Lush Life (3 page)

At least Steele was no longer alone, sharing his small table now with his dealer, Paulie Shaw, a sharp-faced ratter whose alert eyes, spitfire delivery, and generally tense aura reminded Eric of too many shadow players from back in the shame days. Passing on a fifth cup of coffee, he watched as Paulie opened an aluminum attache case and from its velvet, molded interior removed a number of rectangular glass photo negatives, each in its own protective sheath.

" 'Ludlow Street Sweatshop,'" holding it up by its edges. " 'Blind Beggar, 1888.' 'Passing the Growler.' 'Bandits Roost'-that one right there, as I told you on the phone, worth all the rest combined. And last but not least, 'Mott Street Barracks.'"

"Fantastic," Steele murmured, eyes once again straying to the milagro line, to his empty cafe.

"Each one personally hand-tinted by Riis himself for his lectures," Paulie said. "The man was light-years ahead of his time, total multimedia, had sixty to a hundred of these fading in and out of each other on a huge screen accompanied by music? Those uptown dowagers had to be crying their balls off."

"OK," Steele said, half listening.

"OK?" Paulie ducked down to find his eyes. "For the, for what we, for the number we discussed?"

"Yeah, yeah." Steele's knees pumping under the table.

The hungover kid sitting at the bar abruptly laughed at something his friend said, the rude sound of it bouncing off the tiled walls.

"Mike, right?" Eric tilted his chin at the probationary bartender.

"Ike," he said easily, still leaning forward on the zinc like he owned the place.

He had a shaved head and a menagerie of retro tattoos inside both forearms-hula girls, mermaids, devil heads, panthers-but his smile was as clean as a cornfield; the kid, Eric thought, like a poster boy for the neighborhood.

"Ike, go see if they want anything."

"You got it, boss."

"Chop-chop," said his friend.

As Ike came from behind the bar and headed for the back deuce, Paulie pulled up the velvet interior of his booty case to reveal a second layer of goods, from which he took out a large burnt-orange paperback.

"You're an Orwell man, right?" he said to Steele. "Road to Wigan Pier, Victor Gollancz Left Wing Book Club galleys, 1937. What you're looking at right now doesn't even exist."

"Just the Riis plates." Steele's eyes yet again straying to that barely moving line. "I cannot fucking believe this," he blurted to the room at large.

"How about Henry Miller," Paulie said quickly, burrowing into his case. "You into Henry Miller?"

Ike's shadow fell across the table, Paulie half twisting around and rearing back to eyeball him. "Can I help you with something?"

"You guys want anything?" Ike asked.

"We're done," Steele said.

"Henry Miller." Paulie pulled out a hardback. "First-edition Air
-
Conditioned Nightmare, pristine wrappers, and get this, inscribed to Nelson, A, Rockefeller."

Out on Rivington, an argument broke out in Spanish, someone being bumped into the window of the cafe with a muffled thud.

"This neighborhood," Steele said brightly, looking directly at Eric for the first time this deader-than-dead morning. "A little too much mix, not quite enough match, yeah?" Then he turned to his dealer: "How are you fixed for splinters of the True Cross?"

"For what?"

And with that, Eric, the boy-faced dog, was out the door.

A block from the restaurant, his heart thundering as he wondered exactly how he'd go about doing what had to be done, someone called, "Yo, hold up," and he turned to see Ike walking towards him, lighting a cigarette.

"You going to see the Virgin?"

"Sort of," Eric said.

"I'm on break, can I come with you?"

Eric hesitated, wondering if a witness would make it harder or easier, but then Ike just fell in step.

"Eric, right?" "Right."

"Ike Marcus," offering his hand. "So, Eric, what do you do?"

"What do you mean, what do I do?" Eric knowing exactly what he meant.

"I mean other than . . ." The kid at least quick-witted enough to cut himself off.

"I write," Eric said, hating to tell people, but just wanting to get them both off the hook.

"Oh yeah?" Ike said gratefully. "Me too."

"Good," Eric said briskly, thinking, Who asked.

His only viable project right now was a screenplay, five thousand down, twenty more on completion, anything about the Lower East Side in its heyday, Aka Jewday, commissioned by a customer from Berkmann s, a former Alphabet City squatter turned real estate gorilla, who now wanted to be an auteur; everybody wanting to be an auteur . . .

"Are you from here originally?" Ike asked.

"Everybody's from here originally," Eric said, then, coming off it: "Upstate."

"No kidding. Me too."

"Whereabouts?"

"Riverdale?" Then, grabbing Erics arm as he put on the brakes: "Oh, check this out."

The roof of the massive synagogue had caved in just two nights before, leaving only the three-story back wall with its lightly damaged twin Stars of David, shafts of sunlight streaming through the chinks. In the lee of that wall, the cantors table, Torah ark, a menorah with the spread of a bull elk, and four silver candleholders still stood like props on a stage, an intact row of six pews further enhancing the suggestion of an open-air theater. All else was reduced to an undulating field of rubble, Eric and Ike pausing on their way to the mini-mart to stand on the roped-off sidewalk with a gaggle of kufied deli men, off-duty sweatshop workers, and kids of various nations all cutting school.

"Check this out," Ike said again, nodding to a large Orthodox in a sweaty suit and fedora, his ear glued to his cell phone as he picked his way through the hilly debris to rescue the tattered remains of prayer books, piling loose and torn pages beneath bricks and chunks of plaster to keep them from blowing away. Two teenagers, one light-skinned, the other Latino, were following him and stuffing the salvaged sheets into pillowcases.

"Looks like one of those modern stage sets for Shakespeare, you know?" Ike said. "Brutus and Pompey running around in full camo with Tec-9s."

"More like Godot."

"How much you think he's paying those two kids?"

"As little as he can get away with."

A tall young guy wearing a kelly green yarmulke emblazoned with the New York Jets logo stood next to them writing furiously in a steno pad. Eric had the uncomfortable impression that he was taking down their conversation.

"Who are you writing for?" Ike asked without edge.

"The Post," he said.

"For real?"

"Yup."

"Excellent." Ike grinned and actually shook his hand.

This kid, Eric thought, was a trip.

"So what happened here, man?" Ike said.

"Fell the fuck down." The reporter shrugged, closing his pad. When he walked away, they noticed that he had a clubfoot.

"That's got to suck," Ike said under his breath.

"Excuse me, sir!" a bespectacled black man, his clothes nearly in rags but carrying an attache case, called out to the Orthodox, still on his cell. "Are you rebuilding?"

"Of course."

"Very good," the raggedy man said, and left.

"We should go too," Ike said, slapping Eric on the arm and heading out for the Virgin.

As they came up on the Sanaa, Eric turned to Ike, ready to school him on slipping the line, but the kid had already done so, giving Nazir his dollar admission fee and disappearing inside.

Hemmed in by supplicants, they knelt side by side like batters in an on-deck circle before the Virgin, the shrine-pile of offerings having tripled since Erics previous visit.

His first thought was to approach one of the brothers, appeal to them to least reroute the line outside so it wouldn't screw up all the other businesses in the neighborhood, but he realized that the line was just that: outside, as in, out of their control. Which left asking them to lose the Virgin altogether, not likely given the cash coming in. Which left . . .

"Fuck me," Eric whispered, then to Ike: "Can I ask you something personal?" his voice feathery with tension.

"Absolutely."

"All those tattoos, what are you going to tell your kids someday?"

"My kids? I'm my own kid."

"My own kid," Eric said, massaging his chest as if to get more air in there. "I like that."

"Yeah? Good, it's true."

"Shit," Eric hissed. "How do you do this . . ."

"Do what?" Ike whispered, then casually reached for the glass door, opening it for a few seconds, then closing it back. "That?"

Within a minute the inrush of humid air had changed the condensation pattern and sent the Virgin packing. Fifteen minutes later, as the news shot back across Rivington, the milagro line was no more. And by noon, over at Cafe Berkmann, there was a twenty-minute wait for tables.

"See you din't live round here back in the heyday, so no way you'd know, but about ten, twelve years ago?" Little Dap Williams yakking away as he stopped to scoop up the next bunch of Bible pages from under a brick. "Man, it was, there was some bad dudes up in here. The Purples on Avenue C, Hernandez brothers on A and B, Delta Force in the Cahans, nigger name Maquetumba right in the Lemlichs. Half a them got snatched up by RICO for long bids, the other half is dead, all the hardcores, so now it's like just the Old Heads out there sippin' forties and telling stories about yesteryear, them and a bunch of Similac niggers, stoop boys, everybody out for themselves with their itty-bitty eight balls, nobody runnin' the show."

"Maquetumba?" Tristan's pillowcase was nearly full.

"Dominican dude. Dead now. My brother told me him and his crew had the Lemlichs sewed tight."

"What kind of name is that."

"I just said. Dominican."

"What's it mean, though."

"Maquetumba? Man, you should know, you Dominican."

"Puerto Rican."

"Same shit, ain't it?"

Tristan shrugged.

"Sss," Little Dap sucked his teeth. "Like, 'he who drops the most,' some shit like that."

"Drops what?"

Little Dap just stared at him.

"Right." Pretending like he got it. Tristan was just glad to be hanging with Little Dap, glad to be hanging with anybody, with him having to live 24/7 with his ex-stepfather, the guy's new wife, kids, rules, and fists. Even how he got here, picking up Bible paper on this shitpile, seemed a little bit of a miracle; after having dropped off the hamsters-his not-really brothers and sisters-at their schools this morning, he hadn't felt like going to school himself.

So he'd been sitting outside Seward Park High School at ten, not knowing what to do or having anyone around to do it with, when Little Dap cut out of the building, passed him by with a nod, then shrugging, walked back and asked him if he wanted to make some change at the Jew cave-in.

It always seemed like whenever he chose to cut school, everybody else picked that day to go in and vice versa; if he didn't have to be dropping off the hamsters first thing every morning, he could just hang out in the candy store by Seward having a Coca-Cola and Ring Ding breakfast with everybody from the Lemlichs when they decided what to do that day, but he could never make it there in time; same for the afternoon, everybody coming together after last class and deciding whose place to go to; Tristan once again stuck doing the reverse hamster run and not having a clue where they went. And his ex-stepfather wouldn't allow him a cell phone.

"Yeah, the PJ's wide-open now," Little Dap said again.

"What about your brother?"

Tristan knew all about Big Dap, everybody did, the only nigger in history to ever get into a fight with a police in an elevator, wind up shooting the guy in the leg with his own gun, and beat the case.

"Dap? Pfff . . . Nigger's too lazy. 1 mean, he could run the Lemlichs, at least if he wanted to, got everybody up in there so scared a him, you know, if he put in the effort? But shit, all he wants is get the cheese easiest way he could. Go up on a corner, 'Yo Shorty you slingin'? It's a hundred a week.' Collect, go back to Shyanne's crib, smoke his brains out and watch the TV. That ain't no life."

"Times ten corners?"

Tristan only made $25, $30 on a delivery for Smoov, and Smoov only came to him if nobody else was around.

"Wide-open . . ." Little Dap shaking his head like it was a tragedy.

"So, what. You gonna go all kingpin out there?"

"Hell no. And wind up in some underground supermax? This Old Head round the way said them joints age you ten years for each real one, guys be laying there twenty-four/seven daydreaming 'bout how to kill themselves."

"For real?"

"I'll take another bid in gladiator school over that anytime."

"For real."

Tristan had never been to either juvie or, since he turned seventeen last year, the Tombs, just ROR'ed a few times like everybody else for the usual shit: possession, trespassing-aka hanging in the park after curfew-for fighting that one time, pissing out the bedroom window.