“We have four bedrooms.”
“That’s not what I mean, but go ahead.”
“We’d rather not be landlords. Landlords are legally allowed to turn tricks for money. I’d rather steal someone’s money on the street at gunpoint than draw blood from their neck with a pen. It’s more out in the open that way.” He slaps me in the shoulder with his gloves. “See now you got me on tangents. I hate tangents.” He puts his gloves on. “You spend way too much time in your head and you got me going there. The bottom line is you build this thing, you get to eat. That’s the justice you get, Wedgie.”
“I wish you’d stop calling me that.”
“I know. Let’s keep moving.”
Down eight stairs, into the brownstone. Brian lowers his voice. “Listen, do I think it’s fucked that there’s a fifty-thousand-dollar vase sitting in some highfalutin jerk off’s living room when it can feed some people I know for ten years? Yes. Is it mind boggling and unjust? Yes. Can I do anything about it? No.”
“Why not?”
“Cause even if I go home tonight and figure out a way to tip the scales, I’d still have to come here tomorrow and carry rocks. It don’t change nothin. What’s the expression? ‘Fair is fair and foul is foul’?”
“Something like that.” Up eight stairs, onto the sidewalk.
“Point is … I don’t know what that means. Look, I don’t know why you’re so bent to figure out what’s just—not my business—but put it this way: on a softball field you got a white line that separates fair from foul, and out here there’s no lines. None. We don’t have line one. And if we did we’d all be moving it for our own good. Now stop asking me about this shit, you’re making my day longer. What can I tell you? Life’s disappointing. Get a hooker.” We pick up more rocks.
Me and Brian high-five each other after making it through the eight hours.
“Why you work half days on Friday again?” he asks me.
“Because I’m special?”
He laughs. “Mr Mystery. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I walk through Central Park on my way home, which makes me feel like I’m missing out on owning a dog, having a picnic, a girl, a pair of shorts and a bike. I like poets’ row though. All these statues of these guys, most I never heard of, under an arc of elms. They sit permanently carved in their best moment. Not in their mediocrity when they had broccoli in their teeth or got drunk and accidentally pissed on the cat. And good for them. I lie on my back on a bench, looking up through the twisted branches, waiting for the blue background to turn black.
In the East Village I buy a six-pack at the deli and bring it up the stairs of my building. On the sixth floor I see someone has propped open the roof door with a brick. This is supposed to be an emergency exit only, and a red warning sticker on the door says an alarm will sound if opened, but I seriously doubt this alarm has ever worked. From the roof I see strips of orange and red fading at the horizon; the summer tar smell stings my nose. I take a few steps and hear a slow slapping noise and out-of-breath breathing coming from the front of the building. I walk toward it and under the water tower Stephanie and her boyfriend are going at it. He’s behind her with his shirt draped over her ass and pants halfway down his thighs, one hand grabbing a chunk of her hip, the other holding a fistful of her ponytail. Stephanie’s jeans are attached only to her right ankle, a light blue pair of underwear tangled in them. She’s kneeling on her shirt to protect her knees from the roof’s baked-in heat. Now that I see more of her skin I realize how dark it is. And she’s skinny. I’m maybe twenty feet away and can count her ribs. She’s humming in between breaths. “Um hum. Um hum.” I backpedal quietly and leave them to it.
I walk to the other side of the building with my six-pack of Corona, sit on the short brick wall at the back of the roof, and look at downtown Manhattan and drink.
Three beers into it I hear the roof door slam behind me and tiny pieces of rubble get crushed under someone’s feet. I turn around; Stephanie is walking to the edge of this roof about ten feet to my left. Her arms folded over her chest. She stops at the edge and we catch each other’s eyes for a second.
I say, “What’s up.”
“What’s up.”
I look behind her for the boyfriend. No sign. I look back to her and she shrugs like she don’t care he’s gone. She sits down, takes the elastic out of her ponytail, puts it in her mouth, reaches back, re-gathers her hair, then ties it back again. She sniffles, wipes her finger under her nose then on her jeans, folds her arms over her stomach, leans her chest close to her knees. She’s got a nervous twitch, more like a twist—the ball of her right foot twists on the top of the roof like she’s repeatedly grinding out a cigarette.
We sit for a good few minutes, her twisting foot making the only sound.
Without eye contact she says, “I saw you see us.”
My jaw freezes. What do you say to someone who calls you on watching them get fucked from behind? “Sorry. I didn’t know anyone was up here.” I take a long swig.
She shrugs, looks at me, her foot stops. “It’s OK.” It feels weird and comfortable staring at her. She turns her face away and her foot goes back to doing its thing.
We both look at the skyline against its now black background. The city breaks itself down from neighborhoods to blocks to buildings to rooms—millions of tiny pieces—and offers nothing for keeps; it just doles out the same-sized impermanence to everyone. Beautiful selfish city. It makes us eat, sleep, and fuck right on top of one another, makes us breathe the backwash of each other’s breath, daring us to survive a lonely life lived so close to so many people.
The sun’s leftover heat still seeps out of the black roof. Stephanie’s foot keeps twisting out the perpetual fire beneath it. We sit under the arc of airplanes taking off and landing in Queens as two virtual strangers this city has thrown together for the night, wondering if this place might sometime feel like a home.
July 6
Grand Central Terminal. Hundreds of people move under the green ceiling of constellations that hear every voice. I walk to the main concourse; the heartbeat in my head reminds me how much I drank last night. I squint at the departures board. 12:07 Hudson Line local to Poughkeepsie departing from track 32, making stops at 125th Street, Morris Heights, University Heights, Marble Hill, Spuyten Duyvil, Riverdale, Ludlow, Yonkers … I could recite that shit in my sleep, if I slept.
Coke in hand, turkey hero with mayonnaise in mid-bite, I flip around toward my track, and crash lunch-first into a woman hustling to get her train. She glances back and throws me a “Sorry,” with an I’m-too-late-to-be-too-worried face. I wipe the mayonnaise off my mouth … Oh, shit. I vaguely remember walking down Avenue A last night crashing into another woman. Did we crash? No, I think I grabbed her. Probably grabbed her. Maybe she smacked me. Did I get smacked? Yeah. I think I did.
On the train I take my last bite, crumple the wax paper, put it back in the brown bag, and lay it on the seat next to me so no one sits there. I lean my head against the window and try to get comfortable in the seat that was designed by an idiot. My face feels ten degrees hotter than it needs to be. Beer, my head keeps telling me with every heartbeat, beer, beer… I touch my cheekbone. Yeah, I think I did get smacked last night. The details aren’t clear. Probably wasn’t as bad as a couple weeks ago when I was walking down Avenue A, saw this girl coming at me, and decided to grab both of her shoulders. I stopped her in mid-stride and her boyfriend asked me if I had a fucking problem. I told him the last time someone asked me that they were in the third grade and still sleeping with their mother. When he tried to shove me I was quick enough to grab him by his wrists and yanked him off the curb smack into a parked car. But I was too sloshed to stop his fist when he came back at me. He only got off one punch because girlfriend was yelling at him to stop. With my ass on the street I told