Bitter Bronx (23 page)

Pru had to disappear or she wouldn't survive her next excursion to Home Depot or McDonald's. And no book could help her now. Travel guides couldn't map out some no-man's-land where she might be safe. But Emma Mae, her cellmate at Milledgeville, had told her about a particular casbah called the Bronx where the cops never patrolled McDonald's. Besides, she hadn't murdered a single soul within five hundred miles of Manhattan or the Bronx. Pru wasn't a mad dog, as the bulletins had labeled her. She had to shoot the night manager at each McDonald's, because that would paralyze the customers and discourage anyone from coming after her.

She got on a Greyhound wearing eyeglasses and a man's lumber jacket after cutting her hair in the mirror of a public toilet. She'd been on the run for two months. Crime wasn't much of a business. Murdering people, and she still had to live from hand to mouth.

She couldn't remember how she landed in the Bronx. She walked up the stairs of a subway station, saw a synagogue that had been transformed into a Pentecostal church, then a building with a mural on its back wall that pictured a paradise with crocodiles, palm trees, and a little girl. The Bronx was filled with Latinas and burly black men, Emma Mae had told her; the only whites who lived there were “trash”—outcasts and country people who had to relocate. Pru could hide among them, practically invisible in a casbah that no one cared about.

Emma Mae had given her an address, a street called Marcy Place, where the cousin of a cousin lived, a preacher who played the tambourine and bilked white trash, like Prudence and Emma. He was right at the door when Pru arrived, an anemic-looking man dressed in black, with the same white streak in his hair that some skunks seemed to have, but he didn't have a skunk's eyes; his were clear as pale green crystals that burned right into Pru. She was hypnotized without his having to say a single syllable. He laughed at her disguise, and that laughter seemed to break the spell.

“Prudence Miller,” he said, “are you a man or a girl?”

His voice was reedy, much less potent than his eyes.

Emma Mae must have told him about her pilgrimage to the Bronx. But Pru still didn't understand what it meant to be the cousin of a cousin. His name was Omar Kaplan. It must have been the alias of an alias, since Omar couldn't have been a Christian name. She'd heard all about Omar Khayyám, the Persian philosopher and poet who was responsible for the
Rubaiyat
, the longest love poem in history, though she hadn't read a line. And this Omar must have been a philosopher as well as a fraud—his apartment, which faced a brick wall, was lined with books. He had all the old Modern Library classics, like
Anna Karenina
and
The Brothers Karamazov
, books that Pru had discovered in secondhand shops in towns that had a college campus.

“You'll stay away from McDonald's,” he said in that reedy voice of his, “and you'd better not have a gun.”

“Then how will I earn my keep, Mr. Omar Kaplan? I'm down to my last dollar.”

“Consider this a religious retreat or a rest cure, but no guns. I'll stake you to whatever you need.”

Pru laughed bitterly but kept that laugh locked inside her throat. Omar Kaplan intended to turn her into a slave, to write his own
Rubaiyat
on the softest parts of her flesh. She waited for him to pounce. He didn't touch her or steal her gun. She slept with the silver Colt under her pillow, on a cot near the kitchen, while Omar had the bedroom all to himself. It was dark as a cave. He'd emerge from the bedroom, dressed in black, like some Satan with piercing green eyes, prepared to soft-soap whatever white trash had wandered into the Bronx. He'd leave the apartment at seven in the morning and wouldn't return before nine at night. But there was always food in the fridge, fancier food than she'd ever had: salmon cutlets, Belgian beer, artichokes, strawberries from Israel, a small wheel of Swiss cheese with blue numbers stamped on the rind.

He was much more talkative after he returned from one of his pilferings. He'd switch off all the lamps and light a candle, and they'd have salmon cutlets together, drink Belgian beer. He'd rattle his tambourine from time to time, sing Christian songs. It could have been the dark beer that greased his tongue.

“Prudence, did you ever feel any remorse after killing those night managers?”

“None that I know of,” she said.

“Their faces don't come back to haunt you in your dreams?”

“I never dream,” she said.

“Do you ever consider all the orphans and widows you made?”

“I'm an orphan,” she said, “and maybe I just widened the franchise.”

“Pru the orphan maker.”

“Something like that,” she said.

“Would you light a candle with me for their lost souls?”

She didn't care. She lit the candle, while Satan crinkled his eyes and mumbled something. Then he marched into his bedroom and closed the door. It galled her. She'd have felt more comfortable if he'd tried to undress her. She might have slept with Satan, left marks on his neck.

She would take long walks in the Bronx, with her silver gun. She sought replicas of herself, wanderers with pink skin. But she found Latinas with baby carriages, old black women outside a beauty parlor, black and Latino men on a basketball court. She wasn't going to wear a neckerchief mask and rob men and boys playing ball.

The corner she liked best was at Sheridan Avenue and East 169th, because it was a valley with hills on three sides, with bodegas and other crumbling little stores, a barbershop without a barber, apartment houses with broken courtyards and rotting steel gates. The Bronx was a casbah, like Emma Mae had said, and Pru could explore the hills that rose up around her, that seemed to give her some sort of protective shield. She could forget about Satan and silver guns.

She returned to Marcy Place. It was long after nine, and Omar Kaplan hadn't come home. She decided to set the table, prepare a meal of strawberries, Swiss cheese, and Belgian beer. She lit a candle, waiting for Omar. She grew restless, decided to read a book. She swiped
Sister Carrie
off the shelves—a folded slip of paper fell out, some kind of impromptu bookmark. But this bookmark had her face on it, and a list of her crimes. It had a black banner on top.
WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE.
Like the title of a macabre song. There were words scribbled near the bottom: “Dangerous and demented.” Then scribbles in another hand: “A real prize package. McDonald's ought to give us a thousand free Egg McMuffins for this fucking lady.” Then a signature that could have been a camel's hump. The letters on that hump were “O-M-A-R.”

She shouldn't have stayed another minute. But she had to tease out the logic of it all. Emma Mae had given her a Judas kiss, sold her to some supercop. Why hadn't Satan arrested her the second she'd opened the door? He was toying with her like an animal trainer who would point her toward McDonald's, where other supercops were waiting with closed-circuit television cameras. They meant to film her at the scene of the crime, so she could act out some unholy procession that would reappear on the six o'clock news.

A key turned in the lock. Pru clutched her silver Colt. Omar appeared in dark glasses that hid his eyes. He wasn't dressed like a lowlife preacher man. He wore a silk tie and a herringbone suit. He wasn't even startled to see a gun in his face. He smiled and wouldn't beg her not to shoot. It should have been easy. He couldn't put a spell on her without his pale green eyes.

“White trash,” she said. “Is Emma Mae your sister?”

“I have a lot of sisters,” he said, still smiling.

“And you're a supercop and a smarty-pants.”

“Me? I'm the lowest of the low. A freelancer tied to ten different agencies, an undercover kid banished to the Bronx. Why didn't you run? I gave you a chance. I left notes for you in half my books, a hundred fucking clues.”

“Yeah, I'm Miss Egg McMuffin. I do McDonald's. And I have no place to run to. Preacher man, play your tambourine and sing your last song.”

She caught a glimpse of the snub-nosed gun that rose out of a holster she hadn't seen. She didn't even hear the shot. She felt a thump in her chest and she flew against the wall with blood in her eyes. And that's when she had a vision of the night managers behind all the blood. Six men and a woman wearing a McDonald's bib, though she hadn't remembered them wearing bibs at all. They had eye sockets without the liquid complication of eyes themselves. Pru was still implacable toward the managers. She would have shot them all over again. But she did sigh once before the night managers disappeared and she fell into Omar Kaplan's arms like a sleepy child.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

These thirteen stories were published in slightly different form in the following magazines and anthologies:

“Lorelei”:
The Atlantic,
Fiction 2010.

“Adonis”:
The American Scholar
, Winter 2011.

“Archy and Mehitabel”:
The American Scholar
, Summer 2012.

“The Cat Lady's Kiss”:
StoryQuarterly
, vol. 44, 2010.

“Silk & Silk”:
Narrative Magazine
, Story of the Week, 2010–11.

“Little Sister”:
The Atlantic
, Fiction 2011.

“Marla”:
The Southern Review
, Autumn 2013.

“Dee”:
Fiction
, no. 57, 2011.

“Princess Hannah”:
Storie
, vol. 57–58, April 2006.

“Milo's Last Chance”:
Epoch
, vol. 60, no. 2, 2011.

“Alice's Eyes”:
American Short Fiction
, vol. 60, no. 2, 2011.

“Major Leaguer”:
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
, September–October, 2013.

“White Trash”:
Bronx Noir
, edited by S. J. Rozan. New York: Akashic Books, 2007.

O
THER
B
OOKS BY
J
EROME
C
HARYN

FICTION

NONFICTION

GRAPHIC NOVELS (WITH FRANÇOIS BOUCQ)

Little Tulip
(forthcoming)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jerome Charyn has received the Rosenthal Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He was named a Commander of Arts and Letters by the French minister of culture in 2002. His stories have appeared in
The Atlantic
,
The Paris Review, Narrative, The American Scholar,
StoryQuarterly
, and other magazines. His most recent novel was
I Am Abraham
, published by Liveright. He lives in New York.

Bitter Bronx: Thirteen Stories
is a book of short stories. All of the characters, other than those well-recognized public or historical figures whom the reader will readily identify, are products of the author's imagination, and all of the settings, locales, dialogue, and events have been invented by the author or are used fictitiously. In all other respects, any resemblance to actual events, or to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Jerome Charyn

All rights reserved

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