Dreamwalker (6 page)

Chapter Ten

Pete reawakened at 11:30 in the morning. Daylight flooded his room and kitchen clatter arose from the restaurant below.

The dream spent in Twin Moon City had left him anything but rested. Rolling out of bed was an effort. The unhealed cut on his arm throbbed occasionally, but at least it wasn't bleeding. If it wasn't for that reminder, he'd have chalked the “wounded in both worlds” event up to some dream-within-a-dream. Instead, it was just beyond explanation.

He planned to devote his off hours today to figuring out what he was doing in Atlantic City, since he doubted he was called here to wash dishes. He dressed and headed downstairs.

Mama DiStephano sat at the table near the register in a white, short-sleeve top and jeans. Smoke curled from a cigarette at her fingertips as she read the
New York Times
through a set of half-glasses. A cup of coffee steamed next to two uncut bagels, some cream cheese, and a stack of clean dishes. Her long, black hair was down around her shoulders and she didn't have on a hint of makeup, not that she needed it. She was Papa D's age, but had managed the journey better, somehow able to keep trim surrounded by thousands of tempting calories. Pete thought that ten thousand dinner rushes ago, she must have been a knockout.

Her eyes turned to Pete as he came down the stairs.

“So, you're up and around?” She had a thick accent that said New York City, born and raised.

“Good morning, Mrs. DiStephano.” It sounded unnecessarily formal having just rolled out of bed, but he wasn't used to sleeping over his workplace.

“Come,” she said, putting down her paper and beckoning him over, “we'll have a talk, Petey.”

Pete flinched at his new nickname, then girded himself for his real job interview. He pulled out a chair upwind of the cigarette's wisp of smoke. Mama D noticed this and stubbed out what was left of the cancer stick.

“First, call me Mama,” she said. “Everyone does. Second, where did you come in from?”

“Ithaca,” Pete said. “I left college this semester.”

“So, college isn't important to you? An education isn't important?”

“No, no. It's important, I just needed a break.”

Mama pulled the glasses off the end of her nose and looked deep in Pete's eyes.

“You running from the law? I don't need that kind of trouble.”

“No, Mama,” he responded. “I'm not running from anything. I hope that I am running to something.”

“Well, this is a strange place to stop along the way,” she said. “But it's none of my business really. I just don't want the cops breaking in here to arrest you in the middle of the dinner rush.”

“No trouble,” he said. “I just need to work.”

Mama smiled. “Oh, Papa will make sure you do.”

A clang came from the kitchen. Papa was already in the back, cooking. Mama D reached out and patted Pete's hand.

“Don't let Papa bully you. It's just, well, the kitchen, it's all he knows. Since he came from Italy as a boy, he's worked in restaurants. First his family's, now his own. It's the center of his universe. He assumes it's everyone else's.

“And don't let his language skills fool you. He knows what he is doing. God knows he butchers the English, but, tell you the truth…”

Mama D cupped her hand to her mouth and whispered.

“…he butchers Italian just as badly.”

Pete smiled.

“I don't mind hard work,” he said. “It makes the night go by. I can take what he can dish out.”

“You're like our son, Tommy,” she said. “You look like him, too. That's probably why Papa hired you so quickly.”

“He doesn't work the family business?” Pete asked.

“No, no,” Mama said, crossing her hands back and forth. “That cycle ends with Papa. This is no life for my Tommy. Long days, no vacations, small profits. I sent him to school. He is an engineer, back in the city. He'll visit this week.”

“Looking forward to it,” Pete said. He really was. He liked the DiStephano family. They made him miss his own a little less.

“You want some breakfast?” Mama said.

“Oh, I'll go out and get something. I wanted some fresh air and sunshine anyway.”

“Please,” she said. She took one of the bagels in front of her, divided it with one practiced slice, and put a liberal dose of cream cheese on both sides. “The extent of my cooking.”

She put the two halves on a plate and slid it across to Pete.

“Oh, no,” Pete said. “I really was just on my way out.”

Mama reached over and slapped the two bagel halves together, put a napkin around them, and forced it up at Pete.

“Then it's ‘to go',” she said. “Now eat.”

He took the bagel. Perhaps Mama missed having Tommy around even more than Papa did.

“Thank you.” Pete looked the makeshift sandwich over. “Bagels, huh?”

“Well,” Mama said, “they're not Italian…” She pointed a thumb in the direction of the kitchen. “…but he'll get over it.”

A pan clattered into a sink in the kitchen.

“See you at five,” Pete said, waving with the bagel.

Mama D's nose was already back in the paper, and she waved without looking. Pete turned on his heel and headed out the front door.

The clear, sunny day promised warmth the fall season could not deliver. A sharp breeze brought the smell of salt in off the Atlantic. Pete zipped his coat all the way to the top and flipped his collar up over his neck. He wolfed down the bagel.

He wanted to see the ocean. The usual anxiety about getting lost raised its ugly head. He could see the bus station at the far end of the street. He could get there without confusion. One straight line. Deep breath. Go.

As he walked, he crossed Mediterranean and Baltic Avenues. Placing them on a map was impossible, but he did recall the purple colored properties on his old Monopoly board game. In real life, no one built houses or hotels on these sad streets.

He stopped at Atlantic Boulevard, the barrier that kept the oxidation of the old Atlantic City from tarnishing the glittering casinos. An Island Cab zoomed past. The crossed palm insignia flashed by waist high. The car hit a pothole and the doors rattled in their frames.

Pete dashed across the street and crossed an empty lot to the city's signature attraction. At this hour, in this season, the famed boardwalk stretched out deserted. On top, two rows of angled gray boards formed an arrow that pointed south, to the wealth promised by the glowing towers of the Showboat and Taj Mahal casinos beyond.

Pete ignored the invitation. He descended a ramp on the far side and crossed the dunes to the beach. The onshore breeze picked up and salt mist speckled his lips. A stone jetty knifed out into the ocean. Waves beat themselves into oblivion against the dark rocks. He stopped short of where the sea spray dampened the boulders, sat down on the edge, and looked out at the ocean.

He took deep draughts of the crisp, invigorating air and enjoyed the tangy scent of the sea. The Steel Pier Amusement Park sat silent to his right, closed for the season. The skeletons of the Crazy Mouse coaster and the Ferris wheel stood out against the bright blue background. The passing cab on Atlantic Boulevard popped back into his head.

The two crossed palm trees came into focus. One black, one white. He remembered the crossed snake insignia on the doors of the Jeeps that machine-gunned Twin Moon City. They were identical designs, with Twin Moon City's fanged snake heads replacing the palm fronds of Atlantic City. He shivered inside his jacket.

His dreams frequently took events of the day, chopped them into pieces, and rearranged them in convoluted combinations. But yesterday's quick glimpse of the crossed palms on passing cabs would not have merited a repeat run at the Subconscious Drive-In. A pretty uneasy coincidence.

The tender spot on his scratched forearm twinged. He awoke with an identical injury as the one he'd sustained in Twin Moon City. Non-coincidence Number Two.

Then there was Rayna, strange item Number Three. From their first dream encounter during the summer, they shared an instantaneous, spiritual connection. She was always more real than the rest of the dream. Everything else was a movie, but she had three dimensions. Everyone else was cold inside, but she had a heartbeat.

He'd figure all this out. There were lots of pieces, but he'd put them together. Something drew him here to put those pieces back together.

He had a feeling there was a deadline.

Chapter Eleven

“Petey,” shouted Papa D from the back of the prep line. “Potatoes.”

Pete stepped back from the grinding noise of the dishwasher. It was only 6:30 p.m., but an errant use of the spray hose had already soaked him through his jeans. He looked down the line at Papa D with a quizzical look.

“Downstairs!” Papa D said. He pointed past Pete with one hand while he browned meatballs with the other. “Get potatoes. Fifty pounds.”

“You got it.”

Pete left the kitchen for cool storage in the basement. At the base of the stairs, he threw a light switch. Rows of dry stores stretched under the building. There were pallets of sugar and flour, cases of spices and canned goods, and a rack of wrapped bread. Some stacks went from the concrete floor to the low, unfinished ceiling.

Something banged at the far end of the basement. It sounded like a small can hitting the floor and rolling a few feet.

An image of an enormous rat popped into his head. It would be no surprise in this neighborhood. His skin crawled.

He saw a broom leaning against the wall. He picked it up to tip the scales in a man/rat struggle, if it came to that.

He crept down the length of the basement. The cold from the block wall seeped through his damp shirt. His knuckles went white against the broomstick he held up and over his shoulder. Scenes from a half-dozen bad horror films flipped through his mind. The potatoes were at the end of the row. Another rustling noise sounded behind them.

A puff of cold air blew through a small, rectangular window near the top of the wall, propped open with a broken stick. Leaves littered the basement floor beneath it. At his feet to the right, a small purple backpack leaned against a bag of flour, one of the inexpensive packs parents picked up for their children at K-mart.

No rats. Just some kid looking for cans of beer or Reddi-wip. Pete relaxed.

“All right,” Pete said in a voice as adult as he could muster. “I know you're in here. C'mon out so no one has to get hurt.”

A thin black boy with close cropped hair stepped out from behind the potatoes. He wore a black hooded sweatshirt and jeans. He could not have been old enough to shave, and probably weighed a hundred pounds, including the two dirty white plastic sacks in his hands. Foodstuffs pilfered from the basement peeked out of the top of the bags. Sweat beaded on the boy's upper lip. His eyes stayed riveted to the broom in Pete's hands.

“Don't hit me, man,” the boy pleaded. “It's just some food. No point in gettin' violent over food. I'll leave it here, we part ways and both go about our business. No harm, no foul.”

“Drop the bags and sit down,” Pete ordered.

The two bags hit the floor and the boy sat. Pete stepped between the white sacks and the boy's backpack.

“What's your name?” Pete asked.

“Tyrone White,” the boy answered.

“Break and enter much?”

Tyrone looked down at the floor between his feet.

“Well?” Pete prodded.

“We gotta eat,” he muttered.

Pete pushed open the white sacks at his feet with the broom. The torn bags contained bread, a jar of peanut butter, a jar of jelly, and four potatoes. If Tyrone was stealing for kicks or resale, he had much better choices available than these. He was either telling the truth, or his fellow gang members were health-conscious vegetarians.

“Who's ‘we'?” Pete asked.

“My baby sister an' me,” Tyrone answered. “There ain't no food in the house 'cause Momma's back on drugs. We ain't got no money, so I do what I gotta do to keep it together.”

Pete looked over at the stolen items again.

“There's not much here,” he said.

“Only takin' what we need, dude,” the boy replied. Some indignation bled through. “That's lunch and dinner for three days. I knows it ain't right to steal, but I ain't doin' no more harm than I need to.”

Pete glanced into the unzipped backpack. A worn copy of a math textbook within had PROPERTY OF ATLANTIC CITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS stamped on the side. A notebook lay next to it, and a graded history test. The name on it read TYRONE WHITE. Big red numbers at the top announced a grade of 94.

“Whatcha gonna do?” Tyrone asked. “You gonna call the cops?”

“No, I'm not calling the cops,” Pete said. He propped the broom against the wall. “Where's your mother?”

“She comes and goes,” Tyrone said. “She get on methadone and do all right, then she get back to heroin and go off the edge. She disappear for a while, then come back and get clean. She off the edge now. No one know where she at.”

“Can't you get some help?”

“Whatch you mean?” Tyrone said, like Pete was the stupidest man in the world. “Anyone finds out 'bout this and Sis and I are in foster care in two different cities. Nuh huh. I ain't leaving Sis to grow up alone.”

“You do this often?” Pete asked. “Stealing stuff?”

Tyrone puffed his chest out and tried to assume some street cred swagger.

“All the time, man,” he said. “I work these streets.”

Pete guessed this was the first time Tyrone ever stole anything, the first time he did what he thought was necessary instead of what he knew was right. A boy of thirteen going on thirty. Circumstance was about to scour a decent moral foundation from beneath him. The kid needed a break.

“Here's the plan,” Pete said. “I'm going to let you climb back out of that window before I nail it shut. The food stays. Meet me by the rear door of the restaurant at midnight after closing. Every night we trash some damn fine leftovers. Not stuff off people's plates, but stuff we didn't serve and won't bother keeping. Rolls, entrees, you name it. I'll bring that out for you and your sister. In return, you take it home and worry more about getting her to school each day than getting fed. Deal?”

Tyrone's face brightened like a sunrise.

“Now that's a plan,” Tyrone said. “You a man I can work with.”

“You almost made the worst decision of your life today,” Pete said. “Could you live with yourself being a thief?”

Tyrone looked off at the wall.

“Worse,” Pete said, “could you live with your sister knowing you're one?”

Tyrone swallowed hard. Pete picked the backpack up off the ground and tossed it at the boy's chest.

“Get out of here. I need to go back to work.”

Tyrone dashed past Pete to the open window. He paused and turned back.

“There ain't no tricks here, right? You ain't settin' me up at midnight for something?”

“No,” Pete said. “It's all cool.”

The boy scrambled up and through the window. Pete closed it behind him. He picked up a sack of potatoes, hoisted it on his shoulders, and slogged to the top of the stairs.

“What take you so long?” Papa shouted. “Potatoes in bag. You no have to dig for them.”

Pete dropped the heavy sack at Papa's feet.

“Sorry,” he said. “A window down there was open. The lock's broken. We'd better nail it shut tonight.”

By the time midnight rolled around, Pete had secreted a pretty good meal behind the dishwashing station. He had six rolls, meatballs and pasta, and a piece of chicken parmesan that Papa declared “too scrawny” to be worthy, all wrapped individually in plastic. Pete scooped the stash into his apron and slipped out the back door while Papa D cleaned the grill.

His breath came out in billows of steam and the cold air made the hair on his wet arms stand on end. One security light at the rear door dimly lit the lot. Outside its meager glow were just shadows and darkness. He stopped at the dumpster.

“Tyrone!” he whispered

“Yo, dude.”

Tyrone stepped out into the light and shivered inside his thin sweatshirt. Pete grabbed the three bundles from his apron.

“Here you go,” he said. “The stuff is first class. Come back tomorrow and we'll see what else we've got. Leftovers aren't stealing.”

“I owes you big time,” Tyrone said. “Tyrone's a man to pay his debts. You need a solid, this brother's there.”

“Just take care of your sister. That's what you owe me.”

Tyrone disappeared back into the darkness, food bundles clutched to his chest.

Tyrone and his story stuck with Pete that night as he lay in bed. How many other desperate lives like that boy's teetered on the edge in the city each day? He tossed and turned for over an hour.

But when he finally nodded off, it was worth the wait.