Twelve

by Nick McDonell

  Chapter Eleven

  SARA LUDLOW HAS been at Chris’s party for an hour now, and she is not impressed. She doesn’t want a joint or a beer, and she is especially bored by the story Chris tells her about how his brother got his first blow job at a bat mitzvah. She says it’s time for her to leave.

  “Where’s your boyfriend?” Chris asks.

  Sara looks at him for a moment. He might be useful. “Driving in from East Hampton,” she says. “Where’s your brother?”

  Chapter Twelve

  CHRIS’S BROTHER, CLAUDE, walks down Mulberry Street in his dark green North Face parka. In his pockets he is carrying: one clear plastic prism filled with weed, one Coach wallet containing $965, one fake ID (repeating hologram of the Ohio state flag, the buckeye, his picture, and a fake name, laminated, purchased from a card shop on Bleecker Street; the guy who sold it said, “Never fails, forty dollars”), one school ID, one Citibank ATM card, one American Express Platinum card, one naked picture of drunk ex-girlfriend whom he fingered while they watched the Blue Man Group with a bunch of other kids, two MetroCards, and one Nokia cell phone that says “Pussy monger!” when it turns on.

  Claude is six feet two inches tall. He walks with his hood up, hands thrust in his pockets, face hidden. He is much more handsome and strong than his brother; the same fair coloring that doesn’t burn in the sun, but perfect skin and an angular face. He is taking a fifth year of high school at a bad boarding school, and even there he is not a good student or a good athlete, though he lifts a lot. He listens to rap and metal. He used to do blizzards of cocaine. There is a famous story about him that all the kids know. The story goes that one night, in a bar, he walked up to some kids with his huge pet snake coiled around his neck and shoulders. He didn’t know the kids, but they went to some private school, so he knew what they were. And he pushed up against the biggest kid, rubbing the snake on his shoulder. The kid was scared silent—he just stood there, trying to wait it out, whatever it was. Claude didn’t want to wait, of course, so he started pushing the snake up toward the kid’s face. The kid backed away, and somebody yelled for Claude to back off, which gave the kid more balls, and so he said, Yeah, man, what’s the idea?, then laughed a nervous laugh. He knew he had to make it all funny. And Claude was smiling too. Then, out of nowhere, or so it seemed to everyone there, Claude hooked the inside of the kid’s cheek with his forefinger and yanked back violently. The cheek ripped with an audible tear, and all this blood fell on the bar and into the martinis. The kid was screaming and clutching his face, and Claude just walked out of the bar. Everybody knows this story.

  Claude’s friend Tobias was with him that night and is with him again now. He is walking down the street next to Claude, dressed the same way. His hood is back, though. And where Claude is handsome, Tobias is beautiful. Not quite effeminate, just beautiful. Tobias is a part-time model. There is a famous story about him too. It’s about how when Tobias was twelve, he took a shit in his bed just so the maid would have to clean it up. Tobias bragged about it the next day at school, and nobody laughed harder than Claude. Tobias is still proud of the story and tells it a lot, and when he does, there is still nobody who laughs harder than Claude.

  So now the two of them are walking down Canal Street in Chinatown. Slantyville is what they call it. It’s a trip down there, for them for sure. First they smoked, of course. And they have already bought a skinned rabbit from one of the windows where it was hanging. They carried the rabbit around for a while, then threw it in the open back window of a passing yellow cab. Now they stop by a trinket shop. There are weapons in the window. Sais and nunchakus and great replica samurai swords. Claude and Tobias are not samurais, but they like swords and are still a little fucked up. They walk in.

  It is much brighter inside than Claude expects. There is a TV going with a tape of a karate sparring match playing. Beneath the glass counter there are knives for sale. One is especially long and bright, a butterfly knife with blades that slide in and out of the shaft. Claude taps the glass over the knife and indicates to the middle-aged Asian woman behind the counter that he wants it. She takes it out and hands it to him. Claude runs his soft hands up and down the blade. The woman is tiny and fat, and she nods and smiles in anticipation of the sale and takes the blade back from Claude.

  “Look,” she says. She spins her wrist, and there is a metallic swish as the blades open out. Light bounces off the blades onto the walls and reflects off the glass over the framed Enter the Dragon poster. Claude is transfixed.

  The lady puts the knife on the counter, satisfied with her demonstration. “Here,” she says, and reaches for a different weapon. A bola, small and painful, with brass orbs to shatter shins and skulls. She holds the rope and clacks the brass together, and the sound is loud and sharp. Claude watches the orbs go and almost grabs them out of her hand. He tests their weight as if to throw them. He holds one of the brass spheres to his cheek and feels the chill metal against his pores. He puts the bola down next to the knife and points to the halberd in the window.

  “Ah,” sighs the lady. Of course. She pads to a back room where there are two more such spears leaning in a corner, behind a box of miniature Statues of Liberty and New York snow globes. She brings one back to the counter and places it before Claude.

  “No case?” he asks.

  “Sorry,” she says, and wraps a cloth around the crescent ax head and the point of the spear. Claude pays her, and she smiles and nods. Claude puts the spear and bola in his bag, and the knife in its plastic case in his inside coat pocket, where he can feel it against his chest. The shaft of the spear sticks out of his bag and bangs the door frame as he walks out. Then Claude turns back to the woman and slurs out, “Hoh, tenk veddy much, my little yellow-skinned sister.” Tobias can’t stop laughing.

  Claude and Tobias stop at several similar shops before they find the subway and head back uptown. At the end of the night, nunchakus and throwing stars, sharp and bright, and a double-bladed sword and brass knuckles and two sais and a knife disguised as a fountain pen are all on Claude’s person or in his bag and clinking. Tobias thinks the night is a riot, and laughs some more and tells Claude he’s one crazy fucker before they part ways at the subway stop at Eighty-sixth and Lexington.

  When Claude gets home, his brother’s party is still going on but he doesn’t care. He is a samurai, his bag heavy with weapons. In his room, he takes all the clothing out of a wardrobe and shoves it under his bed. He opens his bag and arranges the knives and swords with care. In less than an hour, Claude steps back from the closet and admires his careful work. Closed, the wardrobe looks like a regular closet, an oaken antique. Open it and the weapons glint in the half-light, arranged in some perfect order like a private shrine.

  Chapter Thirteen

  SAMURAI HAVE BEEN White Mike’s favorites since he saw them in cartoons when he was eight. When he was twelve, he read Shogun over Easter break and thought about dying with honor. What he imagined to be samurai music would play in his ears. Walking the street, White Mike would run and jump off railings, bringing an imaginary samurai sword down upon imaginary foes, maintaining the all-important chundan, middle ground. A year or two later he would equate all this with amor fati when he finally got around to reading Nietzsche— the idea that you must love whatever comes, joy or sorrow, pain or happiness. After he read Nietzsche, everything made a lot more sense.

  So White Mike lives in his apartment, which is big and empty, with his father whom he never sees, and looks out the window at the night, and forces himself to be content. He forces himself to enjoy reading, or watching television, or preparing a meal, or doing his laundry, or spending the money he has made, or whittling a tiny bird, like he is doing now at the kitchen table with an expensive handmade pocketknife he purchased. It is a forcing.

  Or later, up in his room, at his desk, White Mike has the lights on and spreads all the weed out on his desk, and it sits before him in different piles, different amounts, and it is nothing new. And he is c
ompelled to order it and organize it and store it away for sale later because it is the most important thing he does. It is what he does, and so it will be done precisely, and with nothing else in mind. Because what else is there to do?

  GRADE 11

  English: 97

  Mike has been an active participant in the discussions of King Lear and is always thoughtful and inquisitive in class. He wrote a remarkably original and thoroughly documented term paper on the difficult topic of “Nietzschean Existentialism,” as he called it; though, as with the rest of his work, it did not seem to be very satisfying to him.

  Latin: 98

  A truly dedicated student. Mike’s translations continue to be written with a passion and interest uncommon in students his age. He could be more forgiving to his classmates, however. He is, at times, extremely impatient.

  Mathematics: 98

  Although Mike is a fine student, he is clearly uninterested in mathematics.

  Science: 69

  Mike is clearly a bright young man, but he simply does not do the work. While all of his test scores are in the 90s, without completion of the lab reports it is impossible for me to give him a grade above merely pass.

  History: 96

  Mike wrote a superb term paper, beautifully researched and highly informative. What he needs to learn is the give-and-take of discussion.

  Homeroom Comments:

  Mike excels in what pleases him and does dismally in what does not. All of us at the school sympathize with the recent tragic event, but it is also our responsibility to point out that his continued disciplinary problems only undermine his future. Although I find Mike charming and have come to think of him as a friend as well as a student, his manner can be off-putting. At times he can seem quite distant, although I do not believe he is ever bored. Mike has many gifts. He may even have genius in him, although many of us who have taught him agree that it is very frustrating trying to bring it out. He is old enough now for it to be up to him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  IT IS VERY late when Chris goes to the bathroom and finds Jessica passed out on the floor by the toilet. He looks at her for a long time. Jessica is his friend, but he never gets to stare at a live girl like this. He likes it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  IN WHITE MIKE’S tenth-grade year, there was a rapist at large: the Upper East Side Rapist. Some girl named Megan in his ethics class told White Mike that, “But no, seriously, being raped is like my greatest fear. I’m, like, so seriously afraid of being raped. Just two days ago, the rapist walked into a store in the middle of the day, locked the door, and raped a clerk. Will you walk me home?”

  White Mike just shrugged and started walking with her toward her house at Ninety-eighth and Fifth Avenue. He told her that she had nothing to worry about if she was alert. When they were just getting to Engineer’s Gate leading up to the Reservoir, they stopped and looked at the runners.

  “It’s not scary here,” White Mike told her, “there is probably no place in the world where you’re safer.”

  On his way back downtown, White Mike stopped in a deli for chocolate milk, and there was a flyer with a sketch of the suspected rapist on the wall. White Mike thought it looked like every other sketch of a criminal he had ever seen. A nondescript young black man in a hooded sweatshirt, like the one he wore under his overcoat. He pictured that man holding down Megan (who was, like, so afraid and screaming) and ripping her plaid-skirt school uniform and probably just raping her right there in the middle of Fifth Avenue. He suddenly felt real bad for both of them.

  Part II

  Saturday, December 28

  Chapter Sixteen

  A BLACK KID and a white kid with fake IDs from Ohio and Oregon, fucked-up dead on 117th Street.

  God I hate drugs, thinks one of the detectives investigating the double murder at the Jefferson Houses housing project. He is now at the Rec. He spoke with Nana’s mother, and she told him that’s the last place her son was. Of the kids there the night before, only Arturo is around. So when the detective asks if anyone knows this kid Nana, they all say yes, but only Arturo says he saw him last night.

  “Were you his friend?”

  “Yeah, we were tight.”

  “Was he ever in any kind of trouble?”

  “No, that kid was great, man, straight.”

  “How was he last night?”

  “I’ll tell you, this punk kid, Hunter, just started fuckin’ with him. I think he was racist or something like that, Detective. One of them Nazis.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, they fought, you know, and I broke ’em up, but Hunter was pissed that I stopped it and took off. But you know I was just looking out for my boy.”

  The other players on the sideline roll their eyes as they overhear. The detective doesn’t notice.

  “You think this kid Hunter might have messed with Nana some more?”

  “Yeah, man, you never know with guys like that. He was crazy.”

  The detective thanks Arturo and heads downstairs. He looks up Hunter’s mailing address in the Rec’s files.

  As the detective arrives in the McCulloughs’ lobby, so too does Hunter, finally tired from hours of wandering the streets. After he went out at three, he walked all the way down to the Village and sat through part of a movie on Fourteenth Street. After it was over he strolled up Sixth Avenue and across the park. He has a bag of doughnuts he bought somewhere. The detective sees the dried blood and asks him if he is Hunter. Hunter says yes, and the detective says he’s bringing him in for questioning. The doormen don’t know what to do. The detective can’t believe this, it’s too easy, but the kid is covered with blood.

  In the police car, Hunter thinks about how his father is on a plane to Europe and his mother is already there, and how he doesn’t have any phone numbers for them. If it weren’t Saturday, he could call his father’s office to get them to track him down. As soon as he was off the plane. He could call White Mike, but White Mike is a drug dealer and what kind of idea is that. He thinks about the other numbers he knows by heart. Not many, and none seem to fit. But he does have this kid Andrew’s phone number with him. Andrew went to a different school, and they knew each other only because their fathers work together, but they had hit it off. Hunter figures that maybe Andrew’s father will be able to help.

  By the time Hunter gets to make this call, a sample of the blood on his shirt is on its way to the lab.

  Chapter Seventeen

  WHEN THEY WERE all little kids, Hunter and White Mike and Warren and White Mike’s cousin Charlie went to the Central Park Zoo. Warren’s nanny, an excellent tiny woman named Dorine, took them regularly throughout the fall and spring when they were in the second and third grades. All of them were precocious children, and the trip was always an adventure. There was the grouchy duck who barked at them: “That duck barked at me,” shouted Warren. “Ducks don’t bark, ducks quack,” shouted back White Mike. “Yes, Michael,” said Dorine, who was paid $350 a week. And then she started making quacking noises that sent the boys into peals of laughter.

  The boys liked the monkeys too (“Are they throwing their poop? Dory, are they throwing their poop?”) and the penguins and the seals, and really all the animals they saw, even the snakes.

  The trip picked up rituals. No matter what time it was, they would always wait till the next half hour to leave so they could see the clock with the animal statues strike the time.

  But the most important ritual, the one that the boys remembered for as long as they lived, was the buying of popguns. The man who sold popguns and plastic swords and balloons from his cart was dark and had a mustache, and once Hunter asked him if he was a pirate, and he said yes. Every week the boys would get new popguns, and the popguns would always break by Thursday, usually because the strings attaching the corks to the barrel would become inextricably tangled in the firing mechanism. Dorine made it clear to the boys that she would not spend her afternoons fixing popguns, and if they broke, too bad. You mus
t take care of your things.

  It fell to White Mike, then, to fix the popguns. He was the best at it, had the most patience for the intricacies of the tangled strings. So Warren and Hunter and Charlie would shoot one another bang dead with the popguns, and then they would argue over whose gun was whose when the first one broke, and then White Mike would try to fix them.

  Years later, when White Mike was walking in the park, he looked for the man who sold the popguns. He couldn’t find the cart or the man, and he realized that, in fact, he had not seen a popgun in years. He realized that he hadn’t seen Dorine in years either, and he wondered what had happened to her and if Warren still had her phone number. White Mike started imagining what he would say if he spoke with her.

  That he was seventeen now and he got it, he saw how the adult world was working, and he was sorry he’d been a little shit as a kid. That he got her job and that he remembered being taken to the zoo, and thanks for that because she didn’t really have to do it; and it is a good thing you were there to raise me and Warren and Charlie and Hunter, because if you hadn’t, I might be like one of those kids I sell to, and do you smoke dope?

  Yes, Michael, she might say, at those parties, me and all the other nannies and housekeepers used to smoke spliffs out in the back stairwell and talk about the famous beautiful people at the party after I put you to sleep. And don’t you know, Michael, that we really moved like ghosts in and out of all your lives, just the way the good help should.