Adrian McKinty - Dead I Well May Be

A black girl is talking to the Dominican boys outside the bodega and it’s more Leonard Bernstein than ever as the hackles rise between the blacks and the Dominicans on this side of the street. Jesus, gunplay is all I need. Just make the train come and when it comes make the air-con work. But it doesn’t and I look away from the boys in case afterwards I’m asked to be a witness by the peels.

Lights appear in the tunnel at the City College stop. The downtown train comes and the Gambians and the other passengers get on and it’s just me now and a few wee muckers at the far end spitting down the sixty feet to Broadway beneath us.

A homeless man comes up the steps having leapt the barrier. He’s filthy and he smells and he’s going to ask me for a quarter. He’s coughing and then he says:

Sir, spa-carter.

His hands are swollen to twice what they should be and he could have anything from untreated winter frostbite to fucking leprosy.

Here, I say, and I don’t want to touch him, so I put the quarter on the ground and then immediately repent of this. How unbelievably humiliating to make a sixty-year-old man bend down and pick up a quarter. He does bend down, picks it up, thanks me, and wanders off.

The pay phone rings. Who knew the phone even worked? It rings and rings. The kids, spitting, look over at me, and eventually I go and pick it up.

Yes? I say.

Michael? a voice says.

Yes, I say, trying not to sound amazed.

It’s Sunshine, he says.

Sunshine. Sunshine, how in the name of bloody Jehovah do you know this pay-phone number? I ask, giving up any attempt to play it cool.

I’m paid to know these things, he says mysteriously.

Yeah but-

Listen, Michael, it’s all off for today. Darkey’s going to see the Boss and he’s taking myself and Big Bob with him. The rest of you have the day off. Scotchy’ll call you tomorrow.

All right, I say, and I’m going to ask him about money but he rings off. The prick. Sunshine is Darkey’s right-hand man, and if ever there was a more weaselly-looking man-behind-the-man type of character, it’s Sunshine. Thin, thinner than Scotchy even, with one of those skinny mustaches, and a bald head with a ridiculous comb-over that makes him look a bit like Hitler. I had him pegged for a child molester the minute I saw him but apparently that’s not the case. Scotchy says not and Scotchy hates him. I don’t. After you meet him a bit he’s ok. Actually, I think he’s a nice bloke, on the whole.

I hang up the phone and look foolishly at it for a second and one of the kids comes up and asks if it was for me. He’s about ten, braver than the others, or more bored. Big hands that are restless behind him. Neat clothes, newish shoes.

I nod.

And who the fuck are you? he asks, squinting up at me and into the sunlight.

I-I’m the bogeyman, I say, and grin.

You ain’t no boogy man, he says, his American pronunciation half accusing, half scared. After all, I can look intimidating on occasion.

You always do what your mother tells you? I ask.

Sometimes, he says, thrown by the question.

Well, listen. Next time you don’t, don’t be surprised if I’m under your bed or in your cupboard or out there on your fire escape. Waiting.

He turns and wanders off slowly, trying to appear unimpressed. Perhaps he is. Not easy alarming little kids around here. Christ, most of their goddamn grandmas scare the hell out of me.

Ok, home. No point lingering. I suppose it’s impossible to get my token back since I didn’t ride the train. I scope the clerk and she’s a tough big lassie whose fucking shadow could kick my ass. She gives me the evil eye while I’m considering the options, so in the end I don’t even bother. And then it’s step, step, step down the broken escalator, which since I’ve been here has been unrepaired. Slime on the bottom step.

I turn and walk along 125th past the live chicken store and the discount liquor and the horrible doughnut shop and the thinly disguised All-Things-Catholic, but really All-Things-Santería store. Cross the street. A man in a makeshift stall is selling bananas, oranges, and some green fruit I don’t know the name of. It’s all well presented but with all this pollution and crap around here you wouldn’t eat anything he’s vending, you’d have to be fucking crazy. People are, of course, and there’s a queue.

At the junction you stop and you take a long look. You have to. For it’s all there. The traffic. The pedestrians. Bairns and dogs and men with limps outside under the overhang. The slick off the Jackie Robinson. Public Enemy blaring from the speakers, Chuck D and Flavor Flav out-snapping each other. The hotness and the sizzle and the crack and the craic . Dealers and buyers and everyone in between. It’s rich and it’s overwhelming but really, in Harlem, all is sweetness. No one bothers me. They take me in. It’s a scene. It’s like the beach. The moisture, the temperature, the people on the dunes of sidewalk and the great hulking seething city is, in this analogy, the dirty gray Atlantic Ocean.

Up the hill. It’s only two blocks but by some freak of geography it’s really the equivalent of about five.

I reach in my shorts for my keys and turn on 123rd. Vinny the Vet is ahead of me going in the building, having a full, angry conversation with no one at all. His shopping bag clinks. Danny the Drunk is on the corner in the sun propping himself up. That purple face is leaning down over his walking stick, dry retching. And me as the third representative of the Caucasian race on the street, what am I like?

Aye, what indeed.

Keys, pistol. Pistol, keys.

Nerves are bad.

Keys. But the lock is screwed up and I have to jiggle it. Must tell Ratko, not that he’ll fix anything. But guilt-ridden by his laziness, he will invite me down for some foul Polish vodka and Serbian delicacies prepared last year or so by the missus. But at least in my warped brain it’ll be home cooking.

Sounds like a plan.

It’s 1992 and Serbs are beginning to get a bit of a bad reputation. But it’s not so terrible yet. Ratko’ll pour me a full tumbler of something clear and awful and we’ll toast Gavrilo Princip or Tito or the memory of the bloody Knights of Kosovo and I’ll have a cold sausage-and-lard sandwich and another glass and when the drink is sweating me close to a bloody heart attack I’ll slink away and stumble up the three floors to the apartment.

Second thought, no.

Inside, Freddie’s there doing the mail.

Freddie, I say, and we talk for a minute about sports. Freddie can see I’m beat, though, and lets me go. Nice chap, Freddie.

Go up the stairs. The door. Keys again. Inside. Hotter here than the street. I put on the telly for company. Free cable somehow. I look for something familiar and settle on Phil Spector and John Lennon and some irritated long-haired session musicians being lectured by Yoko Ono on chord progression.

Run the bath. Water comes out brown. Sit on the tub edge and have a brief premonition of the phone ringing and me picking it up and it’s Sunshine, come over all ominous, saying that Darkey wants to see me.

I shiver, get up, and take the phone off the hook. Disrobe, climb into the bath. Light a fag. Convince myself that this phone call will never happen. Get out of the bath and actually disconnect the phone from the wall, think for a moment, lock the door, get my gun, check the mechanism, leave it where I can grab it. Climb into the bath again. Sink into nothingness. Sink.

Murmurs, hymnals, and in the vestry quiet whole colonies of insects give me kisses and I’m too buggered to do anything about it. Vodka spills from my mouth. I’m sleeping and on the shores of some immense creature’s back, a giant bovine eye and blue nerves and a labyrinth of tentacles. Jesus. I get up out of the water, which is by now cold, and grab a towel.