Charlie Huston - Caught Stealing

– How’s it feel, Hank?

– What’s that?

– Being wanted?

I think about that. I think about it for a while.

– OK, I guess. I haven’t really been wanted for a long time.

– Infamous.

– Yeah.

– Kinda cool, isn’t it?

– Kinda.

– Got no past, nowhere to go back to.

– Yeah.

– Just today and maybe tomorrow.

– Yeah.

– ’Cept, course, you got people out there still.Right?

– Yeah.

– That’s tough, man, very tough. Me and Paris, we only got each other, so we just roll. Be tough to have folks out there worrying after you.

– Yeah.

– Best way to deal with that? Know what it is?

– What?

– Just don’t think about them. Justdon’t fucking think about them at all.

Paris comes back in, walks over to the TV and switches it off.

– Fuckin’ thing will rot your brain. Let’s go.

Once again, Paris drives while Ed and I ride in the back. Bud sits in my lap, being mellow. The Caddie is vintage prime, so there’s no tape deck, but Paris grabbed an oldboombox back at the apartment and he has it up in the front seat with him. He drives with one hand and, with the other, he sorts through a shoebox full of old cassettes, some store-bought, some homemade, none with cases. He pulls them out one after another, checks them out and tosses them back in the box. He pulls one out, reads the hand-lettered label on its front and sticks it in the player.

– Check it out.

He hits play. It’s Curtis Mayfield, “Keep on Keeping On.” Ed leans forward.

– Oh yeah, baby, oh yeah. You know this, Hank?

– Sure.

– Curtis. Wow.

He reaches into the front seat and turns it up. He and Paris sing along a little.

– Many think that we have blown it. But they, too, will soon admit that there’s still a lot of love among us and there’s still a lot of faith, warmth, and trust when we keep on keeping on.

They start laughing and Ed squeezes his brother’s shoulder and leans back next to me.

– That was our mom’s shit, all the classic soul, all the funky stuff.Talkin’ all the time about the music of our people and a “positive black self-image.”

Up front, Paris is still singing along under his breath. Ed leans his head close to mine and whispers.

– That’skinda why she washed her hands of us. Far as she was concerned, we turned out just another couple a nigger hoodlums and she raised us for better. I wrote her off years before, but Paris took it pretty hard,bein ’ cast out and never talkin’ to her before she died. He’s my big brother, but damn , he’s sensitive.

We’re on the Queensboro Bridge, heading back into Manhattan. Ed points straight ahead.

– Take the scenic route. All goes well, none of us will see this place again, ’least not for a long-ass time.

Paris takes us west on 59th, along Central Park South, past the Plaza and the Ritz, to Columbus Circle and down Broadway. Someone visited me from California once and said he thought of Times Square as the pumping heart of New York. I told him it was more like the running asshole. But it is something to see, at night, in the rain.

By the time we reach Broadway and Astor, “The Underground” is playing. It’s all fucked up, distorted guitar and Curtis growling “the underground” over and over. Paris stops at the curb. I open the door and step out into pouring rain. I want to bring Bud, but Ed is afraid he’ll get in my way, so he’s making me leave him behind.

Ed sticks his head out the door. Rainwater streams off the brim of his hat. He’s holding Bud, keeping him from leaping out of the car after me.

– Now just do as you’re told this time, no fucking improvisation. We took you in this once. Fuck up again, I’m gonna take off the leashes an’ put the fucking dogs on your ass. Got it?

– Got it.

– Becool, Hank. In an hour, you’re gonna be on your way to a new an’ better life.

He ducks back into the car with Bud. The door slams shut, the Caddie rolls off. They gave me an old ball cap with an eight ball inexplicably embroidered on the front. I pull the cap down tighter on my head and walk around the block to my post.

I sit in the window at Starbucks, the one on Astor Place as opposed to the one a block away on Third Avenue. New Yorkers like to complain about the proliferation of Starbucks and Barnes & Noble shops in their great city. They bitch about the “malling” of Manhattan.But me? I’m all in favor of anyplace in this city that has a public bathroom.

The rain is keeping people at home. A few of the tables in here are occupied by NYU students or street people with enough change for a cup ofjoe. Based on appearances, I could belong to either group. Outside, the streets are wet and empty. Rainy Sunday night, plus folks are probably waiting at home for play to restart out atShea. I look up at the sky. There’s a good wind blowing and the clouds are moving along pretty damn fast. They should get it in.

The pain from my wound is growing, spreading. I could take a pill. Shit, I could take a dozen pills. I need to stay sharp. The pain will help me to stay sharp.

I sip my decaf herbal tea and look out the window at the cube. Astor Place, St. Mark’s, Fourth Avenue, Bowery and Lafayette all collide in an impossible knot of an intersection out there, and in the middle is a sliver of a traffic island. And in the middle of the island is the cube. Black steel, maybe eight feet to a side, it sits there balanced on one of its corners. It’s mounted on some kind of pivot so that if you give it just a little shove, it rotates. It is a prime example of ugly fucking municipal art.

The tea doesn’t really taste like tea and it tastes nothing at all like beer, but it has no caffeine or alcohol, so it’s good for my surviving kidney. I also got a croissant, but I don’t have an appetite just now because it’s a few minutes to ten and I really want to see Roman and Bolo walk out onto that traffic island and stand there in the rain. Then I will get up and go to the pay phone by the bathroom (which I already checked to be sure it works) and I will call Ed and Paris and they will drive over from where they are parked nearby and, while I watch, they will shoot down Roman and Bolo in the street. After that, I will step outside, Ed and Paris will pick me up and we will speed away. I don’t see much point in trying to imagine what might happen after that.

Out in the rain, Roman and Bolo cross over to the traffic island from the direction of St. Mark’s.

They’re both carrying the kind of cheap umbrellas that vendors hawk for five bucks a pop when the rain starts up. Roman is wearing a long raincoat over his suit. Bolo is out there in just his leather pants and motorcycle jacket. He has his left hand pressed down on his head, trying to keep the wind from blowing his long hair around. I watch them getting wet for a moment.

A gust of wind comes along and blows the cheap umbrellas inside out. Roman turns his to face the wind and it flops back into shape. Bolo takes his hand from his head to fix his own and all that black hair flies off in the wind and lands in the gutter a few feet away.

I turn to run for the phone and bounce off the real Bolo, who is standing right behind me with a Band-Aid on his thumb where Bud clawed him. He points out the window.

– Fucking Russians got nothing but shit for brains.

– I can understand you thinking I might be stupid. I mean, I’m big and strong and I have dark skin, so people see me and figure I must be the dumb one in the group.But Roman? What? You think he suddenly grew a brain tumor or something?

We’re sitting at my table. Bolo picks at my croissant, keeps one eye on me and another out the window on the decoys.