Chango's Fire (14 page)

“I want you in, all the way.”

Like tooth decay, it's a slow process, but in time, when all the original teeth have been left to rot and pulled out, brand-new gold crowns can be put in their place. You keep burning a neighborhood down, you keep cutting services. With all the unhappiness, crime will rise. Now you can blame the people who live there for the decay of the neighborhood. The landlords will sit on the burned buildings, vacant lots, waiting it out, because sooner or later the government will have to declare it an empowered zone and throw money their way.

“They'll know you,” Eddie looks over his shoulder for someone in the distance and as if what he is about to tell me is top secret, “all of them, adjusters, real estate brokers, fire marshals, landlords, but most of all, the local politicians.”

Eddie's eyes are full of light, like he has offered me a chance to go back in time and relive a magical moment I missed by being born too late.

Paris in the '20s.

Berkeley in the '60s.

“I'm getting old,” he says. “In a matter of speaking, I want to pass the torch.”

The history of all countries is the battle over land. In New York City it's always been a battle over the slums. Real estate is to this city what oil is to Texas. It's precious, because you can't produce more land than already exists. And those who own some want to rent it at as high a price as possible, with as little maintenance as they can get away with. Milking their buildings, providing just enough services so as to keep some tenants paying rent. But soon, the landlord will light a match to it. And when that time comes, they always turn to the back alleys. The buffer zones. A way to distance themselves from the effects of their policies. That's where people like Eddie come in. His coffee shop is where poverty czars and local politicians make decisions that affect the lives of those who reside in the ghettoes.

I tell him, “Listen Eddie, lighting up a private house that the owner wanted burned to collect the insurance that's one thing. The guy knows I'm coming, he won't be there. But if I go burn a building where people actually live, people who are not in on the scam, that's another thing. I don't want to go to D.C. I told you over and over again, I quit.”

“Listen to me,” he says, “you'll make so much money.”

“I like that idea,” I say, “but I don't want to set fires anymore.”

“Fifteen, twenty years later you'll get to see that part of D.C. all prettied up.”

I repeat that I'm out. I never heard any names, I don't know anything about the insurance, never saw any faces, I always worked alone, and he knows that. I take my hands out of my jacket. I tell him I'm going to go to school full-time. But I'd still like to keep the demolition job he got me at the construction site. I like the benefits that I get from the union.

“You sure about this, Julio?”

I tell him firmly, “Yes, Eddie.”

“You'll make so, so much money,” he repeats.

“I don't want the job, Eddie. Can't you give this job to someone else?”

“It won't be the same, Julio. It was me and you. Always me and you. Once I got too old, it was just me mentoring you, and let me tell you, you never let me down. Doctors get high on the job, pilots get high on the job, lawyers, teachers, cops, senators, they all get high on the job, now you,” he says proudly, “I don't know when you get high but you never did it when it was time to work.” I nod thanks, like it was a compliment. “And that, kid, is why I like you and won't vouch for anyone else. If those frigging respectable professions have a hard time finding good workers, think how hard it is for people like me?”

“I don't want to keep lighting fires, Eddie.”

“I mean, I won't insult you, Julio, this job is what it is. It ain't pretty. But I don't think you see the entire scope here, Julio. What's at stake.”

“I do,” I say. “I really do.”

“You do?”

Yes, I do.

He watches my eyes. He holds them long enough to know that I'm serious.

“Eddie, I just want to work and go to school right now.”

The old man drops his eyes to his coffee, he takes a sip.

“All right. What you studying?”

“Management, but right now just electives.”

“You never told me. Forget it. Go,” the old man says, “go to school.”

I thank him. My heart is calm.

“You Porto Ricans. I never lost money on any of you. I once bet five grand on the Trinidad—Mosley fight.”

“Don't tell me, you bet on Mosley.”

“Exactly, imagine if Trinidad had won?” his raspy laugh returns, “I'd be out five Gs. But you people never do that to me.”

I'm ready to leave. I've had it with him.

“But you,” his laugh disappears, “you made me lose money.”

A quick spasm shoots up the left side of my leg all the way to my face.

I tell him I've no idea what he's talking about but he must see my left side quivering, the tick in my eye.

Eddie barely moves his hand. A waiter, the only waiter in the coffee shop, goes somewhere inside.

I hear a meow.

The waiter places Kaiser on my lap. He curls there like he missed me.

“Never take anything? That beast was suppose to burn in that fire.”

“Hey it's not like the adjuster can claim it as valuable property.”

“It's a pure breed,” he shouts, “you stupid. But that's not the point.”

I look down at Kaiser, his eyes are royal-looking, like telling me, I'm a pure breed, stupid, I must cost at least something.

“First you turn me down, second you took, and the dumbest thing you did was to let it get loose.”

Like all domestics, Kaiser must have somehow journeyed back to his true home. Someone must have found Kaiser, standing, sitting, or lying by the burned house, weeks after Eddie's adjuster had reported him burned with the rest of the house. So now someone at the insurance company has some explaining to do. About how a cat escaped an electrical fire in a climate-controlled house, unless the fire wasn't electrical to begin with. So now, to shut up mouths, Eddie has to pay for my mistake.

“What you got?” Eddie looks at me half smiling, half angry.

“What you mean?” I reply nervously.

“How are you going to pay me back?”

I ask how much.

He tells me.

I say I don't have anywhere near that amount.

“What you got? Come on.”

I don't have anything.

“Every man's got something.”

I tell him I have nothing.

“A loyal girl you can turn out?”

He laughs a little, the old man laughs.

“I wish,” I say.

“Of course not. You never have a girl.”

“Thanks,” I say, hoping this is all a joke.

“I'll tell you what you got.”

Right there I know he is serious, he has given this some thought, and I'm waiting with my heart pounding, because Eddie is creative. He punishes you like the Greek gods. He'll have you roll a rock up a hill for the rest of your life only to send it rolling back down again and again. Or chain you to a boulder and have some huge bird eat your liver every morning only to grow a new one at night and have that bird visit you again at dawn.

“You got some money coming your way.”

I brace for the impact. I brace for his irony.

“I looked into it,” the old man takes a sip of his cold coffee.

“Into what?” I say.

“Your building's insured under the company where I have my people.”

I know what he wants.

“My parents live there,” I tell him. I think of Helen, Maritza's crazy church as well.

“I didn't say burn your parents.” He frowns and waves his hand rapidly like there was smoke between us.

“We'll split the insurance. You own it, right, the third floor you told me.”

“What about the other people who live there, Eddie?”

“Hey, I'm sorry, you should of thought of that before you took.”

“I can't do it.” I tell him.

“Well I don't blame you. I never liked it myself. But think it over or take the job,” he calmly returns to his paper. When his cell rings, he answers with two words, “Yes, darling.”

I leave Eddie's coffee shop carrying a happy cat in my arms. Kaiser is beautiful. His gray coat is soft and sleek, and his purr is steady and low. Someone had fed him well while he was lost. I'm dazed. Without noticing I have kept walking west and have reached Central Park. Somehow, seeing birds and trees makes me calm down some. I enter Central Park and walk around the Harlem Meer. Kaiser digs his claws into my shirt, scared of water. I hold him tighter, reassuring Kaiser that I'm not going to throw him in the pond. Kaiser lets go of my shirt and lets me hold him lightly, like I have before, as though he's still a kitten.

Twilight is falling, and a smoky white mist is rising from the pond. The shadows the leaves throw on the water look like colorless tattoos. Kaiser's head becomes an owl wanting to take in all that nature. I join him in enviously staring at the pigeons and insects that fly freely by the lamppost. Their shadows create giant flying patterns on the grass and pond below. I'd trade places in a second with any of those flying creatures, because this minute I feel like an angry dog tied to a parking meter. A dog that knows he ain't going nowhere unless those that tied him up say so.

“Eddie has no right. No right, fucking with me like that. No fucking right at all!” I say out loud, but I know some of that isn't true. And then I feel embarrassed when a jogger passing by overhears me. He shoots me a look and then quickens his pace.

I turn around and go home. I don't want to think about setting my house or anyone's house on fire. So I let it go for the moment. I don't think about anything except how happy my mother is going to be. How she loved this beautiful cat and how I will please her by bringing him back. At the moment, it's the only happiness I have to look forward to.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning.

—H
OWARD
C
OSELL
, 1977. A
S
THE
Y
ANKEES
PLAYED THE
D
ODGERS
IN THE
W
ORLD
S
ERIES
, a camera pannedto a nearby fire, showing the grim reality just beyond the comforts of Y
ANKEE
S
TADIUM.

When
I was nine, me and Trompo Loco built a clubhouse on a vacant lot on 109th and Park Avenue. The Brown House, for the president and vice president of Spanish Harlem. Of course everyone on the block wanted to join our administration, because all we did was eat chips and drink soda in there. Word had also spread I had access to
Playboy
magazines that I had copped from the stationery store. That wasn't true, but I let everyone think that, because it explained the sign I had hung outside:

NO GIRLS ALLOWED. ESPECIALLY MARITZA.

Me and Trompo Loco didn't like Maritza, because, growing up Pentecostal, we took a lot of shit from her. Especially me. She took pity on Trompo, because he was slow, but with me she was merciless. She'd say, “You in a white religion, Julio.” I'd point out that everyone in my temple was Puerto Rican. “Yeah, but that's a gringo religion, not like Catholics, see. Now that's a religion for Spanish people.”

What was she talking about? Maritza wasn't even a Catholic, her parents were big-time socialists. Back in the day, back in the island, they had fought with passion for Puerto Rico's independence. When they reached Nueva Yol, on the heels of the great Albizu Campos, they had Maritza and ingrained in their daughter an almost self-righteous socialist repertoire, one equal to that of a religious fanatic.

Back then, when the neighborhood was burning, me and her were just kids, but she knew that in my church we would always have arts, crafts and bake sales, so she always came for that. On every Sunday during the summer, our temple would close the street off from traffic. The block was then transformed into a paradise of sidewalk chalk, music, dance, jump rope and food. Maritza loved it when my father would teach kids how to play the congas. Me and Trompo Loco would help him bring out all these congas, like twenty of them, and he'd give conga lessons outdoors. Maritza would bang on those skins as if she was possessed by some African river deity. She thumped away, happy and smiling, forgetting for a minute that the class was held in a vacant lot full of charred bricks, dirty diapers and junked furniture.

My mother ran the arts and crafts, and I would help in bringing out those huge communal eating tables. Mom would fill bowls with beads and pins and place them on every table. Kids had to bring their own bar of Ivory soap, and Mom would help them make these soap-bead sculptures. Maritza loved that, too. She's stick each pin into the soap so violently, it looked like she was doing voodoo on somebody. Throughout the summer, Maritza never missed a single church festival.

But come September, Maritza would see me in school and it was the same shit again: “Your religion is all show and noise.” Yeah, I'd say, what about those free music lessons you got all summer from my father who was once a top musician? “Yeah, so why ain't your father playing the Palladium, if he's so good?” I'd tell her because the Lord spoke to him one night and told him he had to lead others to the light. Maritza would laugh, “The light? Yo'r pops ain't Con-Ed!” Other kids would say, man if I were you, I'd kick that little bitch's ass. I'd say it wasn't the Christian thing to do and that Jesus had said “to turn the other cheek.” Truth was, I was scared to fight girls, because they scratched, pulled your hair and some spat at you. Besides, I had seen Maritza fight, and back then, in the fourth grade, Maritza could take me. I know, because at that time I had gotten my ass kicked by this nasty, fat girl named Josephine, who beat me up behind the jungle gym. So now the entire school knew I had gotten my ass whipped by a girl. This gave Maritza new ammunition, “Did you see the light? Did you see the Lord? She's fat, right?”