Jerome Charyn - Bronx Noir

“What about being an actress?” he tried to taunt her.

“ Mierda . Well, I wasn’t an actress after all,” she told him, and gave a little cackle that trailed off into a cough. “I couldn’t do anything. But I tried. I left this place.”

“So — maybe you needed me after all,” he said, lowering the gun and trying to smirk at her. Desperately wanting to hear her say it, to hear her admit it, even this sick, dying remnant of the woman he had loved. “Maybe you wish you had stayed with me now.”

She fixed him with another look, a glint in her eye.

“Why would I ever need you? A man who is too afraid to take what he wants? A man who lets a woman plan for him — who is too afraid to stand up to another man on his own?” She gave a short, scornful laugh, and drew herself up as straight as she could at the table. “Why would I ever want such a man? What could he ever do for me?”

Luis walked forward again, knowing then that he was going to do what he came to do. Through the windows he could hear the sharp intake of the crowd’s breath, like that hiss of the waves out at Jones Beach. He took another step toward her, but at that moment she held up a hand, her tired, painfilled eyes staring into his, stopping him for a moment.

“Luis!” she said. “Don’t you remember? Wait for it… That’s it. Ah, cara mia, I knew you would do fine!”

The crowd noise came up then, the full-throated roar, just like the wave enveloping him along the beach, and he took one more step and pulled the trigger, just as he had done it — done it so well — that afternoon thirty years before. But only as he fired, in that very instant, with the noise rising within and around him, and the feeling that he was falling, falling into the wave, only then did he finally put it all together — how she looked, and all the pills on the table; how easy it had been to find her after so many years without a trace, the way his cellmate had suddenly remembered someone who could sell him a gun, the triumphant, knowing way she looked at him even as he took that last step and pulled the trigger; how she had made him wait until the crowd noise rose up from the stadium, and what she really meant when she said those words, now and thirty years before, down in the super’s basement kingdom, I knew you would do fine! — and confirm, once and for all, that she always had been too smart for him.

South Bronx

Iris operated right from the stoop. She lived upstairs with her mother. It was the kind of building where she didn’t have to be too obvious about it, because of the crack traffic. Sometimes fishnets on her long curvies, but for her it was enough to just sit there in jeans and tank top and that smile, the eyes dizzy like she’s seen it all and just had another hit. She might wave to passing cars, plant the lingering stare on the shy ones. Her brown eyes were deep murkies and made people look away. There was just something about her, as if something was about to happen. Her olive skin tanned easy dark. If her hair was up, so much curvy smooth neck, if not, it fell in curly clumps onto her shoulders. A different girl everytime. Some days makeup, some days no. Some days she was a loud brash sound. Other times quiet meek and she could only sit there on the stoop like a lost girl staring back.

Her pimp was Pacheco. He was very nice and didn’t beat her. He was like family because he used to be her mother’s pimp. He sometimes watched out for her on the street but usually just went up to be with her mother, something Iris resented because he was supposed to protect her. There was this guy running around right now, gutting hookers like fish. Three already on the slab and the cops didn’t seem to be doing anything about it. The papers hardly cared. On South Bronx streets life is worth maybe a subway token. Cops don’t take subways. If the hookers were white maybe it would be more of a story, more tragic TV reports. But South Bronx killing zone is an everyday thing, and so one more hooker body appearing near Hunts Point market is not really a crime, just seen like waste disposal. Like a man dumping his trash.

Her mother had the same brown eyes planted deep in a wider face, hair longer but crunchier and usually up out of the way. Body sagging some now, which was why she didn’t do tricks anymore. “My time came and went,” she said, always laughing, lying in bed where she always could be found, mumbling vague words about finding some kind of real work. (She would have to get out of the apartment for that, though.) Iris, junior high dropout, did everything in that steamy three-room. She cooked, she cleaned, payed the bills, did the shopping. Her mother went out sometimes, disappearing up Westchester Avenue to come back late, empty bottle in her hand. Eyes swimming like she was trying to knock the feeling out of them. Iris would put her to bed.

“I feel bad,” her mother would say a lot, especially on Sundays when the big church on Wales Avenue would toll its bell. “I’m nada , you hear? A waste. I shitted up my life. Shitted up your life. Gaw, I wanna die.”

“Shh.” Iris would massage her head softly until her eyes closed.

“Iris. Do you love me?”

Her mother seemed to be talking through a dream.

“Yeah. I love you, Ma.”

“Don’t call me Ma . Call me Angie. We partners, okay?”

Iris called her Angie all the time. The two of them would dress up in spandex, high heels, and big shirts. Pacheco would drive them around. Angie would always remember the days when she was a hooker, and men would stare breathlessly.

“Ahh, don’t cry, baby,” Pacheco would say, his wide sturdy face creased up as he drove. “Iris. Stop her from cryin’.”

Iris would pull her close.

“You don’t understand, Pacheco. You don’t, ’cause she’s not your daughter. I just wasn’t a good sample for her.”

Pacheco lost his cool pretty fast, times like that.

“Look, you took care of her. Everything you did in life was for her. She know that. We talked about it, right, muñeca ? All she wants now is to pay you back an’ help you. Right?”

“Right.” Iris nodding to reassure. “Don’t worry about it, Angie. I’ll be fine. You an’ Pacheco take good care of me.”

And she would kiss and hug her like she was at an airport, then go off to meet her date for the night, Angie slithering up into the front seat as Iris went into the hotel. Iris was used to Angie coming all apart when she drank. It was a good thing she didn’t drink anymore. Now all she did was crack. She smoked in the morning and in the afternoon and at night. Pacheco would bring the stuff and Iris would help her prepare the pipe. Angie would light up and then her eyes would glass up.

“You really love me, muñequita ?” Always asking in the whirl of crack steam.

“Yeah, I really love you,” Iris always replied with an involuntary flinch.

Iris had seen her mother fucking for money for as long as she could remember. Used to operate from a tiny apartment on Avenue St. John. Would bring the men in there while Iris sat on the living room watching Pooh videos and playing with blocks or Holly Hobbies. “It’s the way I make my money, honey,” Angie would singsong with so much color and life and maybe a little too much lipstick. To Iris it was just normal life. If she opened the bedroom door and caught her mother in action it didn’t mean anything because there was food on the table, money for clothes and toys, plus enough time to go shopping and jump all over the sofa and love seat chasing each other. There was time between assignments for Angie to do Iris’s nails and Iris’s hair, to buy her skirts and pantyhose and to play with her face in front of the bedroom mirror where there was always a liquor smell like medicine. “My baby is beautiful,” Angie would say after applying all the makeup to miniature carbon-copy Angie. Iris remembered being in the stroller, crowded Third Avenue, outside Alexander’s in the rush of Christmas shoppers, and Angie blocking traffic there by the entrance so she could stoop down on one knee and reapply the mascara to Iris’s little face. Iris soaked it up. It was attention, it was love. They were girlfriends. They fought over lipstick and pantyhose, and once when Iris swiped her red minidress to wear to school Angie beat the fuck out of her.