Tim Murphy - Christodora

Suddenly, she heard the sound of the dog barking its way toward the door, as if it sensed her presence. Panicked, she ran down the hallway with the pizza and slipped into the stairwell, fast enough that she never knew if Hector came to the door. She caught her breath and collected herself before taking the three flights down to their apartment, where she called her mother, who was still at Judith House, not very many blocks away.

“You’re not going to believe what happened,” she told her mother. “Hector’s dog bit Mateo and Jared had to take him to the hospital for stitches and a rabies shot. And Jared wants to sue Hector and get him out of the building.”

“Oh my God,” said Ava slowly. “Is Mateo okay?”

“Jared says he’s okay. But — should I say something to Hector? Should we? Would you? I feel terrible. Apparently he has a huge drug problem now. And he’s not taking care of that dog.”

Ava sighed. “Everyone he’s ever worked with has tried to do something for him. He doesn’t want anyone’s help. He stopped returning my calls three, four years ago.”

“Really?”

“I think he did actually go to rehab a few years ago, but it didn’t stick, apparently.”

“People are worried he’s going to start a fire or an explosion or something in the building one night.”

“You might have to look into some legal recourse,” Ava said. In the background, Milly could hear the laughter and conversation of the women who lived in the AIDS residence her mother ran. “That’s very sad to think.”

“That’s what Jared says, too.”

“You’re still coming for dinner tomorrow night?”

“Of course.”

The pizzas had gotten cold. Milly put them in the oven and leafed through the sections of the Sunday Times that had already come to the house, in advance of the parts that came Sunday morning. Thirty minutes later, Jared and Mateo were back.

“Look!” said Mateo. He showed off the three stitches in his left calf, where the dog had sunk her teeth in.

Milly held him close. “I’m just glad you’re okay. It must have been scary.”

“I was really scared.”

“We’re going to talk to Hector about his dog,” Milly said. “She won’t hurt you again.”

Later, after they’d finished the pizza and Mateo was absorbed in TV cartoons and his drawing, Jared told her, in a low voice, “Me and a few others are going to see a lawyer this week about Hector. I wanna try to get him out of here.”

Milly shook her head. “It’s so sad,” she said. “I told my mother what happened. She said people have tried to help him the past few years, but nothing changes.”

“I don’t really give a shit about him,” Jared said flatly. “I care about the building.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m just saying he wasn’t always like that. It’s sad how someone can just go downhill.”

Jared shrugged. “Nobody’s making him be a tragedy. It’s his choice.”

“Well, he did lose a lover.”

“A lot of people did.”

Milly said no more about Hector. There was clearly no point, she realized. “Funny, what a perfect day this was up until this,” she said.

Jared took her hand across the table, played with it finger by finger. “Did you get some good work done?”

“A bit.” She paused. “It’s strange. . I was in the studio looking out the window and I had a moment where a — like, a dark rush came over me, like something was wrong. It had to be Mateo and the dog.”

“You have a sense,” Jared said gravely.

“I wonder—” she began. Then she caught the glint in his eyes. “You’re mocking me!”

He laughed. “You’re always having those dark rushes,” he said tenderly.

She flushed. “I know. But this one was so. . vivid. Staring out at that clear blue sky.”

They curled up as a trio in front of the TV and watched their new DVD of Dinosaur . Mateo was enthralled. Dinosaurs had been a favorite drawing subject of his since he was four or five, when they’d first met him in the group home in Brooklyn, and the movie had barely begun before he’d run for his pad and crayons and was trying to capture the baby dinosaur, Aladar. Milly absently ran her fingers through his curls while he drew. Their living room was dark, save for the alternating shades of blue flickering on the walls from the TV. Through the open windows, the sounds of Saturday night East Village revels floated up to them from the street, the whoops and shouts and scraps of music from cars and bars. In turn, Milly and Jared napped on each other’s shoulders, under the afghan, while Mateo remained rapt before the screen. In the moments that Milly came half to, she had the drowsy, soothing sense of being nested between her husband and her son, grounded, in no fear of flying away.

He’s the coolest; he’s got swagger, but he’s also sensitive and open. He’s a hip-hop hipster; he lives art-school thug life. He’s walking down the halls at Art and Design High School in midtown with Lupe Fiasco on his iPod, his massive hair pulled back in one of those comb-type headbands for boys, a long white T-shirt coming down over skintight Levi’s, which scrunch into high-top Airs. Sometimes he pulls up the T-shirt to show the tat on the left lower back that he designed, his tag — the grinning tiger with the mob cap slouched down over one eye, with M-DREEM 92 in stitching on the cap. That’s him, M-Dreem 92, the star of his high school, graduating three days from now and then going on to Pratt.

He loves this Lupe song, “Superstar”; he’s been listening to it for over a year and he mouths along with it. And then Ms. Courtney, one of his design teachers, twenty-eight and from Williamsburg and so sick cool with her retro bangs and her miniskirt and combat boots, flags him in the hall, so he pulls out his earbuds. She and some of the kids from Honors Design are meeting in July, after school’s out, to catch the opening of the Emory Douglas retrospective at the New Museum, all that fucking amazing graphic design for the Black Panthers, and does he want to come? Yeah, sure, he says, I’m down. He’s working at Utrecht, the art supply store, that summer, but he’ll request that afternoon off, so he’ll be there, yeah, sure.

“Awesome,” she says, with that hint of irony he loves about her, and he moseys on, noting that Ms. Courtney didn’t tell him to put the iPod away — which, technically, she should have, because it’s against school policy to use them in the facility — but then again, it’s the last day of school, there’s a loosey-goosey atmosphere along with the humidity, and, also, he suspects Ms. Courtney has a secret crush on him. She can play it cool and appropriate, but by now he knows how to pick it up in inflections. And he knows what he projects, how to turn it on and off, all the dials — the artist, the homeboy, the gifted child and all his drama.

So, his last day of high school. He’s alone in the hallway and he feels so good. He shows up late to Advanced Illustration, but it doesn’t really matter because half the class is absent for different reasons — all sorts of administrative loose ends to tie up today with transcripts, graduation rehearsals — and everyone’s just sitting around doing a crit on one another’s final projects, with cool Mr. Adeyemo and his massive locks tilted halfway back in his teacher’s seat, presiding over it all sleepily. Dude’s even wearing Birkenstocks today and damn those feet are ashy and need a cocoa butter rub.

He sits down next to Zoya, with her half-Egyptian, half-Boricua indie fierceness, her Amy Winehouse eyeliner, and rests his leg against hers. She rolls her eyes but doesn’t move her leg. He remembers when she spooked him back in March. They had been dating for all of two weeks, but it was complicated because there was that shortie, Vanessa, from Professional Children’s School whom he’d met at a rave in Greenpoint about the same time. He was at Zoya’s place in the East River Houses, overlooking the water and the condos going up in Billyburg, smoking herb, listening to Portishead, and feeling retro. A cold March night and they were wrapped in her Care Bears blanket from when she was little, giggling about stupid shit. And then that herb kicked in good and there was this period where the two of them just stared flat into each other’s eyes during “Roads,” and that line that hit him: I got nobody on my side. And surely that ain’t right. And surely that ain’t right.