Brooklyn, Burning

by Steve Brezenoff

  Do you remember Jonny always left a ten-foot pole just inside the gate of his building? We grabbed it together and balanced it nearly straight to the sky to tap his window. He threw it open and stuck his head out, bare-chested and laughing with his mouth wide open, happy to see us. He wasn’t alone, because he never is. But he dropped a key anyway.

  Do you remember? I asked, “What about you? Don’t tell me your story if you don’t want to, but tell me your future. Where will you go when the summer is over?”

  You grabbed the key off the pavement and slid it into the doorknob. “It’s ages away, Kid. It’s the rest of our lives from now.” You pushed open the door, and I followed.

  Do you remember that I took the open door from you as you shot up the steps, probably thinking about Jonny and a drink and finding out who he had up there tonight? But I waited until I heard him greet you before I started up, because the rest of our lives didn’t feel very long to me, and I was thinking of you, and Felix, and another nine long months waiting for my heart to shrink again.

  TWENTY-FIVE CENTS

  I wasn’t sure where I was heading, but I thought down to Williamsburg was the place to go. I stopped at the corner at Greenpoint and Manhattan avenues, right next to the steps to the G train, and saw Ace walking toward me with his new girl. Before he could spot me, I ducked into the shallow entrance of the corner store, behind the newspaper racks and displays of fruit salads on ice, next to a pay phone, covered over in stickers and tags and escort ads. It struck me to check my fifth pocket for change, and I found some and dialed my parents’ apartment—my apartment.

  My father never answers the phone.

  “It’s me.” I kept an eye on Ace and his girl as they crossed against the light, at a jog, scowling. Ace’s girl fiddled with the magazines.

  “You didn’t come home last night, did you?” my mom asked. I admitted it. “I can’t do this again. I really can’t.”

  “I know. I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to stay out. But, well, summer’s almost over. Next week I’ll be back in school, and…”

  She let me breathe for a minute. It’s one of the best things about a mom, I guess: even at my age she knows my soul better than anyone, so when I don’t talk for a minute, for five minutes, she lets me breathe.

  “I had to say goodbye to a lot of people,” I finally said. “To one person.”

  Now Mom breathed, and I let her. My patience wasn’t as good as hers, though, so I pressed her. “Mom?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Is everything okay?” I turned my back on the street and Ace as he and his girl walked past and into the store.

  “Yes,” she said. “Who is this one person?”

  “Just someone I met this summer,” I said, then quickly added, “a guitar player.”

  Mom sighed deeply. “Are you in love?”

  “Mom,” I said, or whined.

  “Okay, okay.”

  We let the word “love” sit there on the line for a while. Then the recorded voice of an operator let me know I was out of time.

  “Mom, I’m out of time on this pay phone,” I said. The operator began to count down from five seconds. “I have to hang up.”

  “Okay, sweetheart. Thank you for calling.” Four.

  “Of course,” I said. Three. “I love you, Mom.” Two.

  “I love you.” One.

  Zero. Click.

  Twenty-five cents doesn’t buy much in Brooklyn. But that was a deal.

  …

  What little was left of the morning had slid by quickly. The stores and fast-food joints were open already, the pizza places even had a few slices missing from their lunch pies. I passed three before I finally caved at the fourth, just near the corner of Bedford—my favorite anyway, thanks to Danny. He was working and he asked about you. I told him I hadn’t seen you, not since last night.

  “We’re playing down at Fish’s bar tonight, though,” I said. “Don’t heat it up,” I added quickly before he tossed a room temperature slice into the oven. He obliged. “Thanks. Anyway, Scout will be there tonight for the show. You should come.”

  “I’ll be here till five in the morning, Kid, you know that.” Danny worked all weekend, seemed like.

  “Aw, but you can sneak out for forty minutes. It’s not far.” I handed him two singles I’d earned for mopping up at Fish’s and held out my left hand for my change while I stuffed the tip of my pizza into my mouth with my right.

  “We’ll see,” he said with a smirk. “Take care of each other, Kid.” And I left, grunting a farewell through my food. It was gone within a block, but it was worth it.

  I got moving along Manhattan Avenue again and pulled your pick from my pocket. I squeezed it in my right fist and decided to drop by the comic shop to see Konny.

  I don’t know what made me decide to do that, really. I knew you wouldn’t have been down there; I guess I had half a hope I’d run into you while I walked. It was a long walk, after all, so why not. But I suppose some of me had to reconnect with Konny. I’d hardly seen her this summer, ever since I found you, really. I wondered if she’d take me back—again. Since Jonny’s party—seeing Ace—she’d been on my mind a little.

  I headed under the BQE and stopped halfway under to enjoy the cool, damp shade of the overpass. The McDonald’s called to me, with its siren smell of fries and Mello Yello, but I soldiered on, down Metropolitan to the comic store where Konny had become a fixture. She was behind the counter, leaning on it, playing a GameBoy.

  “Where’d you get that?”

  Konny shrugged. “Someone left it here last week. Never came back for it.”

  “You gonna sell it?” I went over to new indies and started flipping through. I didn’t really know what I was looking at, though. I was never the comic head Konny was.

  “Shit.” She flicked the GameBoy off and tossed it onto the couch behind the counter. “Yeah, I guess I will. I hate it anyway.”

  I started in on the back issues, and Konny came up next to me. “So, what are you doing here?”

  I shrugged. “Just wanted to say hi. I haven’t seen you in a while.” Konny looked at me sideways then dropped onto the couch and flicked the GameBoy back on.

  “I can’t stop with this thing.” It started beeping away.

  “So, Fish is letting us play a show at her bar tonight,” I said. I pulled an old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from its plastic and started flipping through it.

  “Fuck,” Konny said. “Screw this thing.” She slammed the GameBoy down onto the couch beside her. “How is she doing that? I thought she wouldn’t let you play as long as you’re underage.”

  “Sixteen-and-over night tonight,” I said. I slipped the comic back into its plastic, but Konny jumped up and snatched it away to do it properly. “I mean, if I can find Scout.”

  Konny laughed and flipped through the back issues to find the comic’s rightful spot.

  “What?” I said. “Why are you laughing?”

  She shook her head and went back to the couch, grabbing up a copy of Wizard from the counter. “Now I know why you’re here.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Two possibilities,” Konny said, not looking up from her magazine. “One, you don’t know where Scout is, and you’re hoping I do.”

  “Please,” I said. “Why would Scout come to a comic shop?”

  “Or two,” Konny went on, “you’re afraid Scout’s not coming back, and now you’re warming up to me again.”

  “Fuck you, Konny.”

  “Ha!” she said. “Number two it is, just like last summer.”

  “It isn’t like that,” I insisted. “I just … I miss you.”

  “Of course you do.”

  Konny’s crooked smile stretched just a little, and I knew it was fake—put on to protect her and hurt me. My eyes burned a little, thinking about me and Konny and of me and Felix, and I strode over to the spinning rack of Archies and Betty & Veronicas before I started crying, and I grabbed hold of it,
then pulled it down.

  “Are you crazy?” she shrieked at me, jumping up, and yeah, of course I was, because here I was, a year older, and I’d done it again: I’d fallen in love and set myself up to collapse.

  I ignored her, though, and walked through the wide-open door of the shop.

  At the corner I heard her screaming behind me: “Kid, wait. Come back!”

  But I didn’t.

  THE LOVEBIRDS OF NORTH BROOKLYN

  Williamsburg was madness. I guess it always is, but I couldn’t handle it—I pulled your guitar pick out of my pocket again and fingered it like a stress stone. The bars along Bedford were already filling up with hipsters while brunch was still being fired for the haute set down the street. A guerrilla garden in a vacant lot near North 5th was swaying gently, and I ran my hand across its fence as I entered the full fray closer to North 7th. Strollers cruised that part of Bedford, sometimes two or three wide, and I took refuge in the gutter, or balanced on the curb—arms out, refusing to act my age—as I walked. But I got bumped once—hard—before I’d even hit the next corner and that was enough. I ducked into the video store, thinking you might be hanging around, sitting on the stool like you do, watching whatever gore or eighties flick they had on the display TVs. It was the only place I could really think to find you. And I thought I knew you so well.

  I hated going in there without you. I don’t know a thing about film, and the lights are always so low, and there are cases everywhere. Every time I walk in, while my eyes adjust and I feel like I might fall over, I know everyone already inside is watching me, and it’s like my first time.

  No. Not the first time. The first time was bliss. You led me in and had my hand the whole time, as I met Lill and watched the little TV over the counter with you. You walked me through the selection—by director, because that’s how real film people think about film—telling me your favorites (it’s not a strong enough word, I know), and as the dim light revealed more and more in your face, I began to see the sparkle in your eyes as you spoke. I began to see where your eyes were going when they were bright like that, because that day, you told me.

  But this morning, you weren’t there to lead me. I stood just inside the door until I felt steady, then went up to the counter, letting my finger slide over the display on my left to make sure nothing moved. The glass of the counter was cold. I laid one hand flat on it as the boom of a timpani came out of the TV hanging overhead. With my other hand, I squeezed your guitar pick, and on the TV screen a girl with dark hair and eyes like the moon was in the backseat of a car. Rain flowed over the window as she watched another girl running through woods.

  “Suspiria.” It was Lill. She was sitting on the high stool in the corner. “It’s got everything. Brilliant soundtrack. Use of color that will blow your mind.” She leaned down a bit and narrowed her eyes at me. “Witches.”

  I drummed my fingers on the counter and watched the screen, feigned interest for a second. “Has Scout been in this morning?”

  “Sorry, Kid,” Lill said. She slid a piece of red licorice between her lips, then bit off an inch or so. “Anything important?”

  I kept my eyes on the screen. Lill is beautiful and I don’t like to look at her for too long, especially while she chews. You know—she’s deadly, or something. “We have a gig tonight,” I said. “Over at Fish’s place.”

  “On Franklin?” Lill said. I nodded. “Cool. Do you have any flyers for me to give out?”

  I shook my head. “It was really last-minute. But listen, tell Scout I was here, okay?” I found my way to the door as Lill said, “Yup.”

  With one hand on the door, I turned back and watched Lill for a moment, the lights of that movie flickering over her face. Her lips hung just a fraction of an inch apart, and her dark eyes widened as a scream came from the TV. She smirked a little and, without taking her eyes off the screen, said, “What’s on your mind, Kid?”

  I let go of the door and took a few steps back toward the counter. She held out a licorice whip for me and I took it. After a small bite, I said, “You’ve spent a little time with Scout, right?”

  Lill nodded, still without facing me. On the T V, a blind man walked through an empty European-looking plaza at night. Lill was right: the music was haunting.

  “You two have watched a lot of movies together in here, right?”

  Lill nodded again, slowly. “Sure, what else?” she said.

  “I know you don’t know me very well,” I said, running a finger along the aluminum trim of the glass countertop. “But does Scout … love me?”

  Lill finally looked at me. She ignored the screen as the blind man’s guide dog suddenly turned on him, tearing into his throat, and she looked at me and laughed, shaking her head.

  “It’s not funny,” I snapped and turned away from Lill’s laughing dimples and pointing chin. I blinked hard and forced my eyes to stay on the movie.

  She lunged at me and set her fingernails into my upper arm. “Of course it’s funny, sweetheart,” she said. “Because the love between you two is so obvious it crackles.”

  I glared at her so she’d go on.

  “You two are the lovebirds of north Brooklyn.” She pulled a fresh licorice from the cellophane bag in front of her and took a bite, again shaking her head, then looked back at the screen.

  …

  The sun was dropping fast when I left the video store. I blinked and shaded my eyes as I started west from Bedford, but too late. A stocky guy knocked into me and I backed against a tree. He didn’t apologize; he hardly looked at me. He just kept talking into his cell phone, ignoring even his girlfriend, covered in boutique and Clinique and not at all unique. I watched them stop in front of a Japanese restaurant, and I slid down the trunk, let myself sit.

  I pulled my knees up and folded my arms over them, and I put down my head. I wasn’t crying, but I admit I wanted to. Brooklyn was my home, and I loved it—I always had—but my heart had grown, and filling it now was Brooklyn and you. With summer ending, you could be gone—could have been already—and with my heart this big, Brooklyn didn’t stand a chance of filling it up without you. I squeezed the pick in my hand tightly, like I could hold on to you.

  I lifted my head and leaned on a car parked at the curb to get back to my feet. It was a tiny sports car—forest green. I didn’t know if it was the same one I’d seen at the warehouse. It probably wasn’t. But I wanted to find nothing but you, and instead I remembered the one person who was your opposite. If I couldn’t find you by will alone—by walking from Greenpoint Avenue to Rockaway Beach—I could still do something that would make it possible to move on, to finally give myself to you.

  LITTLE SPORTY THING

  “Detective Blank,” I said as I ran into the station. Behind the high booking desk, a few uniformed cops stopped their conversation to look at me. Behind them, Detective Blank said something quietly into his cell phone, his eyes on me, then slid the phone into his pocket.

  “Ms. Weinberg is at your apartment right now,” he said. “That was her on the phone.”

  “I didn’t do it,” I said, grabbing hold of your hand. “I didn’t burn down the warehouse, and I can prove it.”

  “Yes, you did,” he replied, looking away. He found a sheet of paper on the desk and went on as he read it. “Konstantyna Zawadzki, alibi the first. She remembers the night in question—barely, as she was as drunk as you were—but can’t be sure of what time the two of you parted ways at McCarren Park, if that is indeed where you parted ways; she wasn’t sure.”

  He put the paper down and found another one in the folder lying open on the desk. “And Anthony Esposito—who you called Ace.”

  “I didn’t know his real name,” I said. “Not until just now.”

  “Well, he was a little slow to tell me anything,” the detective went on. “But he wouldn’t say for certain that you were even with Zawadzki—”

  “Konny”

  “—that night. Your alibi is still wide open, Kid. As far as I’m concerned,
you’re our best shot at wrapping this up. It’s not like you’re going to jail, Kid. Why the sudden appeal for your innocence?”

  I shook my head to clear it, to clear the air of the nonsense the detective had filled it with. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “None of that matters. Because there’s a lot I haven’t told you: I know who did it.”

  He put both hands on the desk and looked down at me, eyebrows up, waiting.

  “Look,” I said quickly, glancing at my ragged wet shoes and jamming my hands into my pockets. “I don’t know for sure who actually lit the match. But I do know who’s responsible.”

  Blank looked at the other well-dressed cop, then back at me. “Why don’t you just tell us what the hell you’re talking about.”

  So I did. I told them all about that little meeting Felix and I had with waterfront development, with the little fat toddler in the ugly expensive clothes, and I told them about that money Felix had been in love with.

  “That was last summer?” Blank asked, and I nodded. “Why did the warehouse go down in May, then, almost a year later?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He obviously put the assignment on every dreg he could find: me, Felix, the CPM—”

  Blank’s face went a little softer when I mentioned Felix’s name, but he cut me off at CPM.

  “CPM?”

  “Sorry,” I said, hurrying along and stumbling on my tongue a little. “Crazy Polish Man. He lived in the warehouse, and this real-estate guy definitely approached him too.”

  “How do you know?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him and let my thumb roll over the wheel of the lighter in my pocket—even if I wasn’t going to smoke, that felt nice. “I don’t think I want to get anyone else in trouble,” I said. “Just the real-estate guy. He’s responsible.”

  “Kid, we’ll decide what matters and who’s responsible,” Blank said, “and who to arrest on this, okay? What you’re saying makes a lot of sense, and we’re going to follow every lead we get. But if you’re leaving anything out, it’s in your best interest to tell us what.”