Ten Mile River (4 page)

This bummed Ray out.

He tossed the magazine. Chubber gone, he forced himself to walk through the waiting area to the salon chair where Yolie was clipping a kid. ‘Missis Yolie?'

‘Amor?'

‘Like I see how busy you are, and if you want I could get a clip from, like, Trini.'

‘You don't mind?'

‘She did a real good job last time.' She really didn't. Ray had a divot in the back of his head.

Yolie squinted at the divot, blinked, looked at the full waiting room, sighed, nodded. ‘Trini, amor?' she called to the back of the shop, where Trini was rolling a woman's head down to braids. ‘I got a sweetie pie waitin on a haircut here.'

‘I'm almost done, T'a.' Trini looked out from behind the privacy screen. When she saw Ray she giggled.

Ray tossed the chick a superslick nod, like he didn't give half a damn about her. You are
Ray Mond
, he told himself. You are seriously the shit.

He leaned on an empty salon chair that spun out from under him, slipped into a pile of clipped hair.

Yolie turned away and exploded, her great tetas shaking as she laughed. Trini looked up at the ceiling and howled. She had the cutest teeth. They were kind of buck. Trini winked at Ray. ‘Hello, Mister Mond.'

Ray nodded and sat in the salon chair. Face red, lips tingling, he prayed for death.

The J-man was watching the
Scarface
DVD. He was saying Tony Montana's lines with Al Pacino. His imitation was spot on, perfect Cubano accent. ‘Sani
ta
tion? Sani
ta
tion? I tol' you to say sani
tarium
.'

Ray snuck into the stationhouse, crept on top of the couch arm, sucker slammed the J-man, World Wide Wrestling cage match style. He almost got a fart off on the J-man's head.

José flipped Ray, farted on his face. ‘Whoa, hold still. You got like no hair now.'

‘That's the style.'

‘Sure it is, in the mental hospital. Was she there?'

‘Phew, man, you reek.'

‘Baloney an' Cap'n Crunch sammich. Look at that head. She better be pretty, Ray, 'cause she can't cut hair worth a lick. You got divots all up the side your dome. You look retarded, man, like you oughta be wearing a helmet when you walk around. You look like you fell off a bike.'

The Fatty dog burped in his sleep, his butt on José's pillow.

‘Git off my pillow, man.' José kicked the dog off his bed.

The dog went to Ray's bunk and slept on Ray's pillow. Ray petted the dog.

‘Goddam dog,' José said. ‘He can't go out and play with the rest of the dogs? Goddam two of you, I don't know what I'm gonna do.' José threw Ray his new duds.

Ray dressed. The clothes were tight. ‘Whattaya think?'

‘Ray, serious man, you gotta wear a hat. You look like you're out on a day trip.'

‘You don't shut up about my hair I'll kill you in your sleep, man.'

‘I'd have to be asleep for you to kill me.'

Ray checked his head in the cracked mirror. ‘I like it like this.'

‘You better, because that mess is gonna take a while to right itself. You gonna be livin with that head a
lonnnng
time.'

They got into a slap fight, laughed themselves tired, went to sleep in their clothes, José setting the alarm clock he'd stolen that afternoon for two in the morning. The Fatty dog hogged the bed in his sleep, kicked Ray onto the floor. Ray let the dog have the bed. The dog snored louder than José. Ray couldn't sleep, watched the gangster movie on mute. As he drifted off into dreams of Trini, Scarface was about to die.

Three in the morning up in The Bronx they hunkered in the bushes skirting the park and Jerome Avenue. Overhead the trees swayed with a hot wind. José kept a lookout for the Navigator that parked here about this time. ‘I gotta piss.' He hustled off into the woods.

Ray pulled a spoon from his pocket, balanced it on his index finger and stared at it like Superman melting steel with his eyes. The background stole his focus from the spoon. Across the street were tenements bombed with graffiti bright in the streetlight. Somebody had hit a nearby mailbox with a fat Day-Glo perma-marker. The ink said:

NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOU.

‘Aw no. Some little kid's just learnin to read, spells it out real slow? Nuh-uh.' Ray scratched at the graffiti with his spoon.

‘Will you quit babblin with yourself ?' Back from the bramble, José ripped the spoon from Ray's hand, chucked it into the woods, slapped Ray's head. ‘Freak. What are you doin?'

‘Till you chucked m'spoon I was, like, spoon bendin.'

‘You was chippin at that mailbox with it, raisin noise to tell the world we're out here. Quit lookin after that dag spoon. Look here for a sec.'

‘What?'

‘You're almost fifteen now, punk. You can't be actin like a kid no more.'

‘I ain't no kid.'

‘You're a goddam kid. Jerkin off up at that Braid Palace all the time with your retard haircuts, talkin to yourself, scratchin mailboxes, rollin around on the floor with them damn dogs every chance you get, talkin to 'em like they have a goddam idea what you're sayin, in love with a new chick ever' other week but you ain't got the balls to drop a hi on a one of 'em. That's kid shit, straight up. Quit poutin. I'm puttin my feet down this time, you're goin a school come fall.'

‘This bullshit again.'

‘I'll kick your fat butt all the way there if I got to, Ray.'

‘Then you're comin with me.'

‘I ain't goin to any goddam school, that's for sure. You though, you gotta go. You get your thang together, you could be like a real person, get like a job. You could have a cool car or at least a goddam wife or a kid maybe too.'

‘Who wants a goddam kid?' Ray said.

‘I know. But when you get old, you start thinkin different.'

‘How you know?'

‘I just know. Goddammit, I'll carry you one more year, then after that you ain't allowed to hang with me no more.'

‘Oh, so you're carryin
me
, is it?'

The boys eyed each other, smiled, punched each other. José lit up a cigarette, passed it to Ray.

Ray dragged. ‘What about you then?'

‘What about me?'

‘What you gonna do? With your life, I'm sayin. The rest of it.'

‘If I make it to twenty, I'll worry about it then.' José nodded toward the fire hydrant across the street. ‘Here he comes.'

The Lincoln Navigator docked in front of the hydrant. The driver got out, stretched, blip-blipped his automatic key at the car, the locks clunked. He went inside a building down the block.

José pitched the cigarette, dropped his arm over Ray's shoulder. ‘Y'all ready?'

They swiped deep breaths, checked the street and made for the car. José sank the copy key, opened the door. Ray jumped in and popped the glove compartment with his backup spoon. He ripped the alarm wire out before the alarm beeped three times. The street was quiet.

‘Attaboy, Ray-Ray.'

‘Tomorrow we gotta come back and spray-paint over that mailbox thing.'

‘Hell you talkin about?'

‘That Nobody Cares About You ink.'

José rolled his eyes, rolled the ignition, drove away while Ray scanned the streets for cops. The streets were dead.

José drove the car into the garage. Jerry pulled down the door. Something curbside caught Jerry's eye, a traffic cop sticking a bright orange ticket under the windshield blade of Jerry's Mercedes parked in front of a dead fire hydrant. ‘Four in the mornin and she's peelin oranges.' Jerry limped outside, José and Ray on his tail. He waved to the cop driving away in her cruiser, his hand going from five fingers to one as she rounded the corner. He snatched the ticket, walked it to the car parked behind him, stuffed the ticket under that car's windshield blade. ‘Think they'll pay it?'

‘I look like a fortune-teller?' José said.

‘Sometimes you get a nigger doesn't read the ticket, he pays it.'

‘Jerry,' Ray said, ‘you blind?'

‘What?' Jerry said. ‘Yous ain't
nigger
niggers. Yous're Porda Ricans, right?'

‘Never mind that now,' José said. ‘I'm more wonderin if you gonna pay us, Jerry.'

‘Relax.' Jerry peeled off fifteen hundreds and slapped them into José's hand. He nodded. ‘Yous done real good. We'll do another one next month.'

José looked at the money. He looked at Ray. Ray nodded. José stuffed the money into Ray's pocket. Ray patted his pocket. ‘Now that's real money,' he said.

Jerry laughed. ‘Frickin Round Face. You kill me, kid.'

José and Ray walked off.

Jerry said, ‘'Ey.'

‘What,' both said.

‘I'm proud of yous.'

José and Ray looked at Jerry as if he'd cursed them in a language they didn't know. They looked at each other. Ray shrugged. They left.

‘Frickin kids,' Jerry said.

Back at Ten Mile, Ray wrestled the dogs. ‘Look at Fatty, man. He's like human the way he looks at you. Look.'

‘Hell you sayin now?' José sipped his celebration beer, worked the clicker to pull up the on-screen TV guide. ‘Y'all are drunk, kid.'

‘The other dogs, you call 'em, they turn their whole head to look at you. But Fatty, you call him, he just turn his eyes.'

‘Do not.'

‘Watch. Yo Fatty.'

The dog did what Ray said it would do.

‘See,' Ray said, ‘he's human, man.'

‘Then put him outside, then. I don't want no human dogs in my house.'

‘He can sleep with me.'

‘He
should
sleep with you.' José squinted at the dog, at Ray. ‘You're a little crazy, I'm thinkin, Ray.'

‘I might be.'

‘Y'all stop readin so much. Freakin me out. Human dogs, of all the strangenesses. That readin is gonna be the death of us.'

Ray laughed. ‘Hell're you talkin about now?'

‘I don't goddam know.' José clicked off the TV, flopped back in his bunk. ‘Night.'

‘Night yourself.'

‘Night yourself back at you. Git offa me, dogs. The stink, man. Phew. Dog stew, we should make.' José went straight to snoring.

The sun was almost up. Ray lay back, using the Fatty dog for a pillow. He patted the fifteen hundred bucks in his pocket, whispered, ‘We're rich.'

6

Ray watched the
abuelita
fix the flowers. ‘Could you put a little more of that angel's hair or whatever in?'

‘The baby's breath?' the florist said. ‘You want more? I put a lot in already.'

‘Okay.'

‘You don't want it to overwhelm the roses.
Me
entiendes, hijo?
No, I mean, you want me to, I'll put more.'

‘Nah, it's okay,' Ray said. ‘I don't want it to overwhelm the roses.'

‘That's right.' The florist pounded her cash register. ‘Two dozen extra-long stem comes to a hundred and sixteen sixty…gimme a hundred and we good.'

Ray paid, stuffed the roses into his knapsack but they didn't fit. ‘I borrow your scissors there?'

‘Huh?' The woman gave Ray her scissors.'

Ray cut the stems down to half and the roses fitted in his knapsack. The florist's cheeks turned white. Ray put the scissors back on the counter. ‘
Gracias, señora.

The old woman sat down and mopped her brow with a perfumed cloth.

Ray kicked his skateboard past Yolanda's Braid Palace thirty-one times. He stopped at the corner, opened his knapsack and dumped the roses into the trash can. He rode away downhill, spun back, kicked his board uphill to the trash can, pulled the roses out of the garbage and gave them to a strung-out hooker clicking her heels and snapping Bubble Yum on the corner.

The hooker cried. Ray wasn't sure if the hooker was a girl or a guy or a girl-guy, but it didn't matter. Ray liked all hookers as a matter of principle, even though he'd never been with one. He gave the hooker a hundred dollars. ‘You too young, chico,' the hooker said. She was a guy, Ray could tell now.

‘No, I mean, you just keep it,' Ray said.

‘Say what?'

Ray kicked his skateboard past The Palace. Yolie smoked a cigarette, fanned herself with a magazine as she talked on the phone. Her nipples were hard under her shirt. Ray turned around and went to the hooker.

‘Take the money back,' the hooker said. She was crying really hard now.

‘Um, nah, but could I have like half the roses back?'

Yolie scratched her armpit, squinted at Ray. ‘You just got cut yesterday, no?'

Ray gulped. ‘I…know.'

‘Amor, c'mere.' Yolie took Ray by the hand, brought him to the kitchen. ‘Sit.'

‘Yes'm.'

She poured him a Coke, felt his face with soft hands. ‘You're warm.' She took a thermometer out of the cabinet, rinsed it. Ray hated thermometers as a rule because he knew that after folks used them the first time they forgot whether they were mouth or ass, but with Yolie it was okay. Yolie would never stick an ass thermometer in your mouth. She stuck the thermometer in Ray's mouth. ‘You're runnin a little hot.'

‘I ain't slept is all.'

‘How come?'

Ray shrugged. He opened his knapsack, took out the roses. ‘They're for, like, you, but for Trini too, also.'

Yolie nodded. ‘They're real pretty. Thank you.' Yolie put her hand over her mouth. Her tetas shook as if she stood on quaking ground. ‘Lemme get Trini then,' she said through her fingers.

Ray panicked. ‘You don't gotta.'

‘Sit.' Yolie boobed Ray back into the chair, hit the stairwell that went to the upstairs apartment.

Ray sweat. Nothing happened for two minutes except the room got fifty times hotter. Ray shivered.

‘Hi.' She wore a pink half shirt, low-rider jeans, sunshine patches at the pockets. She moved in slow motion, floated as she came down the stairs.