Rage Is Back (9781101606179) (23 page)

We climbed in silence, stopping twice to catch our breath. At last, the door to the fifteenth floor loomed above us. I took the final set of stairs two at a time, threw it open, and paused.

“You know, I've only done this by myself. I never thought about what somebody else would see, if they watched me. Will I just vanish? Will you?”

“Less talk, more walk,” said Cloud, and pushed me over the threshold. I stumbled into the penthouse corridor, and when I looked behind me, the stairwell was empty. A moment later, so was my stomach, the rigors of time-travel having caused its contents to perform their usual appearing act.

A few seconds passed, and then Cloud stepped into tomorrow, and a pool of vomit.

“Eeeew, youngblood.” He lifted one Timberland and then the other toward his chest, in a modified version of the dance known as the East Coast Stomp.

“Sorry. It always happens.”

“Coulda warned me.”

I rubbed my temples, then my eyes. “You don't feel sick at all?”

“Nah.”

Billy, Fever, and Karen joined us, one after the next. It wasn't much to look at; no shimmering fade into visibility, no sound effect. More like you blinked, and when your eyes reopened, there they were. Minus the blink.

My father and Dengue seemed fine. Karen looked at her phone, doubled over, and waited, cat-style. You ever seen a cat puke? They've got a whole routine they do, like ballplayers at the free throw line. They ratchet themselves into just the right posture, train their eyes on the spot where it's going to land, and hold the pose for maybe a minute, working themselves up to it. If a cat pukes on your rug, it's your fault. You had ample time to move his ass onto the hardwood. Information courtesy of the Uptown Girl, whose brother-sister duo, Gem and Scout, I miss with an embarrassing intensity.

I did the respectful thing and waited until Karen had finished retching to start talking shit.

“There art more things in heaven and on earth than thou dost conceive,” I said, mangling a quote I was sure nobody else knew anyway. I offered her a stick of gum. She reached up, snatched it.

“You didn't raise no liar. Next time I tell you some crazy shit, you best believe the kid.”

“How 'bout we move down the hall,” said Cloud, beckoning for the gum. “Away from y'all's breakfast.”

By the time we regrouped under the window, Karen was rejuvenated enough to pick up where she'd left off.

“Start talking.”

“Take it down a notch, sis. You got no cause to come at me like that.” Cloud paused just long enough to establish narrative authority. “So. Me and Polhemus, we're discussing literature and shit, everything's going good, when Jumpshot's cousin walks in to buy weed. Dude the Jamaicans carved up in prison. Name of Terry.”

“Shit, I know Terry.”

“Naturally, Terry got a gun and wanna know what's going on. Long story short, I handed Polhemus over to him, took what I came for, and skated. Had to throw your name in the mix, youngblood, because the nigga was nosy about the particulars. But it doesn't matter. Terry doesn't care, and Polhemus ain't been drawing breath for a few hours now.”

“A day and a few hours,” said Dengue.

“Yeah. Anyway, I walk outside, and there's Bracken, sitting in a whip with two of his guys.”

“How'd he get on you?” Karen demanded.

“How the fuck should I know? Think I asked?”

“What did he say?” from Billy.

“You motherfuckers really are the Unnecessary Question Brigade, aren't you? Shut the fuck up for two minutes, and I'll tell you.”

“Looks the same, doesn't he?” said Dengue. I saw Billy shiver as he waited for an answer. It came slow.

“Yeah,” said Cloud, pawing the ground with one boot, then the other. “Yeah. He does. Like time stood still. Told me he does Pilates.”

“What?” said Karen.

“Pilates. It's like a combination of aerobics and weight training.”

“I know what Pilates is! What the fuck, you and Bracken gonna be gym buddies now? ‘Hey, Anastacio, can I get a spot?' ‘Sure, Cloud, how many reps you going for?'” She flung one arm in the air, sort of spastically, and stalked a few steps away.

“You better tell your wife to get a handle, dude.”

“I'm not his wife.”

“She's not my wife.”

I said, “Can we get back to the part where Bracken jacks you for the money?”

Cloud threw some surprise my way.

“He did jack you for the money, didn't he?”

Cloud nodded. “Offered to return it if I brought him Rage.”

“And if you don't?” asked Fever.

“Back to jail.”

“What else?” said Billy. “He must have said something else.”

Cloud started to say something, then changed his mind. “Nothing worth repeating.” He pulled a wad of bills out of his pocket, peeled off one or two, and gave the rest to Karen. “Here. This is about two G's. Do what you can with it. I'm out.”

“You're
out
? Excuse me?”

“Look, I'm not going back to prison. And this city's too small to hide in. My uncles, they down in Virginia Beach. I don't know what they're doing, but they say they got a good thing going, and there's room for me. I'ma get my ass on a bus and find out. Ain't nothing more I can do here, except bring heat down.”

“You know what I think?” asked Karen.

“Mom, chill.”

“No, lemme tell you—I think you're full of shit. I think you killed Polhemus yourself, and made up all the rest. And I think you came off with a lot of money. Enough to change your mind about a lot of things.”

I expected Cloud to lunge at her or something. I was tensed for it, calves and hands and thighs, wondering if Billy and I could hold him back, if Karen could dart away in time.

But Cloud just looked at her. It was the look Eurydice probably gave Orpheus when dude turned around to make sure it was really his wife he was leading out of Hades: the look on her face as she turned to vapor, doomed by his lack of faith. Right then, I knew Karen was right. Money does make people do sick things.

“That's what you think, huh?” Cloud's eyes swept over us, one by one. “That's what you all think?”

Dengue said no, and so did Billy. But there was a tiny pause, a sliver of air between the call and the response. I said it even slower.

Cloud nodded. Not like he was answering a question, but like he was listening to jazz.

“I got no proof,” he said at last. “Just my word. Always been good enough before.” He chewed his lower lip. “You could find Terry and ask him, I guess. But you know what? It doesn't matter. Trust is trust, and doubts is doubts.”

He walked back to the elevator, pressed the button. It dinged open, and Cloud stepped inside. “I'm the convict, and y'all the ones thinking like criminals. That's fucked up. It's . . . I don't know. It's real fucked up.”

The doors shut. We listened to the motors and steel pulleys lowering Cloud to the ground.

“Maybe he'll decide to buy himself another day,” I said. “That's what I'd do. We could intercept him on the stairs.”

“If Cloud says he's gone, he's gone.” Dengue patted himself down for glue, found a tube, and fumbled with the crusted top. It slipped from his hands, fell to the floor. Billy crouched to pick it up.

“You don't trust anybody, do you, Karen?” he asked while he was down there. The way he said it was so sad, so full of pity. I wondered if he realized that it was his fault she didn't. Then I wondered if it was my job to tell him.

My mother sighed. “Don't tell me that story didn't sound shady.”

“Maybe,” said Billy, rising. “But it's Cloud.”

“Exactly. And you all wanna act like he's squeaky clean, when you
know
better. Make me be the bad guy, as usual. Remember Fashion Moda?”

From the expressions on their faces, it appeared they did.

“What happened at Fashion Moda?” I asked. It was a graffiti art gallery in the Bronx; I knew that much.

“It doesn't matter,” said Karen.

“Obviously, it does.”

“To her, it does,” said Billy. “Not to me.”

Dengue rubbed a finger-load of glue into the collar of his T-shirt and inhaled the way a young Abraham Lincoln might after stepping out of his log cabin on a crisp autumn morn. “Look, Cloud didn't leave 'cause you insulted him. He left because it was his only play.”

“Definitely the only play if you just robbed and killed a drug dealer.”

“Mom!”

“I said ‘if'!” She threw up her hands, surrender-style. “Okay, it's dropped.” She pulled Cloud's wad of money from her back pocket. “Two fuckin' G's.”

“We shouldn't have taken it,” said Dengue. “That was all he had.”

“Well, now it's all we have, and it's barely gonna cover the welding equipment, so I hope one of you bleeding heart assholes has got a Plan B that runs on fuckin' pixie dust and the goodwill of men.” Once Karen's aggression reached a certain velocity the brakes stuck, and she veered all over the road until she ran out of gas. Or something like that. I'm from New York, man. I don't drive.

“I might,” said Dengue.

“Do tell. And it better not include vans, stun guns, night vision goggles, warehouses, or anything else that costs money.”

“Wait a second,” I said. “
That
was your fuckin' plan? To kidnap eighty city employees and stash them in a warehouse?”

I know my mother. I can tell when she's tipsy, when she's bluffing at poker, when she's realizing that something she thought made sense is ludicrous.

“I mean, Cloud felt like . . .”

“The same Cloud you just accused of robbing everybody?”

“Yeah, smartass. He said he had the soldiers to make it happen, if we had the dough.”

“That's fucking retarded. Dengue, whatchu got? And it better not involve the Mole People.”

The Ambassador stroked his chin. “Di bwoy Amuse, 'im 'ave a thought whose time dun come. You all remember that night at the 207th Street yard?”

“Of course,” said Karen. “I got arrested. Dumbest shit we ever did.”

Dengue wagged a finger. “But it was almost the smartest.” He turned to me. “Amuse snuck into the MTA's main office and stole a clipboard with the guards' schedule on it. Then he called the two guys working midnight to eight, and told them their shift was canceled.”

Karen rolled her eyes. “We waltzed in at one, thinking it was all good. Never occurred to us that each shift waited to be relieved by the next. Amuse and Drum and these two bozos escaped. Me and Rosa 151 got bagged. That's when I knew chivalry was dead.”

“Shoulda run faster. I was no slender reed even back then, and I got away. But check it out: what if there
was
no shift waiting for relief? Wouldn't canceling the next three work?”

Karen drummed her fingers against the pockets of her jeans. “They must use computers now. We'd have to find someone to hack in.”

“I could hit up some nerds from my school.”

Dengue snorted. “This is the MTA we're talking about. Trust me, they haven't even upgraded their clipboards.”

“We'd still need to take out the first shift, and stash them someplace.”

“Hold on,” I said. “This cuts the workload by seventy-five percent. Why wasn't this plan A?”

Dengue grimaced. “All things being equal, I'd rather know that everybody who could be a problem is tied down for the duration. And that it's all being handled by professionals with hi-tech fly shit.”

“They would have been ex-military,” Karen put in, still pissy. “Cloud had connects.”

“Yeah, whatever. I can read the ads in the back of
Soldier of Fortune
too.”

Before my mother could return fire, Billy crossed his ankles, bent his knees, and dropped to the floor, Indian-style.

“I can't do this,” he said, the color draining from his face as he shook his head. “I'm sorry. I understand we need these guards out of the way, but I can't be a part of anything violent. Not anymore. If Bracken was standing in front of me right now, I wouldn't touch him. Except to heal him, if he'd let me.”

Karen heaved a sigh. In a cartoon, the word
exasperation
would have floated up out of her mouth. She knelt next to my father, reached into his lap, and took his hand. “You never
were
a part of anything violent, Billy, except getting your ass kicked. You've always been, you know, a pussy. Or a pacifist. Whatever.”

He pulled his hand away. “If we start hurting people, we're the same as Bracken.”

“Shades of gray, you simple motherfucker.”

I looked at Dengue, the only person left at eye level. He didn't appear eager to dive into the middle of a fight between my parents. Which meant, I gathered, that it was my job. I squatted between them, like a preschool teacher about to give a lecture about not throwing the blocks.

“All right, look. Billy, what Karen's trying to say is that a certain amount of physical intervention is probably unavoidable, any way you cut it. Karen, Billy's right that we can't just go around indiscriminately fucking people up. Luckily, I think there's a common answer to both problems. In many ways, it's the answer to all life's problems.” I stood.

“Spit it out,” said the Ambassador. “Everybody hates coy.”

“Drugs. Gnarly, long-lasting drugs that totally obliterate reality. You got anything like that, Billy? I bet you do.”

My father's head bobbed from side to side, as if he were listening to the proverbial shoulder-perched angel and devil. I assume they're in a proverb, anyway; I hate when people use proverbial wrong,
I'm losing my proverbial shit
or what have you. That and the misuse of literally, as in,
dude, I was so scared I literally died
. No you didn't, you douchenozzle. But I digress.