The Wolves of Fairmount Park (4 page)

It was dusk and turning cool. Orlando paced on the street near Brendan's house, looking up and down the narrow road and rubbing his hands together, a nervous habit that had gotten worse lately. He wished Brendan would come home so Orlando could say whatever it was he came to say and get away, out of this neighborhood of old ladies looking out at him from between the drawn blinds.

He lit a cigarette to have something to do with his hands and then tossed it away, walking down the sloping street past a blue Dumpster where one of Brendan's neighbors was renovating a narrow house, guys going in and out carrying loads of pried-up woodwork and speaking Polish to each other. They eyed him as he walked by craning his neck to see inside, and a big guy with a shaved head and a hooked nose cocked his head and said something that Orlando didn't need translated. He held up his hands and kept moving, but made a note that the place was empty and when he'd looked inside he'd seen an opened wall and the warm red glint of copper pipes. He kept walking the narrow, canted street, tucked his head down.

.   .   .

Brendan was standing in the kitchen listening to phone messages, his keys still in his hands. Kathleen had gone right up to get a shower and a change of clothes so they could get back to the hospital. There were voices from outside, and through the shades Brendan saw the red crawl of lights from an RMP in the street in front of the house.

He was moving toward the door before he heard the knock. Standing on the porch were two young guys from the Fifth District. One tall, black, with the trim body of a runner, the other pale white with freckles and broad across the shoulders. Both had shaved heads, the way they all wore it now, so many of them coming out of the service. The shorter one pointed a metal clipboard toward the car where a pasty kid with blond hair stood with his hands in his pockets, and it took Brendan a minute to recognize his half brother.

Orlando moved to stand at the periphery of the porch, looking down the way he always did, one arm cocked over his face and the hand touching his hair. The same stance Brendan had seen a thousand times when his brother was in trouble. With the old lady, or at school with the nuns. In police stations and courtrooms. Hiding behind his pale hand, his eyes flicking up. Poised for the blow.

“Sir?” The young cop looked apologetic. They'd know, of course; every cop in the city knew about Michael by now. “This individual says he's—”

“Yeah.” Brendan waved a hand, cutting him off and showing his teeth in something that wanted to be a smile. “Yeah, he's with us.” He waved, one quick, sharp flap of his hand. “Get in here.”

The kid tucked his shoulders in and skirted the cop and slid past Brendan and into the living room without a word. Brendan stepped out to the porch, smiling again to show everything was okay. The two cops looked at each other; then the taller one came up and shook his hand and said he was sorry and they were all pulling for his son. The pale, black-haired one looked sheepish and said he was sorry to disturb him and Kathleen but an elderly woman down the block had called them when she'd seen . . . The cop motioned with his head past Brendan toward the inside of the house. Brendan told them he appreciated their coming and keeping an eye on things. Cop to cop, the way he talked to the guys on the job. His face burned red, and he wiped at his mouth and nodded to them as they got back in the RMP. At the door he turned and looked at the blank faces of the houses up and down the narrow street and wondered how many of his neighbors had seen what happened. Great, he thought. Just what they needed now.

Brendan came back in and shut the door to find his half brother standing in a corner of the living room, his hands in his pockets, his eyes flicking around the room. He had always been a good-looking kid, but now he looked tired and maybe sick. His eyes were red, his skin pale and blotchy. His leather jacket was scuffed, and his jeans looked unwashed and greasy. Brendan let out a long breath. He was trying to remember the last time he'd seen him. It was at least a year. Maybe it was the time he'd seen Orlando coming out of a social club on Broad Street that Brendan wouldn't have gone into with a shotgun and a dozen friends. The Tip-Top, that was it. Jesus Christ.

He'd almost called Orlando by his middle name, Kevin. It was something he'd begun doing when his younger brother had started to seriously fuck up, in high school. The name Orlando was ridiculous for a grown man. Something their crazy, drunken mother had named him in one of her moods. A weightless name that seemed to pull his brother away from normal life and into the dark corners where she'd lived. Where she wandered until she died, frozen solid behind a Dumpster, shaped to the hard ground like a bundle of rags.

So let his junkie friends call him Orlando, or Little Brother, he'd heard that, too. Brendan wanted to hug the kid, and smack him hard on the side of the head. Both feelings working on him at once. And of course it wasn't just his brother and the mess he'd made of his life. It was Michael lying unconscious in the hospital. From standing on the steps of a dope house. Someplace his brother, God help them all, had probably copped.

“Yeah,” said Orlando, and Brendan came to himself again. “I know. I'm sorry. I just heard and I didn't . . .” He shrugged. “I didn't know what to do.”

Kathleen started down the stairs, and they both watched her come, her hair wet and lines like bruises under her eyes. Brendan caught his brother's eye and pointed toward the door silently, his eyes hot and white. Orlando put his hands up, placating. He got it.

Kathleen looked lost in her head and it took her a minute to see Orlando, but when she did she ran to put her arms around him.

“Orlando.” She held him close, and he looked over his shoulder
apologetically at his brother, his eyes sorrowful as a dog's. Kathleen stepped away. “You heard about Michael. Thanks so much for coming.” She seemed genuinely glad he was there.

“He just came by for a second.”

“Yeah, I just wanted to see if, you know.” Orlando shrugged. “There was anything I could do. And to say I'm sorry.”

“Thanks. I wish I could make you something.” She swiveled toward the kitchen.

Brendan said, “But we gotta get back to the hospital.” His eyes were lifeless, and Orlando looked down, rubbing his hands on his pants.

Kathleen touched his hand and looked into his face. “Come by and see us sometime. When Michael's home.” She moved away, touching her wet hair, and Orlando moved toward the door.

Brendan followed him out to the porch, and Orlando turned. It was full dark now, and they were just shapes to each other, blue-black figures of men. A car went by, and they watched it go, Brendan waiting for his brother to speak.

“I know you don't want me here. I just didn't know what else to do.” He looked blank and defeated, which just made Brendan angrier somehow.

“Jesus, Orlando.” He shook his head. “Are you eating? Do you have a place to live?”

“Yeah, I'm okay. I'm right down the street from, you know.”

“From what?”

“From where Michael—” He shrugged. “From where Michael was last night.”

Brendan took two quick steps toward him, and Orlando closed
his eyes and stood straighter, as if expecting the punch that Brendan had had coiled in him since he had first seen his half brother on the porch, but Brendan just grabbed the loose sleeve of his jacket and twisted it, bringing them closer.

“Christ, was he with you? Was he coming to see you?”

Orlando opened his eyes. “No, Brendan, no. I haven't seen Michael in, I don't know.” It came out in that tone, that whining schoolkid tone that junkies used with cops.

“The detectives said the boys had a thousand dollars. Was that to buy drugs? From you?”

“No, Brendan. No. I don't know what they were doing. I don't know anything about it.”

Brendan released his brother and held his hand out. “Give it.”

“What?”

Brendan snapped his fingers twice and flapped his hand in a “gimme” motion. “Whatever you took from the living room.”

“Jesus, Brendan.”

“Don't even.” His hand went up fast and he slapped his brother. “Don't even fucking start.”

Orlando didn't flinch, but looked down and put one hand into his jacket. He came out with a small picture frame and handed it to Brendan, who took it roughly.

He had to hold it close to see it on the darkening porch, some kind of phony silver frame with a faded picture of Maire that Kathleen had found among Brendan's father's things and put out on the bookcase near the TV. Brendan had thought about making her get rid of it, but for reasons he himself didn't understand he let it stay. Though he had moved it back behind
some other pictures. Michael in his hockey uniform, Brendan and Kathleen on their wedding day, impossibly young. Other, better memories from the family he made, not the one that made him.

Brendan shook his head.

Orlando kept his eyes down. “I wasn't going to sell it.”

“Yes you were. You might tell yourself something else standing here now, but you were.” His voice was quiet now, and his eyes flicked around the street to see if anyone could see them. “Don't come back here. I know you mean well or whatever, but you're not . . .”

“Not welcome here. I know.”

“No, it's that you're not
you
anymore. You're just this collection of urges and twitches, and I can't have that around my home.” He didn't raise his voice, and when he said it he patted his brother on the arm. No hard feelings. “I don't know you anymore. I know what happened to you, about Maire and how she got. But I can't help that now, and I can't help you.”

Brendan heard a noise from inside and turned to see Kathleen moving in the living room. When he turned again, Orlando was gone.

Kathleen came out, her head down, distracted. She looked at him, narrowing her eyes in the dark. “What's going on? What's that?” She pointed to the frame in his hand.

“It's a picture of my mother.”

There was a small buzzing noise and a faint click as the streetlights came on, and it was night.

.   .   .

Orlando walked up the stairs of the boardinghouse off Green Lane, moving slowly, listening to the hollow sound of his feet on the stairs and thinking about his brother and his mother and trying to remember when he wanted to be something. Trying to remember if there was a time when there did seem to be a way forward.

He was on the clock. It had been most of the day since he'd fixed, and he needed to get high. He should eat, he knew, and he was thirsty, but that could all wait. Right now there were pulses of electricity shooting in his arms and legs and a hot line running from his temple to his jaw that was his jones waking up.

When he got upstairs, the door was ajar and Zoe was inside. There was music on, old Interpol she loved. “Turn On the Bright Lights.” She was dressed from the restaurant in the black skirt and the bright orange shirt she hated because it made her skin itch. He put his arms around her without a sound and she stiffened at first, saying his name like it was a question, and then falling into it, pressing her hands into his back and letting his head fall to her shoulder.

“What's wrong, babe?”

He thought about what to tell her, and she drew back to see his eyes. He lifted a shoulder, let it drop.

“My brother, Brendan, his son got hurt. Shot, up the street at the place the Nortes run.” The Nortes were the Tres Nortes, Three Norths, a mostly Dominican crew from up in Kensington.

“Jesus, Orlando, is he dead?”

“No, but he's in a coma.”

“Did you see your brother?”

“Yeah.” He almost never talked about his family to her, and they were just names. She had a big family out on the Main Line that she hadn't seen in a year. He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled open Zoe's purse. “What do you have? Do you have anything?”

“Yeah, baby, but we got to talk about that.”

He rifled in her purse for a minute, then dumped it out and picked through compacts and lipstick, keys and loose coins, and worked two tiny glassine bags out. He held them up and one was ripped and empty and he looked at her darkly.

“No,” she said, “I didn't.”

“We talked about this.”

“What did I just fucking say? I didn't shoot, I just snorted it, Jesus. Fucking Julian was in my shit all day, I couldn't do nothing right. It was just to take the edge off, you know? Motherfucker thinks being manager makes him God. So I couldn't wait, okay? I didn't know when you were fucking coming home.”

Orlando shucked off his jacket and pulled his works out of a hole in the lining. He opened the nightstand drawer and took out a bent spoon and got a book of matches out of a white box and went to work. When he was ready he tied himself off, and Zoe paced and shook her head.

“I'm just saying what the fuck, though, right? I mean, you can use a needle and I can't?”

Orlando banged up the vein in the crook of his arm, the needle in his teeth like a knife.

“Gimme two seconds, then you can add to my fucking misery, Zoe.”

She stopped pacing and watched. “You suck.”

He pulled up some of his own blood into the needle, then fired into his vein, his hands beginning to shake. He untied, then grabbed her and pulled her into his lap while she lightly smacked at the top of his head.

“I hate you pretty bad, you know it?”

“No, you don't. You love me.”

He held her thin body to him with one hand and with the other dumped the rest of the dope out of the small bag and pushed it into lines on the top of the dresser with the edge of a snapped-off CD. He made a small noise in his throat, an animal moan that was the dope beginning to land. Zoe bent to the dresser and inhaled the lines and they both fell back as if from a fire, lost in their own bodies for a minute. Listening to that faint hum, like for that moment you could hear your own electricity, the circuits and wires that carried the current giving off sparks that snapped and rang inside.