by Ivy Pochoda
“She’s sixteen,” Fadi says.
“Wow.” Jonathan unwraps his cigarettes. “Sixteen, that’s something.” He stares at her while Fadi hands her the box, then shakes his head. “Well, happy birthday.” Jonathan pats Val on the shoulder before heading for the door.
Val grabs the pastries and rushes out of the store. She catches Jonathan at the corner in front of the Greek’s. “Hey, can I have one of those?” She points at his cigarettes. “Since it’s my birthday.”
Jonathan looks at his cigarettes, flips the pack over, and is about to tuck it away.
“It’s not like I’m hooked or anything. I’m not going to turn into my mother. She thinks she’s healthy because she smokes 120s. They taste like caramel.”
Jonathan takes a cigarette from his pack. “Don’t get your hopes up. These don’t taste like caramel. Just don’t smoke it where your dad will see you.”
“Like you need to tell me that.” Val takes the cigarette from Jonathan’s hand.
“Hey, Maestro!” Jonathan and Val look across the street. The redheaded bartender, whom Paulie complains about although he usually drinks during her shift, is leaning against the doorway. “Kind of young for you, isn’t she?” The bartender shades her eyes. “What is it, sweetheart, you hot for your teacher? Come across the street, Maestro, let a grown-up buy you a drink.”
“Gimme a second here,” Jonathan says.
“Offer’s not going to stand.” Lil puts her hands on her hips. “Enjoy your homework, kiddo.”
“Happy birthday.” Jonathan pats Val’s shoulder once more before crossing to the bar.
Did he let his hand linger a little longer this time? Was it her imagination, or did it seem that Jonathan would have preferred their conversation over talking to Lil?
On her way home, Val goes over all the details of Jonathan’s apartment, the smell of old smoke and stale laundry, the sound of honky-tonk trickling in from the bar. She focuses on the battered couch, the piles of jewel cases, the scraps of paper. She replays their kiss, trying to recall the precise texture of Jonathan’s lips. She closes her eyes as she stumbles blindly up her stoop, holding on to the memory, thinking of Jonathan to banish thoughts of June.
In bed, she continues to replay the entire afternoon at the music teacher’s apartment, examining it until the sheen comes off, until she can no longer conjure the thrill of her lips on his. Until her obsession with the details makes the details lose their meaning.
In her dream she is drowning. She is fighting to keep her head above water. The raft has popped out from under her. It’s being carried away. Val splashes, trying to grasp the corner of pink rubber. She slides under the water and cannot breathe. She thrashes and pounds on the walls, trying to break out, escape the water that is swallowing her.
The covers are in a pile on the floor. She goes to the bathroom and splashes water on her face. But she’s still thinking of the raft. She remembers the water, murky and turbulent below the surface with tangled, labyrinthine currents.
Val lies down at the far edge of the bed, one leg dangling to the floor. She closes her eyes. But her heart is still racing. She can’t get the raft out of her head. She feels herself slipping into the water where she is tackled by a wave and pushed under. She’d opened her eyes, but June was already too far away.
The clock says 2:30 A.M. Val tiptoes as she goes into the hallway and down the stairs. In the vestibule she pulls on a sweatshirt and a pair of sneakers.
Van Brunt is quiet. Val passes a few stragglers from the bar. She hasn’t quite shaken off her dream. The nerves in her hands tingle, and her breath is quick and irregular. When she reaches the corner of Visitation, she pauses and glances over at the Dockyard. The windows are fogged and the neon signs cast a fuzzy glow onto the street. From where she stands, the place looks like a clubhouse, forbidding and uncertain behind its steamy windows.
The door opens and a figure lurches into the street. He takes several staggered steps, then collapses onto the mailbox at the corner, splaying himself over its rounded hump like a body washed up on the beach. Under the yellow light of the streetlamp, Val can tell she’s looking at the crown of Jonathan’s head. She watches him for a moment, hoping he’ll stand on his own and get himself inside his building. But he doesn’t move, not even when two of the bar’s patrons slap him on the shoulder on their way home.
“You motherfucker,” one of them says. “You sorry motherfucker.”
Val hesitates. She doesn’t want the redheaded bartender to see her with Jonathan and she doesn’t want her father’s friends to catch her out so late. Jonathan groans and rights himself. He takes several steps backward, then falls onto the bench outside the bar.
Val rushes across the street. “Mr. Sprouse? Mr. Sprouse?” She shakes his shoulder. “Jonathan?”
He moans.
“Jonathan? Mr. Sprouse. You can’t sleep here, Mr. Sprouse.”
His head nods. His eyes are two slits, no bigger than coin slots. “Valerie,” he says. “Valerie.” It sounds as if his mouth is full of pebbles. He reaches out a hand and tries to pat Val’s cheek. “You’re so beautiful and you have no idea. So beautiful,” he says, dropping his hand toward the sidewalk.
“Jonathan, you can’t sleep here. You need to go home,” Val says.
“Can’t go. Lost my keys.”
She finds the keys clutched in his palm. “No, Jonathan, they’re right there in your hand. Please stand up.” She takes the keys and shakes them in front of his face, like she’s enticing a dog with a toy.
“My keys. You found my keys. You’re an angel.”
“Okay, Jonathan,” Val says. “I’m going to go open the door to your building. Then you’ll follow me, right?”
It takes Val a few minutes to figure out which key fits the lock. In the hallway, she finds a piece of brick, which she uses to prop open the door. She returns to Jonathan’s side, crouches down, and tries to coax him off the bench. “Just stand up for me, Jonathan. Please.” Val glances into the bar, hoping no one is paying attention to what’s happening out on the street.
“For you, Valerie, anything.”
Jonathan lumbers to his feet. Val braces herself, catching one of his arms and throwing it around her shoulder. “Okay, just follow me.” They lurch toward the street. Val shifts her weight, directing them toward Jonathan’s door and up the stairs. She pulls him out of his coat and sweater and yanks back the covers of his bed before he tumbles down. Then she unlaces his shoes, removing them along with his socks. She pulls the covers over him.
“Can I get you anything?”
“Water.”
Val finds a glass, rinses it, and fills it with water. When she returns, Jonathan is fumbling with a bottle of Tylenol PM. She taps out two pills and holds up his head so he can drink.
Val sits on the edge of the bed. The clock next to the bed tells her it’s just after three. A late-night bus rolls into the stop across the street. The apartment shakes in time with its idling. Voices rise from the bar below. Country music slips in through the floorboards. Someone breaks a glass. Jonathan shifts position. One of his hands flails, then gropes at the blankets. Val laces her fingers through his and watches the clock work its way toward four.
Val’s eyes grow heavy. She reaches over Jonathan and eases the second pillow out from under him. She tosses it to the foot of the bed. Then she climbs to the inside of the bed, stretching her feet toward the headboard. She curls into the crook behind Jonathan’s knees and, wedged between his body and the wall, falls asleep.
Val wakes up in the same position. At first, she doesn’t want to disturb Jonathan who’s snoring lightly at the head of the bed. She closes her eyes, searching for sleep.
She had slept without dreaming and without fear of the nightmare that had driven her from her own bedroom. She’d felt anchored by Jonathan’s proximity—the regularity of his breathing and the sonar of his sleep.
After twenty minutes, Val knows that sleep is futile. Her legs feel cramped and
her back aches. She worries that when Jonathan discovers her there, he’ll be angry, furious at the liberty she’s taken. He let his lips linger, she tells herself. He chased me down the street.
The clock shows that half an hour has passed since she woke up. Van Brunt is still quiet. The sun, just a suggestion. She knows she should go home before her parents wake up, slip into her room, and pretend she was there all along. But Jonathan hasn’t stirred except to press closer to Val. Even if he’s sleeping, this means something.
Val grows cramped. She stretches out one leg at a time. Then with as little adjustment to the covers as possible, she slides out of bed. The second her feet hit the floor, Jonathan rolls over, grasping for the space she’d just evacuated. His eyes flash open, a startled look on his face. “Where are—?” he says. Then he turns and sees Val. She watches him bring her into focus, his eyes narrowing and widening as he searches for explanation or memory.
He props himself up on one elbow. “Valerie? What are you doing here?”
“You don’t remember? You couldn’t get home? You were on the bench outside the bar?”
“Jesus. Fuck,” he says, falling back against the mattress and pulling a pillow over his head. “Did I … Did we …”
“No, Mr. Sprouse.”
“My God, don’t fucking call me Mr. Sprouse.” His voice is muffled by the pillow and Val can’t tell if he’s angry or not.
“I’m sorry, Jonathan.”
“I’m not mad at you, Val. I’m just—this is fucked up.”
“It’s okay, Jonathan. Nothing happened. I just helped you upstairs. That’s all.”
“And you slept here, in my bed.” He tosses the pillow at the window. “I could lose my job. Worse, your dad will kill me.”
“No one saw.”
“In this neighborhood? Someone saw.”
“I’m sorry,” Val says. “I should have left. But I was worried. You were kind of messed up. I didn’t think I should leave you alone. Should I have left you alone? What if something happened, like you choked or passed out and hurt yourself?”
“God.” Jonathan balls his fists and presses them into his eyes. “That would have been better.”
Val takes his water glass and goes to the sink to refill it. She finds some antacid in the bathroom. “My sister takes these when she’s hungover. She says they’re better than aspirin.”
Jonathan pulls back the covers and sits at the edge of the bed. He takes the pills, then hangs his head. “Hangover advice from a teenager. I’m a real fucking mess. I’m going to take a shower,” he says. “I smell like death. I feel worse.”
Val watches the bathroom door close behind him. She pulls on her shoes and finds her coat.
Jonathan hadn’t said stay but he hadn’t said go, either, which was encouraging. So maybe the mature thing to do, the thing that would demonstrate her independence, would be to leave on her own terms without being asked.
Val pulls on her sweatshirt and opens the door.
“Valerie? Val?” Jonathan pokes his head out of the bathroom. The shower is still running in the background. “I need to get out of this fucking place.”
“Your apartment?”
“Red Hook.”
“So why don’t you? You’re an adult. You can just leave. I’m stuck with my parents.”
He wishes he could jump into his mother’s battered Mercedes wagon that’s parked around the corner on Imlay Street and whisk Val away to Fishers Island where the water isn’t hemmed in by the industrial ports in Jersey and the jagged Manhattan skyline. He could collapse in an Adirondack chair and let the sea air wash the hangover from his head. His brain throbs. His stomach clenches, and he sees Eden’s blue figure stranded on the rocky beach.
Jonathan ducks back into the shower. “You’re not leaving, right? I owe you something. At least a cup of coffee.”
Still wearing her sweatshirt, Val waits by the door until Jonathan emerges from the bathroom. He’s shirtless and has wrapped a towel around his waist. He’s got more muscle on his skinny frame than she imagined. His chest is sprinkled with sparse black hairs. She watches him go to the kitchen and search the cupboards.
“Shit. No coffee. No milk. Nothing.”
“It’s okay,” Val says.
Jonathan rubs his temples. “No. It’s not. None of it’s okay. You’re too young to know people like me. People who can’t even keep instant coffee in the house.”
“I’m not.”
“This is not an ideal example of adult life.” He sweeps an arm around the apartment. “Please don’t think it is.”
Jonathan goes to his dresser. He pulls on a T-shirt, then finds fresh underwear and a pair of pants. “Do you mind?” he asks. Val turns her back and lets him finish dressing. “It’s way too early for any of my degenerate friends to be up, so maybe I could buy you a cup of coffee since I can’t provide one here. Let’s just make sure the coast is clear.”
They kneel on the bed and look out the window. Fadi is standing outside his bodega talking to the black kid who warned Val to stay away from Cree. There’s no harm in these two, Val thinks. She checks the clock—not even her parents will be up this early.
The interior of the Cruise Café is hidden behind a film of greasy steam. A couple of methadone addicts are pantomiming something in the bus stop.
“Okay?” Val says.
“I think we got it.”
Now they are accomplices—the coffee run, an illicit adventure.
They walk down the narrow staircase. As they step outside, the door to the Dockyard opens and a ragtag crew in last night’s clothes stumbles out.
“Inside,” Jonathan says.
He fumbles with his key and gets the lock open. There is a moment of silence, before Val and Jonathan erupt into laughter. They are inches apart from each other. Val can feel Jonathan’s laughter in her own chest. She laughs harder, bending forward. Her head hits his breastbone. She feels Jonathan’s lips in her hair. Then his mouth finds his way down to hers.
This kiss develops slowly, taking its time, assuming a depth and a rhythm as their tongues dance and twist. Val is uncertain whether it lasts seconds or minutes.
Then they are standing apart. “Jesus, my head hurts,” Jonathan says. He peers through the smudged glass window in his doorway. “Maybe it’s better if I go alone,” he says.
Alone in the apartment, a wave of giddiness overtakes Val. He hadn’t told her to leave. He’d kissed her. He trusted her. He left her alone. He’s coming back. Val bows her head to her knees. There is no one to watch her clap her hands and fist-pump the stale air.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Cree hauls the red metal shopping cart piled high with bags of folded laundry up the dark stairwell, the rubber wheels bumping as he climbs. He drags the cart into his hallway, steadying his load with his free arm. At the door to his apartment he searches for the key. Before the bolt slides back he knows something is up.
Gloria, Celia, Grandma Lucy, and Monique are gathered in the living room. The older women are lined up on the couch while Monique sits off to the side in the room’s single armchair.
Cree closes the door. The women remind him of the female hosts of one of those midday talk shows—young, fiery, and feisty alongside old, wise, and maternal.
“What?” Cree says.
He knows them well enough to recognize that each of them is sequestered in her own style of anger. Monique is sulky and pissed. Her arms are crossed over her chest, her body angled away from the group. The lower half of her face is clenched, like she’s biting down hard on a word she doesn’t dare say. Celia is simmering with the animated anger she brings to her arguments with Ray. She is unable to sit still. Gloria’s face conveys disappointment and deep sadness. Grandma Lucy is alert and intense, her fury honed to a fine point.
“Darnell Renton Davis,” Celia says, standing up. Her hands are on her waist, her amber eyes glitter, and the gold highlights in her hair seem to have caught fire.
“Celia,” Gloria says
, reaching for her sister’s arm with her good hand. “Celia, sit.”
Celia allows herself to be pulled down to the couch.
“What about Ren?” Cree says.
“So you know him?” Celia says. “You admit you know him.”
“We hang sometimes. Why? Why’s it matter?” Cree says.
The women look at one another. Celia raises her eyebrows and nods at Gloria. Gloria opens her mouth. Her lips tremble, but the words don’t come out. She shuts her mouth and tries again. “Baby,” Gloria says, “Darnell Renton Davis is the boy who shot Marcus.”
Cree becomes aware of every detail in the room: the teacups on the coffee table, the remote control forgotten on the windowsill, a towel hanging on the door to his bedroom. “What? No, Renton’s cool,” Cree says. “We’re, you know … he’s my … Friends and whatever.”
“Nevertheless,” Gloria says, “he’s the one who did it.”
“He did,” Celia says. “He certainly did.”
Grandma Lucy dangles her pendulum, watches it spin, and says nothing.
“No,” Cree says. “You’re wrong. You’re all wrong. He’s a strange boy. But not that. No.”
“He wasn’t much older than you were,” Lucy says. “A baby himself.”
“I’ve seen him in lockup when I worked the juvee wards. I’ve seen him. I know,” Celia says. “That’s the boy. Plain and simple.”
The nerves in Cree’s hands tingle. His chest tightens and his breath catches. “You never told me his name.”
“You were twelve,” Gloria says. “His name didn’t matter to you.”
“How long’s this boy been messing with you?” Celia says, looking from Cree to Monique. “With both of you?”
“What’s Mo got to do with this?” Cree says.
“Nothing,” Monique says, drawing farther away from the circle, so she’s looking out the window.
“Boys like that don’t change,” Celia says. “I see it every day. Turn them loose and they’re back where it started. Boost a car, get a gun. Murder’s no thing after that.”
“What are you going to do?” Grandma Lucy says. She folds her brittle arms over her chest and stares at Cree until he looks away.