Bodega Dreams (6 page)

Bodega pointed at his eyes again. Then he laughed a little laugh. “It’s all a matter of where yo’r standing, where you comin’ from. Willie Bodega don’t sell rocks. Willie Bodega sells dreams.”

At that moment Sapo got up. He stuffed the
Playboy
in his back pocket, dropped the joint he had been smoking, carefully killed it with his sneaker, picked it up, and put the roach in his wallet.

“Yo, I’m going down to the bodega to get some beer,” he said. “Anybody wan’ anythin’?”

“
B
UILDINGS
, huh?” I was a bit skeptical. “How do you escape the IRS? What do you tell New York City?”

“Ahhh, thass where my man Nazario comes in again. Yo, he’s a genius. Nazario made up a legal management agency. It’s supposedly owned by a Jew named Harry Goldstein, but you know who the real Harry Goldstein is? Thass right, me. The Harry Goldstein Real Estate Agency. I run the most humanitarian housing management company in New York City. B’cause, like I told you, Chino, if you take care of the community, the community will take care of you,” Bodega said proudly, like he had found some truth only he knew about.

Sapo walked in with a forty-ounce Miller and a bag of chips. He pulled the
Playboy
out of his back pocket, opened his beer, and sat down.

“So if they need more heat I give it to them,” Bodega continued. “They can’t make that month’s cheap rent? I give that, too. Something breaks, the super fixes it, quick. Complaints? Complaints, thass where you come in. Complaints would go t’ you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you.”

“Why not Sapo? Why not have him work with Nazario?”

“Nah, nah.” Bodega shook his left hand in the air dismissively. He
looked at Sapo, who didn’t look back. With the
Playboy
on his lap, Sapo was munching away contentedly, spilling crumbs on the pages. “Nah, nah, nothing against Sapito. But they know what he does. When I say they, I mean the community. I want someone smart and someone who has never worked a corner. And if he goes to college, all the better. A role model. Nazario the lawyer and his sidekick Julio College, both Ricans helping Ricans.” He looked straight at me again, snapping his fingers just as he started to speak. “Both working together, getting buildings. Thass a big legal shit, but don’t worry, Nazario will guide you through it all.”

“I’m only half Rican, my father is from Ecuador,” I felt compelled to tell Bodega.

“So what? You Spanish, this is your neighborhood. You grew up here, got beat up here, and I hope beat someone up too. Sapito tells me you used to paint R.I.P.s?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Thass good, bro. People remember you as someone who tried to make the neighborhood a better place. And that’s good. And now they see yo’r in school and that’s good too, bro. Just remember one thing, from an old
pana
who has been here longer than you, just remember, bro, that no matter how much you learn, no matter how many books you read, how many degrees you get, in the end, you are from East Harlem.” He paused. Silence fell. I wasn’t about to break it. I looked around the room, bypassing Sapo. There was nothing else to look at. A hole in a wall. A few roaches crawling nearby. Two windows with no curtains.

“So, man, like yo’r perfect, Chino.”

“Perfect?” I asked, toking my joint, which was halfway finished now.

“Perfect to represent me. You and Nazario. B’cause, Chino, it gets bigga.”

“Yeah?” I realized that my system was so clean that the joint had already taken effect. I wanted to laugh for no reason and a little vein in my forehead was throbbing.

“I mean, I plan on acquiring as many abandoned buildings as I can get my hands on. Renovating them and putting in people who I know will back me if I need it. Not particularly b’cause they love me but
b’cause I am in charge of their well-being. They are dependent on me for their shelter. Where the city sees burned buildings I see opportunity. I’m talking about becoming the second-biggest slumlord after the City of New York.”

My joint was turning into a roach. Bodega opened a drawer and handed me scissors. I took them and clipped my joint.

“See, Chino, I’m talking about property. I’m talking about owning the neighborhood legally. The way the Kennedys own Boston. But this ain’t fucken Boston. This’s New York City. Manhattan. Location is everything. I’m talkin’ about ownin’ a big chunk of the most expensive real estate in all the nine planets. Don’t mara if what I’m after is the toilet seat. Wha’ maras is where that toilet seat is located. From 129th Street down to 96th Street, from Fifth Avenue to First and after 116th Street, Pleasant, every neglected building, mine. The things I do, they’re just a means to get me what I need, and when I’m done I’m going to be respectable and send my kids to Harvard, like Joe Kennedy. In a few years, why not a Nuyorican president?”

“What’s with you riding Kennedy? Get off his dick already.” With the help of the joint I felt confident enough to clown around.

“B’cause you gotta have a blueprint,” Bodega said.

“Fuck the White House.” I wanted to drop all this shit and just hang. “Let’s skip Washington and target the Vatican. A Nuyorican pope is better. That way we’d have God on our side.” I laughed as if the joke was funnier than it was.

“Oh, shit.” Bodega looked at me closely and smiled. “Shit, you gone, bro. No more for you.” He took the roach and the scissors out of my hand. He looked Sapo’s way and said, “Sapito, Chino is Memorex. One fucken joint and the nigga is gone.”

“Thass ’cause his lady don’t let him smoke inna house. You should meet her, Willie. Fine, but a bitch,” Sapo said in between swigs of his forty.

Bodega laughed. “If a man can’t smoke a joint in his own house, who wears the pants in that fucken place?”

“Nah”—it was time to defend myself—“yo, that bitch does what I want. Blanca has no say.” Of course they didn’t believe me, but they let me get away with the lie. Because whatever you’ve heard about the
Latin woman needing to be saved from her sexist man is not entirely true. Keep your mouth shut and your legs open? That’s a myth. My mother had my father on a leash and she never took Feminism 101.
Maria Cristina me quiere gobemar y yo le sigo la corriente para que la gente no crea que ella me quiere gobemar.
That’s what it comes down to. And if you dare hit a Latin woman God help you, because you’ll wake up with scissors in your back. Yeah, she’ll go to jail for a good twenty years but you’ll be dead forever. And if she isn’t that violent, she’ll get you, one way or another. I didn’t know what Blanca had in store for me that night, all I knew was that it was getting late and she was already mad at me.

“Look, bro,” I said, “I think I’ll pass on this Nazario thing.” Then I realized that I couldn’t go straight home because I was high and Blanca would kill me in this condition.

“Come on, bro. Sapo told me you were busy and shit, with your job at the A & P and your night school. But, like, I want you around.”

“Nah, I can’t.” I got up from my seat and kept shaking my head. “I can’t, man. I hope this works out for you, but I can’t. I’m mad busy.”

“Thass it? You don’t want ta think it over? Drive it around the block? Kick a tire? Spit on the windshield?” He stared at me hard, waiting for my answer as if I hadn’t given it to him already. “Come on, think it over.”

There was something honest in his dishonesty. Unlike Blanca, I believed it was dishonest people that brought change. It was paradoxical people like Bodega who started revolutions. All you could do with honest people was lend them money and marry their daughters. And as much as I loved Blanca, I’d never felt Christ was the answer either. He was taking too long to come. Spanish Harlem needed a change and fast. Rents were going through the roof. Social services were being cut. Financial aid for people like me and Blanca who were trying to better themselves was practically nonexistent. The neighborhood was ready to boil. You couldn’t see the bubbles yet, but they were there, simmering below the surface, just waiting for someone to turn up the heat and all hell would break loose. The fire next time would be the fire this time.

Part of me really wanted to be there, to be part of it. But I had Blanca
and the baby to think about and I wasn’t about to throw that away. I was happy with Blanca. I had no idea what good deed I had done in my life to deserve Blanca, all I knew was that she was there. She wouldn’t like me getting involved in any of this.

“Nah, it’s cool. I wish you well, bro.”

“Don’t be like that.”

“Nah, I got no time,” I said, and extended my hand toward Bodega. He shook it. I was surprised to see disappointment in his eyes, as if I had had the upper hand all this time. I felt like I had something he needed, something he needed badly and didn’t really know how to ask for. Something he had done a bad job in getting, or convincing me to give to him.

“
Mira
, Chino, you need somethin’, anythin’, come see me.”

“ ’
Tá bien
, bro.”

Sapo got up from the sofa and, without saying goodbye to Bodega, placed his half-empty bottle on the floor and headed out the door.

“Don’t forget, you need somethin’, anythin’ …” Bodega broke off and looked at the ceiling, shaking his head as he whispered, “Thass a shame. A fucken shame.” I guess he was saying this to me.

Nene was still outside the apartment waiting, keeping guard.

“Whass wrong with Sapo, bro? He like ignored me and just took off
with no direction home. Like a complete unknown. Like a rolling stone.
”

“Nice meeting you, Nene,” I said, hoping to leave quickly so I could catch up with Sapo.

“Yeah, like, you know, Chino, it was nice meeting you too
and don’t go changing to try and please me
,” Nene said. I laughed, not because he could splice songs into his speech but because my system was so fucked up.

“So,
mira
, there’s this party at La Islita, this comin’ Saturday,” Nene said to me as I headed for the stairwell. “Come, bro. You can bring your lady, Negra, right?”

“Blanca.”

“Right, Blanca. Come, bro. My cousin always throws good parties there, lotsa beer and salsa.”

“I’ll try,” I said and, a little high, I stumbled down the stairs.

When I stepped outside, the fresh air did me some good. It was early
spring and there were a lot of people out. The old men were still playing dominoes, sitting on plastic milk crates, but the song on the small box had changed. It was a late-sixties tune, ‘Mangos Pa’ Changó’:
Cuando te fuistes con otro bajé a bodega pa’ comprar mangos.
I saw Sapo smoking a cigarette by his black BMW and I went over to him.
Pa’ luego hacerle una oferta a Changó.

“What’s with you, bro?”

“Nah, man, get away. You got the cooties.”

“Cooties? What the fuck. You think you still in the fourth grade?”

“Nah, don’t talk to me, Chino. You fucked up.”

“Why? Because I don’t want to work with Nazario?”

Sapo looked at me and nodded as he took a long drag.
Pero no tenía dinero. So mami, mami perdóname pero es que tuve que darle un holope a alguien.
“Yeah, thass why. Bodega’s been looking for a guy to work with Nazario for some time. And I thought of you. You know, I built yous up to Bodega. I told him, ‘Nah, Chino is cool. You’ll like him. He’s a cool guy and smart. He goes to Huntah.’ Shit like that, and then when he meets you for the job, you get all fucked up, laugh in his face, and don’t take the job. Do you know how that,” Sapo said, jabbing a finger in his chest, “reflects on me?”

“Sapo, all I know is, yo’r doing what you want to do. If you want to do this then you do it. I ain’t going to preach to you, bro. If you want to leave that shit in my place it’s cool. You want me to hold money for you, I’ll do that, too. But you know that in this business, the only thing that counts is money. And Bodega might talk all this shit about helping the community and shit like that but what it all comes down to is making money.”

“Shit, I was there. He didn’t lie to you. He said things about money. He said he had to give some away in order to keep some. Money is important. I don’t deny that. But there are othah things involved here.”

“Bullshit. This guy is talking a lot of dreams, bro. Clouds.” As soon as I said that I wished that I could take it back. I didn’t yet know Bodega too well, but I knew Sapo. Sapo was too smart to work for a guy who only blew hot air. I knew that everything Bodega had told me was true, because Sapo believed it.

“No, bro, there are diamonds in that dog shit he talks. I know. You
still don’t really know the half of it, bro. Why Bodega is really doin’ all this. You don’t know, so don’t go fucken barkin’ all this shit. Why can’t you see things and say why not?”

“Ho, shit! What the fuck is this? Who are you, man?” This is all crazy, I thought. Bodega thinks he’s Lyndon Johnson with his Great Society and now Sapo talks like he’s Bobby Kennedy with this why-not stuff.

“Look, bro, all I know is when no one would gimme a job, Bodega did.” Sapo got closer to me, like he always does when he wants me to pay attention. As if I’m deaf and can’t hear well. “But I don’t want to be some manager of a few crack houses. I wanna be part of history.”

“Look, Sapo—”

“Nah, it’s true. Bodega is going to own the neighborhood. Legally. And I want to be part of it. Maybe someday take it over when he’s gone or somethin’. You too happy with your alleluia girl to understand.”

“Hey, Sapo, come on, leave Blanca out of this.”

“She’s the real reason why you here, bro.
Pero no tenía dinero.
So mami, mami perdóname pero es que tuve que darle un holope a alguien.”

I didn’t know what Sapo meant but I didn’t press him about Blanca because back then I had no idea how important she was to Bodega.

“Nah, Sapo, yo’r my friend and you know that I won’t lie ta you.” I let what he had said about Blanca slide. “So you have a nice car and make good money, but Bodega, Bodega is the Man. Bodega has made a name for himself. You know about names, Sapo. When you get one it’s only a matter of time before you have to prove who you are. And Bodega has the biggest name in the neighborhood.”