“I’m not, but don’t worry, nobody gets it right. I’m half Japanese, but my dad was black. He was from Barbados originally. He died of a heart attack about three years ago.”
“Oh, no.”
“I’m okay with it now, but it’s not the sort of thing you ever really get over. It bothers my sister more than me, makes her worry about my mom.”
“I guess between us, we’ve got one full set of parents.”
For some reason, I was surprised. “Did something happen to your mom?”
“She’s okay, but she ran off with some guy last year. Not that I can blame her. My dad can be a bit like your boss sometimes—i.e., an asshole.”
I asked her what her asshole dad thought of her playing music in the street. She said he didn’t like her practicing at home and besides, she could take care of herself. It felt good to be learning about her, like she was giving up her secrets just for me. I wanted more of them.
“What about school? Will you be going to Evandale in the fall?”
She shrugged as if it didn’t really matter. “I don’t know. Maybe. If we stay in town.”
“You’re not staying?”
“Depends on my dad’s work. He, um, teaches courses at Falconer. My favorite one’s called Philosophy of Music. It’s pretty cool, but right now it’s mostly evenings and weekends. What we really need is for him to get tenure for once. That means a full-time gig.”
“I hope he gets one. Then you’ll stick around, right?”
“Maybe,” she said, looking away.
I didn’t like the way she seemed distracted. I wanted to say something to grab her attention. “You know what I thought the first time I saw you? When you first walked past the window where I work?”
Her attention returned, but not the way I wanted. She was squinty-eyed and suspicious. “What did you think?”
“These are the exact words. I thought, ‘Holy shit, it’s Jesus!’”
She laughed. “Shut up.”
“I couldn’t see your face, and—well, look what you were carrying.”
“Wait. So the guy who runs the jewelry store says I’m an angel—and you thought I was Jesus? That’s a shitload of divinity to pile on a girl.”
“It’s true.”
She smiled at me, but only with half her mouth. “You have a weird way of giving compliments.”
“How do you give a compliment?”
She laughed.
“Go ahead,” I said. “I can take it.”
“You think I’m gonna pay you a compliment, just cuz you asked for one?”
I stood up, spread my arms, and spun in a circle. “Look carefully. I’m sure you can find something worth at least a little praise.”
She covered her face, obviously embarrassed. “Stop spinning like an idiot!”
I did.
“Okay,” she said. “I got one.”
Before she could tell me what it was, a dog barked outside the window. Only it wasn’t just barking, and it wasn’t just any dog. It was Razor, and she was going berserk. She raced past the window, and a moment later B-Man went scampering after her.
“Oh, crap.”
“Who was that?” Zoey asked.
“B-Man.”
“You know that guy?”
“We should go,” I said. “Like right now.”
“Why?”
“Because I think I know where they’re going.”
31
How to Detect a Lean-In Moment
Razor leapt at the Sit ’n’ Spin’s huge window. B-Man struggled to keep her from crashing through it. Inside, a crowd of Mr. Rodolfo’s poker players taunted the beast, shooing it with the backs of their hands, snarling at it from behind the safety of the glass. A-Man was there too, out in front, trying to pull B-Man toward Emerson. He must have shown up late for the poker game.
“Shit.” I stopped halfway up the block and grabbed Zoey’s arm. “We should wait here.”
“I can’t! ” There was real panic in her voice. “I need the rattler!”
She tried to pull away but I held on tight. I slid my hand down her arm and we were holding hands, unintentionally, just like at Toph’s party.
“It’s okay. I hid it pretty good. They won’t find it.”
She spun around and glared at me. “You don’t understand. I can’t go home without it. I need it.”
“We’ll get it. We just have to wait.”
Mr. Rodolfo came out of the Sit ’n’ Spin. He had the Arbitrator. He started hollering, pointing the hooked end of the huge crowbar in B-Man’s face. Behind him, the Brothers stood watching, arms folded, grim and silent as ever.
A-Man got between them, grabbing hold of the Arbitrator. He was trying to keep the peace, but it was hard to say if it was working.
“Is that him?” Zoey asked me.
“My boss? Yeah.”
“He really is an asshole. What is that thing?”
“He calls it ‘the Arbitrator.’ ”
Zoey scoffed. “You need a new job.”
“He pays me pretty good.”
“I’ll bet he does.”
I squinted at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Look at him. He looks like a Sopranos reject.”
It was true. The Arbitrator was huge, but in Mr. Rodolfo’s hands, it looked more like a chopstick. I tried to explain to Zoey that just because you spoke with a slightly thick-tongued accent and carried a wrecking bar into the street to defend your business, it didn’t make you a mobster.
“He’s just a regular guy,” I told her.
Zoey let out a derisive shot of laughter—HA!—and covered her mouth. “Oh, my god. I just realized! He’s not even trying to hide it. It’s a freakin’ laundromat !”
“So?”
“You do realize there’s more than one meaning for the word launder, right?”
“Um, no.” But then it dawned on me (vaguely). I had an inkling that the term was used to describe a process of hiding stolen money. “You mean, like, money laundering ?”
“Exactly. Let’s say—hypothetically—you stole a shitload of money. If you didn’t want anyone to find out, you’d hafta disguise where it came from. Basically, there’re two ways to do that. One, you start a business and pretend it makes more money than it really does. Say, for instance, a laundromat. Or two, let’s say the money was stolen direct from a bank. Then it’d have serial numbers. The police and insurance companies can trace those pretty easily. That’s why you have to mix up the numbers, exchange the money that you stole for new bills, and send the old ones off in all different directions. Basically, you wash the money. You launder it.” She pointed to the crowd of men. “Spreading it around in a gambling game is one way to do it.”
“Wait, you’re saying Mr. Rodolfo robbed a bank?”
“How should I know?”
“Why do you even know all that, about money laundering?”
“Don’t you watch television? Every cop show for like a hundred years has had a money-laundering episode. It’s like a … like a trope.”
“That’s TV, not real life.”
But the seed had been planted. I thought about how protective Mr. Rodolfo was of his office in the basement. I thought about how the doors down there were always locked. I thought about the way the Brothers barely spoke to anyone and, even though I’d gotten used to it, how eerie and threatening that silence had been at the beginning of high school when I’d first started working for Mr. Rodolfo. I thought about how obsessed he was with keeping everything “good for business.”
“No way,” I said, in spite of all that thinking. “I’m telling you, he’s just a regular guy.”
“Who threatens people with a—what did you call it? ‘The Arbitrator’?” Her fingers made a pair of mocking air quotes.
“That’s just how he is.”
A-Man was finally getting the situation under control. He was pushing B-Man back to the corner of Emerson. Razor was still barking, still leaping up on her hind legs, still yanking against her collar. Nevertheless, A-Man calmly guided them both away.
B-Man’s interruption had put an unofficial end to Mr. Rodolfo’s poker night. A couple of the men inside came out and got into cars. Eventually, the only ones left were the Brothers and Mr. Rodolfo himself. They chatted for a while in low voices before finally locking up.
Once they were gone, I snuck up the street and let myself in. The instrument was just where I had left it, untouched.
“Well, that was fun,” Zoey said when I brought it out to her.
“Can I help you carry it home?”
“I don’t live around here, like I said. I better catch a streetcar.” She glanced up the street, where one was already on its way toward us. “Usually they gimme shit for bringing my instrument on board, but at this time of night they don’t care so much.”
I was disappointed, of course.
“So,” I said, “you really think my boss is a gangster?”
“He sure looks like one.”
I laughed. “I guess he does.”
“Thanks for dinner, anyway. It was good.”
“No problem. Maybe you could leave the instrument at home next time. It’ll make life easier if we didn’t hafta stash it somewhere every time we want to hang out. I mean, if you feel like hanging out again.”
“You’re cute,” she said.
“What? Why?”
She tapped the side of her head. “You’re always thinking ahead. I like that.”
This was unexpected. “I am?”
She nodded. “And you’re honest. You say what you feel.”
“Is that my compliment?”
She smiled. “Maybe.”
There are moments in life when you should lean in—i.e., quit talking and kiss the gorgeous girl standing right in front of you. Detecting these moments is a skill. I was crap at it.
Zoey, however, knew what she was doing. As the streetcar rumbled through the intersection, drowning out our words, she tipped forward and pecked me on the cheek. “Gotta go.”
“Wait, can I call you? You have a phone, right?”
She scooped a random piece of paper out of her purse and scribbled the number.
“Bye,” I said, as the doors of the streetcar flapped open. “I’ll see you soon.”
She lugged the instrument up the steps and our first date (if you want to call it that) was over.
32
DeWinter Hills
From what Mom tells me, when Nomi was born, I was dead jealous. Here was this precious blob that sucked up every drop of my parents’ attention. I was eight years old, not at all accustomed to sharing.
One day, maybe to prove to me I was still wanted, Dad came home with a basketball. It was a green and white one printed with the Celtics logo, a little leprechaun leaning on a stick. I loved it in spite of being tragically inept at any sport involving equipment—especially a ball. I could run and I could swim, but throwing? Catching? Kicking? I was useless.
It was the same with a basketball: I sucked.
I went out on the driveway, where I bounced it too high. I jammed my fingers. I tripped over my feet. Three dribbles and the ball stubbed off my toe and went bounding into the street. I rallied after it, of course—like an idiot—and I probably would have died that day if Mom hadn’t yelled at me through the window.
“Kazuo!”
She was just in time. This sleek, black, nuclear sub of a luxury car torpedoed around the corner, right between me and the ball. Mom came running out with the little Nomi-blob balled up in one arm. She was furious, but all she did was hug me with her one free hand.
“You have to be more careful.”
I just stared at her.
“Promise! ”
I nodded.
After that, Dad started taking me to this park in Rosemount called DeWinter Hills. There weren’t any hills there and I had no idea who Johnny or Jenny DeWinter were. All I knew is that off in one corner, there were three pristine basketball courts.
“This is a game of misdirection,” Dad explained to me the first day. “You know what that means?”
No, I didn’t. I was, like, eight.
“You pretend to do one thing while you’re really doing something else.” That was how Dad summed up basketball: an exercise in fakery. “All you have to do is be able to fake—a pass, a shot, just a step with your foot—and POW! ” He dribbled straight for me, faked a shot, then twisted past for an easy hoop. “See what I mean?”
I did. Dad was never the most athletic guy in the world. He was short and stocky, with pudgy cheeks and a bit of a gut. But he had strong legs and dextrous arms, and these—along with a good fake—got around me every time. (Also, did I mention I was eight?)
It took me a couple years to master the art of shutting him down. I remember clearly, just after my eleventh birthday, the first time I stuffed him. He was as surprised as I was.
“I think you’re getting the hang of this,” he panted afterward, a massive grin on his face.
I improved even more. It wasn’t long before I could flat outrun him. I guess I started to get bored with it. Calen and Topher and some of the other guys from the neighborhood played pickup and (for once in my life, thanks to Dad) I was decent enough to join them. We’d stopped going down to DeWinter Hills by then, but occasionally we still did.
“Now,” he said, after a long hiatus of not playing with me, “let’s see if you still remember what I taught you.”
“Maybe I’ll teach you something.”
I was up twenty to nothing when Dad sucked in a screeching breath and, in this slow, horrifying collapse, went down on his knees.
“Dad! What is it?!”
He couldn’t even answer me. He just coughed and waggled his head like he needed to shake something loose.
“Dad! ”
“I’m okay,” he sputtered. “Just dizzy.” He smiled at me. “You’re really good.”
I watched limply as he climbed back to his feet. As soon as he got there, he slapped the ball out of my useless arm and, only using his right hand, dribbled up the court for a layup.
All the way home, he kept saying, “I’m fine. I was only faking. Remember? What did I teach you? That’s what it’s all about. Misdirection.”
I wanted to believe him. It was just a fake, just something he’d pulled so he wouldn’t get shut out. I didn’t tell Mom about what happened, and a week after we played, Dad was dead.
33
Dave Mizra’s Secret
The next night, Calen, Alana, and I wanted to see a movie. Before we could go, I had to put in a shift at the Sit ’n’ Spin. Midway through the afternoon, it started to rain, so when Dave Mizra came jogging across the street, he held a plastic bag over his head. It did little to keep him dry.
“Just some shirts today.” He piled three damp button-down Oxfords on the counter.
I was surprised, once again, there were so few. He often did ten at a time. I brought up the pad of Premium Service receipts.
“Actually, no thank you. Just regular today.”
“Regular dry cleaning?”
This just wasn’t the Dave Mizra I knew. He looked worn out. Maybe it was only the rain, his fine black hair dripping down to narrow his face, but he definitely looked thinner.
“Are you sure?” I asked him. “Not Premium?”
He didn’t answer the question. He just asked, “How much for your regular service?”
“You mean, when I do it? You pay by the pound.” I picked up the shirts, mentally weighing them. “This won’t cost much.”
“Good. Let’s do that.”
“Really
?” It seemed odd that the guy running the most successful business on the block suddenly wanted by-the-pound laundry service instead of Premium Service. “Doesn’t seem like you.”
“Cutting back. You know how it is.”
“But you’re Dave Mizra.”
He laughed, but it didn’t end right. The sound trailed off and he stared at me for a long time, as if he genuinely needed to be reminded who he was. Then, taking me completely by surprise, his eyes welled up and he started to cry.
“Whoa-whoa-whoa, are you okay?”
He shook his head, because (obviously) he wasn’t. He covered his face with both hands.
“You want some water?” I ran to the bathroom on the far side of the dry-cleaning booth and filled a glass from the faucet. “Did something bad happen?”
He didn’t say anything for a while, just dabbed his face. “I have some troubles.”
“You do?” I always thought of Dave Mizra as the cheeriest guy in Evandale.
“My wife,” he said. “In our home, near Algiers. She was in a car accident.”
“Oh, no. Is she okay?”
“She’s fine.”
“Injured?”
He shook his head and spread his arms wide. “Completely unharmed.”
“Wait—so what’s the problem?”
“Because of the other person in the accident. He is an important businessman from our town. It’s a lot of trouble for us. He intends to press charges—even though this accident, it was all his fault. Now my wife is going to court; the papers have been filed; and because of this, she will not be allowed to come until the case is settled. It’s a great delay, and if something goes wrong, she may no longer be able to come at all.” His eyes went glossy again. “It’s not right for a man and wife to be apart so long!” I thought of how often Mr. Rodolfo called this man a faggot. How stupid was that? Obviously, Dave Mizra was crazy about his wife. “The man from the accident, he is asking for a bribe. It’s blackmail.”
To me, the solution was simple. “Pay him off and get it over with. If it’ll get your wife here, just pay the guy.”
He threw up his hands. “How?! ”
Blues for Zoey Page 8