by Matt Burgess
“No,” she says softly. She chews on her lower lip, her teeth clicking against the metal piercing. “I don’t know nothing about this.”
“Well that, at least, is some good news.”
From the waist of her pants, the pink-haired girl unclips a walkie-talkie. But she doesn’t speak into it. With the walkie-talkie in hand, she wiggles out from behind her folding table and heads toward the dressing rooms at the end of the hall. She walks slowly, toe to heel. The door to the dressing room yawns open, and when the pink-haired girl gets to it and peers inside she might scream or she might run away or she might drop her walkie-talkie or she might rip off her Macy’s name tag and throw it to the floor. Tariq doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what she says or what she does because he’s already gone.
In his stiff-legged designer jeans he walks through the menswear section and the handbag section and the unmentionables section. Two security guard fat-bodies in navy blue blazers run toward him. As they get closer, they split apart, passing him on either side. Walkie-talkies are pressed to their ears, giant grins plastered across their broad honest faces.
Who’s chocolate going to fool? Nobody. Particularly if you get close enough to it. But who’s going to get close enough? Who’s going to bring their nose right up to those brown, nut-filled smears on the wall?
But that’s not even the thing. Tariq knows that these kids—the pink-haired girl, the thick-necked security guards, every last one of the embittered employees of the Macy’s department store, trapped in here on a beautiful late spring Saturday morning, working the complaints department, staring at doors, breaking penny rolls into cash registers, folding the pants and shirts nobody wants—they all absolutely need to believe in a dressing room smeared with shit. So that later tonight, after they’ve clocked out, these boys and girls can go home and drink a beer out on the stoop or smoke a dub in Astoria Park or just drive in circles around Francis Lewis Boulevard, and they can turn to their friends and say, Guess what, just guess, what the fuck happened at work today.
A black guy with a Big Brown Bag heads toward the exit, and Tariq times it so that they push through the doors at the exact same moment. The alarm trips and beeps. Red lights flash. The black guy stops. Tariq doesn’t.
Because the haircut has left him with brown and gray hairs all over his face, and because in the sweaty walk to and from the mall these hairs began to feel like so many swarming, mandible-snapping fire ants, and because he can’t show up at home like that, looking like a face-scratching bum, Tariq goes down to Travers Park and sticks his head in the sprinklers. Around him, kids are leaping and prancing through the water, but Tariq stands still, cleans himself off for Isabel. His body temperature cools. Water sprays into his eyes, fills his open mouth.
Doused, he sits on a bench in the sun—what a beautiful day!—and yanks the Steri-Strips off of his face. Every time he tugs on one, his cheek tugs back. He rolls the strips into a gooey ball on his finger and flicks them away, as if he were airmailing boogers.
Two little white boys watch him. They don’t run through the sprinklers or kick a ball or play saloogie with some smaller kid’s cap. Faces blank, they just stand there, seemingly content to watch this bald man tear sutures from his face.
He pays them little attention. Instead, he stares across the park at a Guyanese man sitting on a bench just like his own. Actually he doesn’t so much watch the man as he watches the dog at the man’s feet, a beautiful brown pit bull, its face spotted with white freckles. The dog leans into its collar. Its tongue hangs out, as crooked as a question mark. When a ball rolls by, when a tennis ball or a softball or a soccer ball or a Sky Bounce blue handball gets away from some kid and rolls near the bench, the pit bull lunges after it. And because in parks balls don’t roll by without kids close behind, chasing them with outstretched fingers, every time the dog lunges at a soccer ball, the dog also, in effect, lunges at a child. The Guyanese guy pulls up hard on the leash. The pit bull snaps its teeth. And the children run away laughing and squealing. No one, Tariq thinks, seems to appreciate the danger. Except for himself. And the dog of course, whose legs strain forward with coiled bloodlust.
Tariq stands up off the bench, and the ground tilts. He throws his hands out in front of him. Light dances in his eyes. He feels a spirit of dizziness poured into his ear. No wonder! It is close to one and his stomach is growling.
Get this: the booths inside Gianni’s Pizzeria are no longer booths. They are tables. Covered in red and white checkered cloths. The floors have been mopped. A sign on the door says Now Serving Iced Coffee! And the old movie posters on the walls—Stallone’s Nighthawks; Stallone’s Rocky IV; Stallone’s arm-wrestling picture, Over the Top—have all been replaced by tastefully framed photographs of Italian hills and wooden gondolas and old ladies smelling luminous eggplants. Tariq grips the back of a chair, as if to make sure it actually exists. He never expected time to wait for him, to freeze in place, but he also didn’t expect the skyline to look so very different, or the currency, or the inside of Gianni’s Pizzeria. He never expected so much to have fucking changed. At least the ancient Street Fighter II machine still stands in the corner, where a crowd of Asian kids have collected around it to watch one of their own, a spiky-haired Korean, battle a heavyset black kid. And, most comforting of all, Gianni himself is still here. He stands sentinel behind the counter, kneading dough with his fists.
Tariq orders two slices, extra hot. He hoped to elicit a Hey, where you been? Or a Nice to have you back! Tariq wonders if Gianni can’t recognize him because of the gash in his cheek and with his head shaved bald—or maybe, he tells himself, expecting hospitality from Gianni is expecting a little too much. While the slices bubble in the oven, Gianni preps a tray, covering it with wax paper, placing three napkins off to the side. Another comfort, another thing that hasn’t changed. There are no napkin dispensers on any of the tables. Gianni, cheap bastard that he is, doles out all napkins himself in an effort to prevent paper overdrafts. You get three—if you’re lucky—and if you want more you gotta go ask Gianni and deal with his harrumphs.
Tariq gets his money ready as the slices come out of the oven. The crust has charred and bubbled beautifully. Here’s the plan: Tariq will fold the crust down the middle and flip the tip back into the slice, so as to trap the oil. He will blow on the cheese once, maybe twice. Then he will bite in, burning the roof of his mouth so badly that for the next twenty-four hours he will regretfully prod the skin with his tongue. Oh well. What are you gonna do? Gianni throws the slices onto the tray and Tariq’s cheeks fill with water.
“Four dollars even,” Gianni says.
“I don’t want a Coke.”
“No Coke. Four dollars for the slices. You want a Coke?”
“Four dollars?” Tariq says. “For two slices?”
“Four dollars for two slices,” Gianni says.
“My entire life it’s been one fifty a slice.”
“What do you want me to tell you? You want one slice?”
“You don’t understand. I’ve been eating pizza bagels. Catsup and rubber cheese on a toasted bagel. On an English muffin.” Tariq looks into his face. “I don’t want one slice. One slice doesn’t mean anything to me. I want two slices, please. For three dollars, please.”
“Two dollars a slice. Two slices, four dollars. You want a calculator?”
“No thank you. I want two slices for three dollars, please.”
The redness starts in Gianni’s neck and rises past his chin and mustache and doughy nose all the way up to the crown of his head. He brushes his flour-covered hands against his apron.
“Hey!” someone says. When Tariq turns around he sees that the voice belongs to the heavyset black kid, the one who was playing Street Fighter II. The kid comes over and throws his arm over Tariq’s shoulders. He says, “Hey, Gianni, cut this guy a break. He’s a friend of mine.”
Gianni points a wooden roller at Tariq’s chest. “He needs to learn some manners.”
“Ha h
a,” the black kid says. He tightens his grip around Tariq’s shoulder, hugs him even closer. “Like I say, you gotta cut him some slack. He just got out of prison.”
If Tariq turned to look at the kid, their faces would be touching. The kid would be able to breathe into Tariq’s mouth.
“Figures,” Gianni says. He talks to the black kid but looks only at Tariq, their heads floating on opposite sides of the counter. “You need to remind your friend here he ain’t in prison no more. He’s gotta get rid of his joint mentality. You know what I’m saying? Out here there’s something called etiquette.”
“Ha ha,” the kid says. “I’ll tell him. I’ll let him know.”
So that Tariq may be guided out of his own darkness, he reaches, arms straining, toward the Book:
Hasten for the pardon of your Lord, and for Paradise extending over the heavens and the earth, laid out for those who take heed for themselves and fear God, who expend both in joy and tribulation, who suppress their anger and pardon their fellowmen.
“Excuse me,” Tariq says, shaking the kid’s arm off his shoulders. He walks away, leaves the slices untouched on the counter.
Outside, the dizziness returns. It drips down his ear, into his throat. Miniature suns float across his retinas. They burst, these suns; they burst and blood surges behind his eyes. He’d sit down if he could, if the streets didn’t stink of piss and rotten fruit, if the sidewalks weren’t clogged with garbage. Everywhere he looks: garbage. Garbage in the gutters, on the street, spilling out of corner wastebaskets, stacked high on the curb in black-bagged pyramids. One of these overstuffed bags has a tear in its side. Flies buzz around the hole. Brown liquid oozes out onto the sidewalk. Tariq stares at this hole in this bag, and he half expects a baby to fall out, its belly clawed open by pink-eyed rats.
The black kid has followed Tariq outside and he wants to know if everything is okay, if there’s anything he can do.
“Go away,” Tariq says.
“Don’t you remember me?”
“Go away.”
The kid takes a step backward and shows himself to Tariq. He spreads his hands out wide, causing the flesh under his arms to jiggle. He is man-sized—he is XXL-sized—and yet Tariq could drop him to the ground so easily. Knock that stupid Spider-Man hat off his head and push in his eye, smash his head against the sidewalk. He wears—loosely, and yet the outlines of his breasts remain visible—a stylish Rocawear T-shirt, which Tariq thinks would nicely complement his own Rocawear jeans. He wonders what Isabel might think of this shirt.
“You don’t recognize me at all?” the kid says. He takes off his Spider-Man hat and shows Tariq the top of his head, where the hair grows only in patches.
“Winston?” Tariq says. The kid smiles and quickly puts his hat back on. “You’ve gotten huge,” Tariq tells him.
“I got fat. But you—you’re ripped. I don’t want to know what happened to the guy who opened up your face.”
“Where’d you get that shirt?”
“You like it?” He pulls down on the hem, so that they can both get a better look at it. The shirt tightens, making Winston’s breasts even more visible. “Alfredo bought it for me a while ago,” he says. “Hey, have you seen Alfredo yet? Have you even been home yet?”
“Give me the shirt.”
“It’s nice, right?”
“Give it to me.”
“What?” he says. He tries to smile. Half his face looks dry, but the other half sweats. Big beady drops roll down his cheek. He dips his head to his shoulder, wipes his face dry with the sleeve of his shirt. When he looks back up at Tariq, Winston’s smile widens and brightens into the genuine thing. “You got me. For a hot second, you got me good. Give me the shirt, he says. Ha ha. You’re hilario, Jose. Sorry, sorry. Tariq. You’re hilario, Tariq.” Still smiling, Winston shakes his head and looks around at no one in particular, like a sitcom straight man gesturing to the TV audience, as if to say Get a load of this guy. His eyes suddenly widen. “Holy shitballs,” he says, pointing behind Tariq. “Would you look at that!”
Tariq suspects a lame schoolyard trick. Asked to give up his shirt, Winston points at the unseen world and says Look at that! and when Tariq does, Winston will take off running. But that’s not what happens at all. Winston doesn’t take off running. He actually comes closer, throws his arm once again over Tariq’s bulked-up shoulders. He turns Tariq around and points across the street where a white Camaro plays HOT 97 out of its open windows, and where two halter-topped Isabels dance on the sidewalk, melting the ice in Tariq’s throat, and where, behind a furniture store’s plate-glass window, a sofa stares out at the street with an empty-cushioned, heartbreaking loneliness, and where the Mister Softee ice cream truck drives by and momentarily blots out Tariq’s view, and where a black kid pushes a bicycle with two deflated tires, and where a young Isabel bites into a Jamaican beef patty, the steam softening her face, and where—if Tariq follows Winston’s extended index finger precisely—the Guyanese man from the park is walking down the block, his beautiful brown pit bull at his side.
“That’s your dog,” Winston says. Reeking of pot smoke, he squeezes Tariq tightly. “You talked to Alfredo yet? We been trying to find a dog for you all week. Like a present kind of? For the dogfight tonight? The welcome back party? You talk to Alfredo yet or what? I’m telling you, we been looking for a dog just like that one. And now, poof. Yabba-dabba-doo, man. You know what I’m saying? A pit bull. Right across the street.”
The Guyanese guy holds his dog on a short leash. The pit bull doesn’t trot or scamper beside him. The dog walks. He walks with his head held high, just as a man would walk. Between his legs swing an impressive pair of bright-red balls.
“It’s like a sign from God,” Winston whispers. He takes a plastic bag of pills out of his pocket. He reaches into the bag—without even looking at what he’s grabbing—and pulls out a small white pill, which he drops onto the tip of his tongue. “You want one?” he asks, but before Tariq can say no, Winston has already sealed the bag and put it back in his pocket. “I’m quitting drugs,” he says. “Starting tomorrow.” He closes his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose. “Here I am, standing right here with you for crying out loud, and a pit bull, your pit bull, walks across the street. Do you know me and Alfredo been looking for a dog like that all week? We found a nice one last night, a Doberman, but it was behind a fence and we couldn’t get at it. All week. No luck. And now here I am with you, twelve hours from the dogfight, and …” He shakes his head. “It’s like the gods be smiling. It’s like the universe is on our side. You know what I mean?”
Tariq knows exactly what he means. Across the street, the dog and the man are walking away, nearing the intersection. They pause for the light, let the cars drive by, and then they move on, walking quickly down Northern Boulevard. From a distance of one full outer-borough block, Winston and Tariq follow.
“Stare at his shoes,” Tariq says.
“Stare at his shoes,” Winston repeats.
“You don’t want to look at the back of his head. People can feel that kind of thing. It tingles the scalp, don’t ask me how. But if this guy feels eyes on the back of his head, then he’s gonna turn around, and if he turns around—”
“Then we’re sunk,” Winston says. They walk in step, not faster or slower than the man and dog a block ahead of them. “So what we want to do,” Winston says, “is stare at the shoes. Got it.”
“Ain’t no one ever felt eyes on the back of their shoes.”
“And this guy ain’t going nowhere without taking his feet with him.”
“Exactly!” Tariq says, smiling. He feels good. He feels better than he has all day. “It’s just a little trick, sure. But I’m telling you, Winston—it’s little tricks that keep you ahead of the game.”
“You pick it up in prison?” Winston asks.
Tariq shakes his head. He never had to follow anybody in prison because he already knew where everyone was going: the same place he was. No, shadowing people wit
hout getting caught was something he learned out here, in Queens, long before he ever got incarcerated. On Friday nights he’d meet up with Gio and Conrad—currently serving out their prison sentences at Otisville and Altona, respectively—and the three of them would follow the construction workers who stumbled off the 7 train, their jeans splattered with paint, their pockets jammed with payday cash, their blood Budweiser-thinned. Stare at the shoes, he’d tell Gio and Conrad. Amazing, ain’t it? Years later, and he’s saying the same shit.
The man and his dog turn the corner, disappear from sight for the very first time. Winston starts to hurry after them, but Tariq grabs at his shirt. He counsels patience. He explains that the guy might’ve stopped right around the corner, to chat with a neighbor or to scoop poop off the curb, and if Tariq and Winston were rushing they’d bump right into the guy, or they’d have to walk past him, lose their advantage, become the pursued rather than the pursuers.
“Relax,” Tariq says. He gestures to the Isabels passing them on their left and right. He points to the base of a maple tree, where pigeons peck at dried crusts of bread. “Take it easy, brother. Enjoy all this scenery.”
When they eventually do turn the corner, they see the man and the dog halfway down the block. The guy has slackened his grip on the leash. In his free hand, he jangles a set of house keys. The dog makes a sharp left toward a stand-alone, one-family house, a Queens residential specialty, and the man follows. They go through a fence—it is waist-high, with a latch door—and they head, the man and the dog, toward the backyard.
Winston and Tariq don’t stop. They pass the house without looking at it. They go all the way around the block, taking their time, practicing their lines. When they get back to the house, they make the same sharp left the dog made. Tariq lifts the latch on the fence door as if he’s been lifting it every day of his life. And what if the man hasn’t gone inside the house yet? What if he’s still in the backyard, sunning himself on a lounge chair, zinc oxide smeared on his nose? We’re here for the party, they’ll say. Told to come straight out back. You know. For the barbecue, the cookout for the Mets-Yankees game. Weiners and hamburgers? This is Rosario’s, right? Tell me we’ve got the right house. This is Eighty-third Street, right?