“McKay,” I said, “I’ve seen this movie before. Twice before. I’m here because I wanted to be alone with you. Without the Dolphin. To be together. Alone.” He was silent. “Together,” I said.
“Honey, what you want?” said McKay.
“Take me home,” I said.
He started the car, he stepped on the gas. The Chevy roared through the movie parking lot, its chrome shone moonlight, the speaker was left on the cement. We sped down the Avenue, we left rubber in the driveway of a White Castle, we came to a stop in the alleyway where no neon could reach. The short-order cook, who was ready to leave the grill at any hope of a fight, stood in the alley waiting for action. Instead he got us. He stared at the Chevy’s headlights. McKay switched them off and glared at the cook. The cook, knowing McKay’s name, knowing the Orphans’ reputation, pulled his white hat farther down over his head and slunk back into the kitchen door of the Castle.
“You know,” said McKay. “You know what I’m doing.”
“I know what you’re doing.”
We were silent.
“What the hell are you doing?” I said.
“Get in the back seat,” McKay answered.
I climbed into the back as McKay opened the Chevy door. Snow was in the midnight. McKay was beside me once more. Outside in the parking lot waitresses answered the calls of bright headlights with hamburgers wrapped in plastic-coated paper. Several Orphans loitered in the warmth of the Castle drinking coffee, talking and combing their hair.
“Girl,” McKay said to me, “we got to talk. I can’t lie to you.”
A tap at our window and through the fog I could see the Dolphin standing there.
“Don’t turn around,” I said to McKay. “Stay with me,” I said. McKay turned to the glass and saw the colors of the Dolphin’s arms, the tattoos shimmering at the wrist and throat. McKay rolled down the window. “Why?” I said and the word was lost in cold air.
“My man,” the Dolphin said, and I stared blackly at him as he leaned his head into McKay’s window. I did not have to ask how the Dolphin had found us. Starry had said “The Dolphin knows all,” and I knew there was no escape from him.
“I could be holding in less than a half hour if I could get a ride into the city,” the Dolphin said.
Manhattan once more. The Dolphin’s hold on McKay once more. “Then get one,” I said.
The Dolphin didn’t turn his sunglassed eyes my way. “Shut up,” he said and continued staring at McKay.
“I’d like something to drink,” I said.
“You’re not holding now? You hung me up today and now you don’t even have any shit? Don’t you know I’m carrying my last hit?” McKay whispered to the Dolphin. And the red of a crown lapped at the Dolphin’s knuckles, the tail of a peacock wisped at his throat.
“I’d like to be alone with you,” I said to McKay. We held our territories in the back seat and watched the Dolphin stick his arm inside the Chevy and turn its wheel with his smallest finger.
“Dolphin,” I said, “why don’t you leave us alone.”
The Dolphin ignored my words. “Leave McKay alone,” I said. I moved deeper into my corner of the Chevy, as far away from the Dolphin as I could.
“If she’s so stupid,” the Dolphin said, his black-gloved hand turning the car wheel slowly, the blue denim jacket sleeve framing the paintings on his hand. “If she’s so stupid that she don’t know what’s happening, she don’t deserve to know.”
“Give me a few minutes,” McKay whispered to the Dolphin.
“You’ve had enough time,” the Dolphin said.
McKay nodded. “Give me a minute.”
“Tell her, man,” the Dolphin said and he turned his face to me. Did our eyes meet through his dark glasses? I could not tell, for the Dolphin had turned his head to McKay and he nodded. “Later.” The Dolphin walked slowly away from the Chevy and the window of the car was left open.
“You don’t owe me anything. You don’t have to tell me anything,” I lied.
McKay reached out his hand to me. “I can’t stop,” he said. “I have to give him the ride.”
I answered “Go” with eyes that Nancy Sinatra would never have given to Peter Fonda.
“It’s not the Dolphin,” said McKay. “He’s the one who does me favors. He’s going uptown for me.”
Favors like the favors the Dolphin must do for Starry when she held ten dollars in her hand. Tonight’s sodas and sickness. “Why do you have to go?” I said.
“What do you want from me?” He lit a cigarette and my boot crushed an ancient beer can. I reached over McKay and into the front seat to switch on the headlights and call the eye of a waitress. “Goddamn,” McKay said as he also jumped forward to turn off the glare, the call. I slid back to my side of the back seat. As he half stood, half crouched with one leg thrown over the front seat, I told McKay I wanted a soda, a pizza, a song, a cigarette, anything so that McKay would not have to tell me. Outside the Dolphin’s stare was in our direction and I could see his heel pound the asphalt.
McKay tore off his leather jacket, the jacket I thought he would never remove, never forget. He shoved it onto the floor and slammed his body into the back seat. He sat in T-shirt and goggles. “Why can’t you ever shut up?” he said. I only knew that I couldn’t. I did not want to ask the questions, but my words took control and I had no choice. Now that I had the right to scribble McKay’s name on endless matchbook covers, on endless pages of yellow paper, now that I had his name, I found I could not do as he asked. He wanted a wordless drive into Manhattan with the Dolphin, and me waiting in the White Castle or on a stool at Monty’s counter. But I could not, I would not be silent.
“Open the door, McKay,” I said, “but I won’t leave unless we talk. You owe me nothing, you don’t belong to me, I know. But I won’t leave.”
He fumbled at his waist, undid the gold belt buckle. “Why not wait until we’re alone without the Dolphin waiting?” I said. He tied the belt around his arm—too late for me to jump out the window in silence, too late for me to stop wanting to know.
“McKay,” I said. A Buick full of girls cruised by us, their heads turned, necks craned to see McKay’s car. Waitresses answered light calls and the Orphans waited in the winter night. “Say something to me,” I whispered.
I kicked the car seat with my heel, I stepped on black leather crumpled on the floor. McKay reached under the car seat and pulled out a pale envelope and left it on the seat, close to my touch. He pulled the belt tight as iron around his arm, the veins pale sea-blue. Our eyes. I looked into the eyes and they were mine, black and fire. McKay held the tail of the belt out to me to grasp in silence, and through the Chevy’s open window cold night air blew through me like white horses.
JULY
FIVE
THE PRICE OF ADMISSION
1
Time flies; it also walks, crawls, occasionally it does the stroll. Like mood, time is made of air. Like mood, time firms and then disappears. So very quick; so very slow. Birth, death, revelation, orgasm, accident, trauma, the intake of one breath. Would you have sentences to try to replace hours, moons, menstrual periods, sleepless nights? Time is of air, and has little to do with words and minutes.
Some things seem to change. Jose applied for the New York City Police Department. Failing to meet height requirements, he bought a pair of Frye boots, was accepted into the training program, and was welcomed by McKay as a cop in the pocket. Starry was seen less and less on the Avenue—although some of the Orphans claimed to have sighted her in several unknown cars; she moved from Toyotas to Cadillacs with ease—and was now the Number One Property in name only. The weather grew warmer; soon it was July, and the weather was hot.
And some things seem not to change. The Dolphin never called me by name, never looked into my eye, or entered McKay’s apartment when I was present. In time I forgot him, and remembered the colors of his tattoos only in certain dreams at night. I could not, could never sleep at night until I heard McKay�
�s key turn in the lock, until I felt him close beside me. Each time he was away from me I feared I would lose him, and so during the nights I held McKay and waited until I heard his breathing deepen. Only then could I finally close my eyes and sleep. And the same conversation between us, over and over again, recurring like clockwork. From the first time I found him on the tile floor of the bathroom, fallen from his seat on the rim of the bathtub with the belt still around his arm and the spoon and the needle resting near him on the tile, we spoke the same words.
“Again?” I would say.
“Don’t give me jive,” he would answer.
“Go ahead, kill yourself,” I would advise.
“I’m cool, darling,” he would say. “If I even think I’m hooked, I’m gonna quit it. Trust me, darling,” he would whisper.
“Again?” I would say.
The heat seemed to burn away the repetition of our dialogue. The eyes that could never be perceived by any sequential time were so dark they could melt the second hand off any clock. Time passed; it was easily erased with the blink of one eye. It was July, and the weather was hotter. The Chevy was fixed up for racing and we moved into summer.
When McKay mailed the twenty-five-dollar application fee to the track out on the Island, I planned to use the race as an excuse to get away from the Avenue for a weekend. I walked down the Avenue carrying a bag of groceries, and I noticed that any plant, any weed, that might have grown between the cracks of the sidewalk had begun to wilt. For weeks the radio had promised that the heat wave would end, but we all knew this was not true. The radio itself admitted the lie with its tired voice, with percents, ratios, and the promise of a cold front.
New York was dying of the heat; and I planned to get us away from it all.
“Darling,” said McKay as I walked into the apartment with a brown grocery bag full of sodas and beer, “the people gonna meet us at the track.”
I did not want “the people,” the Orphans, to follow McKay as always. I placed the bag on the wooden table. I unhooked a soda from its plastic harness and ran the cold can along my neck. The windows were open, and soot covered the windowsills. McKay sat in a chair by the window watching me, cloaked in black leather even in the heat of July. I tossed the metal ring of the soda can on the table. “Fuck you,” I said.
McKay smiled. I removed my July-damp clothes and wrapped a thin bathrobe around myself. McKay stared lazily as I undressed. “What do you want?” said McKay.
Did that matter? What I wanted was McKay, but even when he was with me, he wasn’t with me. The only time I did not fear McKay leaving me was while he slept, and even then I stole touches and glances to ward off heart attacks and comas. Even then there were dreams.
McKay smiled. “The Orphans cannot live without me. How can I deprive them of the right to see the Chevy beat out every other car on the track?”
“Do what you want,” I said, and I began to pack a small suitcase.
“Do what I want,” said McKay. “I have obligations,” he said, and he pointed to a six-pack of beer. I threw a can of Budweiser across the room and McKay nodded. “What service,” he sneered.
He drank the beer, watching me for a while. Then he walked into the toilet, locking the door behind him. Whenever the lock of the bathroom door was turned I ceased to think, I ceased to feel, I stared into air and tried not to count seconds. I lived again only when I heard the doorknob move, only when McKay walked out of the locked room with his eyes heavy and quiet and dark.
McKay sat again in the chair and his head nodded on his shoulder. When I clicked the suitcase shut and threw it on the wooden floor he turned to stare at me.
“And another thing,” he said and his words were slurred and easy. I walked into the bathroom to run the shower. McKay’s works, the needle and the envelope, still lay on the porcelain of the toothbrush holder. “I’m talking to you,” called McKay. “And I’m saying that you’re spending too much time with Starry. Hear me now? I want you to quit that.”
Although I had never told McKay what I knew about Starry—the stories of where she went in those shiny Cadillacs, or how much heroin she was using daily—she was not fooling McKay. Maybe some of the other Orphans, but not McKay. He knew the look, the whisper, the nod. I shut the door of the bathroom; the mirror began to cloud, steam rose, and I threw my bathrobe onto the floor. McKay opened the door. He stood in the doorway in leather and steam.
“I know what she is,” said McKay.
“What is she?” I said. I thought of nights alone without Starry to call on the telephone while I waited for the hours to pass, while I waited for McKay, who was out on the Avenue with the Orphans, with the Dolphin.
“A whore,” said McKay. “And I don’t want you with no whore.”
“Those are nice words,” I said, “about the Number One Property of your people.”
“Not for long,” said McKay. “She won’t be Number One for much longer.”
Her knuckles turning white as she grasped the bottle of tequila on the Night of the Wolf; as she waited for the Orphans’ return. Starry belonged to the Orphans. And did McKay want me alone now, without even Starry’s voice? Sitting alone with my fear of needles; alone in the darkened apartment with no number in my telephone book?
McKay closed the door of the bathroom. “I know she’s a junkie,” he said.
“You should talk,” I said, and although the room was small and closed, and filled with steam, my skin felt unusually cold.
“Don’t say that,” he said quietly.
“All right,” I whispered.
“Don’t say that,” he said, and McKay opened the door and grabbed the suitcase from the floor.
I shut off the shower, threw on some clothes, and tried to catch up to him as he walked down the stairs and out to the street where the Chevy waited. I ran.
“All right,” I said.
McKay walked by the greeting of the auto repair shop mechanic, whom he regularly supplied with stolen goods, and slid into the Chevy. He started the engine. There was no doubt McKay would leave without me, so I opened the door, and we sat silently as the engine droned and the summer heat surrounded us.
“Maybe I get high sometimes,” McKay said. “There’s a difference between that and Starry dragging the Orphans’ name in the dirt. There’s a difference between getting high and fucking for a fix.”
McKay steered the Chevy toward the highway which would lead to the end of the Island and to the track. “I won’t see her as much,” I said.
“You won’t see her at all,” said McKay.
It was not such an unreasonable demand. I had not seen Starry as much as McKay imagined. She was not often on the Avenue anymore. And although Starry never was absent from an official meeting of the Property, her time was spent in the city, hassling, hustling, searching for money and then spending it on packages of white powder. Lately we had not seen each other at all, but it was true, our voices met nightly through the telephone wires.
“Whatever you say,” I told him, and McKay gave me his nod, and his smile once more.
Miles later McKay registered the Chevy. As he spoke with other drivers and mechanics, and they admired the sheen of the car, I sat in the empty stadium in the heat of late afternoon. Although the track was not far from the ocean, no wind rose, and the sawdust that coated the earth of the track was still. I watched McKay with the eyes of a stranger: the dark eyes, the easy walk, the motorcycle goggles, the leather, and the smile. It was still McKay. He was McKay, all right.
The other Orphans began to arrive; with leather and laughter they encircled the Chevy. Martin the Marine leaned over the Chevy’s open hood, as. Danny the Sweet danced before the Chevy’s engine and waved to me. I only nodded in response, for Danny was another McKay couldn’t tolerate. Yes, McKay allowed the Sweet to make runs into the city and pick up envelopes from Flash’s apartment, but he hated the Sweet’s never-ending smile. And so lately Danny the Sweet and I only nodded to each other as we passed on the Avenue. And although
he continued to smile at me, the Sweet had stopped his offers of candy bars and advice.
Jose had officially joined the Department, but still he could not miss a race of McKay’s. I watched McKay and the “cop in his pocket” stand apart from the other Orphans, and Jose smiled and nodded and drew circles in the sawdust with his boot heel as McKay talked.
Irene had brought her Viet Nam veteran boyfriend to the track. He held his arm around her as her laughter rose into the air. I smiled. Could the boyfriend, with his short, combed-back hair, have known while he sat with his pencil in some rice paddy how many of the Property had smiled at his misspelled words, how many times his line “I can’t wait to get back to the States to fuck you” had been referred to? The boyfriend smiled as he was introduced to the leather and the looks of the Orphans in the diminishing sunlight of the afternoon. No, he did not know.
T.J. and Gina stood together. They had become more of a couple than any other Orphan and Property. T.J. held a silver-headed cane, a present from McKay, and occasionally leaned on Gina’s arm for support. His wound from the Night of the Wolf had made walking difficult, and more and more he needed Gina—so much so that she had quit her job at Monty’s in order to be with T.J. as much as possible. Officially, T.J. and Gina were of the Orphans, but they stood together now. T.J. was no longer an asset to the Orphans, although he remained a sort of mascot, with his silver cane and his black eye patch and his legendary wounds.
The Dolphin had not appeared at the track, but then the Dolphin rarely appeared at social gatherings. Tosh and Leona stood sullenly among the Orphans and with them were Kind and Starry. I was never glad to see Kind, to see her painted eye on McKay, on the letters of his jacket, but I had learned to ignore her smiles and her eyes. It was Starry, not Kind, I did not want to see at the track. I did not want to see Starry this far away from the city limits, for she had told me, laughingly, in the safety of the Tin Angel, that each time she left New York, each time she crossed the line, her nose began to run, her body ache, even if she carried a week’s supply of heroin sewn into the lining of her jacket. She could not leave the city.
Property Of, the Drowning Season, Fortune's Daughter, and At Risk Page 9