by Brian Selfon
To burn down the dark house, she thinks. To cage the well-dressed bachelor.
“Justice,” she says, remembering Katja.
The round-bodied alcoholic writes nothing. He is staring at her hands.
chapter 7
It’s June, still early in her weeks of living with Uncle Shecky, and Kerasha is sitting on a shabby gray couch. The pillows make her skin crawl. If Satan has a single masterpiece, it must be faux velvet. When Kerasha was little Kerry, she could give herself goose bumps just thinking about texture like this, the fibers against her skin like tiny fingers. This talent had impressed Mama, who, before heroin took over, had herself been an imaginative person. Mama won a Burghardt Prize for her poetry while still in high school. Got a scholarship to Barnard, a young white woman determined to study African American literature. She married an older black professor who dropped dead from a heart attack when Kerasha was still young. The transition from struggling widow to full-on junkie seemed as smooth and natural as an ice cube melting.
But early Mama, poet Mama—Kerasha wonders what she would say if she came back today. Heard what was left of that powerful imagination.
We wear the mask that grins and lies …
What if Mama could see her clever Kerry now? No quick eyes registering all the stupid around her. No wicked laughter ready on her lips. Instead, there is only this husk. But this is the dull, empty, nonperson Kerasha must become—in miserable fifty-five-minute increments—every time she steps into this room. The whiff of potpourri. The little man with the ponytail, that fucking faux velvet. Her brain cries outrage, knocks against her skull, as Dr. Xu packs more and more humiliation into every session. At Franklin she had keepers, and over time her hatred of them evolved into a kind of art. Here the enemy is herself, the idiot she must perform. Empty-headed. Powerless.
Not me.
Dr. Xu and his ponytail have held Kerasha hostage for a half hour now, and Kerasha wonders how many patients have sat in this office, on this very cushion, and breathed the same potpourri. How many have run out midsession to commit suicide.
“Just get through it,” Uncle Shecky has told her. Tells her again in her head. “You did six years at Franklin—after seventeen at the Moses Houses. If you had a real lawyer, he would’ve argued that as time served.”
A dangerous feeling, nostalgia for prisons past. But at Franklin and in the Moses Houses, hostility was physical and out in the open. The ugliness was a kind of honesty. With the ponytail, though, hostility masquerades as “treatment.” Comes as “betterment questions,” each of which is a drizzle of piss on her brain. She is amazed by what she longs for in this space. The morning roll calls at Franklin, the gummy bread, even the punitive room tosses—she misses them.
Get through it. Good advice, Uncle Shecky. I’m trying.
Take things one breath at a time. This is from Kerasha’s onetime cellie Nicole, a yoga instructor who embezzled some fifty thousand dollars from her aunt’s studio. More sage advice. Wisdom everywhere. Mostly reiterations of the code billions of people live by every day. Don’t kill yourself. Don’t kill your psychiatrist. Simple enough, but Kerasha doesn’t know whether she is equal to it.
Still, Kerasha Brown is famous in Bushwick’s underworld for a reason, preternaturally gifted in evasion since girlhood. No room she can’t get out of, no person she can’t get past. Security guards, police. Teachers, social workers—outdumb them, look befuddled, let them talk. Fences can be climbed, shadows can be friends, and so, even here, in this office, she has tactics. Playing the fool, an act this so-called doctor is all too ready to believe. Echoing his questions, stumbling over big words. Pauses, blank stares. All while giving free rein to her fantasies. Like how about we kick over this coffee table. And the glass bowl hits the floor, and she picks up a shard, giving no fucks what it does to her fingers. And her free hand takes hold of that ponytail, and she saws that motherfucker off.
If only.
Kerasha’s eyes stay on the glass bowl. It was empty during her first session, she remembers. Today it’s filled with marbles.
Count the marbles in your head. Uncle Shecky never said this to her. Couldn’t have, she’s never shared any details about this room or what happens in it. Nonetheless, it’s his voice she hears—it’s the spirit of his counsel. Count slowly.
The coffee table is enormous and ornate, and it’s completely out of place here. Kerasha herself has never lived in a building that had furniture like this, but she’s broken into plenty of homes and offices, and she knows the function of this table. It’s a show-off piece, something you stick in the middle of a show-off room, and you surround it with paintings and wedding photographs, icons and altars, cheap souvenirs from expensive trips. Coffee tables like this rarely see coffee, and in this room, it sends a clear and specific message: You’re a nobody. I know your kind. I’ve heard all about your weak mothers, your vanished fathers, how it’s their fault you shit-wrecked your life—I know your type, the coffee table says. You’re a—
Full stop. Dr. Xu is looking at her through narrowed eyes, saying something about reincarceration.
Shit, she thinks, I missed something.
“Sorry, doctor,” she says, and makes her first truthful and complete statement to the man paid to know what’s on her mind: “I kind of tuned out there.”
Dr. Xu grins—a first for him, the only genuine expression she’s seen on his long face. “Part of the court mandate is that your early release is conditional on positive reports from me.” He speaks slowly. “The first one is due within ninety days of your release. Part of the write-up is attendance. So far, so good on that front. But then another part of the write-up is participation and progress. And on that front…”
The trail-off. What a showman.
Kerasha hates everything about this little man: the way he speaks, the profession he chose, his taste in pillows and coffee tables. She hates his chin, his nose, his eyes, his hair stylist. (Yes, she decides, he has a hair stylist.) But most of all she hates his grin, and the undisguised pleasure he’s taking now, turning her freedom over in his hands.
chapter 8
Two big carries tomorrow, and Shecky can’t sleep. When he finally does nod off, he dreams of the blue Impala. Of his argument with Henry. Exhausted in the morning, he puts ten one-hundred-dollar bills into a copy of The Accidental Alchemist. Bribe money. Seems like yesterday you could buy a police clerk with a fifty.
He closes the book with the money inside, brings it downstairs into the kitchen, and puts it high (for him) atop the china cabinet. Out of sight, for now. Henry’s the one with the hookup at the precinct. Henry’s the one who can find out exactly how fucked they are. But Henry generally can’t be asked to do anything until he gets some food in him.
Breakfast o’clock, Kerasha pads in and yawns. New slippers, he notices, zebra-striped and puffy, swiped from fuck knows where. To risk her freedom for such ridiculous … Shecky shakes it off. Doesn’t have it in him to lecture her, after all she’s been through. “Good morning, Kerry.” He touches her shoulder as he passes into the kitchen.
Grill pan: thick-cut maple bacon. Sizzle for five, flip, sizzle again, flame off. Whole-wheat sourdough: slice with a bread knife, drop in the toaster. Pan number two: butter, eggs, a touch of milk. A shake of salt, a shake of pepper, simmer. The percolator rattles as if it wants to topple. Settles. Mug one, for Kerasha: cream and sugar. Two, for Henry: cream. A splash of whiskey goes into his own mug, and minutes later the breakfast table is set.
Kerasha raises the coffee to her nose. Closes her eyes. “The smell of freedom,” she says. She opens her eyes, gives her uncle a little smile, and raises her mug to him. “This is how I know I’m out.”
Shecky looks away, embarrassed, and his eyes land on Henry’s chair.
Empty.
Where is he?
Dinner at eight is the family rule. Breakfast, also at eight, is optional, but Henry rarely misses it. Has even stayed up through the night for it after hard nights out
partying. And who fucking knows, it could still happen this morning. Henry staggering in, dropping into his seat, and slopping food into his mouth. His eyes half closed.
Where is he?
Last night, after the argument, Shecky pushed Henry’s chair back into place. Or thought he had. It’s aslant from the table now, though, as if Henry isn’t quite all right with the family anymore. But is he all right, period? And as Shecky hurries to straighten the chair, Kerasha’s warning from last night—the Impala—is back on his mind.
The Impala.
The watcher.
Fear comes at him fast. Henry in a dumpster. Henry in handcuffs. Henry tied to a chair, or, frightening in a very different way, Henry peacefully breakfasting elsewhere—by choice. Having taken a last hard look at the family and clicked “unsubscribe.”
He’ll come back to you, Shecky tells himself. He’ll be up from the basement in ten minutes.
But this is a hollow hope. Last night, after all, Shecky went downstairs to make peace. Found the basement empty, a cigarette butt. Shecky had picked it up—couldn’t help himself, always tidying—and seen the dark lipstick on the filter.
Shecky checks the time. Just five minutes late. And besides, eight o’clock isn’t even a hard start time. Breakfast isn’t like dinner, he tells himself again. A no-show means nothing.
Except if it means everything.
Most likely Henry’s splayed out on some dirty couch. Dry mouth, dry sweats, still tangled with that girl, but so what. The kid needs to let loose from time to time. The thousand ways Shecky pushes him, tasks him, it’s amazing he doesn’t skip more often.
Seven minutes.
Shecky goes to get his laptop. Comes back with it, opens it on the table. “Sorry,” he says to Kerasha, “bad manners. Won’t be a minute.” Log-in. A VPN connection, a spoofed IP, and now he’s losing himself in a transaction. The client, whom he met at the Muddy Cup yesterday, lives by cash. Runs a subcontracting business fixing roofs, fixing furnaces, installing water heaters. Would have to lay off half his staff, he once told Shecky, if he did it on the books. But now his daughter’s starting at Colgate University, and the tuition is “a fucking heart attack.” “So what am I supposed to do,” the client asked yesterday, “drive up with a sack full of cash?”
Shecky took a sip of coffee. “You can call Aunt Pitney.”
“I don’t have an aunt Pitney.”
Shecky took another sip of his coffee. Delighting, as Dannie used to, in masterful pauses. Then he smiled and said, “Let me introduce you. Your aunt Pitney lives in Guernsey. She is a widow and the heiress of a small fortune.” He picked at his muffin. Continued in a lower voice: “I created your aunt Pitney two years ago. Whatever cash you give me, I’ll wire to her. Whatever Colgate needs, she’ll wire them. And don’t worry—this lady is very real on paper. Colgate will hit her up for contributions to the endowment, and believe me, they will take her money with their eyes wide shut.”
As do we all, Shecky thinks now. Feeling wise and philosophical and competent, he powers down the laptop.
Henry is twenty-eight minutes late.
Kerasha is smiling into her book. Shecky raises his mug to whatever sweet devil brought her here. “Hey, kid. How about rosemary chicken tonight?”
She smiles a yes. Turns a page.
Twenty-nine minutes.
Henry must be so angry. Shecky can almost hear himself being trashed, can almost see Henry cutting the air with his big hands, bitching to the dirty girl. My uncle this, my uncle that. No combat pay, no finder’s fee for bringing in a new client. But what if it was worse than anger. What if, like last night, Henry was cold about him. Didn’t care anymore.
Back in the kitchen, Shecky clears the drying rack. Pours the bacon fat, thickening but still runny, into the grease jar he keeps in the refrigerator. Then he wipes out both pans, drops the soiled paper towels into the compost bin, and washes his hands. Washes berries, too. He brings out three heaping bowls, three little fruit spoons. Kerasha’s eyes get big. She even puts down her book. Shecky sits down with his own bowl, but his eyes are on Henry’s. How forlorn it looks in front of that empty chair.
Thirty-two minutes. Shecky calls defeat.
“Breakfast was perfect,” Kerasha says. “Again.”
Her voice sounds different, and he looks up. Her bowl is empty. Her seat is empty. Kerasha is back in the corner, in his old armchair—now hers—and she has her book again. Left leg swaying to the rhythm of whatever she’s reading. And yet she’s keeping an eye on him, he knows. Kid has eyes all over her body, eyes in every room, it seems. So while her mouth holds a sad-wise line, and her leg sways, and her eyes move across and down the page, a good part of her attention, he knows, is on him. Her warning is in the air again, like a late echo, and he wants to ask, and she’s just waiting for him to.
Don’t. Let her have her peace. She’s been through enough.
Shecky clears their fruit bowls but leaves Henry’s next to his plate, which is still heavy with eggs, bacon, and toast. Just in case. In the kitchen Shecky washes the pans, the bowls, the silver. Loads the drying rack. Pours himself more coffee.
Forty.
In his dream the Impala was parked in Henry’s basement room. A thump thump from the trunk; he knew the kid was inside. Frightened again, like a child, Shecky peeks back into the dining room. Steals a glance at his niece, who’s still reading. Reassure me, he wills her. Always serene, his Kerasha. Could be mistaken for innocence, for obliviousness, even. But the thing about Kerasha is her eyes are wide open.
“Henry came home late,” she says. “A little after three o’clock.”
Shecky lets out his breath. Feels something unknot within himself. He rushes to her and asks, “And the Impala? Have you seen it?” The words are out before he thinks them. “Can you get the license plate for me? Without, you know, being seen?”
Shecky’s relief about Henry—it was beautiful, but now other fears come fast at him. Bank of America: Transfer denied. Chase: Internal inquiry. Capital One: Account closure. And the watcher, that fucker in the Nets hat.
“Henry’s got that friend at the precinct,” Shecky says. His eyes turn automatically to the china cabinet. The mystery novel stuffed with bribe money. “She could run the plate. Tell us who’s fucking with us.”
The words are hardly out before he regrets them. Henry’s friend is a source: you can pay her, get the intel, and move on. Kerasha is family. There should be more between them than the ways she can be useful. Her reports on the car—that’s all been her initiative, he’s never asked. And now he’s treating her like—
“Can’t get the plate for the Impala,” she says. “It’s gone.”
He stares at her. “You’re shitting me. Thank Jesus. Look, I know—I know. A touch of paranoia makes good business sense. But sometimes an Impala is just an Impala.” His relief is a firehose. He catches his breath. “It’s really gone?”
Kerasha turns a page. “Now it’s a green Mustang.”
His heart freezes, but the dramaturg inside him is all admiration. Beautiful deadpan.
He takes a long time to collect himself. “How do you know?”
She raises her eyes, and for a moment she’s the little girl he saw in Paulette’s apartment all those years ago. Vulnerable. Playful. Defiant. The sight of this girl in that cockroach nest broke him up, but there was nothing he could do about it then. He had no claim on her. So he went on with his hollow little life, swept her to the back of his mind until he heard about the arrest. Her mother’s death, while Kerasha was fresh in jail. Kerasha’s multiple escapes from jail, then from prison, and how they caught her again and again, and added years to her sentence.
“Spotted it this morning,” she says. “It’s the same guy.”
“Jesus fuck,” Shecky says. “I must’ve, I don’t know … how…” Fucked us. Somehow. But how? And how now to un-fuck …
He goes to a chair. Remains there, a deflated flap of nothing, for several minutes.
&
nbsp; Kerasha, meanwhile, turns the pages. Sips her coffee. “Your shirt looks nice,” she says at last. “Ironed like that.”
Shecky stirs. He looks down at his shirt. Ironed? When the fuck did this happen? He doesn’t even remember.
“Listen,” he says at last, sitting up, “I don’t want you to do anything dangerous, but—”
“I’ll get the plate for the Mustang.”
He stands. Crosses the room. Gives her a one-armed hug. She doesn’t quite reciprocate, but out comes her tiny smile.
Let her stay here always, he thinks. His cousin’s daughter, a survivor of a scampering, filthy life—let her ease into something better here. Let her stay.
Footsteps. The moment snaps and the basement door creaks open. Henry blinks and squints as he steps into the light.
Shecky’s smile is big and warm and real. “Henry. I’m so glad … Your breakfast plate’s right over there. And there’s plenty more if you finish that. Here, let me make you a new coffee.”
And pour myself a whiskey. Jesus fuck, what a morning. Down and up and down again. Two kids here, but also that watcher. And the canceled transaction. And the night he spent in his ledger—he’ll need to go back to that. But here’s whiskey in his glass, and morning whiskey isn’t his habit, but right now it’s beautiful. Looks like a glass of magic. He raises the glass. Stops. He’s remembering his uncle Joseph, a raw motherfucker who drank straight whiskey every morning. Shecky empties his glass in the sink. Returns to the dining room and puts Henry’s coffee in front of him.
“How you feeling?” he asks.
“Eh.”
“Listen, about last night. I thought about what you said. And I get the sense that … that you don’t realize how much I appreciate you. Your work is outstanding. Day in and day out, the bread goes where it’s supposed to. And when a dollar’s missing, you don’t run crying to me. You go out and get the fucking dollar. I’m proud of you. Which is why I’m trusting you with a new project. Time-sensitive like a falling bomb.”