Читать книгу The Sunshine Crust Baking Factory - Stacy Wakefield - Страница 8

IV

Skip asked if I wanted to go to a poetry slam with him and I dropped the broom I was pushing around and ran to get ready. I had to laugh at myself while I dug in my bag for a clean shirt. I always said poetry was for beatnik throwbacks, but I really needed to get out of the house. Over the last few weeks I’d gotten the first floor livable and moved in, but it wasn’t the fun, friend-filled world I’d dreamed squatting would be. Lorenzo was home one night out of three, Jimmy even less. I avoided Mitch because he was so judgmental and Eddie because he was vacant and weird. I wanted Veronica and Raven to come visit but they both acted like Brooklyn was on the other side of the moon.

On the L train into the city, Skip seemed nervous. He was muttering to himself, distracted. We transferred to the 6 at Union Square and got off in the 30s. I followed Skip up Third Ave. and into some place that looked like an Irish sports bar. It was air-conditioned and full of men with crew cuts. I wondered if we were in the wrong place until a skinny guy with a pencil stuck in his hat came rushing from the back.

“Skip! Tell me you’re ready.” He slapped his clipboard. “I only got the Prozac girl and the angry banker tonight, I’m freakin’ out.”

“I’m gonna do it,” Skip breathed.

The guy clapped Skip’s shoulder and snapped his fingers over our heads at the bartender. “Drinks for these two,” he cried, spraying me with spit. The bartender served us without carding me.

In a little room in back where chairs circled a microphone, people seemed to know Skip. They held up their drinks or nodded but Skip didn’t introduce me to anyone. We found seats and I looked around. Adults with jobs in summer clothes. The kind of squares I wouldn’t normally notice. Skip seemed too nervous to talk to me. He sucked on his Corona and studied a piece of wrinkled paper from his pocket.

By the time it was Skip’s turn to read, his anxiety had rubbed off on me and I was stiff with embarrassment. He recited with his eyes squeezed shut, intense and weird. At least he didn’t rush. Actually, his voice was clear and confident and he knew how to pause for laughs. Laughs! I’d thought he had no sense of humor at all. I looked around and saw that everyone was listening and smiling. His poem was about selling books on the street. That’s what he did for work. The refrain was, “I’ve got books,” and at first it was funny, with all the characters passing by who don’t care or don’t speak English or are in a hurry. The narrator loves his books and calls out his refrain with defiance, but the day is cold, he gets hungry, lonely, bored, yelled at, and by the end, “I’ve got books” came out tragic—that’s all the guy’s got and it’s not enough. Skip’s shoulders dropped in relief when it was over and everyone hooted. He nodded around the room with stiff jerks of his neck and he gave me a shy smile.

* * *

A couple nights later it was Lorenzo’s turn to be on stage. Everyone I knew in New York was at his band’s first show, even though it was just an early spot at the Spiral. People were curious. Lorenzo’s old band from Mexico was notorious and the new singer had been in Five Knive, legendary New York punks. While Lorenzo had been practicing for this show, I had gotten our space together by myself, but watching him play I felt elated. I’d had a tiny role in making this come together and I was proud of it. It was raw, old-school, three-chord punk. They only had twelve songs so it was over in twenty ferocious minutes. Then everyone stood around with their ears ringing saying, “Holy shit!”

“They were awesome.”

Raven’s friends from Rot-Squat gathered in a pack of dreads and jewelry. Abby’s skimpy cut-off overalls displayed the row of tiny dots tattooed up her slender sides. A wild mess of white-blond hair hid her face. A girl with dark dreads pulled into a knot wore sports socks with pink pom-poms with her beat-up Adidas and miniskirt. I loved that, it was totally Mad Max tennis player. A girl named Jessica wore a dog collar with spikes around her neck.

Once the girls had joined me, Jimmy lost no time sauntering over. He pointed at me with disco fingers, singing, “Housemaaate! Where’re y’all going now?” I remembered that he’d had a thing with Abby that had ended badly, but it looked to me like he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

I waved over Jimmy’s shoulder to Veronica, who stalked toward us in clunky heels and striped knee socks. She gave me a hug, “Not bad for a first show!”

“How’s the new job?” I asked her.

Veronica was working construction. Getting jobs wasn’t the hard part, plenty of guys thought it was great to get a chick on their crew.

“I thought I’d learn about carpentry but I’ve just spent, like, two weeks sanding the stair rails,” she complained. “Seriously! I’m still on the third floor! The money these jerks spend on their balusters would build a whole house for regular people . . . How’s your place coming along?”

“Great! When are you coming to see it?” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lorenzo leave the stage, sweat and excitement glowing on him, his dreads pushed behind his ears. Kids high-fived as he passed, threading toward me, like he felt the same magnetic pull I did. He winked at me and joy spiked into my brain.

Veronica dangled a key in front of my eyes to get my attention back. “I have my boss’s van! We can go now!”

“To Brooklyn?” I clapped my hands. “Jimmy! Lorenzo! Veronica’s driving us to Brooklyn!”

Raven cried, “Let’s all go!”

Lorenzo led the way out of the club like the Pied Piper. Stumps was out on Houston Street leaning against Veronica’s van. He was the guy I thought of as the doorman at Rot-Squat; always on the stoop keeping an eye on things. His housemates told him we were going to Brooklyn and he took charge, directing us all to buy beer at the deli next door because there might not be stores out in Brooklyn. I didn’t drink much, one beer would make me giddy, but everyone else grabbed armloads of forties like they were going to be trapped in the boroughs for a week.

I sat up front next to Veronica to give directions. Lorenzo leaned between us to talk about the show. I’d never seen him so hyped up. The guitarist had started the second song on the wrong chord, he said. Did we see that kid in front throwing beer around? Did we see the dude from Missing Foundation was there? Lorenzo’s euphoria was contagious. This was it, I thought, I’m really doing it. Living in the city, rattling home over the brightly-lit bridge with my friends.

* * *

When we pulled up in front of the Bakery, Veronica glanced into the back of the van and saw Stumps swigging from a bottle. “Did you guys open beers in the car? I could lose my license!”

Stumps laughed, spewing beer through his gold teeth.

“Sorry,” Raven apologized, but Veronica was out already, slamming her door.

Jimmy sang to Stumps, “Bitch alert!” and cackled, Beavis and Butthead style.

Inside, I ran to put on some lights while Veronica stood in the doorway. She squinted through her cat-eye glasses at the old braided rug next to my patchwork quilt–covered bed, the lamp on a stack of suitcases. I had made a little island of street-scored hominess adrift in the space. You didn’t want to get too near to the crumbling, damp walls. We still had to figure out how to seal them. Lorenzo and I had a line dividing our spaces. It was like The Brady Bunch, that episode where they put the masking tape down the middle of the room. But we didn’t have tape; just bags of garbage and metal scraps. Way in back, under the window, was Lorenzo’s bare mattress and sleeping bag, backpack of clothes, a folding chair.

Lorenzo squeezed past Veronica, followed by everyone else, and turned on his boom box.

Veronica asked to see the rest of the house. “Why don’t you have a phone here?” she asked.

“Mitch said he tried and they wanted some big deposit or something . . .”

“Who’d he call? They can’t refuse service just because it’s a squat.”

The stairs were dark and narrow, but when we emerged on the open second floor with streetlights filtering through the windows, we found Skip waiting for us. He looked worried. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“Nothing, we just brought some people over.” I ran my hand through my hair. “Lorenzo’s band played, so—”

“I didn’t know that. Was Jimmy there?”

Crap. Lorenzo had specifically told me not to tell Skip about the show. Lorenzo was all chummy and cool to Skip’s face, so Skip thought they were pals.

Veronica saved me by introducing herself. She told Skip she lived at 9th Street Squat, opening with her credentials, and watched his face to gauge his reaction. “When we moved in there, it looked a lot worse than this.”

“Did you see Sid’s mural?” Skip asked, and led her to the wall.

I’d been too busy cleaning out the first floor to work on it since the night I’d started it. You couldn’t even see what it was supposed to be, it was just a sketch, but Skip was always talking about it like it proved something about the building. He told Veronica about his vision for the second floor, how it should be an art space, where everyone in the house could work on art projects and collaborate. He used the word art like it was religion, which made me cringe. A serious squatter like Veronica would be more impressed if we were running a soup kitchen or teaching bike repair to disadvantaged youth. Finally, I got so uncomfortable I cut Skip off.

“Let’s show Veronica upstairs,” I suggested.

The third floor was the best part of the house. Jimmy’s room was in front, right above the street, and Mitch’s room was way in back against the far wall. Between their rooms was a loft-like space with big windows overlooking the BQE. Mitch had installed his woodstove back by the kitchen near his room. At the kitchen table, Mitch, shirtless, was drinking from an orange juice box.

“This would make a better art space than downstairs!” Veronica said. “All those windows! The high ceiling!”

“But the artists should work in the center of the house,” Skip insisted.

“What’s this, an inspection?” Mitch asked.

Skip laughed nervously. “Veronica’s from 19th Street Squat.”

“It’s actually 9th—” I started.

“Whatever.” Mitch turned to head into his room. “Maybe she should go back there and tell them how to run their building.” His pale, naked back was an accusation.

Downstairs, Skip kept apologizing to Veronica for Mitch, making it worse by not letting it go. Veronica crossed her arms and looked bored. In my discomfort, I took the bong Stumps handed me and dragged a long toke. Pot was supposed to relax you, right? Then I passed it to Skip, who, like me, rarely smoked. But I guess he was trying to be cool too. He breathed in and collapsed in a coughing fit.

No one noticed. Jimmy lounged with Lorenzo on Lorenzo’s mattress, their eyes heavy and stoned. Raven’s girlfriends were dancing to a techno tape, bumping each other and giggling. Stumps mocked them, holding his beer over his head. In the time Veronica and I had been upstairs, everyone had managed to get shit-faced.

“Come on, Lorenzo!” Abby reached down to his bed for him, her voice slurred, ignoring Jimmy.

Raven sat cross-legged on my braided rug, rifling through my box of zines. “You have Squat Beautiful!” She waved it at me. “I took pictures in this one, did you see?”

She opened it to portraits of girl train hoppers. I touched the paper and saw from the way it shimmered that I was totally stoned. “These are amazing! I forgot you were a photographer!”

I tried to focus on what Raven was telling me about going to art school and how she’d quit and the photographers she liked, and she seemed utterly beautiful and smart and I loved how her long beaded dreads bobbed around and how her tongue piercing clicked against her lip ring. But I couldn’t follow; I was distracted by something bad in my peripheral vision. Skip was telling Veronica about selling books on the street, his voice stumbling all over itself. It must be my ears. I shook my head to make it stop, but I still couldn’t concentrate. I worried he was going to recite his poem. The mattress groaned and I jumped.

It was Veronica, moving away from Skip and sinking down next to me, her legs crossed at the knee like an adult in her heeled shoes. She pointed at Lorenzo’s mattress where the boys were sprawled. “You and Lorenzo share the room?”

“Well, it’s a big space . . .” I glanced at Skip, but he was rubbing his eyes and didn’t seem to be listening.

She raised an eyebrow. “You need a wall.”

“I guess . . .” I looked up at the ceiling. I had no idea how to build a wall. I’d talked to Lorenzo about the idea, but he dismissed it. I was secretly pleased that he didn’t think it was urgent to separate our spaces.

Abby had Lorenzo on his feet now. He did a comic mosh in a circle around the girls, stomping with his head down. They cheered him on.

Veronica raised her voice over the music: “Seriously, you need a wall.”

Raven jumped in: “I’ve shared spaces with guys before!”

I didn’t know everyone was listening but Abby yelled, “You were screwing them all, you slut!” and Jimmy whooped from the bed, like he approved of the turn the conversation was taking.

“We don’t know what Sid and Lo-ren-zo get up to in here,” the dog-collar girl sang. She stumbled and grabbed onto Stump’s bullet belt for support.

Stumps bumped her hips. “Give you three guesses!”

“Cowabunga!” Jimmy held up his beer like a frat boy.

“Siiiiid,” Abby sang. She reached down to me on my bed, her necklaces dancing into my face. “Come on, girl!” I shook my head and tried to smile in a relaxed way. I moshed sometimes at shows, but even watching this sexy-girl techno-thing made me feel like a hippopotamus.

Jimmy made a megaphone with his hands and hooted, “Sid! Sid! Sid!”

Lorenzo had been moshing around like he wasn’t hearing any of this, but now he kicked Jimmy’s boot where it was hanging off the bed.

“Oh shiiit,” Abby grinned, like things were getting fun. “Fight!”

“They’s fightin’ over yoooou.” Stumps pointed at me, his narrow eyes just slits in his round face.

“You trippin’,” Lorenzo growled, and threw his beer bottle at the wall where it shattered near Jimmy’s head. The violence of it made everyone jump.

“Jeez, dude! Sorry!” Jimmy held his hands up in playful surrender.

Lorenzo kicked glass out of the way and threw himself down on his mattress, his face angry and dark.

Raven leaned her cheek against my leg and rubbed my knee like she wanted to console me, which only made Lorenzo’s anger seem more humiliating.

Veronica stood up. “I gotta go,” she said. “These guys can take the train back or whatever.”

Skip jumped up. “I’ll get the door for you.”

In a moment he was back, leaning down to me, his face rippled with tension. “Sid,” he hissed, “the door was open!”

The pot had made him paranoid; his eyes were really red.

“Did you shut it?”

“Yes! But why was it open?” He looked around hysterically for intruders. “It’s really late! This music is too loud!” He scurried to the boom box.

Raven and I went outside and found the dark-haired Rot-Squat girl around the corner slouched against the building. Her head was buried in her bare knees and her optimistic pink pom-poms looked gray in the dark.

“What happened?” I asked. “Are you sick?”

She nodded and groaned.

Skip came dashing outside and grabbed my arm. “We’ve got to go inside! The neighbors!”

I looked around, exasperated. Our house was the last on the block and over here around the corner, we were just facing the park and the highway. “No one can see us here!”

Skip put his hands in his hair. “Sid, I need your help!”

“Everything’s fine! Give us a sec, will you?”

“Fine? Fine?”

“You’re freaking out!”

“Oh!” he cried. “Oh! I’m the problem?”

A retching sound made us look down.

“Can you get Stumps?” Raven asked me.

I hurried inside, happy to get away from Skip. Now Abby was sitting on Jimmy’s lap on Lorenzo’s bed, their faces hidden by the cloud of her hair. The dog-collar girl was sprawled on my bed with her sneakers on my pillow. Stumps sat on the floor near her.

“Um, Stumps?” I gestured at the door.

He looked around hazily, noting the absence of his girlfriend, then staggered up, sloshing beer on my bed. “On it, captain!” He saluted and stumbled out.

Skip ran in and pulled the boom box cord out of the wall. Lorenzo just watched him. The party was over. Lorenzo kicked his mattress and Jimmy and Abby jumped and giggled. “Go upstairs,” Lorenzo growled at them.

When they were gone, Lorenzo laid down on his sleeping bag and shut his eyes. The girl on my bed rolled onto her side and snored. I dropped into my velvet armchair and propped my feet up on a corner of the bed.