by Rob Hart
The bathroom was small and we were standing close and I could smell you. Cigarettes and lavender. You looked away from me, readjusted your purse on your shoulder and asked, What?
Quinn is a friend, I said.
I know.
It would be weird. Do you know what I mean?
What are you trying to say?
Promise me it won’t turn into a thing.
The muscles in your face went slack. You asked, Promise you?
It would just be a weird thing.
You nodded your head, slowly, like some long fought-for realization had dawned on you. And you left me standing in the bathroom. I locked the door and sat on the edge of the toilet and stared at the wall, studying the collage of band stickers, holding my guts in place. I sat there until Lunette left the back room and saw me and thought I was actually using the toilet and she freaked out and ran back inside. Then I sat there a little longer.
After I left Apocalypse that night, I stumbled the five miles north to Quinn’s apartment. I stood across the street and wanted more than anything to knock on his door and see if you were in there.
Quinn and I grew up on the same block. He was taken by the gilded edges of the Upper West Side while I heard my siren song in the punk rock clubs on the Lower East Side.
Some friendships fade because it’s better if they do.
By that point, where the three of us intersected, me and him had nothing in common. Nothing now, except you.
The doorman at Quinn’s apartment building is way too trustworthy. He doesn’t know my name but I’ve been here a couple of times for parties and he recognizes me a little bit. It’s on the tip of his brain, and when I toss out Quinn’s name, he slaps his forehead and nods. We chat for a couple of minutes, enough to make him think my intentions are pure, and he lets me inside. Which makes me think that he’s not actually a very good doorman. I certainly wouldn’t trust me.
There’s a small fountain in the middle of the marble lobby. It gurgles over the elevator music streaming through hidden speakers. The air is clean and cool, like it’s coming off the ocean. There’s a security guard at the desk, but he doesn’t bother me. If I got past the doorman I must be cool.
When I get to Quinn’s floor, I knock on the door but no one answers. I would call him but I don’t have his number and I can’t ask Bombay, because he’ll assume I’m going to murder him. I check under the mat and find a spare key. Another example of poor key management. Though, Quinn has a habit of losing his belongings when he’s been drinking, so it makes sense, a little. And it’s not like theft is a problem in a building like this.
The apartment hasn’t changed much since I was here last for his birthday party, when I stayed for ten minutes and left without saying goodbye.
Everything is pristine and white, futuristic edges that make me feel like I’m on a sci-fi movie set. A green swath of Central Park stretches out from the bottom of the floor-to-ceiling windows. The living room is sunken into the black hardwood floor. There’s a small fireplace in the corner that’s built for show, not warmth.
I feel like I’m going to ruin everything I touch, which makes me want to touch everything. The least inviting surface is the sofa, so I plop down, put my feet up, and wait. I find a remote control on the glass coffee table and fiddle with it until a flat screen television lowers from the ceiling, making the whole apartment that much more fucking absurd. There’s nothing on television worth watching. After clicking through a few hundred channels, most of them infomercials and cable news, I turn it off and put my hands behind my head. Focus on my breathing.
A key scraping in the lock jostles me from the edge of sleep.
Quinn comes in and crosses the apartment. His hairline is starting to recede, the only sign he’s getting older. His tie is undone, hanging off a crisp white shirt, and he looks like he’s been at it for a couple of days. It’s not until he’s at the bedroom door that he sees me sitting on the couch, and he does a very exaggerated double take.
“Ash,” he says, tossing down his briefcase. “How did you get in?”
“I am very clever.”
He rests against the wall, like he needs it to hold him up. “Man, give me a second. I’ve been stuck at work since this morning.”
“It’s only three.”
“It’s Saturday.”
“Ah. Well then.”
Ten minutes later he comes back into the living room, wearing a hoodie, a tank top, and basketball shorts. His dark hair is freshly spiked, and he smells like a French hooker. He sits on a chair across from me, leans forward and puts his elbows on his knees. I stay where I am, sunken into the couch. He doesn’t offer me his hand. I don’t offer him mine. This sets a bad tone.
“So,” he says. “To what do I owe the honor of you breaking into my apartment?”
“I didn’t break anything.”
“Don’t play games with me. Why are you here?”
“You know why.”
He looks away from me. “Chell.”
“Little odd, you being at work. She died two days ago. And considering you were headed to the altar, I would have assumed you’d be a bit more broken up.”
He drops his head. “You heard?”
“That I did.”
He rubs his face hard, to hide tears or produce them, I can’t really tell. “First, with the way things are at work right now, if I don’t show up, I lose my job. I don’t have a choice. We can’t all make our own hours.”
“You have a life to maintain. But if she was your fiancée, you’d figure they’d give you some time off.”
Quinn says something under his breath. I ask him to repeat it.
“She didn’t say yes.” As he’s finishing the sentence he jumps off the chair and heads into the kitchen. Over his shoulder he asks, “Beer?”
I decline. He reappears with a freshly-popped Heineken. I’m glad I didn’t take him up on his offer. That’s a beer I’ll never understand. He returns to his seat, sitting with his back a little more straight. He takes a sip, and he doesn’t look at me as he talks. “I saw Tommy and told him she said yes. I guess that’s how you heard. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You shouldn’t have proposed to her.”
“Are we still on this? I loved her Ash. I’m sorry, but I did.”
“But you knew how I felt about her. You broke all kinds of codes when you went and tried to get her away from me.”
“If she were alive she’d be disgusted to hear you say that.”
“She’d be even more disgusted to find out you’re going around playing the widower-to-be.”
Quinn takes a long gulp of beer, the kind of gulp when you’re looking for something to say. When he’s done, he places the mostly-empty bottle on the coffee table and holds it for second, before letting go and looking up at me. “Fine. So what? Why are you here?”
“Where were you the night she died?”
As I’m saying this he’s about to pick up the bottle, then he stops and slams it on the table. A little fountain of beer shoots out of the top. “If you’re going to ask me questions like that you can get the fuck out of here.”
“Or what?”
“I’ll call the police.”
“Just like you, not man enough to stand up for yourself. Go ahead and call them. Ask for Detective Medina, I’m sure he’ll be happy to see me.”
“Get out.”
“She knew she was being followed. Did she call you?”
“When?”
“The night she died. Did she call you?”
He pauses. “No.”
“She called me. You couldn’t protect her, and she knew that.”
“It’s because you live nearby.”
“Tell yourself that.”
“Well, two nights before she died she was in my bed. Rationalize that.”
My hands are shaking so hard I can hardly hold them back. He sees this and says, “I think you should go. Neither of us is in the right frame of mind to be having this conve
rsation.”
I get up and ask, “What did she say to you, when she said no?”
“Chell is dead, Ash. Can’t we just let this go?”
I stand up. He gets up too. We stare at each other, eyes level, close enough I can see his nostrils flaring as he breathes. We search for things we used to know about each other, finding nothing.
“I know she’s dead,” I tell him. “But you’re still an asshole.”
He fumes in his beautiful apartment and I walk outside and let my feet carry me through unfamiliar blocks, past people walking purebred dogs and yelling into cell phones and looking at me like I’m going to mug them. Which is probably my fault for not putting on clean clothes.
I consider the subway but settle on looping around to First Avenue. I head south. I need to think, and that means I need to walk. I turn on the autopilot, weave through the pockets of people on the sidewalk, dash across the street to beat the cabs bearing down on intersections. Try to think about anything other than Chell and Quinn together, which is exceedingly difficult. The image forces itself into my head like it’s got a grudge.
As I get closer to Times Square, the crowds of tourists get thicker. I keep getting stuck behind people who aren’t walking fast enough or who stop in their tracks in the middle of the street to consult maps or take photos. I come to regret my decision to walk.
Worse is, I want to lash out at them. Tell them to move, to walk quicker, to get the fuck out of the way, to treat the sidewalks like a highway, where rules about constant speeds and merges apply.
I’m shaking. I duck into a doorway and light a cigarette, close my eyes.
Deep breath.
I don’t think Quinn could have killed Chell. He would have been upset when she said no. Anyone would be. But he doesn’t own a car, so he’d have to plan to get one. Not enough time to get his hands on one. I don’t think so, at least. Anyway, Quinn needs three drinks in him before he’ll take a side in an argument.
He’s not a killer. As much as I’d like him to be, so I can put a beating on him.
I take out the sheet of paper Bombay gave me with the website’s phone number and consider it, just to give me something to do with my hands that’s not smoking or hitting, but figure it might be best to solve the problem of my apartment first. I was able to close the door just right so it didn’t look broken, but it certainly wasn’t going to lock.
If I could get Miss Hudson to pay a visit to Aziz I could probably get him off my back.
I explain the situation with my landlord to Snow White. She listens silently, sucking on a Newport. I ask her to play pretend and sign some paperwork. I never knew the lady who lived there before me, but I’m banking on Aziz not remembering what she looked like, or not caring much.
Snow White asks, “How much?”
“What do you mean, how much? Can’t you just do me a solid on this one?”
“Look cutie, that’s time I’m not working. This is my office. You ask me to leave my office, I’m going to lose on sales. You have to compensate me for my time. It’s simple economics.”
This is why you should never assume your drug dealer is your friend.
I ask the ATM in the bodega across the street for one hundred dollars. It spits out five twenties. I walk back and hand them to her. She gives me back two. I write down all the information she needs, where to go, the name to sign. I tell her to wear a scarf and sunglasses, say she’s moving down to Florida for the winter because the cold is too hard on her, and she’ll be back by summer. That’ll give me time to figure things out.
Snow White takes it and doesn’t ask any questions, she just stuffs the paper into her bra, flashing a brown areola to the whole street as she does it.
Chanticleer looks sad in the daylight. So quiet. No one inside but a bartender, and he barely looks at me as I make my way toward the back.
Ginny’s private room is stripped down to the studs. She’s standing in the center of the room wearing a bright pink pantsuit, a brunette wig tied into a tight ponytail at the back of her head. She’s barefoot, dangling a pair of tortoise-shell glasses from her left hand. On the opposite side of the room is a young queen in a blonde wig, a white blouse and a black pencil skirt, also barefoot. The queen holds up swatches of green against the bare stone walls.
Ginny puts her finger up as I walk in. “Get the purples, darling. I’m thinking less like a plum and more like a bruise. Take your time though. Momma has a meeting.”
The ingénue disappears and Ginny turns to me. She shakes her head at me like I’m a child who wet the bed. I take the hat off and hang it from a nail sticking out of the brick, and smooth out the indentation it left in my hair. It’s warm, so I take off my jacket too, hang it up next to the hat. Ginny points at the bandage on my arm. “I see you’ve been busy.”
“I made a new friend. But I think I’ll wait three days to call. I don’t want to seem too eager.”
“You’re punchy today.”
“Sleep deprivation and blood loss.”
Ginny pulls two folding chairs out of the corner and hands me one. We sit in the circle of light cast by the bulb hanging from the ceiling on a frayed wire.
She leans forward, interested. I don’t know if she knows why I’m here. She likes to play head games, fine. I’ll wait and let her start the conversation. Let her be uncomfortable.
Except she doesn’t take the bait.
After she realizes what I’m doing, she sits back and smokes on her cigarette, occasionally bringing a curled hand up to her face to check her nails.
I give up, ask, “Ginny?”
“Yes, darling.”
“Why did you lie to me when I was here?”
Her eyes go wide and she presses her spread fingers to her chest. “What reason would I have to lie to you?”
“Maybe a good one. But when I asked if you had seen Chell around, you neglected to mention you had brunch with her the day she died.”
For the first time since I have known Ginny Tonic, there is a split-second, a tiny fraction of an instant, that she doesn’t have a comeback. This is what it’s like to watch someone drown.
“Well,” she says, drawing out the word. “It didn’t seem relevant.”
“I think it’s pretty damn relevant that she was spying on the hipster community in Brooklyn.”
She narrows her eyes and breathes out slowly through her nose. “How did you know that?”
“There’s a reason you keep me around. Things like this.”
Ginny sighs. “I’m impressed.”
“I’m not, because I thought better of you.”
We sit there in silence. Me staring at Ginny. Ginny staring off at the wall. Neither of us speaks because neither of us wants to.
Finally, in a quiet voice, Ginny says, “There’s a war coming.”
“Don’t be so fucking dramatic.”
She swings her head around, then gets up and paces the room as she lights a cigarette. “You know how the districts work, right? And the power structure?”
“I know enough.”
“Good.” Ginny says, the words spilling out. “So the most powerful districts had always been in Manhattan, and the outer boroughs barely even registered, but all of a sudden Brooklyn is on the map. Like it actually matters or something. The districts out there are amassing power. We believe they’re going to push their way into Manhattan.”
“Like a turf war?”
She sits down in the chair and slows herself. “They have numbers. The Manhattan districts are fractured. So now I’m trying to build coalitions.” She pauses. “And meanwhile I had Chell working her way into the inner circle of the guy who runs Bushwick and Williamsburg.”
“What’s his name?”
“People call him The Hipster King.”
“Fucking wow. And what did you have Chell doing?”
“She was hanging around, listening, letting me know what she heard.”
“So you just sent her out like that, unprotected?”
�
�They’re a bunch of hipster brats. The most dangerous thing they could do was criticize her taste in music.”
I slide my chair toward Ginny. “Then why are you afraid of them?”
Her eyes frost over. “Numbers count. And they have more.”
She gets up and paces again but doesn’t say anything. I ask, “Any idea where The Hipster King hangs out?”
“There’s a bar in Bushwick. It’s called Slaughterhouse Six.”
Convenient. “So the king is tied into this game she was working for?”
Ginny pauses and smiles. Impressed, and not entirely thrilled to be showing it. “Very good. Very, very good. You’re right. This is exactly why I keep you around.”
My cell phone buzzes. I can’t believe I’m getting a signal down here. Text from a blocked number: It didn’t work.
“Time to go,” I tell Ginny.
She says, “Ash, like I said, down-low.”
“I practically invented the term.”
Ginny doesn’t laugh.
Snow White hands me a crumpled twenty. “Partial refund. Didn’t you know this lady was black?”
I never met Miss Hudson. When I got into the apartment there was some barren, dusty furniture. No photos.
Seems I’m not as clever as I like to think.
And thus ends my reign on Tenth and First. Aziz’s parting message to Snow White was that he would have an ad for the apartment posted within ten minutes. The place would probably be gone ten minutes after that.
There’s a very good chance I could get home and my things could be at the curb. I can’t find any words and Snow White has something caught in her throat, so we shuffle our feet, looking at everything else but each other, like a solution is going to magically drop from the sky.
Shaking her head, she says, “I hope this doesn’t mean I’m losing my best customer.”
“C’mon. I never bought volume.”
“You’re the only person who ever asks about my grandkids.”
For a very brief moment, I see her for who she is: An old lady no one would care about if she wasn’t running the drug game on this block. I imagine her apartment is filled with afghans and cats, an image that stands in stark contrast to the time she had a rival dealer tuned up for slinging across the street.