New York Short Stories Read online

  I might have left the hood twenty years ago, but—thing is—the hood never leaves you. If you ever watch anyone who grew up during the depression operate a business, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Poverty is a treacherous shadow that darkens your decisions with doubt. And whatever negative connotations I have about the hood, I have never let myself fully leave it. Even when I picked out the apartment on the east side, what tipped the scales was that it overlooked the George Washington Carver housing project.

  It’s a compulsion. When I first started graphic design, I sold weed to all my clients even though I didn’t really have to. Made myself stop because they started treating me like a drug dealer, not like their graphic designer. That’s the thing with people in this industry, once they know you’re from the hood, and you sell them a little grass, you’re just that kind of person to them. They’re not willing to accept complexities, outside of their own work anyway. Frail, flaky, industry people. I don’t even mingle with them anymore. I know it’s bad for my wallet, but I just let my work do the talking. My dilemma? I could stand the people in the hood even less.

  Before I go on with my tale, I should add that when the economy tanked in 2008, I eventually lost more than half of my clients. To fill the void I chose to get a 9 to 5 job. I wanted it to have nothing to do with design, so I would hunger for it all day and work harder at night. I took some tests, and became a certified lead inspector. Where am I working? The Bronx division of the New York City Housing Authority. Back to the hood.

  Now I spend my days shit-stomping across the Bronx and dealing with tenants and my nights in front of a Mac putting up with clients.

  I’m in Cafe Tallulah watching my client pick out the ugliest of my designs. Four hours earlier I was breaking up a fight in the Patterson projects breakroom.

  I’m on the balcony of the Morgan Stanley building, overlooking Times Square at night, drinking this client’s Chablis during a break, face-timing with an old classmate, bitching about how much more we like Photoshop over InDesign; that morning I was soaking wet from the rain, dressed in workman’s blues and getting stuck in a piss-drenched elevator (yeah, that cliché is true).

  I know I’m not part of either of these worlds, completely.

  And now because of my good work ethic, I’m offered a promotion at the day job. I can even choose to live in the projects now because of the position I would have there. I could get a great check, and pay nothing, forever. I could shut down my graphic design company I worked so hard to build, and return to the Bronx, instead of constantly struggling to pay more rent to stay amongst the assholes I deal with daily.

  So whatever happened to Namor? Since the Marvel Universe is an ongoing entity, his story doesn’t really have an ending. But there are several strands about the future of this character, and one of the more popular and feasible comes from the Earth X story line. His biological duality causes dementia, and in this state, he kills Mr. Fantastic from the Fantastic Four. Mr. Fantastic’s son, Franklin, witnesses this, and because he possesses the power to manipulate reality, he causes Namor to combust, burning half of his body, forcing him to live the rest of his life in permanent flame and pain.

  I tossed a client’s laptop out of his parked car the other day. He tried to stiff me on a payment; I knew it would scare him, and I knew his bitch ass wouldn’t do shit back about his broken computer.

  At the day job, I saw this group of kids, one of them wielding a semi-automatic, chasing another boy who ran into traffic and was hit by the BX15 on Willis Avenue.

  After I saw it happen, I pulled out a marker and just started drawing. Everywhere. Even on cars. I got arrested when I reached a cop car.

  In the overnight stay in prison, even in that solitude, I couldn’t make up my mind about my apartment, my lease, and if I should renew. I just hoped it wouldn’t hurt too much once the flames began to engulf my body.

  THE CLEANING LADY

  BY GIL FAGIANI

  Solid as a hundred pound sack of rice, with short red hair, and walnut-colored skin, Belén lived alone in the same five-room apartment in the Melrose Houses project in the Bronx where she’d raised four daughters. One day, before the rooster’s ki-ki-ri-ki—and there were roosters in her project— she woke up feeling frisky and decided to clean her apartment. She swept, vacuumed, and mopped all five rooms, and when finished sat down to have a cup of café con leche and read el Diario. She left one of the windows open and a warm breeze rippled the pages of the newspaper, reminding her that it was springtime. “¡Coño—Damn!” she said out loud, “It’s time to do a serious spring cleaning!”

  Opening her record cabinet, she pulled out some albums by Tito Rodríguez—Tito Número Uno, she called him—because she considered him superior to his musical rival Tito Puente. As soon as she heard Tito’s voice and the horns and percussion of his orchestra, she kicked off her slippers, loosened her shoulders, and mamboed into her front closet. Using a mop handle as a partner, she dipped and turned while taking out buckets, mops, brushes, and soap. Starting with the rear bedroom, she washed the window panes, sills, and molding and scrubbed and waxed the floors. She had worked her way into the bathroom and was polishing the toilet when Paco called. He picked up that she was in a good mood and asked if he could stop by with some lunch.

  “¡Claro!—Sure!” she said, “and bring some beer.” After pork sandwiches and a couple of Miller High Lifes, they ended up in bed. Paco was in his fifties and out of shape, but with the help of Belén’s wildly undulating hips, he managed to pop his cork twice, something he hadn’t done since he was a young man in the Army. Moaning softly, he’d just turned on his side and closed his eyes when Belén rolled out of bed, and came back with a washcloth. “Clean up, papi, and then let me get back to my house cleaning.” Paco would have preferred to linger for a while, but knowing how Belén got during one of her cleaning campaigns, he quickly got dressed and bolted out the door.

  Putting on Tito Rodríguez’s Algo Nuevo—Something New, Belén piled old newspapers, magazines, and empty bottles by her front door. In the process, she noticed a few dust balls and paper scraps on her floor, so she decided to sweep, vacuum, and mop her floors again, just for good measure.

  Then she made another trip to the front closet, and pulled out a plastic bucket containing cloth rags, a feather-duster, a screwdriver, two pairs of white gloves, and a glass salt-shaker filled with cotton swabs. In her living room she feather-dusted her Puerto Rican tchotchkes: hand-painted maracas, ebony rhythm sticks, ceramic versions of coquis—Puerto Rican tree frogs—and her collection of miniature straw hats, huts and dolls. Next she dusted her furniture with the cotton rags and rubbed her wooden shelves with linseed oil. Taking a few deep breaths, Belén took the screwdriver and unscrewed the back panels of her radio and TV. Putting on a pair of white gloves, she dragged her index finger through the maze of tubes. Whenever her white finger became smudged with dirt, she used a cotton swab to carefully scour out the source of dust or grime.

  She wanted in the worst way to take apart and dust all the light bulb fixtures in her apartment, but remembered once trying it and receiving an electric shock that caused her to fall off a stepladder and smash her knee. Even now, when the weather was damp, that knee was stiff and painful.

  It was nine o’clock at night when it dawned on her that she really hadn’t been as thorough as she should have been in throwing things out. She went back into her bedroom closets and pulled out jackets, dresses, blouses, and slacks she didn’t wear anymore and dropped them on the floor. Next she went through her bureau drawers and did the same thing with her slips, bras, panties and socks, adding them to the growing pile in the middle of the floor.

  Then she went into what had been her daughters’ rooms. She kept a lot of their clothing, even though they were all married and had long-ago moved out. They rarely came by anymore and she figured she might as well bring the clothing down to the community room, where los pobres—the poor people—could benefit from them. In the back of a clos
et she noticed dolls, board games and toys of all kinds. She had hoped someday her grandchildren would have played with them. Nothing in life works out the way you want it, she thought, shaking her head. The toys were only collecting dust and attracting bugs. And indeed as she cleared them out of the closet she swore she could see snakelike clusters of dust, along with roach shells, mouse droppings and paint and plaster chips.

  It was after midnight when she carted all the clothes and toys downstairs. The community room was unlit and locked, so as neatly as she could, she stacked the clothes and toys by the doorway. Once upstairs, she rummaged through her record collection and had just picked out an album of boleros by Tito Número Uno, when the telephone rang. It was her daughter Pura.

  “Mami, I was in the neighborhood and saw your lights on, ¿Todo está bien?—Is everything OK?”

  “Don’t worry about me, I’m O.K. But remember what I said the last time; I have no more money for your drug habit.”

  “Coño, mami, I told you I’m clean now. I went through a program.”

  Belén put the record she was holding on her turntable and began to dance slowly. Tito’s broad, handsome face beamed from the album cover she held tightly to her breasts. “O.K.,” Belén said, “I’m busy now . . .”

  “Mami, talking about drugs, I hope you’re . . .”

  “I’ll see you,” Belén said, dropping the phone on the receiver.

  Stretching her arms, Belén felt a surge of energy and with trembling hands, opened a kitchen window. The moon was full and its bright light illuminated her pinched face and protruding eyes. Suddenly she remembered the filth that she had uncovered in her closets and dragged the broom, dustpan, vacuum cleaner, mop and buckets back into the bedrooms. She was vacuuming a closet when she heard a muffled cry and the pounding of a stick against the ceiling of the apartment below. She ignored the sounds but in a few minutes the telephone rang.

  “Who is it?” Belén asked.

  “It’s Carmen, your neighbor below. You woke up my husband. Can’t you wait until tomorrow to do your damn vacuuming? Por favor!”

  “Not all of us in this building are pigs. I’ve seen that good-for-nothing husband of yours throw beer cans out the window . . .”

  “Lies! . . . Maricona!”

  “You’re the lying faggot! ¡Hija di gran puta!— Daughter of a big whore!” Belén shouted, letting the phone dangle on its cord. She was really worked up now. Her mouth was dry and a white coating began to form in the corner of her lips. That’s the problem with this neighborhood, she told herself. Too many pigs, and too little cleanliness. Images of dead dogs in alleyways, water bugs, rats, roaches, blackened carcasses of cars, and mountains of empty tin cans passed through her mind.

  She still had it in her head there was too much clutter in her apartment and rushed into her bathroom with a plastic garbage bag. She threw in half-used shampoo, conditioner, and perfume bottles. Opening her medicine cabinet she scooped out a half a dozen smoky brown vials of pills, spilling their contents on the tile floor.

  “¡Coño!” she said, running for a dustpan and brush, but then remembering she hadn’t finished cleaning the bedrooms yet.

  It was three o’clock in the morning when she realized that she had tracked white powder all over her apartment from the pills she had stepped on in her bathroom. Sweat poured down her face and her lips looked sugarcoated. She couldn’t stop moving and put on another Tito Rodríguez album, this one featuring cha’-cha’-cha’ favorites from Cuba. The woman below continued to bang her broomstick on the ceiling and there was a heavy pounding on her front door. “¡Epa!” Belén shouted, as she threw her arms in front of her like she was squeezing a dance partner and cha’-cha’-cha’-ed towards the howling vacuum cleaner.

  The next evening Belén shuffled stiffly in an aqua green gown down Ward 9 at Bronx State Hospital. She stared straight ahead, her lips cracked, not saying a word to anyone. Listed in the hospital records as a multiple admission, the staff nicknamed her The Cleaning Lady, and except for insisting that she take her meds, left her alone. Inside a visiting room filled with cigarette smoke and cockroaches, Paco and Pura sat around a plastic table with an uneaten container of rice and chicken Pura had cooked for her mother.

  Belén had been brought in earlier in the day by the police. As the sun came up, she started throwing her cleaning equipment out the window: brooms, dust pans, vacuum cleaner, mops, buckets, rubber gloves, detergent, furniture polish, and cleaning rags. Then she let it fly with her Tito Rodríguez albums, cracking the window of a neighborhood bodega below. One of the cops who forced his way into her apartment said she was foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog, and screaming, “¡Qué viva Tito Número Uno!” when they handcuffed her and drove her to the hospital.

  HOOK

  BY RON KOLM

  What the fuck!” Duke muttered, amazed at what he was seeing in the darkened bookstore. A thin curtain of smoke was rising from under the baseboard like an inverted waterfall. It stretched the entire length of the left wall.

  Holy shit, the joint’s on fire! I better get the fuck out of here, he thought, turning back towards the bathroom window he’d just busted to get in. But then he noticed something odd—the smoke smelled like marijuana—one of his favorite things— so he hesitated a moment—and then he became aware of the pounding and shaking—it felt like a humongous semi grinding down St. Mark’s Place in second gear.

  And, finally, he picked up on the sounds; shouting, cursing, music (Duke had problems with his hearing—way too much heavy metal over the years).

  “Jesus, must be some kinda weird party or something goin’ on next door,” Duke said, thinking out loud while lighting a stray joint he found in his pocket. He was curious and, anyway, he could always come back later to clean the place out—so Duke hoisted himself through the splintered window frame and dropped down onto the bare plot of ground behind the bookstore.

  The space next to the East Village Bookstore had been converted into a unisex haircutting boutique: HAIRPOWER TO THE PEOPLE. It had a couple of windows in the rear wall, so Duke eased over to check things out.

  “Man, world’s totally fuckin’ nuts!” he whistled. All the furniture had been piled against the walls and the front grates had been lowered. Bathed in unnaturally bright light, a bunch of Hell’s Angels, dressed in full colors, were slow-dancing with the male hairdressers.

  One of the Angels seemed to be holding a metallic object; light glinted on it brightly. Duke squinted, trying to determine if it was a gun or a knife—but it turned out to be neither. This particular Angel had a mechanical hook for a hand and, in thrall to the music, he pressed it deeply into the small of his partner’s back.

  Now Duke remembered. He’d seen this guy hanging out on St. Mark’s Place, hassling passing tourists. The Angel would use his hook as bait, attracting the naive, the curious and the stupid, engage them in conversation, turn it strange, get pissed off and then beat the unsuspecting victim to a pulp with his steely contraption.

  Duke winced—not his idea of a good time. He turned to re-enter the bookstore just as the music changed. The slow song segued into the raucous chords of the Dead Kennedys’ “Too Drunk to Fuck,” and the partygoers began to slam into each other like battered cars in a demolition derby.

  Duke couldn’t help himself—he started pogoing spastically—and that was his undoing. One of the Angels noticed his pale countenance bobbing up and down outside the window. He let out a yell, directing all eyes towards the back of the barbershop. Everyone froze—and then, as if at a hidden command, an angry horde of sweaty, drug-crazed psychopaths charged the back door.

  Duke frantically jumped at a fire escape ladder dangling just above his head and managed to grab hold of the bottom rung. He pulled his skinny, drugwasted body up by sheer will alone. The Angel with the hook took a swipe at Duke’s disappearing leg, snagging a strip of already frayed jeans.

  ***

  The hot, noonday sun beat down on a frazzled Duke. He was squatting aga
inst the blue, cinder block wall of the St. Mark’s Cinema, very broke and totally stoned. Somehow he was gonna have to figure out another way to rip off the bookstore across the street—man, there was only one fucking clerk running the whole joint—that’s practically an open invitation—shit, hitting a place like that should be as easy as taking a crap.

  Doing the bathroom window again at night was flat out. Earlier in the day he’d seen a couple of repair guys with toolboxes and armloads of two-by-fours go into the shop, followed by a lot of hammering and drilling.

  Armed robbery was also out of the question—the cops had confiscated his gun—something about one of his friends getting blown away while playing Russian roulette with it.

  Duke decided on the direct approach. He got up, crossed the street and stepped into the dank, ill-lit recesses of the bookstore. Books and pamphlets were casually strewn around on old wooden sale tables. Duke checked out the guy working at the front counter; a tall, long-haired dude with thick John Lennon granny glasses. The clerk seemed to be deeply engrossed in an underground comic—Zap #4, Duke guessed from the cover.

  This’ll be like taking candy from a fuckin’ baby, he thought, walking back towards the very bathroom he’d broken into last night. To the right of the bathroom was a small messy office, created by mass-market display racks jutting out from the wall. Duke sidled in behind the makeshift barrier.

  Inside, a half-eaten sandwich adorned a chipped wooden desk, next to tumbled stacks of indecipherable ledgers. A battered bicycle was chained to one of the legs. Duke simply tilted the desk back and slipped the lock free. Yeah, he’d take the bike—it had real value—not like those fucking books—you had to heist so many of them to make it worth your while.