Dogfight, A Love Story

by Matt Burgess

  But things changed. He changed. Things he never imagined came to pass. Difficult things? Sure. Some of them. But one must adapt, right? That is, as the expression goes, the name of the game. Tariq’s new and improved reentry day to-do list:

  Buy a watch.

  Buy chocolates.

  Get a haircut.

  Pick up a more impressive, more stylish pair of jeans.

  Remove Steri-Strips.

  Buy and eat two delicious slices from Gianni’s Pizzeria.

  Be home by 1:10 for the start of the Mets-Yankees game, when everyone will be together, sitting in the living room.

  He checks his Casio F-91W. Time to make moves.

  From a bodega on Roosevelt Avenue he buys Kit Kat bars, Snickers bars, Charleston Chews (his favorite), Mr. Goodbars, and two fistfuls of Hershey’s Kisses. Not only does it cost him all six of his remaining Isabel coins, but he also has to dip into his last twenty.

  “Hope you got a good dentist,” says the bodega man.

  Tariq stuffs the candy into all four of his pockets, really jamming it in there. Outside he walks on the sunny side of the street, partly because it’s so nice out, and partly because he wants the chocolate to get warm.

  Everyone inside Jackson Heights’ Headz Ain’t Ready barbershop—the barbers, the men getting their hair cut, the men waiting for their turn, the men flipping through issues of Source magazine and Sports Illustrated, the men who, with felt-tip pens and management’s permission, scrawl their graffiti tags onto the walls—they all turn to look at Tariq when he walks through the door. No one stops what they’re doing. The clippers still clip and the buzzers still buzz and the boom box still blasts an Eminem song Tariq’s never heard before. But just because the men in here don’t stop what they’re doing doesn’t mean they’re not eyeballing him. As Tariq knows, there’s always time for that. Even the photographs tucked into the mirrors. Even the two-dimensional hair models—their glossy head shots pasted to the walls—even they seem to give him the once-over. Look at the new guy in his Casio watch and his too-short jeans. One kid in particular, a broom sweeper, a skinny little bitch with sharp elbows and a pubic hair mustache—he can’t stop looking at Tariq. The kid runs his hand over his mouth, hiding his toothy smile.

  The Book says:

  Do not disagree among yourselves or you will be unmanned and lose courage. Persevere, for God is with those who endure.

  In an uncomfortable wooden chair, Tariq waits for his turn. The men around him talk about the upcoming Mets-Yankees game. With Roger Clemens coming to Shea and with the DH rule not in effect, everyone wants to know if the Mets will plunk Clemens for what he did to Piazza two years ago. No one asks Tariq for his opinion. When they’ve exhausted the Mets game, they talk about the Nas/Jay-Z feud and they talk about the molestation scandal in the Catholic Church and they talk about a young black kid who got himself killed last night in Corona. Tariq tries to read the Queens Gazette, but the words keep running together. He feels certain the broom sweeper is watching him.

  “You up,” the barber finally says, and Tariq takes a seat in one of Headz Ain’t Ready’s high leather chairs. The barber circles behind him. “Damn,” he says. “Look at all these gray hairs! My man, you can’t be older than twenty-two years old, am I right?”

  “Shave it all off,” Tariq says.

  Through the mirror he sees the barber frown, as if he’d much rather give Tariq a shape-up or an ill fade, as if simply shaving a man bald is a waste of his talents. “You sure?” he says. “I can take it off, but I can’t put it back on.”

  “Get rid of it.”

  “You the boss,” he says. Around Tariq’s neck, he ties a hair-catching smock. His breath smells like coffee, his fingers like Barbasol. As he buzzes off a sideburn, he says, making conversation, “That’s a real beaut you got there. Fresh. Recent.”

  Tariq assumes he’s referring to the two-and-a-half-inch gash in his face. The barber wants to know the story, but he clearly doesn’t have the balls to come out and ask for it.

  What is there to say? He was out in the yard, playing cards. With his Spades partner shooting for nil, Tariq had to cover the high cards and pick up as many books as possible, and that’s exactly what he was doing, scooping up his partner’s queen with an ace, when he heard what sounded like the teeth of a zipper coming undone.

  The other Spades players jumped up from the table. Tariq’s hand came away from his face slick with blood. He was impressed—this was before the pain arrived—by how bright red his blood looked, almost like cartoon blood, a sign, he thought, of a healthy body. Then the pulse in his cheek jumped. He closed one eye—the left one, on the untouched side of his face—to make sure he could still see out of the other eye. While he held his cheek together, blood rolled down his arm, dripped off the tip of his elbow. He tried not to get any on the playing cards.

  Arturo Sanchez rang him up with a toothbrush, buck-fifty’d him with intent to blind. Tariq doesn’t know if he used a blade—he never got a chance to ask him—but if Arturo didn’t use a blade, then he must’ve spent two or three nights sharpening the handle of his toothbrush against the walls of his cell. If he did use a blade—and it certainly felt like he used a blade—then he probably snapped the plastic safety off his disposable razor, pushed out the banger, and melted it onto the toothbrush with a Bic lighter, stopping every now and again to blow on the tips of his fingers.

  He cut Tariq against the grain. The toothbrush entered the cheek just above his mouth, got yanked upward, tore through facial muscles, took a banana route around the orbital bone, and came out, the toothbrush did, a half inch shy of his ear. Arturo walked away, his hunter green pants spotted with blood. He let the toothbrush drop from his fingers. An against-the-grain buck fifty is deep, although inaccurate, and while Arturo must’ve been pleased to see the blood squirt out of Tariq’s face in long, satisfying arcs, he must’ve also been disappointed to have missed the soft jelly of his eye. Not to mention how pissed Arturo must’ve felt later that night, forced to brush his teeth with his finger.

  Tariq imagined that if he were a corrections officer, he would’ve been lounging in the back of an ambulance, on his way to the Beacon ER for reconstructive surgery. But instead he got tossed into the in-house medical unit, where he saw, for the very first time, his new, gashed-open face. He thought of his mother’s disappointment. He thought of Isabel, and how much harder everything would be now. His cheek puckered open like the mouth of a fish.

  But because he tries to strive in the way of Allah with a service worthy of Him, Tariq received the blessing of the FHS’s most skilled doctor: a short, no-nonsense Korean with fingerprint smudges all over his glasses. A man respected throughout Fishkill, by both COs and inmates. As the doctor worked on the cheek, Tariq told him about Isabel and how important it was—how necessary, really—that the doctor fix him up right, that he get Tariq back to his old handsome self.

  “Stop talking,” the doctor said.

  He didn’t sit there with a needle and thread like in the old days, sewing Tariq’s face back together with 150 stitches. Instead he compressed the gash, cleaned it, dried it, and reunited the cheek’s two halves with something he called Steri-Strips. Tariq thought they looked like bones a dog might gnaw on. Except tiny of course, and sticky on one side. When the doctor finished applying the Steri-Strips, he jammed a tetanus needle into Tariq’s arm, slapped a clear plastic Band-Aid on his face, and said, “Don’t mess with it. Keep it clean. Keep it dry. The Steri-Strips should fall off on their own within seven days. That’s their genius. Don’t pull them off yourself before it’s time. You’ll get infected. And please—don’t bother asking me for painkillers. Come back on Tuesday and I’ll give you another Band-Aid.”

  “I can’t,” Tariq said proudly. “I’m moving out. Saturday morning, I’m going home.”

  The doctor grabbed Tariq’s chin and tilted his head toward the light, just as Lizette used to do when she checked her son’s ears for wax. The doctor inspected the
left side—the clean side—of his face.

  “Keep telling those psychopaths you’re getting released,” he said, “and I’ll be seeing you in here tomorrow. Bleeding out the one good cheek you got left.”

  Tariq says none of this to the Headz Ain’t Ready barber. He is told he’s got a real beaut, fresh, recent—and all he says in response is uh-huh. He fidgets in the chair so as to better smush the chocolate in his pockets. The barber finishes the haircut in silence. When he’s done, he holds a mirror behind Tariq’s head, giving him a 360-degree view of his new, shaved, vulnerable-looking dome. Perfect. Tariq imagines he looks as bald and as clean as the day he was born. With a small brush the barber wipes the hair off Tariq’s face, careful to avoid his cheek.

  At the cash register, the skinny little broom sweeper rings him up. As he stares at Tariq’s cheek, he passes his hand over his mouth, just below his pubic hair mustache. The haircut costs thirteen dollars, and when Tariq has to take the Kit Kats and Snickers bars out of his pocket to get at his money, the kid laughs, hahahahaha, and sticks his hand in a jar full of lollipops next to the register.

  “Sweet tooth?” he says. “Here. Take some. You want a purple one, too? Go ahead. Take as many as you like.”

  Fight those in the way of Allah who fight you, but do not be aggressive: God does not like aggressors.

  The broom sweeper actually grabs hold of Tariq’s hand. He uncurls the fingers, shoves lollipops into his palm.

  “Do you enjoy what you do?” Tariq asks.

  “What?”

  “I said, Do you enjoy what you do?”

  “What do you mean? Do I like working in the barbershop?”

  “No. That’s not what I mean. I didn’t ask, Do you like working in the barbershop? I asked, Do you enjoy what you do?”

  The broom sweeper smiles. He doesn’t try to hide it. His hands stay down at his hips. “I don’t know,” he says. “I guess I don’t know what you mean. What do I … what am I doing?”

  “Don’t you know? Surely, my brother, you must know what you do. The broom? Yes? The hair on the floor? You sweep it up. You sweep it up into tidy piles and then you take it away. That is what you do. The question, my brother, is do you enjoy it?”

  “Well,” he says. He hits a button on the cash register and the drawer slides open, kisses his belly. Looking not at Tariq, looking down at the money in the drawer, he says, “I don’t know. Why? What is this about?”

  “What is this about?” Tariq puts his money on the counter. He counts out the bills. One two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen, which leaves him with exactly three dollars, just enough for a couple of pizza slices from Gianni’s. “That’s thirteen dollars right there,” he tells the broom sweeper. “There’s thirteen dollars on the counter, plus an extra two. That two dollars is for you. That’s yours. You want to know why? Don’t answer. I know you’re not good at questions. That two dollars is me saying thank you. For sweeping my hair off the floor. Because you seemed to enjoy yourself so much, I’m giving you two dollars of my money. What do you say? You say, Thank you. What do I say? Look at me. Don’t look inside that cash register. There’s nothing in there for you. Look at me. You say, Thank you, and I say, No, no, no. Thank you, brother. You did a very good job.”

  Buy a watch.

  Buy chocolates.

  Get a haircut.

  Pick up a more impressive, more stylish pair of jeans.

  Remove Steri-Strips.

  Buy and eat two delicious slices from Gianni’s Pizzeria.

  Be home by 1:10 for the start of the Mets-Yankees game, when everyone will be together, sitting in the living room.

  How fast does news travel from the streets to the prisons? You read letters. You make phone calls (collect; monitored; fifteen-minute max). You have dreams and nightmares. You stand on line at the commissary, waiting to buy another can of instant soup, and you look up and see a guy from the neighborhood, a guy you went to sixth grade with, a guy who used to steal Slurpees from little kids, and you say, Hey! What’s going on? When’d you get here? What’s poppin back at home?

  And he says, Haven’t you heard?

  How fast does news travel from the cells to the streets, from Fishkill to Queens? It don’t. Nobody cares … Yeah yeah. Boo-fucking-hoo.

  Of all the shops in the Queens Center Mall, the Macy’s department store has the most merchandise, the most men’s and ladies’ wear, the most jewelry, the most street-level exits, the most gifts-with-purchase, the most cashiers, the most security guards, the most women with the most makeup spritzing the most perfume onto the inside wrists of passersby, the most cameras, the most shoppers, the most crying babies, the most Isabels, the most cosmetic specialists, the most everything, and it is here, inside this mall-dominating superstore, that Tariq grabs off the shelf a pair of Rocawear jeans ($68) and carries them into one of Macy’s many dressing rooms.

  A young, pasty, pink-haired girl guards the entrance to the rooms. She folds one button-down shirt after another. A metal hoop pierces her lip, hangs from her mouth like the knocker to a door. The age and ethnicity work, Tariq thinks, to his advantage. He’s not as sure about the pink hair or the lip ring. He worries she’s the kind of young woman who lives to be unimpressed, who watches scary movies with her chin on her fist, who opens birthday presents with a snap of her gum and a roll of her eyes. That’s not what he needs. His plans do not call for underwhelmed reactions. Having finished with the shirts, the girl moves on to a series of khaki pants, folding them, matching hem to hem. This is her job. She folds the clothes people tried on and discarded, the clothes nobody wants. Then somebody else—not even her—takes them away and puts them back on the shelves. When Tariq approaches her folding table, the pink-haired girl hands him a card with a 1 on it (for the number of items he’s trying on), and she points him toward a dressing room in back.

  “Thank you,” he says, because one should always be polite.

  Inside the dressing room, he gets down on his knees facing east. Or at least facing what he hopes is east. For only the second time today, he prays. Allah has a plan and Tariq has a plan, and the trick for Tariq will be keeping those plans from a battle royal. Of course, as it is written, the best of planners is Allah, but what Tariq needs to do is sandwich his plan to His plan, so that they become plans within plans.

  He tries on the Rocawear jeans, the bottoms of which cover the tops of his sneakers, just as they should. In an ideal world the jeans wouldn’t fit so tightly, but in an ideal world the Fishkill Correctional Facility would’ve given him a belt. He peeps himself in the mirror, turning this way and that to admire his ass. Looking good, he thinks—and a good thing too, since that’s a part of his physique Isabel’s always appreciated.

  He slips out of his dressing room and enters the one next door, which looks exactly the same: same mirror, same carpeted floor, same bench with wooden slats, same vanilla-colored walls. He looks up at the light fixture above his head. He wonders if it conceals a security camera, if there’s a sun-deprived man in a tiny room jammed full of closed-circuit televisions, staring at the top of Tariq’s head. Oh well. As the saying goes, No reward without risk.

  He unwraps the Snickers, Kit Kats, Goodbars, Charleston Chews, and Kisses. The chocolates—sun-battered, pocket-pressurized—have softened nicely. They smell sweet, strongly sweet, sickly sweet, and for a moment he feels dizzy. Because he can’t help himself, he eats one of the Charleston Chews. The rest he smears onto the dressing room walls. Carefully, so as not to mess up his new Rocawear jeans, he shakes a soft, dripping Snickers bar over the bench, splattering its wooden slats. He streaks the mirror with Goodbars, leaves crescent moons of chocolate on the glass. While mashing Kit Kats into the carpet, he notices a feather in the corner of the dressing room. It lies on the floor, its two ends curled upward. Another crescent moon! Somebody must have been trying on a down jacket in here, and the feather popped out of a sleeve. Has it been here since winter? Tariq can’t even
imagine. He leaves it alone, rubs chocolate Kisses onto the dressing room’s doorknob.

  Not since Little League have his hands been so filthy. Not since he slid into second base on a mud-covered infield. He turns them over, these sticky, chocolate-smeared hands. The Hershey Kisses’ wrappers—those thin, metallic sheets—have rubbed off on him, and now his palms and fingers sparkle with glitter. Time to clean up. He does the best he can with his hands by rubbing them against the rough insides of his Fishkill jeans. He sucks chocolate out from under his fingernails. The candy wrappers, the three dollars of pizza money, the parole paperwork—all of this he shoves into his new Rocawear pockets. With the old pants balled up in his fist and with his head held high, he leaves the dressing room and strides over to the pink-haired girl at the folding table.

  “Who you been letting around back here?” he says.

  “Excuse me?” She folds a plaid shirt against her chest. She keeps the collar tucked under her chin, making it easier for her to work, to finish this shirt and move on to the next one. “I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you.”

  “I asked who you was letting around back here. Crackheads?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Excuse me, but I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on around here when you’ve got dressing rooms covered in shit.”

  She lifts her head to look at him, and the shirt falls out from under her chin.

  “Feces,” he says. “I’m talking about somebody’s feces up on them walls.” He throws the Fishkill jeans down onto her table. He leans forward, closes the space between her body and his. “I’m walking around back there, I look into a dressing room and I see it’s got shit all over it. Right back there. Hello? You hearing me? Somebody did diarrhea up on them walls. Understand? And I’m telling you so you can get somebody down here and clean it up.” He pulls his head back, a natural-looking recoil. “Unless you already know about it,” he says. “Unless you already been knowing about it and it’s cool with you to work all day in a crack den, a place where the walls get themselves shat on.”