A Brief History of Seven Killings (72 page)

—You some ranchero, Papi?

—Take off my fucking hat.

And the fucked-up thing is all I could think about was Rocky. Even with my hand in this kid’s dirty hair, as his head bobbed up and down, I thought about Rocky’s rules. We had certain rules. Or maybe we thought we did. If you’re gonna make it with somebody, fuck guys on the sofa because on the bed is cheating. And only if the guy is really, really cute, because the memory gem said we only pass this way but once and then you just have to make it with him, because we’re queers and bullshit rules don’t apply. Well, straight rules.

But fucking hell, man, stuff I had put to bed years ago has been staging a fucking reunion in my head these past few days. Fuck if I know why, I’ve never been to New York.
Here, it’s like this, see, suck my finger and suck and suck until you’re a vacuum, see, like when you suck on a plastic bag till all the air’s gone out? suck so hard. Suck so hard that I can’t pull my finger out—I know how to do it.
Nobody told me NYC was a place overrun by ghosts.
You’re a fucking freak, John-John.
I never meant to push the boy. Yeah I did. I never meant for the boy to get hurt. Yeah I fucking did. I never meant to kill him. What does meant mean? When he landed facedown on the train track and I pulled him up, just to position his head over the beam so that his loose mouth bit into it and then kicked him hard at the back of his head again and again until I heard the crunch, all I could think about was summer camp.
Is it in? Oh yeah. All the way in? Uh-huh
. Fourteen, back from
summer camp and my pop punched me in the stomach once and told me I was a fucking wimp who needed to get hard. Summer camp was all about bad food, calamine lotion and counselors walking around with rulers to stick between dancing couples
to make space for Jesus
. Me and Tommy Mateo, all red-haired whiteboy Afro, sitting on the sidelines hissing that this was bullshit.
Hey, you wanna smoke? Uh, yeah
. Two weeks after camp all I could think of was seeing Tommy again. On the phone he seemed different, busy, like he was talking to somebody else. You know the old train tunnel over by Lincoln? I get there and he’s staying far back, like he wasn’t the boy whose butt I was stuffing every night in the fucking woods. Tommy blew smoke in my face when I got too close.

Tommy, you wanna, you know?

What? No, you fucking fag.

You’re the fucking fag, getting cornholed
.

Fuck you, that’s because there weren’t no fucking girls.

Girls to fuck you in the butt? Camp was full of girls.

Not any girls I would want to fuck, shit, even you were cuter than all of them. But we’re back home and girls here are cute.

I don’t want fucking girls.

You’re supposed to, or else you’re a fag. You’re a fucking fag and I’m gonna tell your pop
.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Why am I thinking all this shit right now? The light in this guy’s bedroom went on, then off, the bathroom light went on for half an hour and off. It’s been off for half an hour now. Give a man half an hour give or take to fall asleep. He could be fucking some chick with the lights off, but then same rules still apply. He’ll either be asleep or distracted. I would climb the fire escape but it’s three floors up and that’s a pretty fucking tricky thing to tip-toe all the way. Griselda gave me a set of keys but coming through the front door just seemed like a really stupid thing to do. This is New York, he’s gotta have locks on that shit. Or maybe he’s fucking some chick and don’t want her to stay.

Crossed the street and I’m in the building. Every now and then I get some hint that I’m really just a stereotypical fag, for example, who the fuck
had the great idea to paint this whole hall area mustard? Ten, fifteen feet and the first stairway still has carpet on the steps. Three floors up I know that’s not sweat running down my back. At the door and before I know it I’m sweeping my hands across it like I’m checking if it’s real wood or some shit. Given how much I don’t trust that Colombian bitch, I’m half expecting the key not to work. I push it in and turn hard, expecting it to break or something, but it works, it works with a fucking bang. Fuck this shit, first I think to abort. Maybe it was louder out here than in there? Either way it’d be wise to take the fucking safety off.

Door creaks and opens and there’s no living room, I guess people in NYC don’t really need one. Right in front, a dining table and two chairs, or maybe the other chairs are someplace else. Little light’s coming out from outside, so all I can see is a couch pushed up against the wall and the bed pushed up against the other side. TV right by the window. Can’t tell if it’s black sheets or if by the bed is just dark. Either way, I walk up to the bed, look for the slightest lump under the sheet and let rip seven shots from the clip. Three things: the zoop-zoop of the silencer, the slight pop of the bullets bursting the pillow, and the gasp behind me. I swing around to see a naked white man with red hair maybe. Can’t tell in the dark since he left the bathroom light off. Bitch gave me the wrong fucking apartment. I raise the gun to get him in the head but he throws something straight into my eye and it’s like I’m outside myself hearing myself when I fucking scream. It runs down my face and I taste it. Motherfucking mouthwash. By the time I run into the bathroom and wash out my eye he already pushed up the window and jumped out on the fire escape. And I’m after him, this naked white man running down each step screaming and me trying to get a good shot. I fire and it blasts the metal, shooting off sparks. I’m barely running three steps in the flat before I’m down another staircase, firing at the screaming naked dude, I don’t know what he’s screaming but it doesn’t sound like help. And all I’m shooting is this fucking fire escape. He jumps down the rest of the way instead of taking the ladder.

There we are running down the alley, him screaming like his throat half cut, me behind him, half blind and my right eye still fucking killing me.
Worse, we’re kicking up this shit-rot-sour-dead stink with each step. I’m trying to get shots off, but only movie motherfuckers can run and shoot straight, and that’s with two working eyes. All my shots keep disappearing in the dark, not ricochet no nothing. He’s pretty fast barefoot and hopping and zipping through this dark alley, hot with potholes and trash cans everywhere. I step on something squishy and don’t bother to check if it was a rat. We hit a cross street and the sudden headlights and streetlights stop him cold for too long. Pop him off right as he starts running again, just as two cars pass on both sides of him. One stops for a second then peels out, swerving right, almost hitting a light, then left then right again, disappearing down a street. Nobody on the street at all, which was fucking strange for New York, I think. First I thought the wall looked weird, black, bulby and shiny. Then I realized that it was garbage bags, one on top the other making a fucking wall that covered both sides all the way down into total dark. I walk up to the man, grab him by the left ankle and drag him back into the alley.

Dorcas Palmer

S
eriously have you taken
a good look at this shit? At the cover? A pair of thick-rimmed glasses and a big pink nose. Who’s it by, Groucho Marx? And my God, look at the other publications from this place.
Improvised Weapons of the American Underground
, and this,
Professional Homemade Cherry Bomb
, and what’s destined to be a classic,
How to Lose Your Ex-Wife Forever
. What is this really? I’d think you were militia but you’re not in Texas and far as I know militias haven’t relaxed their no niggers policy.

Meanwhile I’m trying to figure out why exactly this man has started to think he has the wherewithal to act out in my own house. Yes he’s been acting familiar all day, but this shit like he’s my father or husband or something is a whole new level. No, he’s a bored old man who finally gets a mystery to solve and acting like it is such a hassle. No, he thinks he knows me because I have some obligation to him, and he’s so disappointed. Whatever it is this man have some nerve.

—Calm down.

—Whaddya mean calm down? You some kinda fugitive? Why would you need such a book?

—Not that I owe you any explanation, but I saw it in a bookstore and was curious.

—What bookstore, Soldier of Fortune? Those wackos read?

—It’s just a book.

—It’s a manual, Dorcas, if that’s your real name. Nobody buys a manual unless they plan to use it. And judging by the dog ears, you’ve used it lots.

—I don’t have to answer nothing to you.

—Then don’t. But come on, surely this book is a crock of crap?

—Yeah, total junk as you would say. That’s why I don’t use it for—

—I said the book was crap. I didn’t say you weren’t using it.

Why am I not kicking him out of my house for getting angry with me? It’s my fucking house. I pay the rent.

—And nobody gets to speak louder than me.

—What?

—I said it’s my house and nobody get to speak louder than me in me damn house.

—Sorry.

—Don’t apologize. I’m the one that’s sorry.

He sits down.

—It’s your house.

Another version of me would say that I really appreciate that he cares, and be even moved that somebody could care about me despite knowing so little. But I don’t say any of that.

—I didn’t use the book.

—Well thank God.

—Because—

—Because?

—Because most of the stuff in there that it says to do, I already did them. It’s not the only book out there.

—What are you saying?

Mr. Colthirst pulls up one of my dining chairs and sits right in front of me. He takes off his jacket and I try to stop reading symbols in everything, at least for one night. This is something I’ve picked up from American women, this trying to read every single thing a man does as containing a secret message for me. Right now he’s the fucking fugitive. He’s looking at me with that tilted head like he asked me a question and waiting for the answer. I wish this man would understand that I’m not like all these people he watch on
Donahue
. All these people with their private business that they dying to tell thirteen million people. Tell one of these people a simple hi
and they think they must bend down low and tell you what they know. Everybody just want to confess, but they really not telling you nothing. Not revealing nothing.

—Flushing Cemetery. 46th Ave., Flushing, New York.

—Huh?

—Flushing Cemetery. It’s where you will find her if you care to look.

—Who?

—Dorcas Palmer. Dorcas Nevrene Palmer, born November 2, 1958, Spauldings, Clarendon, Jamaica. Died June 15, 1979, Astoria, Queens. Cause of death, tragic circumstances, the obituary said, meaning she got hit by a car. Can you imagine, somebody getting lick by a car in New York City?

—Licked?

—Hit by a car.

—And you’re using her name just like that?

—Claudette Colbert was starting to sound obvious.

—Not funny.

—I wasn’t joking. Claudette Colbert was starting to sound obvious.

—You can’t just use a dead person’s name. Isn’t that pretty easy to trace?

—This might come as a shock, but the department in charge of death certificates is really not the largest in the municipal government.

—I’m more shocked by your consistent use of irony. Not what I remember about Jamaicans. Don’t look at me like that. If you insist on dropping bombs every five minutes, I insist on giving this shit some levity when I need it.

—Right. You really want to hear this.

—You sound like you really want to tell this.

—No, not really. I’m not into this confessional fad thing going around at all. You Americans and your “you wanna talk about it?” I mean, Jesus.

—Anyway.

—Anyway, this is New York, because this is New York, not many people who died here, born here. And states don’t have some grand national record for everybody. In fact, the department for birth records, and for death re
cords, really don’t have nothing to do with each other, they’re not even in the same place. So even if there is a death certificate, there is no—

—Birth certificate.

—And if you can get hold of a birth certificate—

—Then you have proof that you are you, without the real you coming after you. What about her family?

—All in Jamaica. They couldn’t afford to fly up for the funeral.

—Social Security?

—Oh she’s collecting that now.

—She wasn’t—

—All you have to do is get a birth certificate. Yes I just called the Registrar in Jamaica and asked for a copy of my, well, her birth certificate. Can’t even remember how much I paid for it. People are always ready to believe the worst more than the not so bad, so why not give them the worst? You’d be surprised how many places you can say, I’m sorry but I misplaced my passport, or just say it was stolen. But I do have my birth certificate.

—Guess you’d have a slight issue if your name was still Claudette Colbert.

—Or Kim Clarke.

—Who? When were you her?

—Long time now. She’s gone. The next thing I did was contact the census bureau requesting whatever information they had on Dorcas Palmer.

—Oh right, and they handed it over just like that?

—No. They handed it over for $7.50.

—Jesus Christ. How old are you?

—Why you need to know that?

—Oh right, you’re keeping that one a secret. Social Security didn’t think it a little weird when you applied for a number so late?

—Not if you’re an immigrant. Not if you have your birth certificate but can’t find your passport. Not if you have a story long enough and boring enough that they will do anything just to get you out of the line. Carry these two with you and you can easily get a state ID. After that thirty-five dollars can get you a passport, but I didn’t get one of those. That’s in chapter two.

—But you’re not an American citizen?

—No.