Jonathan Lethem - The Fortress of Solitude

While Barrett Rude Junior improved this lyric, a variation on the old song-call it “Little Dylan Is the Man, Part 2”-Mingus Rude plopped beside Dylan on the couch, knees touching as they sank together to the middle, and without saying a word opened his hand, so that Aaron X. Doily’s ring clanked gently into a clear spot on the cokey mirror.

Barrett Rude Junior set down two tumblers of orange juice, with half-moon ice drifting like bellied fish.

“What’s that?” Junior asked.

“Just something I was keeping for Dylan in your floorboard. He’s taking it with him to Ver- mont , where the girls go swimming without any clothes and niggers work in gas stations.”

“Oh.” This was lost on Junior. He arranged himself in the butterfly chair, his robe curtaining to show boxing trunks and wasted chest, his sternum like a tent pole.

A mansion of a man had been scooped out, done in as if by termites.

Dylan palmed the ring, got it into his pocket. Half thinking, he lifted his fingers to his nose, sniffed where they’d skimmed the glass.

“There you go,” said Junior. “Cool you right out.”

“See, he wants it,” said Mingus, “he just doesn’t know he wants it.”

Ring safe in his pocket, Dylan suddenly heard his own song, the one he’d been humming to himself all summer, “Little Dylan’s Almost Gone.” He recalled his basic condition: Not In Jail, Just Visiting. Let Mingus lead him one more new place before he ejection-seated to Camden College, Camden, Vermont. He’d dropped acid, popped a quaalude in a bowling alley, mushroomed at Jones Beach, so what’s this hesitation? Arthur wasn’t here to witness, to call him on the bluff. He’d get away with taking a sniff of the cocaine. Only recall the routine, pretend it wasn’t your first time.

Dylan moved the straw from the mirror to his nose and sucked like he’d seen.

And Mingus Rude did a line.

And Barrett Rude Junior did a line.

And they all did another line and Dylan Ebdus was doing coke with Gus and Junior, just another summer afternoon on Dean Street, no biggie. It was like a visit to an alternate life, one where he’d never abandoned the block, never quit visiting this house. The drug rained through Dylan and streamlined the illusion, scoured away doubt.

Your body could be cooled from inside, sweating like an iced glass.

A bass line never sounded so profound as when Barrett Rude Junior dropped a needle on Bunny Sigler’s Let Me Party with You , and orange juice loosened the slushy trickle in the back of the throat surprisingly well.

“You like that?” said Junior. His bearded skull spread in a smile. Dylan might be getting used to it.

“Yeah,” said Dylan honestly, his eyes open.

“That’s nice stuff, right?” said Mingus. His tone softened, as though he’d only wanted Dylan to join him all this time, only wanted his oldest and best friend to ratify him in the medium of cocaine.

“Yeah,” said Dylan again.

Maybe it was possible to be forgiven. Maybe you’d misunderstood and everything was actually completely cool. The ring was in your pocket now. You were hanging out with Mingus and Junior and you were also just weeks, days away from leaving for the most expensive college in the world. The two weren’t mutually exclusive, your fear was wrong.

Maybe everything was perfect but even as you thought it Barrett Rude Senior came up the stairs and popped into the room, astonishing them all, no one more than himself.

Despite the day he was in his black suit, his gold tie clip and cufflinks, white handkerchief.

He smelled heavily of flowers, of roses.

Mingus was the one caught with his face to the mirror. He dropped the straw and smoothed at his nose with a finger.

“This what goes on any chance I’m out the door,” said Senior, his voice quavering. “Corrupting the morals of another neighbor child.”

“Get downstairs, old man,” said Junior simply, not looking at his father.

“Messing with the white folks’ child you’ll bring down cataclysm on this house.”

Dylan failed to recognize himself or anything he knew about Gowanus or the world in this. It was suddenly so funny he almost guffawed. Mingus elbowed him.

“Why you home early on a Sunday anyway?” said Junior. “Sister Pauletta finally kick you out for taking a pinch on one of her flower girls?”

“Lord forgive the twisted soul who was formerly my little boy.”

Barrett Rude Junior rose, pulled his robe tight, went past his father to the sink. “I came twisted, old man. The twist got handed down. So why don’t you take a load off, baby. Loosen your tie, day’s too hot. You want some blow, help yourself.”

“I praise God every day your mother never lived to see it.”

Barrett Rude Junior turned and said softly, “You praise God, is that right? Over the name of my mother ?”

“I do.”

“And what’s God say back to you, old man? When that name comes up?”

Mingus said quietly, “Go to your room and pray, Granddaddy.”

“Each day and night I pray beneath the feet of sinners,” said Senior. “One fine morning I’m coming out of my hiding to say what I’ve seen.”

“Go now,” said Mingus, pleading.

“I’ll cry it to the hills.”

Dylan didn’t know how it was possible for Barrett Rude Junior to cross the room as quickly as he did, and gather his father’s suit lapels in his two fists to slam him back against the stairwell’s wall. A sigh came out of them both, Junior and Senior, seemingly one sound. Then Senior was gone, down the stairs, and Junior had again turned his back to the couch, was running water at the sink.

Dylan bowed in guilty silence at seeing it. Mingus just shook his head and returned to the straw and the mirror.

Dylan felt his pulse beating everywhere in his skin: the drug, probably.

The music went on playing and for a moment it was as if nothing had happened. One moment, then the room refilled with the scent of roses, Senior was at the top of the stairs again and it was instead as if he’d never gone and the moment of peace had been an eye blink. Except Senior had made a trip to the basement apartment: proof was in what he’d retrieved there and now displayed in his two hands. The left gripped a bouquet of twenties, which he immediately flung before him so they twirled to the carpet. The right was filled with a gun.

From the speakers Bunny Sigler sang on, oblivious.

“You don’t lay hands on your father,” said Barrett Rude Senior to his son. “It says so in the book. Now I got the evidence you been using children for your dealing ways. The boy’s room is full of your dirty money. You got no shame, I got to teach it to you, boy.”

“Mingus has his own money,” said Junior quietly, watching the gun waver in his father’s hand.

“You teach sinning ways and you got to pay for laying a hand on your own father.”

“Lay down the gun, old man.”

“Call me father, now. The gun’s to put some fear in you.”

“ You got to ad-mit, you an old man. ” It was another of Barry’s impromptu melodies, the last Dylan would hear.

Mingus hurdled from the couch, and ran to his father’s doorway. He turned, before vanishing into the back, and shouted, “Go home , Dylan!” Protecting him still.

Dylan Ebdus never would remember getting from the couch to the door, from door to stoop, stoop to gate, to the sidewalk. A part of him was still inside, beating like a pulse behind eyes staring at the faces, at the gun, at Mingus framed for an instant in the doorway before turning away, moving inside his father’s bedroom. Dylan Ebdus still heard the music and felt the scuff in his nostril, still puzzled at the missing gold records on the wall, the missing flesh in Barrett Rude Junior’s face. So the blazing day into which he’d been ejected made no impression. Still, he was outside. Mingus shouted at him to go and he’d gone and he was intact, ring in pocket, five hundred college dollars scattered from Barrett Rude Senior’s fist to the floor, mission accomplished. He wasn’t inside. He was on Dean Street, teetering on a square of slate, when he heard the shot.