Читать книгу For Love of the Dollar - J.M. Servin - Страница 13

CHAPTER THREE

In which...the landlord’s son is revealed to be the Video Game Hero...Reluctant Roommate...and Protector of the Realm.

Mark spent several days without appearing in the Bronx. Rose shared this information with me while we had lunch in the backyard. Sandra hadn’t mentioned this during our recent light-night sessions, and I didn’t notice the usual noise that once emanated from the basement studio was now gone. No more complaints about someone plundering the groceries. Until then I hadn’t understood Norma’s taciturn way when it came to waiting for news. Despite everything, the atmosphere in the house was now agreeable; the dog days no longer penetrated walls and windows, and Joe and Norma weren’t at each other. An ideal circumstance for weekends, without a doubt. Sandra would stay in her room, and we probably wouldn’t see her until dinner. Rose exaggerated her concerns, but she was shaken up enough about the matter to not even take her dosage of Valium.

Mark was all grown up, twenty-eight years old, married to a Californian woman who gave off airs as an intellectual. She was working at Condomania until she could land a better gig. With a BFA in interior design, money wasn’t something that worried Carol a whole lot, especially not while her parents continued to send her a monthly check to cover her expenses. Mark preferred expensive restaurants. His friendly look, clean-shaven features, and gift of the gab as a salesman were his calling cards for that moment when he would eventually ask if there were any openings for waiters.

“He’s probably with his friends, you know him. Have you called around?” I said in order to reinforce Rose’s suspicions and assumptions, before going upstairs to take a shower, feeling woozy from the tedious chatter from someone who needed someone else to take care of her own problem.

All of Mark’s friends lived in Brooklyn and he spent the majority of his time with them, except for those moments when they would get together in his studio in order to play video games or watch the Oscars, all of them dressed up like movie stars. Mark always chose Robert De Niro in his role from The Godfather. Joe would dress up as a John Wayne type of cowboy, while Carol dressed up as Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. The cast from The Rocky Horror Picture Show delivered to your door.

Mark liked smoking pot with Joe. Without speaking too many words, they understood each other. When Mark would bring his friends over, Joe would go downstairs to the basement studio. They loved pizza, fruity soft drinks, and chocolate, and apart from video games and computers, they had exchanged basketballs and bicycles for bongs.

Mark always had a lot of excuses to not be at home. They almost always had to do with job hunts or culinary night classes. The last time, he had signed up for a course at an institute for French pastries. He dropped out after three months, and with a loan from his mother, he opened a pastry shop on the outskirts of New York, close to where his maternal grandparents lived. He found Carol and they spent almost a year as his grandparents’ tenants. When they returned to the Bronx, Mark was depressed and irritable, and Carol stopped talking to all of us. Rose’s anger dissipated not too long after, though her savings had been depleted from the parties, rental items, burned cakes, cake decorations, and equipment with which they’d started the business.

Mark was confident that he would soon be a prosperous restaurateur, or at least that’s what he would claim each time he started a new job as a waiter.

Carol wanted to believe him, and, with Rose, she would spend entire afternoons knitting and making plans for the future. Mark wasn’t a nobody. He wasn’t another one of those under-the-table guys in kitchens filled with Latinos and Asians, nor a hired hand working during the winter season. He was a full-fledged citizen of the United States and proud of being Italian American. That’s what Rose and her daughter-in-law reasoned animatedly, yet guarding their words in front of “foreigners.”

Mark had promised Carol that she would soon be the owner of a gift boutique with products she designed, while he ran a trattoria in Brooklyn—“Just give me some time,” he would say. But for the meantime, he would excuse himself before leaving the house and looking for his crew. He was the leader, the only one married, and the only one whose mother had lent him his own studio. He was also the only one ever suspected of pilfering cash from Rose’s purse. Demands met the conditions present: a cute house, all expenses included, and a cute wife. Moreover, his buddies revered him for being the best at video games.

As for the rest of us, his best quality was his frequent absence.

Everything was going well for Mark; the only hitch in his plan was his return to the Bronx at night. Since childhood, it bugged him to be surrounded by “loud and aggressive” neighbors who never said a word to him. But, as for now, there was nothing he could do. His mother’s hospitality helped him avoid paying astronomically high rent for apartments the size of a walk-in closet outside of the Bronx. Mark had confessed to me once how the forty-five-minute ride from Brooklyn made each hair on his body stand up when he reached Ninety-Sixth Street. From thereon, only crazy blacks and Latinos boarded the cars.

“Oh, man, there are so many!” he would say while counting with his fingers, pretending to be astonished. Rap music, eyes reddened from drugs, and everything else dark, really dark, and then he would unleash a sardonic cackle that made his mother uncomfortable.

Mark had no motivation to connect with his neighbors. They made him feel ashamed. Luckily enough, the police station was on the corner. With just a shout, they would be there for him, ready to protect a U.S. citizen. Joe was always on his side, even though Mark would discreetly chide his mother for having chosen a much younger partner. “Jesus, Mom,” Mark would complain whenever his demands weren’t met.

The South Bronx was an unbearable Babel with hostile neighbors. It was a rare event when Mark went to the store for groceries. He preferred to pick among things in the fridge and the community cupboard. He loved my Colombian coffee. Whenever possible, my sister would advise Rose to get her son in line. Mark thought it reckless that Rose had rented a room to two Hispanics, but he nevertheless convinced my sister to let him borrow her car. Once he disappeared with it for two days; the police stopped him, and he didn’t say a thing about that. When the $200 fine came in the mail, my sister stopped all loans and borrowing forever.

“It’s nothing personal, Mark, but she doesn’t like lending money for breaking the law while driving drunk.”

Mark didn’t say anything else. No one believed his excuses, which weren’t very original. Eventually no one cared about his petty theft when it came to groceries or forgotten change in the pockets of jackets hanging by the foyer.

Mark would always say, “You’ll pay for this,” which clashed with his ingenuous smile. “Patience!” he would yell at Carol when they argued in the studio, especially whenever he had disappeared for some days. “I have the right to have some fun, don’t I?” was the way he would finish off his act of being offended, which lasted for a few hours.

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Alexander Avenue at night. Anyone you looked in the eye for more than five seconds would assume you were challenging him to a fight.

Once, Mark had to learn this the hard way. It couldn’t be avoided, as the guys were only a few feet from the subway. Mark had exited from the subway a bit before dawn. They had broken into Norma’s car, and they had taken out the dashboard with screwdrivers and by pulling on it to snap off the wires. Meanwhile, one of the thieves had opened all four doors in order to help the others with their undertaking. Mark wasn’t sure if he had witnessed all of this from the moment they had started. After all, it was the car that was no longer going to be lent to him, the car that he could have used upon returning from Brooklyn and with fewer risks.

They were trying to turn over the engine of the modest white Subaru with some miles on it, the typical sort of jalopy that poor workers with modest incomes used. They couldn’t get it to start. They pulled out a stereo, which had cost a hundred bucks from a nearby Caldor. They had cracked the windshield while trying to take apart the dashboard. The four Mexicans from the neighboring house were no professionals. They didn’t even care about the ruckus they were making, nor that their own children were keeping watch nearby, at the foot of the house.

Mark found himself in the midst of their gazes. The sudden silence only confirmed that they recognized and loathed each other. An ambulance siren whizzed down Willis Avenue, parallel to Alexander end to end. Mark tried to, but couldn’t, pretend that he had taken the wrong way, yet his reflexes urged him onto the stairs of his house. He had one hand stuck in his pants pockets. House keys. Fear confused him. It didn’t occur to him that in order to enter his studio he had to go down the stairs, not go up, and now he had to return to those icy gazes of the thieves, who were still watching him. He walked down, as if he were out to buy the newspaper. Before stepping on the sidewalk, he searched his breast pocket. There they were, chained to the tweezers in the shape of a pistol that he used to smoke roaches. The Mexicans surrounded him: grimy, long-haired Pygmies, shirtless and with their pants sagging.

“You shouldn’t do that,” he said, trapped by the circumstances. His voice broke despite how hard he tried to remain calm.

The thieves looked at him one last time. Then after telling him to fuck his mother in Spanish, and with their chins pressed against their chests, they ran off carrying the spare tire and a canvas bag.

Mark let out a gasp of relief. He had scared them off. He looked at the police station and then at the patrol cars, the motorcycles, and the cars used by plainclothesmen. They would park out front in some reserved spaces by the same sidewalk in front of his house and the police station. Laughter erupted from some building. He placed his hand again in his shirt pocket to feel the smoothness of the key ring: a good replica of a Smith & Wesson used in the Old West.

He walked down the steps leading to the studio, and while passing by the trash cans, he put their lids on. Carol was asleep on the sofa in front of the TV. He gave her a kiss soured by whiskey, chocolate, and weed, but she didn’t wake up. He undressed while humming the theme to Top Cat, his favorite cartoon. He had a glass of milk, and before getting into bed, he looked at his Top Cat pupils. Without saying anything more, he went to sleep, exhausted.

The light from the entryway upstairs turned on at that moment. Rose and my sister opened the door, alarmed. They didn’t see anyone, and Norma found that her car had been broken into. Shortly after, Rose, wearing a robe, accompanied her to file a report with the police. Norma made a statement, and in return, the sergeant said there was nothing more they could do and that she should go back to sleep. Rage kept Norma up all night. Even in my sleep, I could hear her muttered curses against the United States.

In the morning, when I went down for some coffee, my sister was having breakfast with Rose and Mark. Norma barely touched her waffles drowning in maple syrup, listening to the story with an icy gaze. He could never explain exactly why he didn’t call the police.