t go for Christmas, I go for Carnival.”

  “Ah.”

  “Usually I just kick it with Marjorie and Phoebe in the morning and do whatever when they take off for grandma’s.”

  “I was thinking about going to Honduras to see my mom.”

  “Getting pretty late to just be thinking.”

  “I was only thinking. I always tell her I’ll think about it. Then I chill with Cara and Jamar. Either we go to her parents’ or his. I kind of just tag along. I always feel welcome enough. But this year I’d rather just be here with you.”

  “Good.”

  I liked the feel of his breath on the back of my neck and the way he squeezed my feet between his. I closed my eyes. I was content being with him in-here, and there were so many out-there things this closeness could undo.

  The door squeaked open,

  breaking the spell of the dozey morning, and Phoebe entered like a drill sergeant. She said, “Mateo!”

  If I’d had time to decide what to do, I likely would’ve drawn the covers slowly up over my head and pretended not to be there—but the surprise made me sit up quick and then, upon seeing who was at the open door, gather the blankets up against my chest.

  Mateo sat up too but his nakedness under the covers prevented him from leaving the bed. So we were forced to continue to be in it together. “What is it, Miss?”

  Phoebe’s scrunched mouth, a sign that she was processing, suggested she hadn’t expected to find me here. She looked at us for a minute with concentration, then her face relaxed and she walked quietly across the room and sat down on the foot of the bed.

  “Guess what Mateo?” she said. She didn’t acknowledge me.

  “What’s up?”

  She put her hand to the side of her mouth to impart a great secret, but did not whisper. “I’m going to Sunfield.” She laughed.

  “You got a place?”

  She nodded. “A lady is moving. They said Phoebe we want you here right now!”

  “That’s very exciting!” He put out his hand to shake, and she clutched it and pressed it to her shoulder in a sort of hand-hug.

  “I told them my friend Mateo is going to visit me all the time!”

  “Totally. Of course I will. We’ll have to celebrate. I was just talking to Fletcher about some things, so why don’t I see you downstairs in a little bit?”

  “OK.” She started sidling off the bed. “And you can bring your friend,” she said with a glance at me.

  “That’ll be fun. Can you close the door when you go?”

  She nodded and did, and we were alone again. Her footsteps were heavy on the stairs.

  I flopped back on my pillow. “Jesus Christ. Has she ever done that before?”

  “Nah. It was good news. She just wanted to share.”

  “It’s lucky we weren’t screwing, Mateo. Can you even imagine?”

  “Relax, Arrowman. It was fine. All we were doing was sleeping and that’s all she saw.”

  “Naked.” I lifted the covers.

  “She couldn’t see that.”

  “I’m so not used to kids.”

  “She’s not a kid. She’s almost the same age as us.”

  “You know what I mean. What’s—what did she say? Sunfield?”

  “It’s that place I was telling you about before. This is good news. They’ve been waiting literally years for a room to open up.”

  “She’ll live there?”

  “Yup.”

  “For how long?”

  “Long as she likes, I guess.”

  “So she’s moving out?”

  “She’s getting her own place.”

  “So it’s just going to be you and Marjorie?”

  “Unless you want her room.” He nudged my hip.

  Back and forth, tick

  and tock, cold and hot. A can, a blanket. A hoodie, bare skin. Angst, contentment. One minute I had him in my arms and the next, on the other side of his alarm clock’s ear-splitting blare, all I had was a backpack.

  From under the dank, dark

  overpass where we were painting on a Saturday night—or, rather, where Mateo was painting—I could see Christmas lights glittering in a few of the windows in the buildings that lined Commonwealth Ave. They looked pretty and warm and I imagined I smelled sugar cookies baking inside.

  Twenty feet away, against one of the overpass’s concrete support columns, a bum slept on a bed of cardboard, mummified in a cocoon of gray shipping blankets he probably ganked from the back of a U-Haul. He’d already peered out once to check us out before withdrawing back under the blankets. I kept an eye on him. Like so many things that are harmless in daylight—coatracks dangling hoodies, the shadows of tree branches—hobos seemed more threatening at night.

  Mateo, in just a thick hooded sweatshirt, added some finishing touches to the Izzie, or Fact, or whatever you call them, while I sat on a concrete block shivering, shoes scuffing back and forth on the stiff dirt. His backpack sat between my feet and I rubbed the zipper teeth to make sure my fingers still had feeling.

  “What do you think?” he said finally, stepping away from the wall, flicking wet paint off the back of his hand.

  I gave it a glance. GIVE IS GET. The letters had bells and ornaments hanging from them, a Christmas theme—but when I thought of Christmas I didn’t think of overpasses.

  “Looks good,” I told him. “I like it. Want your camera?”

  “Hey. You barely looked.”

  “I looked. I’ve been watching. It’s nice.”

  He frowned and took the camera, and when my hand was empty I pulled it back into my sleeve. Next time I’d wear gloves, even if he said gloves were too restricting. When he turned around with the photo I was already wearing the backpack and starting down the little slope back to the sidewalk. I gave the sleeping bum a parting glance to make sure he wasn’t going to chase after us with the jagged edge of a soup can or something.

  “Hold up,” Mateo told me, and when I stopped he unzipped the backpack and put the camera inside—a new camera he didn’t like as well; his old one got broken during the incident at the post office.

  “Are we good for tonight?” I said.

  “We can be. Feeling tired?”

  “A little.” My hat was pulled down to my eyebrows and my nose wouldn’t stop running.

  “OK. We’ll go home now.”

  “My place or yours?”

  “Let’s go to mine.” He put his arm around me and pulled me against him. Even though smiling cracked my chapped lips, I couldn’t help i
t.

  Tick and tock. Cold and hot, so hot.

  We did Christmas.

  I strategically forgot about an invitation from Alex to his and Jimmy’s Christmas Eve bash, reason being that a meet-and-greet with Jimmy Perino wouldn’t be the best thing in the world for me. Instead Mateo brought me to Mass at a church I never knew he dipped into from time to time. In the cavernous, candle-lit place we sat on the benches and I whispered, “You’re really Catholic, aren’t you?”

  He shrugged. “I just like the windows,” he said, pointing to the stained glass. “They’re like graffiti.”

  I got him a digital camera, which I thought would be easier for him to carry around than that bulky Polaroid but which I don’t think he ever used. Also a pair of fingerless gloves, which he did use. I braced myself to receive from him some kind of graffiti paraphernalia—a black book, an array of markers—but in what turned out to be a disappointing realization that he understood I wasn’t exactly into that, he gave me a box of fancy stationery and a giftcard to Urban Outfitters. I looked at the giftcard and suddenly felt as though our relationship was running on fumes.

  We did New Year’s.

  We didn’t go out, the city too crowded to be painted on unseen. Instead we watched Times Square on TV with Jamar and Cara and threw handfuls of foil confetti at each other when the ball fell.

  And then January began chugging

  along. The most striking measure of the passing winter was Cara, literally—the growth of her middle. It started slow and then, suddenly, every time I saw her she was like ten sizes bigger.

  “I’m a whale,” she announced in early February, on the evening after her baby shower. Her eighty aunts had swarmed her that afternoon and now the living room was strewn with boxes of stuff bearing pictures of cartoon animals and giggling infants. She slid farther down on the couch. “I feel like a whale. I look like a whale. My bulk extends through all these products.”

  “You don’t look like a whale,” I told her.

  “I’m a whale in a Shuster College t-shirt.” It was Jamar’s—it fit her like a dress.

  “Shush, you’re not a whale. You’re barely a bottlenose dolphin.”