Nebula Awards Showcase 2016 (41 page)

My one and only time in court: I am ten. Mom bought drugs at a bodega. It's her tenth or hundredth time passing through those tall tarnished-bronze doors. Her court date came on one of my rare stints out of the system, when she cleaned up her act convincingly enough that they gave me briefly back to her.

The courtroom is too crowded; the guard tells me to wait outside. “But he's my son,” my mother says, pointing out smaller children sitting by their parents.

I am very big for ten.

“He's gotta stay out here,” the guard says.

I sit on the floor and count green flecks in the floor. Dark-skinned men surround me, angry but resigned, defiant but hopeless. The floor's sparkle mocks us: our poverty, our mortality, the human needs that brought us here.

“Where I'm from,” Case said, “you could put a down payment on a house with two thousand dollars.”

“Oh.”

“You ever dream about escaping New York?”

“Kind of. In my head.”

Case laughed. “What about you and me getting out of town? Moving away?”

My head hurt with how badly I wanted that. “You hated that place. You don't want to go back.”

“I hated it because I was alone. If we went back together, I would have you.”

“Oh.”

His fingers drummed up and down my chest. Ran circles around my nipples. “I called that guy I know. The porn producer. Told him about you. He said he'd give us each five hundred, and another two-fifty for me as a finder's fee.”

“You called him? About me?”

“This could be it, Sauro. A new start. For both of us.”

“I don't know,” I said, but I
did
know. I knew I was lost, that I couldn't say no, that his mouth, now circling my belly button, had only to speak and I would act.

“Are you really such a proper little gentleman?” he asked. His hands, cold as winter, hooked behind my knees. “You never got into trouble before?”

My one time in trouble.

I am five. It's three in the morning. I'm riding my tricycle down the block. A policeman stops me.
Where's your mother/ She's home/ Why aren't you home?/ I was hungry and there's no food.
Mom is on a heroin holiday, lying on the couch while she's somewhere else. For a week I've been stealing food from corner stores. So much cigarette smoke fills the cop car that I can't breathe. At the precinct he leaves me there, windows all rolled up. Later he takes me home, talks to my mom, fills out a report, takes her away. Someone else takes me. Everything ends. All of this is punishment for some crime I committed without realizing it. I resolve right then and there to never again steal food, ride tricycles, talk to cops, think bad thoughts, step outside to get something I need.

Friday afternoon we rode the train to Manhattan. Case took us to a big building, no different on the outside from any other one. A directory on the wall listed a couple dozen tenants.
ARABY STUDIOS
was where we were going.

“I have an appointment with Mr. Goellnitz,” Case told a woman at a desk upstairs. The place smelled like paint over black mold. We sat in a waiting room like a doctor's, except with different posters on the walls.

In one, a naked boy squatted on some rocks. A beautiful boy. Fine black hair all over his body. Eyes like lighthouses. Something about his chin and cheekbones turned my knees to hot jelly. Stayed with me when I shut my eyes.

“Who's that?” I asked.

“Just some boy,” Case said.

“Does he work here?”

“No one
works here.
”

“Oh.”

Filming was about to start when I figured out why that boy on the rocks bothered me so much. I had thought only Case could get into my head so hard, make me feel so powerless, so willing to do absolutely anything.

A cinderblock room, dressed up like how Hollywood imagines the projects. Low ceilings and Snoop Dogg posters. Overflowing ashtrays. A pit bull dozing in a corner. A scared little white boy sitting on the couch.

“I'm sorry, Rico, you know I am. You gotta give me another chance.”

The dark scary drug dealer towers over him. Wearing a wife beater and a bicycle chain around his neck. A hard-on bobs inside his sweatpants. “That's the last time I lose money on you, punk.”

The drug dealer grabs him by the neck, rubs his thumb along the boy's lips, pushes his thumb into the warm wet mouth.

“
Do
it,” Goellnitz barked.

“I can't,” I said.

“Say the fucking line.”

Silence.

“Or I'll throw your ass out of here and neither one of you will get a dime.”

Case said “Come on, dude! Just say it.”

—and how could I disobey? How could I not do every little thing he asked me to do?

Porn was like cloudporting, like foster care. One more way they used you up.

One more weapon you could use against them.

I shut my eyes and made my face a snarl. Hissed out each word, one at a time, to make sure I'd only have to say it once

“That's.” “Right.” “Bitch.” I spat on his back, hit him hard in the head. “Tell.” “Me.” “You.” “Like it.” Off camera, in the mirror, Case winked.

Where did it come from, the strength to say all that? To say all that, and do all the other things I never knew I could do? Case gave it to me. Case, and the cloud, which I could feel and see now even with my eyes open, even without thinking about it, sweet and clear as the smell of rain.

“Damn, dude,” Case said, while they switched to the next camera set-up. “You're actually kind of a good actor with how you deliver those lines.” He was naked; he was fearless. I cowered on the couch, a towel covering as much of me as I could manage. What was it in Case that made him so certain nothing bad would happen to him? At first I chalked it up to white skin, but now I wasn't sure it was so simple. His eyes were on the window. His mind was already elsewhere.

The showers were echoey, like TV high school locker rooms. We stood there, naked, side by side. I slapped Case's ass, and when he didn't respond I did it again, and when he didn't respond I stood behind him and kissed the back of his neck. He didn't say or do a thing. So I left the shower to go get dressed.