Hot Pink in the City (7 page)

"It's all her greatest hits," he says, ever
the salesman.

"We'll take it," I say.

"How much?" Nasreen says. Her purse is across
her body, like mine is, which is how she told me we need to wear it
in the city -- not the way I normally sling it on my shoulder as if
I'm at the mall. The city is dangerous. Normally I feel comfortable
around relatives and other Middle Eastern people, because those
people are like me, from the same fabric so to speak, but these men
unsettle me. The relative guy stares at me harder, and the greeter
gives off a bad vibe. His smile widens until gold fillings wink at
us from the back of his mouth.

"Err, what's the price?" I ask.

"This tape is very special," he says. "Also
this tape isn't on the shelves. It's from my personal collection.
It's not an official recording."

"We know," Nasreen prods. "We don't have a
problem with a bootleg. What's the price?"

"The cost is one..."

One dollar? My heart soars. This is like
hitting up flea markets back in Miami and finding great dollar
deals. The rhinestone earrings on my ears and the turquoise scarf
I'm using as a belt were both a dollar. I never knock a dollar
deal.

"One dollar," Nasreen murmurs. I hear the
thrum of joy underneath her words. I grab her hand and she
reciprocates with a squeeze. Replacing the tape is easier than we
thought.

"Not one dollar, young lady. The tape costs
one hundred dollars."

Chapter Eight

Dizziness hits me. I've been in the hot sun
and I've only had a soda to drink since leaving the basement
apartment. Something else adds to the surreal spinning feeling that
wraps around my head. I believe the man in front of me asked for an
exorbitant amount of money, which I don't have. There must be some
mistake.

"What!" I screech.

"A hundred dollars?" Nasreen asks. "Is the
cassette gold-plated or something?"

"It's the only one I have," the man says.
"And it's straight from an Egyptian bazaar. It's a bit old, made
when cassettes were gaining popularity. It's practically an
antique. I bought this myself, and it carries many memories from my
time in Cairo. Also, again, it's not an official tape. It's not on
the shelves, and it's not really on sale. I pulled it out because
you expressed an interest."

This is highway robbery. Where are we going
to get that type of money? Between Omar ripping me off and basic
living expenses during my trip, I don't have that amount of money
to spare. I can definitely forget about getting Madonna tickets
too. One... hundred... dollars. For a tape.

"Listen, what are your names?" he asks.

"Why?" Nasreen asks, narrowing her eyes, far
more street smart than I am, because I was about to blurt my
name.

"I can take down your number, and if I get
some more Kulthum tapes, I'll sell you a newer one for much less.
But I can't part with this one that easily."

"Can't you just copy the tape?" I ask. "You
must have the equipment since this is a music and video store."
Many of Uncle's tapes are bootleg, and this is a bootleg as well.
One copy can't hurt, right?

"Ahh, I don't really do that," the man says.
"It is against my way. I don't want to dilute the quality. I've
tried that before, and the quality really is affected. Also, I've
only played this a few times because I don't want to wear it
out."

Nasreen snorts. "So we can't have a bootleg
of a bootleg."

"No, sorry," the man says, ever smiling, ever
happy he's ruined our day. We find what we want, but this man has
his reasons on why it's overpriced and we can't have it.

"This isn't fair!" I say.

"Life isn't fair." He shrugs. Now he's
sounding like a parent or a teacher. I want to get out of here,
even though he's holding exactly what we need. I'm beat after
spending hours looking for this tape. It looks like a glass of
water on a sizzling day, but I can't have a sip of it.

Nasreen asks for a pen and paper. I see she's
writing down fake names. She calls herself Shireen and I'm Isma.
That's easy to remember, not that it's likely I'll see this guy
again... although he has the answer to our problem. The Middle
Eastern community seems small. I wouldn't be surprised if Uncle or
someone else I know has been to this store before. Fake names are a
good idea. Nasreen also writes down a phone number, which makes me
feel ill at ease.

"This is the number to the payphone outside
my window," Nasreen whispers to me. "No way am I giving out our
house number."

"This guy is a total rip-off," I whisper
back.

"Yeah, tell me about it."

"Good-bye," I say aloud.

"I'm Wahib, by the way," the owner says, "and
over there is my brother Tahir. This is our store."

Tahir winks at us. Nasreen's body shakes.
Wahib hands us two business cards with the address and phone of the
store next to a colorful picture of a cassette tape. I don't see
myself calling him, but maybe I can put this in my scrapbook.

"Okay, bye," Nasreen says. She grabs my hand
and pulls me out of here, away from the money-hungry storeowner and
his perverted brother. I can breathe freely again. The air is humid
and there's no breeze, but I gulp it in. I need some water soon. I
envy the boys a block away who are jumping through the spray of a
fire hydrant.

We've smeared the notepad paper full of
addresses from handling it all day. We look out across the street
at the school. There are a few kids lingering out front, but then
they dissipate. It's time for us to go home too.

"Maybe I can tell my dad I ran out of funds
and he can send me some money," I say. "I don't know if that'll
work since he said he gave me enough. I guess he thought his nice
little daughter isn't capable of getting into a situation like
this."

"We can look harder and find another tape,"
Nasreen says. "There's no way this is the only Kulthum tape in the
whole city."

"But we went to all those places today," I
say. "This was it."

Nasreen's lips are a grim slash. Her lined
eyes look tired. "You're right," she says. "Let's just go home, and
maybe tomorrow we can resolve this. Hey, maybe we can explore the
other boroughs, even other states. Maybe there's something to be
found in New Jersey."

I don't feel good about all the traveling we
may have to do, which might not be fruitful. What if we go to other
stores and they don't produce a tape? Also, I enjoyed the city
somewhat today, but the tape is pressing on my mind and the time we
took going to all the stores were draining. "Great. I hope Uncle
doesn't have a sudden hankering for Kulthum tonight," I say.

"Yeah, we can only distract my dad for so
long," Nasreen says.

***

There's one more hour to go until Uncle's
home. I'm watching a music show when Madonna comes on. I have the
urge to take Uncle's stereo and pull it to the TV to capture the
sound, which I've done in my own home, but I can't do that. Auntie
is walking in and out of the living room, and Omar is playing with
his toys behind his curtain. I miss the privacy of my bedroom back
home. I suppose I could've bought a Madonna tape while I was out
today, but the Middle Eastern stores didn't have them. Also, I have
to be money conscious. I'll buy Madonna after I get the Kulthum
problem out of the way.

Auntie continues with her superstitions. She
blew on me hours ago, and now she's frowning at me because my
bedroom slippers are flipped over on the floor. Using her foot, she
nudges them right side up. "That's bad luck," she says.

My dad said that once, that it's bad luck if
shoes are lying upside down. I don't know how much worse my luck
can get. When Auntie leaves the living room, I put the slippers
back on my feet.

I continue to sit by myself in the living
room, watching TV. Nasreen is in her room looking through college
and scholarship applications. She's deep in that paperwork and I
don't want to disturb her. Anyway, this is a great time to figure
out how to make some money fast. Maybe I can get a brief summer
job, although that would totally ruin my vacation. Why would I
travel somewhere to work? Any job I'd be hired for would be some
grueling, horrible job like waiting tables or operating a cash
register -- not my idea of fun.

I look at the gold bracelets on my wrist.
Maybe I can pawn them, but they're family heirlooms. They're
twenty-one karat, thick bangles given to me by my mother, given to
her by her mother, and they wouldn't let me live if I got rid of
them. Money... I need some right now. I'm good at dancing and
playing soccer. I also write a mean essay -- I always get As in
English, and if it weren't for soccer I'd have joined the
journalism or yearbook staff. I have talents, so there must be
something I can do for some quick bucks in a short amount of
time.

Auntie walks out of the kitchen, a spoon in
her hand. She's seeking her daughter out for her taste-testing
abilities. Her eyes skim over me, and then she goes into Nasreen's
room. "Habibti, taste this for me. What are you doing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Nasreen
asks.

"Why are you applying to a college in Los
Angeles? No, no, I won't have this. You cannot go there."

"If I get a scholarship and a job to support
myself, I'll go wherever I please!"

"How dare you yell at your mother..."

They're arguing in a mix of Farsi and
English, their voices muffled behind the wall, yet I can hear
everything since the door is open. This doesn't look good.

"I don't want to stay with you, Mom. Get over
it. I want to leave this apartment. I want to leave New York."

"Why do you want to leave us? Have we not
provided for you? Don't we love you?"

"You don't get it."

But I do. I know that intense yearning for
freedom. I've felt it many times myself. I've felt it at school,
when I'm out by myself, at the airport, in the airplane... being
out on my own, no parents telling me what to do, making my own
decisions, the freedom to make mistakes I can learn from. Why is
that so much to ask for?

I hear a sniffle. I'm not sure whether it's
Nasreen or her mother who's begun crying. They lower their voices,
repeating their argument. Auntie walks out of the room, rice still
on her spoon. She's frowning, walking past me and ignoring me.
Nasreen rebelled by refusing to eat the offering, which I've never
seen her do before. I want to rush in and comfort her, but I'll
give her privacy. It's bad enough she shares her room with me
during my stay and that she just had a tiff with her mother. When
I'm in a crying mood, I don't want anyone talking to me.

I wonder if there's anything I can do to
help, but things aren't right with me either. How am I able to help
someone else when I can't help myself? My first priority is to
replace the tape, but I also want to help my cousin. It'll be tough
since Uncle and Auntie think the way they do, but there must be
some way to crack their old-fashioned resolve.

With this heavy stuff swirling in my head, I
decide it's time to call my friends in Florida. I sneak into
Nasreen's room to get a handful of quarters from underneath the
clothes in my drawer as well as the letters I wrote to my friends
last night. She bends her head down and doesn't look at me. Auntie
is also in a funky mood, chopping up vegetables and not saying
anything when I tell her, "I'm going to drop off these letters in a
mailbox."

First I go around the corner to a heavily
graffitied mailbox, and then I return to the building to where the
payphone is. I deposit a coin and after I dial Tamara's number, an
operator asks me for more money. Ugh, long distance is a pain in
the ass.

Tamara's mom answers and then puts her on the
phone. "Hey," I say. "I wanted to check up on you."

"Hey, girly," she says. "I miss you. How's
New York?"

"It's great."

"Doing anything wild?"

"Well, I met this guy, but I lost sight of
him at the airport."

"Oh, Asma, you should've been more
aggressive, be more of a go-getter."

"I know," I admit.

Please deposit twenty-five cents
, an
automated message rudely interrupts.

"Can you hear me?" I ask.

"Yeah, I can now," Tamara says. "Get me a
souvenir, at least a keychain."

"Err, okay. Hey, something else happened,
something sort of bad--"

"Bad? To a goody-goody like you?"

"Yes, it's because I left a Madonna tape at
home."

"You and Madonna! It's not that big a
deal."

"But there's more..."

Please deposit twenty-five cents.

I give the greedy payphone more money while
picturing myself throttling whoever owns that voice.
Stop
stealing my money!
I want to scream. I also want to tell Tamara
to stop interrupting so I can tell her about my problem with the
Umm tape.

"Hey, I have to go," Tamara says.

"But I didn't tell you about what happened to
me last night."

"Oh, Asma, I really gotta go. Write it in a
letter. My toenails are dry and I gotta get to my fingernails
now..."

She makes a kissy sound on the phone before
the line goes dead -- I'm not sure if I ran out of money or if she
hung up on me. It's as if I were caught with my pants down around
my ankles. I wanted to tell her something important, to get
something off my chest, but I couldn't. I also didn't write about
my problem in my letter because I'm paranoid about Uncle. What if
he saw the letters lying around and decided to read them, the same
way he reads Nasreen's mail?

I'll call Tamara in a few days and maybe then
we'll have a normal conversation. I also owe Misty a call, although
I'm not eager to talk to her. I love my friends, but there are
things about them that irk me. They seem too busy to listen to me,
and they're full of putdowns they insist are nothing more than
playful teasing --
Because we love you
, they say. And Tamara
thinks I'm a goody-goody. New York is pulling me out of that
goody-goody shell, bringing out a side of me I didn't know
existed.