Dark City Lights

by Lawrence Block

  “I dunno about this.”

  “Well, there is a condition with it.”

  “And what is that?”

  “You got to leave now, right this minute. No more dancing in here. No looking back. No hanging around the Bronx. Now. Leave. Go. Consider this your severance from the GreenLeaf. Go home, pack, call your cousin. Hey, Frankie?” The big man looked over.

  “Yeah?”

  “What train goes up to Boston?”

  “Amtrak.”

  “Where does it leave from? Grand Central?”

  “Penn Station, I think.”

  “That’s fine. You call ’em, Norma, make a reservation. Heck, the 1 train right outside will take you to Penn Station. One bag is all you need to start. Anything else, leave it and I will make sure it gets there, if I have to drive it myself. Penn Station is the stop after Times Square.”

  “Now? I got to go now?”

  “That’s my one condition.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Easy. Because I can and I will and I did. Case closed.”

  “But what about . . .”

  “What?”

  “You.”

  “Me? What about me?”

  “Well, I thought you liked me.”

  “I do. A lot. Enough to invest a small fortune in your future.”

  “No, I always thought that there was going to be, you know, an us.” She reached over and put her hand on top of his. He felt something start to melt inside.

  “I’m too old for you.”

  “Bollocks. No, you’re not.”

  “Look, Norma, think about it. You just got out of a bad, abusive relationship. You need time to work on yourself, to take care of yourself and get your life started right . . . in school, in a new place. Believe me. You need this.”

  “Ah, but what about Tony coming after me?”

  Frankie let out a snort. She looked over where he was fiddling with the glasses.

  Jimmy answered. “Won’t happen. I can assure you. He has decided to work on his cars, especially his Porsche.”

  A few silent moments passed, rock music low in the background from the radio. “Memory Motel” by the Stones.

  “I can’t believe I won’t be seeing you anymore. What if I have a problem?”

  “I’m a phone call away. This place still has a phone, right, Frankie? You father did not take it out?”

  “We still got a phone.”

  “Can this really be happening?”

  “It already did.”

  “Will you come up visit me?”

  “You can count on it. Hell, you’ll probably get so sick of me, you’ll want me to go back to the Bronx. Besides . . .” He picked up the book. “Professor Zinn teaches in Boston. I want to go to one of his classes and talk to him. Maybe more than one. And there is another teacher up there by the name of Chomsky. Want to look him up as well. They know the truth.”

  “Stand up a minute, my savior, Saint James.”

  He stood up and she came forward and pressed her body hard into him and gave him the longest, deepest kiss of his short life. And he returned it with all his being. He leaned backward and one point and she stayed with him, briefly leaving her feet, kicking one foot behind her. When it ended finally and she broke away, tears were pouring down her face.

  “Thank you, Jimmy. I could not have done this without you. I could never have gotten through this without you. Everybody in this place knows there is something serious going on between us. And that’s the truth not in your book.”

  He just started mumbling something that did not make sense.

  “Hush. I listened to you. Now, you’ll listen to me. You need a savior as well. You can’t go through life always the hard man. You are not as tough as you pretend. So I will do as you say. For now. I will get me head back on straight and maybe then we can pick up this conversation where we just left it. Maybe an us. That’s my down payment to you, kiddo.”

  “Ah, yeah. Sure. Whatever you say.”

  “This is no joke: I love you. I will always love you and now you have made me mess up me face.”

  “Go, darlin’, go.”

  With that, she grabbed her bag from the bar and turned away. Then she stopped, reached in, and took out a half-used silver tube and tossed it to him.

  “What’s this?” he said catching it with both hands.

  “My glitter that sparkles. Maybe you can find use for it.”

  Then she fled the bar. “Bye, Frankie, thanks for everything. Love you, too.”

  Jimmy the Soldier sank down on his stool, the tube in his hands, and was suddenly very tired. He struggled unsuccessfully to stifle back his tears. Frankie ambled over.

  “Have a good life,” he muttered, looking at the door. But she was gone.

  “Thanks. You too. But I have just one question,” Frankie said.

  “What?”

  “You’re going after her, right?”

  “What, and leave you. Nah, I’m fine here.”

  “Like hell you are. You’re a fool, Jimmy. Here’s a girl deflates and inflates your lungs in a bar and pledges her love forever and you’re gonna let her walk.”

  “Some things you can’t make better by wishing, Frankie. Ever.”

  “Says you. Well, at least you are a romantic fool. I’ll give you that.”

  The big man started to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You know, when she was kissing you there and you leaned back and she was in your arms, all you needed was a sailor’s uniform and you would have recreated that famous photo of VJ Day in Times Square of the sailor and the nurse. Looked just like that. Wish I had a camera.”

  Jimmy the Soldier said nothing but rubbed his hand along his face. It came away wet. The hand with the tube in it was shaking slightly.

  “Maybe the Soldier has finally come home, Jim. Maybe the war is over. Think about that.”

  “I will take a drink now, Frankie.”

  SPIT THE TRUTH

  BY EVE KAGAN

  THE FIFTH FLOOR WALK-UP HAD never been an issue before. When she moved in the summer after graduation she was surprised it was not included in the amenities: South facing. Hardwood floors. Electric stove. Built-in StairMaster to your front door! After four years of pizza and beer, and in spite of the occasional bout of anorexia or bump of coke, she figured her ass could use it.

  They told her not to drive home, not that anyone she knew drove in New York City. They told her to take a cab, not that she could afford one. But no one told her to hire someone to help her up the stairs. She had it all planned out: Friends reruns on TBS, Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey, expired Vicodin stolen from her aunt Ginny. She sat down on the stoop feeling woozy, empty, and alone. She wondered if this would be her only abortion or merely her first. She wondered if this moment would become an anecdote she would tell at fancy dinner parties on the Upper West Side or rooftop barbecues in Fort Greene. She wondered how the fuck she was going to get up the stairs.

  It wasn’t like she slept with her professor or her boss or a married man or a stranger. His name was Teddy. He was a bartender. He made killer mojitos and his dreadlocks smelled like sweet almond oil. He wasn’t interested in a relationship. He was an aspiring musician. She felt like everyone in the city was an aspiring something, except for her. Somehow her aspirations got left behind with the boxes of philosophy books in her parents’ basement. There they sat, collecting dust with Hegel.

  She was wearing black yoga pants and a threadbare Haverford sweatshirt that she had worn since junior high. She’d spent the fall of seventh grade chewing thumb holes into the wristbands while staring with longing at the back of Ari Cohen’s head. That was 1993 grunge in suburbia. This was 2003 hell in Harlem. She shoved her thumbs through the holes. Still comforting ten years later.

  When had it become fall? It was only 4:30 p.m., but the sun was already threatening to set too soon on what she figured should be an excruciatingly long day in her life. It wasn’t exactly col
d yet or crisp, but the light had changed from the golden glow of summer to something starker. A little girl in pigtails came skipping past the stoop and flashed her a shy smile. Her mom was close behind her wearing a newborn in a green raw silk sling. They probably thought she was fine, just fine, maybe a bit winded after a run or a Bikram class. Did anybody really know anything about anyone?

  She reached for the railing. How did handicapped people survive in this city? It’s not like everyone in a wheelchair could afford to live in a building with a doorman and an elevator. Not that she was comparing her present situation to being a paraplegic or a war hero. She had just read an article in Time about the first soldiers blown up by IEDs in Iraq. They said when you lose a limb you feel this tingling like the ghost of the arm or leg haunting the empty space that was once full of flesh. She wondered if her womb would tingle with the loss or if it would just return to business as usual, pretending nothing ever happened, like a broken heart that loves again in spite of the cracks.

  She had never thought of herself as the kind of girl who would get an abortion. She was the last one to lose her virginity. Sure, she was felt up before she was ever French kissed but those things happen. Sure, she was pro-choice but that was just a position. The reality was that the condom broke. She told him she was on the pill (a lie). She told him not to worry (she was worried). She told him it was no big deal (another lie). Six weeks later she walked into the bar wearing her tightest dress, so he would notice her swollen belly. He didn’t. The next morning she called the clinic.

  Maybe she should have told him. Maybe she should have told someone. The lady at the front desk was clearly under the impression that a friend would be taking her home. She had friends, but after college they were scattered across the world. Amy was in London getting an MA in directing from LAMDA. Jeff was sleeping in a hammock on a beach in Laos. Sarah S was a legal assistant in San Francisco. Sarah K was on a pilgrimage to Kyoto to pay homage to her ancestors.

  This wasn’t exactly the kind of news you shared over the phone or in a group email. She hadn’t made any real friends in the city. She moved into her place two months before 9/11 and even after two years, xenophobia was still rampant. She had acquaintances but they weren’t the kind of people who would carry her up the stairs.

  The wind blew another piece of hair loose from her ponytail. If she had to withstand one more car horn she would probably scream. Everyone in the city was in such a big fucking hurry. She stood up too quickly and braced her left hand against the brown door. There were tiny flecks of silver paint surrounding the doorknob that she had never noticed. They looked like a miniature constellation. She reached into her pocket for the key and jammed it into the lock. The sound of old metal on metal grating from years of lazy landlords and hurried tenants hurt her ears. Everything was throbbing with poor choices.

  She opened the door.

  A young black boy was hopping down the stairs from the first floor landing. He froze, dropped to a seat on the lowest step, and stared up at her with his mouth agape as if he had just been doing something naughty. This who me? look was clearly perfected from years of being caught in the act. He was probably around ten years old, but skinny, his long arms swimming in the oversized T-shirt sleeves, his slim jeans bunched up around the ankles, riding just above pristine white Nikes that must have been brand new for the first day of school. He had wide-set eyes with long thick lashes like a baby doll. His front teeth were two sizes too large for his mouth.

  “My mama says I can play on the steps as long as I don’t go outside.”

  “Okay.”

  She stumbled slightly at the sound of the door slamming shut behind her.

  “You sick or something?”

  She was always taken aback by how sharp kids could be, how they had no filter, how truth just spilled out of them. She was suddenly blinded by a memory of eating chocolate chip pancakes at a roadside diner with her mother. She was four. She was dipping a pancake wedge into a pool of syrup when a very overweight man pushed through the doors. She had never seen anything like him before and announced at full voice, “Mama, look at the fat man!” She was promptly slapped. That was perhaps her last moment of raw honesty.

  “When I’m sick my mama makes me take my shoes off so my head won’t get too hot. She says the fever gonna drip down through my toes and then I’ll be all better. You don’t look so good.”

  “Thanks.”

  Even at ten he could catch her hard edge. Was every kid in New York City born with an innate sense of sarcasm?

  “You’re right. I don’t feel so good. Can I sit here with you for a minute?”

  “Don’t you gotta get upstairs and lie down?”

  “I do but I’m not ready yet.”

  She slumped down on the lowest step next to the boy. The front hall always smelled like something had been left in the oven too long. The stairs were painted the same swampy brown as the front door.

  “You can’t take your shoes off now cause it’s all kindsa dirty up in here.”

  “You’re right.”

  She swallowed hard, feeling the vomit rise up in her throat, the chili basil sauce from last night’s drunken noodles fomenting a riot in her gut.

  “I got seven sistas.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I got seven sistas.”

  She realized she had seen him before amidst the parade of girls in various styles of cornrows tromping up to the third floor on Sundays at noon. She had assumed they were related but not that they were all sisters or that there were actually seven of them. They were anywhere between two and eighteen years old which must have landed him splat in the middle.

  “What’s that like? I mean, what’s it like to be the only boy?”

  “It’s a-ight. They nice and all but they don’t know how it is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How it is to be the man.”

  “You’re the man, huh?”

  “Naw naw, not like, you da man, like cool. I mean the heavy.”

  “The heavy?”

  “Life.”

  “Life? Right, life.”

  “Bein’ a man ain’t no Christmas party. My mama says I gotta win the bread and be stand up. But sometimes I just wanna sit down, you know?”

  “I do.”

  “My sistas got it easy.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah. If one of them do somethin’ bad they can just blame the otha one and half the time my mama can’t even tell them apart. But if I do somethin’ bad they all know it was me and even if it wasn’t me they gonna blame it on me anyway and there’s just one of me so that’s that.”

  “Sounds rough.”

  He proceeded to give her what her mother would surely call the fish eye.

  “No really. It sounds like you get a lot of the blame.”

  “Mmmmhmmm. You got any sistas?”

  “Nope. No sisters. No brothers. Just me.”

  “For serious?”

  “For serious.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m pretty sure. Unless I was separated at birth from my twin and my parents kept it a secret all these years like in one of those Lifetime original movies.” She watched her reference fly right over his head.

  “Yeah. I wish I had a twin, too.”

  She could have sworn this moment was the closest to silence she had ever experienced in a city that was never silent. And of course she felt the need to fill it.

  “So are you in school?”

  “Duh. Why grownups always gotta ask about school? You all miss it or something?”

  She had never been called a grownup before.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Why?”

  “I guess because school has structure. You know exactly how your day is going to go: Math. Science. Art. Recess. Once you get out of school everything gets kind of . . . blurry.”

  “Like when you open your eyes underwater?”

  “What?”

&nbs
p; “I did that last summa at the lake by my grandmama’s house. My eyes stung like crazy and all I could see was brown.”

  “Exactly. What’s your name anyway?”

  “Jeremiah. What’s yours?”

  “Tal.”

  The fish eye.

  “My real name is Talia but everyone calls me Tal.”

  “But you ain’t tall, you short.”

  “And you aren’t a bullfrog.”

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t you know that song?” She belted out: “Jeremiah was a bullfrog! Bah dah bah . . .”

  “You crazy!”

  “That may be true but it’s a real song.”

  “Well, I’ma call you shorty cuz you ain’t tall.”

  “Then I’m gonna call you bullfrog.”

  “You crazy!” He laughed.

  She could feel the blood seeping around the wings of the pad. It was less of a pad and more of an adult diaper. Even with seven sisters she figured she would have to wait for Jeremiah to go home before she made her way up. She wondered whether she was the only one in the city bleeding on overpriced yoga pants. She was glad she went with black instead of gray.

  “Are you married?”

  “What? No.”

  “You got a boyfriend?”

  “Nope. Why? Do you want to be my boyfriend?”

  “Naw, I got a girlfriend. Fayth. With a Y not an I.”

  “Oh.”

  “I mean, you cool and all but I gotta be real to my girl.”

  “Definitely.”

  “We could be friends though.”

  “I’ve heard that one before. I mean, that would be nice.”

  “Nice?”

  “Cool?”

  “Dope.”

  “Dope? Dope it is then.”

  “You tryin’ a get ridda me? Cuz I won’t go out witchu?”

  “No. Not at all.”

  “Good. So where was you?”

  “Where was I when?”

  “Where was you when you got all sick? You out all night partyin’? My Auntie D she like to party all night an’ then she come over an’ sleep on the floor all day long even when my sista put on In Da Club an we be dancin’ all over her. You know that song? 50 Cent is da bomb!”