“I don’t know, Sapo.” I was afraid. Not of the cops but of Blanca.
“Yo, come on, man, one last favor for your pana, Sapo. You be just taking the sack to Tweety, bro. He’s the one who’s gonna be doing the real thing.”
“So why don’t you take it to Tweety? Look, I’ll wait for you here to come pick—”
“I’m in the Bronx, Chino! You think I would’ve called you if I coulda come by? Fuck, man, you go to school or what?”
So, without telling Blanca, I did as Sapo had asked.
•
THE NEXT night Sapo knocked at my door and handed me fifty dollars, just for taking something to where I was already headed.
“Compliments of Willie Bodega, my man. For your backpack.” Sapo slapped the crisp bill in my hand.
And that’s when I heard the name Willie Bodega for the first time.
“Willie wha’?” I thought it was a funny name.
“Willie Bodega? You nevah heard of him? He’s like the big Taino in this neighborhood, you know? Although only a few have seen his face.”
It’s important for me to remember that night, because once I heard that name it was never about Blanca or Sapo. As important as they were to me, it was always about Bodega. We were all insignificant, dwarfed by what his dream meant to Spanish Harlem. And in obtaining it, he took shortcuts and broke some laws, leaving crumbs along the way in hopes of one day turning around and finding his way back to dignity.
ROUND 3
Willie Bodega Don’t Sell Rocks.
Willie Bodega Sells Dreams.
IT was a night like any other. Blanca was laboring at the computer writing a paper for one of her classes and I wasn’t. I was reading a book that had nothing to do with any of the classes I was taking. I knew that Blanca would soon get up from the computer and ask me why I wasn’t writing my paper. I was ready.
“We only have one computer.”
“I’m finished for tonight.”
“So fast?” I thought I had it covered.
“Fast? I been at this paper for over a week. When are you going to start your work?”
“I’m researching even as we speak, see?” I showed her my book.
Blanca squinted at the title. She had her suspicions but let it go. Then someone knocked at our door. I went to answer it. It was Sapo.
“Yo, Chino, Bodega wants ta speak with ya.” As always Sapo was Sapo and he said this not caring that Blanca could hear him. She strode to the door and stared at me, waiting to see what I was going to say.
“What does he want?”
“Bro, are you coming or not?” Sapo asked impatiently as if I was taking up his valuable time. He didn’t look at Blanca and Blanca didn’t look at Sapo.
Blanca pulled me away from the door. “Julio, who is this Bodega guy?” she asked, letting the door slam. Sapo waited in the hallway. He hated Blanca and he knew Blanca hated him right back.
“A friend.”
“A friend of Enrique’s, you mean?”
“A friend of Sapo is a friend of mine,” I said, and Blanca shot me an evil look, then pointedly clasped her rounded belly.
“Blanca, please, I’ll only be gone an hour or two. It’s not like you’re going to give birth any minute, you got months to go.”
“Julio, we’ve gone through this already. When you leave with him,” she loudly whispered, “I get these feelings, Dios me salve.”
“Blanca, no Christ right now, all right?” This upset her.
“What about your work?” Her voice got louder. “Weren’t you studying or something?”
“I just finished.” I don’t know why I said those things to Blanca sometimes when I knew she could see right through me.
“You mean you want to hang with Sapo.” She sighed and waved her hand dismissively. “Forget it. Vete. Act like a single man.” She stormed into the bedroom to get on the phone with her sister, Deborah. Blanca called her sister only when she wanted to hear gossip or to complain about me. Deborah was the complete opposite of Blanca. She wasn’t as pretty, wasn’t Pentecostal, she cursed, drank Budweiser from the can, and got into fights. She was so much the opposite of her kid sister that from the time Blanca was ten and Deborah twelve, everyone called her Negra.
After the skirmish with Blanca I grabbed my denim jacket and headed out the door. When I came out, I saw Sapo waiting impatiently in the hallway. When he saw me he smiled, his big lips uncovering all his teeth. He was happy, as if he had won some duel.
“Let me tell you, bro, I always knew you were gonna marry that girl. And that’s all right cuz she’s fine, but you got to admit she’s a bitch sometimes.” His hand landed on my shoulder and he said, “Bodega is nice, man. You’ll like the guy.”
“What does he want with me?” I asked again.
“He didn’t say. He just wants ta speak with you, thass all.” We headed toward the stairs and Sapo squeezed my shoulder and then stopped. He took his hand off me, turned, and looked in my eyes to make sure I was listening.
“Bodega wants something from you, man. That shit don’t happen often. Know what I’m sayin’?”
I nodded, and we walked down the stairs.
“Where does does Bodega live?”
“Bodega? Bodega lives in a lotta places. He has apartments all over the neighborhood. You got to have many places and juggle your place of dwellin’ in order to create confusion. Only your closest of panas can know your exact whereabouts. All I know is he said he wanted to speak with ya and that he was goin’ to be at his place on top of Casablanca. You know where Casasblanca is, don’ cha? That fucken meat market.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, and we walked out to the street.
From my place in the Schomburg projects on 111th and Fifth to Casablanca the camicería on 110th between Lexington and Park is only four blocks. Regardless, Sapo led me to his parked BMW and we drove the short distance.
“There’s this retard at the door yo’r going to meet. He’s Bodega’s cousin. Thass the only reason why Bodega has him around, b’cause you can’t fire your own family. But the nigga is stupid, bro. So when we get there he is going to open the door and that nigga, bro, that nigga talks in songs. Like, he fucken grew up on radio. Ese tipo está craquiado.”
When we arrived Sapo parked the car right next to a fire hydrant. Outside the walkup some men had set up a table and were sitting on milk crates, drinking Budweisers in paper bags and playing dominoes. They had a small radio at their feet tuned to an old love song, “Mujer, si puedes tu con Dios hablar pregúntale si yo alguna vez te he dejado de adorar.” Across the street, on the entrance wall of a project building, was an altar, meaning someone had just died. There were flowers, a forty-ounce Miller, pictures of saints, and pictures of the deceased, with six large candles burning in the form of a cross. Sapo led me inside the old tenement where the storefront butcher shop Casablanca had been been serving up meat to the neighborhood for years. We walked up three flights. Inside the tenement the walls were torn up, the stairs creaked, the smell was of old and decay; the only thing worse than the smell of a tenement is a pissed-up elevator in a project. If you look at the floors of an old tenement, you’ll see layers upon layers of linoleum from different years. All in different colors. Sapo stopped at a steel door that looked like it was imported from Rikers Island.
A tall, big man with a baby’s face and the shoulders of a bear opened the door. He was Bodega’s cousin. He was slow, but only in intelligence. Later on I would find out that he was actually light on his feet, like a feeding grizzly. I guessed he was in his forties and was stronger than he knew. I mean, this guy could hug you and not know he was killing you. He was a child of AM radio’s Top Forty heyday. Word had it he started to talk in song years ago, when AM radio broke his heart by going all talk. I figured Bodega kept him as someone to watch his back or at least to watch the door.
“Oye, como va. Bueno pa gozar,” Nene said to Sapo, who then introduced me.
“This is my main-mellow-man Chino. Yo�
��r cus asked for him.”
“Chino, yeah, bro.” Nene looked at me and extended his hand. I met it. “Hey, it’s cool, bro. You a businessman, I take?” Nene asked me. I just shrugged. “You cool, Chino, because any businessman can come and drink my wine. Come and dig my earth.” And he let us inside. Sapo just shook his head and muttered curses under his breath every time Nene used a piece of a song. It was something Sapo had to tolerate, a clause he had to accept if he was going to work for Bodega.
Inside was nothing. Just bare rooms. I had never gone to Sapo’s place, but I’d heard it was the same way. It had to do with not owning too many things because you never knew when you had to disappear for a while. You had to travel light and easy. Nene led us into a room with a desk, two chairs, and an old, dirty sofa with a Playboy magazine stuck in between the cushions. Standing behind the desk was a man in his forties with a goatee and the droopy eyes of an ex-heroin addict. His hair was curly and he was about five feet ten. He was talking on a cellular phone and when he saw Sapo and me he quickly smiled, cut off the conversation, hung up the phone, and motioned to me to take the seat in front of him. Sapo sat on the dirty sofa and pulled out the Playboy.
“Sapito, this is your friend?” Bodega asked.
“Yeah, this is my main-mellow-man, Chino. He’s smart, Willie, yo he’s smart. I useta copy off him when we were in school. Till I got tired of that shit.” Sapo was excited. He was happy that I was there, as if he wanted me to be part of some crew. I saw Bodega scope me out and shake his head, as if he was disappointed. As if he had expected someone else.
“You a friend of Sapo, right?” He asked, knowing full well that I was.
“Yeah,” I said, not really knowing how to answer.
“So check it out, Sapito tells me you go to college. That true?”
“What kinda question is that?” I said laughing, playing it off because I was a little nervous. I would have been scared, but Sapo was there with me and I knew nothing would happen to me.
“Yeah, man, I go to a public college, nothing big and fancy—”
“Yo, college is college and thass all that maras.” Bodega then eyed me again up and down, then nodded his head, snapped his fingers, and pointed at me all in the same motion.
“You all right,” he said, as if he finally approved. “So, check it out, Chino, right? It was Chino?”
“Yeah.”
“So, check it out, Chino, you evah heard of Edwin Nazario?”
“Edwin Nazario? Is he related to the boxer who was going to fight Rosario, el Chapo?”
“Nah, same last name, no relation.”
“Don’t know him. Who is he?”
“He’s a lawyer.”
“I don’t like lawyers, they’re prostitutes in suits,” I said, trying to be cool.
“Not my man Nazario. He’s my brothuh, we share the same vision.” Bodega pointed at his eyes as if he could see whatever it was he was going to tell me. As if it were there in front of him.
“I hear you,” I said. I always say “I hear you” when I don’t understand things or have nothing to add.
“Nazario, he’s amazin’. Chino, he knows the law inside out, like a reversible coat. And thass just the beginnin’. With Nazario I intend to own this neighborhood and turn El Barrio into my sandbox.” His cellular phone rang and he picked it up.
“I can’t talk right now,” he hissed, his droopy eyes flashing. “I’m in the middle of something yeah … yeah, no no, at the botanica, que pendejos son, yeah … yeah … at the botanica.” He put the phone down on the desk and looked at me.
“Like I was tellin’ you, Chino, check it out, Nazario and I know that we are livin’ in the most privileged of times since the nineteen-twenties, since Prohibition.” I saw that Bodega was in no rush to get to where he was going. That night when I met him I didn’t like him. It wasn’t because he was some drug lord. Nah, to me that was no different than some Wall Street executive who makes a million dollars by destroying some part of the world. I didn’t like him because he was a loudmouth who couldn’t cut to the chase. Bodega was the type of guy who, if he was going to show you how to make paper airplanes, would first tell you how trees had to be cut down in order to make paper.
“B’cause men that made this country, men that built this country were men from the street. Men like me, men like you, men like Sapito there.” He pointed at Sapo, who had his nose in the Playboy. “Men that used whatever moneymakin’ scheme they could, and made enough money to clean their names by sending their kids to Harvard. Did you see that special on the Kennedys, on channel thirteen, Chino?”
“You watch channel thirteen?” I was surprised.
“Yeah, I watch channel thirteen. What you think, only kids and white people watch public television?”
“Nah, I ain’t saying that. It’s just that eso está heavy duty, thass all.”
“Not only do I watch it but I’m even a member. So did you see that special on the Kennedys, Chino?”
“Nah, must have missed it.”
“Yeah, well, that shit told the truth. Yo, ese tipo era un raquetero. Joe Kennedy was no different from me. He already had enough money in the twenties but he still became a rumrunner. Alcohol is a drug, right? Kennedy sold enough booze to kill a herd of rhinos. Made enough money from that to launch other, legal schemes. Years later he fucken bought his kids the White House. Bought it. Yeah, he broke the law. Like I’m breaking the law, but I get no recognition because I am no Joe Kennedy.”
I wanted to ask Bodega what he was talking about but I just nodded my head and let him talk.
“Because, Chino, this country is ours as much as it is theirs. Puerto Rican limbs were lost in the sands of Iwo Jima, in Korea, in Nam. You go to D.C. and you read that wall and you’ll also see our names: Rivera, Ortega, Martinez, Castillo. Those are our names there along with Jones and Johnson and Smith. But when you go fill out a job application you get no respect. You see a box for Afro-American, Italian-American, Irish-American but you don’t see Puerto Rican–American, you just see one box, Hispanic. Now, you don’t want to consider me an American, I got no beef with that. You want to keep me a bastard child, I got no beef with that, either. But when the spoils of the father are being divided, I better get some or I’ll have to take the booty by force. East Harlem, East L.A., South Bronx, South Central, South Chicago, Overtown down in Miami, they’re all the same bastard ghetto.”
He paused for about a second and looked at me. For the first time I saw his eyes were a strange shade of pale brown, as if they had been dulled by some deep sadness that the years had turned into anger.
“I hear you,” I said again. I was ready to excuse myself. At the first opportunity I was going to tell Bodega that I had to go home to Blanca because she was pregnant. That I hoped he would understand. That I would love to hang with him but I couldn’t. But right that minute, Bodega slid open a drawer and pulled out a Ziploc bag the size of a Bible and said the magic words that kept me there that night.
“Yo, smoke with me, Chino.”
I settled myself down and looked at the weed. That shit must be real good, I thought. When he opened the plastic bag, the aroma was like coffee and the seeds were as big as quenepas. Bodega then zipped the bag back up and flung it to Sapo.
“Sapito, roll us some.”
Sapo smiled his huge smile and brought out his own bambú. He opened the bag, grabbed a handful of pot, and spilled it all over the Playboy on his lap. He closed the bag and began to unseed the handful he had spilled on the magazine. “Ho, shit, I just realized,” Sapo said, laughing, “I spilled all this pot on Bo Derek’s face. Man, that bitch is still fine, she like forty and shit.”
“Nah, she’s wack. She was hot once, not anymore,” I said, happy that the conversation with Bodega was stalled. As I watched Sapo, I hoped that Bodega would get down to the point. I wanted Bodega to just tell me what this had to do with me. But right then, it didn’t matter as much because a nice joint was coming my way and since the day I h
ad married Blanca, I hadn’t had a good smoke.
“Nah, Bo Derek is still usable,” Sapo said.
“Not like when she had those little trensitas. You know, when she had those little braids like Stevie Wonder. Back then she was fine. That shit should come back. White girls look fine with their hair like that,” I said.
Sapo continued to smile. “You know, Iris Chacón in huh prime never posed for Playboy. Thass a fucken shame,” he said.
“Now that,” I agreed, “would have been worth paying for.” Iris Chacón was my wet dream, as she was for many. When she danced, she prostituted your blood, masturbated your soul. She was a gift from the mother island to remind us of the women that were left behind, the girls that were not brought over to Nueva York and were left waving goodbye near las olas del mar, en mi viejo San Juan.
“But I don’t care,” Sapo said. “Iris Chacón or not, yo las cojo a to’a’. I take ’em all, from eight to eighty. Blind, crippled, and crazy.” I laughed with him. Sapo hammed it up. “If they know how to crawl, they’re in the right position.”
I laughed. “Nigga, you’re crazy.”
“If they can play with Fisher-Price”—Sapo was on a roll, grabbed his crotch—“they can play with this device.”
“Dude, shut up, get help,” I said, laughing.
Just when Sapo was about to crack another snap—“If they watch Sesame Street they can”—Bodega came back to life. “So, Chino, like I was telling you …”
Sapo quieted down and I let out a deep sigh because I wanted to talk about something else. Even hearing Sapo’s mad crazy snaps would have been a welcome relief. Bodega picked up on my boredom, smiled, and went right to the point.
“Nazario needs help. It would be good if he had you. You know, a smart guy, like an assistant, Chino.”
“Hey, man, it’s cool but I’m not interested in this business.”
“Did I say anything about pushing rocks?” Bodega looked insulted. His voice sailed a notch. “I told you Nazario is a lawyer.”
“Look man, I know you gotta do what you gotta do,” I said. “I got nothin’ against you or what you’re doin’. I don’t believe in this ‘Just say no’ shit because there ain’t too many things to say ‘Yes’ to in this fucken place. But I can’t.”
Bodega Dreams Page 3