Drop (3 page)
‘I don’t want to,’ I said. The malt-liquor boys were looking over at us, taking a rest from lying. I recognized the big one from summer camp. He was looking at me, pointing, saying something while laughing to the degenerate who leaned against the wall next to him. Look, there’s Christopher. They were both laughing now. Wasn’t it funny? I was a joke: I was not a thug, I was not a bailer, I was not a mack, I was not paid. I was not a comedian, even though I inspired great mirth. All I was was clever and creative, and unless you had a ball in your hand or your mouth in front of a microphone, this place had no respect for either one of those things. I hated them because they were violent and ignorant-and arrogant about both of those deficiencies. They hated me because I was not.
‘When you coming back to Philly?’ Alex asked me. So we were going to play our game again. The one where Alex tried to get me to love this place and I tried to get her to hate it. Bring it on.
‘I’m not coming back. I hate this place.’
‘See, that’s wrong. This is the community that helped raise you.’
‘And made me have to sneak home, terrified, every day growing up so as not to get my ass kicked. The community that broke in my mom’s house, taking everything she had that they didn’t, three times. I don’t owe these people nothing. I’m gone.’
‘See, you’ve become a sellout.’
‘Shit, I would love to sell out, but who the hell would buy any of this crap?’
Alex shrugged me off, deciding it was in jest, and took more pictures, her narrow elbows jutting out on both sides as she aimed.
‘Get your camera,’ she told me.
‘I know what this place looks like. I grew up here.’
‘Then what the hell are you so scared of?’ she asked, dismissive and annoyed. Beyond us, invisible,
pop-pop-pop
went the niggers. Someone was discovering lead. Alex didn’t even notice, didn’t even hear this answer to her question. That sound: that was my fear. I was scared of becoming them or becoming their victim. I was scared they were all life would allow me to be. Alex took the roll of film out of her camera and then made me move my knees as she reached to the glove compartment for a fresh one. She’d put two ice packs in there, but it still looked too hot.
‘Your film’s going to go bad. You should buy a cooler.’
‘Buy me one. So what happened? You just quit taking pictures?’
‘No, I still shoot. Or at least I’ll be art directing some shoots. That’s part of what I do, Alex. That’s part of my job. I have a job now. I have a career. That’s why I have to be at the airport, remember?’ Suddenly exhausted that I wouldn’t reinforce her Philly delusions, Alex got back in the car.
This was my last time seeing this place, so I looked around. Most of the stores I’d grown up with had closed, or changed names, or gotten tackier, just like the people. But those weren’t changes: they were continuations. The laundromat still had video games in the back where grown men dealt drugs while their children shot gigabit punks. The bar across the street from the Superfresh still smelled like a whore’s hangover, door always open in hope that its patrons would get off their stools and go. Across Pulaski, pushing a stolen shopping cart filled with junk, that same crazy man: skin orange and hot like the pulp of a sweet-potato yam, hair rust-red and dusty and shaped like the top of a mushroom cloud, muscled body taut with the steam of madness, his smell walking twelve feet before him. He was staring at me, both hands pushing that wreck my way. I felt sorry that Alex had to stay in this place. ‘You know, after I get settled, you could move out to London, too.’
‘Wouldn’t that be sweet? Maybe, if this photography thing ever starts happening for me, maybe I could swing through for a little visit. That would be so nice.’
‘When your shit drops, you need to just move out by me for good.’
‘Move? Chris, why would I want to move?’ Alex looked over her shoulder for traffic. Outside my window the yam-skinned man was getting close, smelling like he wore shit for clothes. Next to the car, he stopped pushing his cart and kept staring. All that fire-flesh focusing its rage on me, angry because I was getting out, that I wouldn’t be forced to negotiate his existence. Yam-skinned man staring at me angry because I wasn’t letting him climb on my back while I pushed his shopping cart up the road. The yam-skinned man, standing there, eyes wide as if
I
was the abomination, vibrating like he was going to go Osage on me, end my life because I was smiling back at him, daring to yell out, ‘Niggawhat? I’m gone!’
‘What the hell is wrong with you? All the years he’s been out here, that man’s got enough problems without you applying your own.’ Alex pulled out into the road. Below us, the heat made the asphalt sluggish, soft, and I could feel the Yam-man behind me, still standing there, stinking up his part of the world. Refusing to accept my rejection, willing the tar to slow our wheels and fuse the rubber to the road.
Philly was me, speeding back down 176, looking at the daytime glamour of the crew clubs at Boathouse Row thinking, yeah, they look nice, but they’ve still got to get into that nasty water. It was me sitting in Alex’s car, so damn happy that this was my last victory run.
‘You’re going to miss this,’ Alex said, watching my face as I stared Center City down, passing the violence of South Philadelphia, moving beyond muscle T-shirts and pidgin English, the narrow street parking space fights. Fuck water ice.
‘How long do you really think you’ll be gone?’ Alex asked. She maneuvered her little car amidst the bigger beasts by bobbing her head around like a Rittenhouse Square pigeon as her callused palms tugged at the wheel.
‘This is it.’ Outside, the oil refineries we passed made the air smell like hot dog vendor farts. In the car next to us a white woman with a man’s haircut, sleeveless T-shirt, and
GO EAGLES
sticker on her passenger side was yelling at a little Barbie doll-chewing girl who ignored her, staring instead at me, at my escape. Sorry, I can’t take you with me. Sorry you’re going to turn into that beast driving.
‘For real, Chris, when do you think? Next year? Two years maybe?’ No more Moonies selling exhaust-fume pretzels on exit ramps for Christopher.
‘This is my terminal. It’s over here.’ Alex moved her wreck of a car to the curb and let it die for a second.
‘So this is it?’ It was me asking, too excited to trust just my eyes.
‘I guess so.’
‘Watch. I’m gonna make you proud.’
‘What the hell are you talking about? I already am proud. You earned this. Be proud of yourself.’
‘I will be,’ I nodded, hopeful.
‘You want me to park, come in with you? I brought extra money, I can cover it. I can’t park here.’
‘Nah, you don’t have to. I’m cool.’
‘You gonna miss me?’
‘Yeah, you I’m going to miss.’
‘You’re going to miss Philly.’
‘F Philly.’
As Alex bent to get something from the back seat of the car, I kissed her on the side of her big butterscotch forehead. Twins: we recognized each other’s wounds, the need for their tending. When Alex turned around she had the white paper bag she’d gotten from Stop ’n’ Go.
‘Don’t forget, I got something for you.’ She pulled it out. I didn’t have to see its slender torpedo shape to know what it was.
‘I told you I wasn’t hungry,’ I lied.
‘A cheesesteak. You can eat it while you wait for the plane.’
‘I don’t want any Philly food.’
‘Then save it for when you get there. I don’t know, put it in the freezer for when you get homesick.’ Yeah, sick and home, but not in that order. Alex placed it in my palm, and it was heavy. Hot, soft and heavy. Weighing down my hand as I hugged her, wanting to carry her with me, praying that she would come to her senses before this city made her its meal.
At my departure gate, as I waited with the other runaways for my plane to arrive, the sandwich sat on my lap like an anchor, thick with greasy Philly nourishment. There would be hot sliced beef inside, melted pale provolone cheese because Alex didn’t like the processed kind. If I unveiled the white wrapping and then the aluminum that held that steak, steam would rise slowly from its salted innards; there would be onions, browned by heat and oil, overflowing from the tan, thick crusted roll that attempted to hold them. When my boarding call finally came I left it on the lobby seat behind me, relieved when they took my ticket and I couldn’t go back for it.
I saw ‘Chris Jones’ written on a white sheet of cardboard, quick black letters from a thick black pen. The woman who held it was tall and light, made up of a group of curving lines (neck, legs, arms, even hair), staring down at a paperback instead of into the current of arriving faces. When I stopped in front of her, she turned up and started aiming the sign at my face like I might forget who I was.
‘Urgent Agency?’
‘Right.’ She dropped the placard and her novel. ‘Is that the whole of your luggage?’
‘Yeah. Is David Crombie here?’
‘No, he’s not here. Couldn’t expect him to get dressed before noon, could you?’
‘Maybe he wanted to get ready,’ I said, already making excuses, and I hadn’t even really met the guy.
I had already decided I liked this woman, who was David’s wife. Maybe it was because I had lost my own mother but, while in the line (because it wouldn’t be a queue yet for me) to buy bottled water at the airport kiosk for the jet lag Margaret was sure I was destined to endure, when she turned back to me, stared at my face for a moment, then licked her thumbs and rubbed my eyebrows straight with her own saliva, I fell in love with her. I knew then that I would love her husband as well. All this slightly older (ten years maybe?) elegant, seemingly sophisticated black woman had to do was rub her spit into my face and my guard, whatever insignificant American perimeter I maintained, was decimated.
In the car, Margaret’s hands held wheel and stick, pulling and winding and yanking. Those hands were long and lanky, slightly wrinkled on the back where the thin skin was, every purposeful bone visible, thick river veins bulbous, soft and meandering. On a full speed right turn Margaret’s book slid across the dashboard and bounced off the glass, onto my lap. Without looking or slowing down, Margaret snatched it from its resting place and threw it in a high arc over her shoulder. I heard the sounds of a dry avalanche behind me and turned around. One paperback had been lost in a mountain of its brethren. Filling the space meant for legs, asses, torsos, the peak of the many hued heap reached all the way up to the back window. Books. Their spines broken, their covers permanently bursting, outstretched, trying desperately to vomit the pages held within.
‘I read mysteries,’ Margaret offered, so I stopped staring and turned around.
Zip-zip-zipping down roads in a tiny red car in a new land. Why would anyone buy a car so small? And why build streets to match it? And getting nervous every time we came to an intersection (Jesus, what fucking lane is she turning into?). My body was out of step, one minute awake and the next moment glazed. Outside everything looked familiar, then not. Like seeing someone you think you know on the street and realizing they’re a stranger when they get closer. So many black folk. Didn’t know I wasn’t expecting to see them till I did.
‘Welcome to Brixton.’ Margaret had been quiet except for her light cursing as she avoided automotive contact on one-lane roads with two-way traffic. So quick, these precise maneuvers, pulling into parking spaces to give room for oncoming cars to pass, pulling out with one hand while lighting her cigarette with the hot metal the auto provided for such purposes.
‘Do you work for Urgent?’ I asked.
‘Used to. Not any more. David and I actually started it together, when he resigned from the Patterson Group, but I’ve gone back to being a solicitor. I suspect that’s why you’re here.’
‘What’s David like?’ I asked, looking at the side of Margaret’s face as she laughed, having forgotten already what this woman looked like and needing to check again.
‘What an odd question. I don’t know if I’m the person to ask such a thing. Maybe you should ask someone a bit more impartial. Someone who isn’t married to him, for instance.’
David was: belly so big, so generous, soft like peat moss. A devious smile on a pudgy face making him look like a wicked baby. Hairline retreating and leaving flags of gray in its wake. Biceps bulbous with muscle, thighs thick with it. Looking like a French-horn sounds if the player is giddy and excitable. Arms in the air, smiling, like he might fall forth upon me right there, swallowing me with his flesh and consume all but the polished bones.
‘You look like a hole’ was the first thing he said to me, nodding, finishing the can of beer in his hand and then dropping it so he could squeeze me into him. ‘Margaret, that is the face of desire,’ David said over my shoulder as my ribs struggled for room to expand.
‘Darling you were supposed to be asleep.’ Margaret picked up the beer can and walked past us out the living room. These people had money. Everything in the house looked either extremely hard or unrealistically easy to break. The only things cheap in the place (besides me) were the paperbacks that filled the shelves that wrapped around the walls. Short, chubby fiction hugging the room.
‘You’re here!’ he said, releasing me. ‘The Sound of Philadelphia has arrived! I knew we could do it! I knew we could get you out of there!’ And he kept going on like that, as if he were Harriet Tubman and I had hay in my ’fro.
‘You are the secret weapon. Do you know that? How could you come all this way and not know that?’ David reached up and seized my neck. I once met Dizzy Gillespie coming out of a hotel off Walnut Street and shook his hand: this is how thick David’s palms were. ‘You’re a crazy bastard, Sir Christopher, my wife has brought home a crazy man. This is our time! Things are going to happen, mate! You can feel it, can’t you? Tell me! You can, can’t you?! It’s right, right?’
When you talk to a drunk man you must stand directly before him and stare straight into his eyes. When you look at him you must believe that yellow is the color that always serves as his pupil’s sea, that the smell on his tongue is the saliva of knowledge. You must walk his logic’s path beside him, comfort him that your feet are on the same ground and that you too can intuit the turns that lie ahead on this trail. You don’t grow up poor and not know this, learn this as a means to comfort or just to avoid a beat down. So this I did, to the best of my ability until, a half hour later, I was sent for more beer. The kitchen had white tile on the floor and a window over the sink where Margaret was leaning, cigarette held near her thigh, an arm around her waist, her eyes staring down at her feet or something near there. When she saw me Margaret said, ‘It’s over to the left. Pull them from the bottom drawer, those are the coldest,’ turning up to watch me move. ‘I should have warned you at the airport, sorry about that bit. He’s been so excited you were coming, he’s been up probably as long as you have.’
