Victor LaValle - Ecstatic

My God just look at that thing.

Ishkabibble was on a cigarette but still managed to say, — You walk slower than my old Aunt.

I nodded because he was right, but why tell me.

— I’m not trying to down you or nothing, he added.

We were on 147th Avenue, only two lanes but respectably wide. Nabisase’s church was on the corner, one block away. By the third time I’d disappointed my sister she stopped asking me along. Grandma and Mom, too. Nabisase left at 9 on Sunday mornings and stayed longer every week. That first time, on the 8th, it was only for an hour. One month later service lasted three. In half a year she’d be living there in a state of constant worship.

Ishkabibble gave the last of that cigarette such a pull I thought he’d eat the filter.

When I’d gone out that Thursday afternoon, November 9th, for a constitutional, Ishkabibble hadn’t been what I was looking for, but he’s who I met. I was walking by Brookville Park’s half-hearted playground. A place for kids to swing in the afternoon and teenagers to drink at night. The grounds had seemed deserted, but then Ishkabibble stepped out from behind a water fountain. I’d been alone and then I wasn’t. He found me.

At the corner of 230th Street Ishkabibble led me into the Get Right launderette. I was talking, had been for twenty minutes; he didn’t tell me to keep quiet, just to follow him as we spoke. He, for one, didn’t treat me like a dolt.

Behind the counter of the launderette was the matriarch of a Jamaican family who owned the store. She kept watch against people trying to dry their sneakers in the machines. She wasn’t happy to see us, but I blame Ishkabibble. A man whose own mother was probably repaying one of his high-interest home loans.

— Miss Rose.

— Yes, she said, but it wasn’t a question, like Yes may I help you? or even, Yes that’s who I am.

I really think I smelled the small black microwave oven behind her before I saw it. Or it might have been the tasty snack she sold. Alongside washers and dryers, this laundromat had food. So many of the smallest businesses around here had to diversify for profit. The owners of the low-budget cab service next door, Fast Fast Car, sold sneakers at the back of the store.

— Beef patty? Ishkabibble asked me.

Of course there was meat in a beef patty and beef is healthy, right? Forget that herbivore routine. How bad would it be to have just one because beef patties are so good when the meat inside is seasoned spicy and the yellow-brown shell is crisp. Maybe she also had coco bread.

Nineteen days since I’d been to Halfway House and seen Ledric’s extreme dieting technique. I’d been trying to keep myself to a reasonable five thousand calories a day, but faced with a good beef patty I faltered.

The woman rose, shuffled to the microwave. — You’re not eating? I asked Ishkabibble.

— I’m one of those people without much of an appetite.

— Lucky man, I said.

While the microwave carousel rotated for three minutes the Jamaican woman got her checkbook. She set it down; she hadn’t spoken; she didn’t ask Ishkabibble how much was owed. She knew exactly.

After that she went to the tiny black oven where there was, my delight, coco bread. She heated it separately then put bread and patty together. I was going to ask her for my favorite other ingredient, mayonnaise slathered on the patty’s skin, but I didn’t. I count this as marvelous restraint.

— How much? I asked.

She hadn’t looked at me not once and didn’t do it now. She asked Ishkabibble. — How much?

— He’s a friend of mine.

Then she waved her hand. — Take. Take, she said to me.

Outside again I talked to him after I’d finished the food. I ate fast though the meat was hot because Mom might drive down 147th Avenue and see me. Maybe Hillman had a satellite in synchronous orbit over Queens smoking photos of its members when we cheated. At times I felt a power must be keeping track of me.

Ishkabibble was an ideal salesman because he had the knack for listening. Anyone else would’ve rushed me while I explained the shortcomings of We Like Monsters and movies like it . Evening of the Hatchet, Crematorious . I went on for fifteen minutes about how stories of the eerie, August Derleth let’s say, usually let me down. The creatures turned out to be paper dolls and the characters were thin.

— Maybe most people like it when the movie gets all gross, Ishkabibble suggested.

— They can be bloody, but they don’t have to be dumb, I said.

When I talked passionately about this with Mom and Nabisase they politely answered, Oh yes? and Ah-hmm, but nothing more. To be fair I understand that a twenty-three-year-old man getting agitated over B-movies casts a certain dummy-colored glow.

On two occasions we crossed the street when loose dogs threatened us.

As we walked Ishkabibble looked back down the block. He did it every ten feet, but I didn’t think it was only the wild canines he feared.

— You not too popular or something? I asked. Kennedy Airport wasn’t far behind us now. A person could walk to his departure terminal from here if he had a little chipperness in the bones.

I was out of breath. — Can we stop a second?

He laughed, but not as viciously as it seemed to me then. — We only walked five blocks, he said.

— I know what it was!

— Okay. I’m not trying to down you.

I only needed half a minute to get some wind. I tell you it’s exhausting being so big.

— You not too popular? I asked again when he wouldn’t stop glancing around.

— I’m popular when I bring people the money, just not as much when I ask for it back.

— My mother told me you charge nine percent above the prime rate!

— A man comes to me making twenty-nine thousand dollars a year and wants to drive a forty-thousand dollar car, whose fault is that?

— But you’re black and doing this to black people!

— I work with Hispanics, too.

— What’s that on your neck? I asked, to change the subject. There was a large red patch of welts on the nap at the back of his head.

— I fell asleep in a tanning machine.

— You tan?

I wasn’t surprised that a black man would go under bulbs, but that even with the help Ishkabibble was still so yellow. I mean the man made me look like a cloudless night.

— I trusted one of my customers. He promised me a free ten-minute trial. I helped him buy that business! Some Italian over across the park. He turned the alarm off, so I fell asleep in there for half an hour.

— You’re not popular at all, I said.

Ishkabibble was annoyed; when he sighed the breath was a kazoo toot as it filtered through his skewed incisor. — You’ve got a funny way of asking me for a favor.

— Was I trying to get one?

— You just haven’t realized it yet.

I’d thought I was just babbling, but a good peddler hears the plea.

We had breezes blowing gasoline fumes; across the street a harried man uncapped his yellow Freightliner truck, which was parked in the driveway of his home. One of his young daughters was using a hose on the headlights as he pulled a second, muddy girl from getting into the sleeper.

— You want to make a monster movie, he said.

— I don’t think that’s it.

— Why else would you be talking so much about that. And with me?

— No one in my family would listen.

— Big Man, you are not about to act like we’re tight.

— Well what kind of monster would it be? I asked.

— Godzilla movies only cost as much as the rubber suit. I can get you some nice distribution if we make a tape and sell it through barbershops in Queens.