This Is a Bust (24 page)

“You know my parents yelled at me when they saw me
bloodied up? They thought that I'd done something wrong. My parents will never understand me.”

“Well, that's tr
ue, but it's something you have to learn to live
with.”

“Do you talk to your parents?”

“I don't talk to my father because he's dead,” I said. We
slowed to get off an exit ramp and I slid slightly into Paul as we made the turn. “My mother, I talk to sometimes.”

“That's too bad about your dad.”

“It is. But a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.”

“What do you mean?”

“You'll find out soon enough.” I sat back in my seat and
settled into my sore body.

—

I lifted the smoked-plastic lid to my turntable and put on Marvin Gaye's
What's Going On
. I played it at least once a week. Every time I listened to that record, and I've had it for years, I would hear some lyrics I hadn't known were there.

Suddenly, the record skipped during “Mercy, Mercy Me.”

I put a dime on the needle. Then I tried a penny, a nickel, a
quarter, and then two quarters. The record still skipped. One little skip ruins an entire album in my book.

I tried a hair dryer and a dry toothbrush. I even ran the
sharp end of a thumbtack over it. Nothing worked. I played that groove over and over, just to see if I could get used to it, but hearing that skip physically hurt me.

I turned off the stereo. Then I got a beer and sat on the
couch. Then I got another. And another.

I heard a door slam in the apartment building. Then
nothing.

I p
icked up the PBA newsletter and looked at the pictures. I
folded it into a plane, then crumpled it up and threw it into the trash.

I tried the record again and it skipped.

I gra
bbed the basketball and rolled it around the coffee table
with my feet.

I opened up the freezer and looked at the ice-cream bar.

I drank a glass of water.

I tapped my fingers on the coffee table and scratched my
face.

I stretched my back and legs.

I tried the record again. No dice.

I turned the TV on and off.

I went back to the freezer, got the ice-cream bar, and ate it.

Then the buzzer rang.

I stuck my head out the window and looked down. There
was no one down there.

“Hey!” I yelled. Someone backed out from the apartment
doorway and looked up. It was Paul. “What are you
doing here?”

“You have to let me in,” he yelled up.

“Kid,
it's late. Shouldn't you be out somewhere, smoking and
drinking?”

“Let me in!”

“I'll let you in, but I'm going to frisk you.”

“I'm not carrying anything! Buzz me in!”

“The buzzer's broken, just push it open!” I suddenly realized
that that was the wrong thing to be shouting into the street after midnight.

Soon there was a knock at my door.

I looked through the keyhole and opened the door.

“You got up those stairs pretty quick,” I said. “Must have
strong legs. Now spread 'em.”

“I don't have anything,” he said, but complied.

“If I knew you were coming,” I said, patting him down, “I
would have told you to bring some beer.”

“You'v
e been drinking enough,” said Paul, brushing my dirty
fingerprints off his jeans.

“Now you wanna tell me what the hell you're doing here?”

“They threw me out of the house again.”

“Surprise, surprise.”

“At least I took the old man's cigs.”

“And what else?” He hooked both hands into his front
pockets.

“Nothing.”

“How much did you take?”

Paul rolled his eyes. “Twenty,” he said. “But it was my
money! I won the winter science fair and they took it from me.”

“What are you gonna do with 20 dollars, anyway?”

He shrugged. “I don't know. Keep my pockets warm.”

“What's this?” I asked, dangling a note with a sticker on it.
Paul turned red and his eyes bulged. “Those jeans of yours leave a lot of room for pickpockets.”

I read the note. It was from a girl named Lei. She said she
liked him. Paul wasn't talking. He was barely breathing.

“Lose your tongue?” I asked.

“Give it back!” he said.

“Who's Lei?” I asked, handing the note back to him.

“She's a girl.”

“She's not one of the girls running with you and your
friends?”

“I don't have any friends anymore. Ever since they saw you
beat me up, they don't talk to me anymore.”

“I didn't beat you up.”

“My nose was bleeding.”

“That's because you were too excited.”

“I could sue you.”

“For what?”

“Assault and battery.”

“You'd be a real credible witness, Paul.”

“That doesn't mean I don't have civil rights.”

“I'm gonna give you the right to remain silent and also the
right to get the hell out of my apartment.”

“I don't have anywhere else to go.”

“I'm sure there's some nice park out in Brooklyn that ain't
too crowded. . .”

“My sister Lonnie said I could stay with you.”

“What! You're Lonnie's brother?”

“She said you said I could stay here.”

“I said you could stay here,” I said to myself. I suddenly felt
tired. I went over to the apartment door and slid the door chain into place. I waved my hand at the couch. “You can sleep over there, Paul.”

“Thank you. You're not going to regret this.”

“But I already do. Where's your stuff?”

“I'll go get it when they're gone in the daytime. I only need
two dresser drawers.” I became a little suspicious of him.

“Paul, what was that science project you did?”

“It was about pl
asmids.” He looked into my unblinking face. “Do you know what a plasmid is?”

“Sure, it's when a star turns into a black hole.”

Paul gave a short, smug chuckle.

“Well,” I s
aid, “good night. Get some rest.” I went down 
the
hallway.

“Um, do I have to go through the bedroom to get to the
bathroom?”

“Yeah.”

Paul pushed past me. “Excuse me,” he said, “I have to brush
my teeth.”

—

The next morning, I felt good when I saw Lonnie back at the counter at Martha's.

“They give you a hard time about coming back?” I asked her
as she gathered up
my two iced coffees. I didn't eat in the mornings anymore. Two beers at home would fill me up.

Lonnie smiled.

“They gave me a raise. Paul is staying with you, right?”

“Your brother.”

“He's actually my stepbrother. Did you know that after my
mother went to San Francisco, other girls stopped playing with me because my parents had split?”

“But it wasn't too bad for your father.”

“Is it ever bad for the father? He got married again and they
had Paul.”

“Your father beats Paul.”

Lonnie shook her head. “It's my stepmother who beats Paul.
But you beat Paul, too. You gave him a bloody nose.”

“I didn't touch his damned nose. That kid's got bad capillaries.”

Lonnie sighed
. “I guess everything's okay, now. You know, he's never had a
strong male figure who really cared about him.”

“So you figured he could just move in with me?”

“You said he should!”

I propped my arms up onto the
counter. “Can you explain to me why he just got thrown out of
the house?”

“I told you already. He's got a girlfriend. But my stepmother
doesn't want him
to have a girlfriend until he goes to college.”

“That kid's bound for stripes, not college.”

“He gets straight A's in school.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“He's really smart. Everything comes really easy to him.”

“Then why is he hanging out with those delinquents?”

“They're not delinquents! They're all really smart kids. I let
them hang out here to keep them off the streets and away from the bad kids.”

“Those kids are in a gang.”

“You were in a gang.”

“It was different back then. It was more like a club that
didn't have a tree house. Kids are getting killed these days.”

“Paul and his friends are just trying to look tough so they
don't get picked on. You know kids.”

“I know I don't like them.”

“Lonnie,” growled Dori, “when you keep talking to the
customers, you leave more work for me.”

“I'm not just a customer, I'm a regular,” I said.

“A regular cradle robber,” said Dori.

“Shut up, Dori! You can't have kids so you won't have to
worry about cradle robbers!” yelled Lonnie. It was the first time Lonnie had ever snapped back, and the sharpness of it tore across the filthy and busted foam tiles of the ceiling all the way to the front door, where an old man was standing, uncertain if he should come in or run for it.

Dori screwed her mouth up and pounded the counter once. “No respect!” she cried. Then she went into the back, kicked
aside an empty plastic bucket, and went into the bathroom.

Lonni
e wiped her forehead and said, “Hey, come on!

Who's next?”

—

When my shift was over and I got back into street clothes, I went down to the park to see the midget. Some fool tourist was playing him at a board game I didn't know.

“Why are your hands all black?” the midget asked me.

“I had to replace the ribbon in my typewriter. Stupid thing
tried to eat my hand. What game is that?” I asked him.

“The game's called Sorry!” said the midget. “It was released
by Parker Brothers in 1934, a year before they acquired the rights to Monopoly.”

“I heard of Monopoly, but not Sorry!” I said. “How do you
know so much about this game?”

“I read it off the side of the box. Basically, you have to get
these pieces around the board and into the space marked ‘Home.'”

“Hey,
no outside help!” said the tourist. He was a white male
in his mid-30s, five-seven, 180, brown eyes and hair.

“Calm down, he's just explaining how to play to me. I
haven't seen this game before,” I said.

“I'm a lifelong Sorry! player,” the tourist said. “I heard there
was a little guy in the Chinatown park who'd never lost at any game, so I came down all the way from Boston to check him out.”

“You ever lose at this game?” I asked the tourist.

“A few times, but honestly, it's hard just finding people to
play with.”

“You must've been a lonely kid,” I said. He gave me a dirty
look. The midget fiddled with the pieces on the board.

“Hey,” the tourist told the midget, “you're supposed to say
‘Sorry' when you do that!”

“I'm not sorry,” mumbled the midget.

“I'm reading these rules,” I said, “and it doesn't say
anywhere that you have to say, ‘Sorry.'”

“Well, even if it isn't a rule, it's a common courtesy.”

“This guy's getting in a bad mood because he's losing,” the
midget said to me.

“Hey,
while we play I want to impose an English-only policy,
okay?” said the tourist. “Just so you don't cheat this white devil.”

Okay, my friend, the midget said in English, I'm sorry.
Then all of us laughed. Then the midget won, and went on
to beat the guy two more times. Each game was shorter than the previous one.

After we were alone, I asked the midget if he'd known that
Paul was Lonnie's brother.

“Oh yeah, I knew.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“I thought you knew, too.”

“How could I know?”

“How could everyone else know?”

“You heard I had a run-in with Paul, right?”

“Yeah, but I guess you guys patched it up. You're living

together now, right?”

“I didn't know the details of my life were public information.”

“It's not public,” said the midget. “Very few people know
about it.”

Willie Gee came up to me and flashed a wicked smile.

“Thanks
for taking care of that hunger striker the other day,”
he said. “Maybe you can just pull out one protestor every day. That's a good strategy. I really underestimated you.
You're the kind who likes to work with discretion.”

We were standing on a corner around the block from the
restaurant, out of view of the protest.

“I didn't pull her out of the strike for you or for Jade Palace,”
I said in a way that cleared my throat at the same time. “I knew the girl and was concerned about her health. I didn't think the hunger strike was good for her.”