In the City of Shy Hunters (15 page)

I'm shitting my pants! Fiona said, took off her apron, and started running down the stairs.

You just don't understand, Will, Harry said. That's Arwings Khodek! The first person to take performance art into the realm of complete presence!

Harry took off his apron and started running down the stairs.

Harry! I said. Get back here!

Don't wait for the chef to ask you, Harry said. Just kneel. Then bark. Three times. Loud. Don't growl.

WHEN I FINALLY
stood myself at Rose's table, my ballpoint pen was ready. The dinner check was on the drink tray in my hand. I was smiling, so I stopped smiling.

Good evening, I said.

Negroni, Rose said.

My mother's nerves.

Excuse me? I said.

Ex-cuse me? Rose said. The chin, he started to tuck the chin.

I didn't hear, I said.

Negro, Rose said. You know
Negro
, don't you? Rose said.

Yes, I said. Negro, I said.

Very good! Rose said. Now it's Negroni, Rose said.

Negroni? I said.

Rose threw up his arms, bracelets clack-clack.

Rose yelled, Go ask the fucking bartender. And get me a Mediterranean salad.

Harry was back at the bar. He looked kind of green and he was spraying Binaca into his mouth.

Negroni, I said to Harry.

Tall glass lime setup, Harry said. Three-fifty.

Negroni, I said to John the Bartender, writing down
Negroni
on the bar chit, the bar chit with my name, the date, the day, the table, the tall glass iced, garnished with lime, and the straw, the cocktail napkin.

When I delivered the Negroni, I read what it said on Rose's T-shirt.

CURE AIDS
:
FUCK THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL
.

Just like that—I didn't mean to—I laughed out loud.

Rose's chin tucked, moving only his black eyes straight into my eyes at an angle just above his rhinestone reading glasses.

Ex-
cuse
me? Rose said.

I was just laughing at what your T-shirt says, I said.

Do you know what AIDS is? Rose said.

No, I said.

Maybe you know it as GRIDS, Rose said. The gay cancer—gay-related, you know. Gay and Haitian, that is. At least that's the White Paranoid Patriarchy's fucking scapegoat propaganda.

Gay cancer, I said. Yes, I've heard of it.

Then why are you laughing? AIDS is a
terrible
disease, Rose said. And not something at all to laugh about. Do you think just because it's black people and queers who are dying it's something to laugh about?

No, I said.

Well, then, Rose said, I suggest you stop your little comic outburst and just go do it.

I said, Do it?

Yes, yes, go do it! Rose said. Just do it! Go fuck the Centers for Disease Control!

At the bar for the second Negroni, my hands shook as I did my setup.

Don't let it get to you, John said. She's a local Diva—come in here before. Some kind of Shakespearean ac-
tor
, specializing in
Othello
, John said.

Othello?
I said.

She's black, ain't she? John said. Got one of those new ethnic names. Armadilla Kowabunga or something.

Argwings Khodek, Fiona said.

Fiona was beside me. Fiona's circumcised lip.

John said, Performance Art, right? That Lower East Side shit. Those kind are all the same, black or white or blue. Underneath the attitude all you got is another Norma Desmond queen.

Harry whispered in my ear. There it goes. The lip, Harry said. Susan Strong's lip is getting large. Performance Art, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, or Argwings Kodek, never fuck with any one of them around Susan Strong.

I watched Fiona's lip, and sure enough, Harry was right.

Sometimes it grows so fast it peels her lipstick back, Harry said. Remarkable phenomenon. Only other thing I've ever seen grow like that's a hard-on.

Fiona was kneeling on top of the bar. Her face poked into John the Bartender's face.

When you make something more of your life,
bartender
, Fiona said, Besides blowing the boss's married brother, and meeting the boss's pour
in your little playpen back here, I'll listen. Until then, dickhead, Fiona said, Pour the fucking drinks I tell you to pour and shut the fuck up with your expert attitude.

John closed his mouth. His eyes clouded over. His face started melting.

This is where the large lip becomes lazer lip, Harry said. Lazer lip: Why she'll never see Sections Four or Five, Harry said, Let alone Section Six.

You're going this way and then shit happens and then you're going that way.

I can't believe what I do next.

Just like that, I am marching through the swinging red doors, past Georgette, past the reach-in, into the kitchen. I am writing down the date, the day, the table, my name, and
Med Sal
on the yellow chit. I am just about to call out the order in my clearest, strongest voice, when I see this: Crummy Dog. My Crummy Dog is sitting on the gray-painted cement floor in front of the dinner station, smiling the way he always did, tail flipping, tongue hanging out. Barking like a dog.

Just at that moment Chef Som Chai slips and, trying to get his balance, reaches out for the deep fryer, misses, and sticks his hand into the boiling grease.

Fatum
. I look over just as Chef Som Chai's hand goes into the grease. I see nothing else.

Everyone is just standing around, so I start hollering and pointing and reach over and grab Kung Fu's plastic salad tub, dump the lettuce out, run to the ice machine, fill the tub with ice, run behind the service line to Chef Som Chai, grab him, spin him around, stick his hand and arm into the ice up to his elbow, walk with him, my arm across his shoulder, guiding the chef out of the kitchen, past Georgette, yell at Georgette to call 911, walk through the swinging red doors, Crummy running ahead of us, the chef walking along with me, getting pale, looking at me like I am the Big Guy above us on the ceiling. We walk through the dining room—me holding the chef's arm in the tub of ice, Crummy leading the way through the crowd—the chef getting paler with every step, past Fiona going shit-spray, past Argwings Khodek Rose, bracelets clack-clack, past his Negroni, past Harry standing with a piece of
gâteau au chocolat
, the candle melting, Harry just about ready to belt out Happy Birthday, past Daniel, the boss's beer-can-dicked-married-getting-blown-by-John-the-Bartender brother, and then out the front door.

There was no ambulance, but two cops in a car drove by. I yelled to the cops,
Burn victim! Stop!
But the cops kept going.

Then, just like that, all at once, Kung Fu salad guy pulled up in a black Mercedes, got out, opened the passenger door, and helped the chef inside. The chef was not pale anymore. He was green.

Mercedes better than ambulance, Kung Fu salad guy said. Then: Thank you, he said, I manage from here.

The black Mercedes drove off, east, evens east, shit from New York Shinola. I stood on the street, Manhattan wrapped all around me. Steam rolled out of the manhole in the street, the Mercedes driving deeper into the form, into the function, into the dark.

Beyond the pile of black plastic garbage bags, through the steam, people inside Café Cauchemar gathered at the window. The street, ahead of me, behind me, not a dog in sight.

My grandpa shoes on asphalt skin. I looked up my body, my black pants, white apron, looked up the buildings, across to just the tip of the Chrysler Building, up to the moon rising over 46th.

Then I heard it: Happy Birthday. Harry's singing Happy Birthday.

Wounded by a blow of love.

The sensation was a finger drawing a circle around my heart. A tenderness not since Charlie 2Moons. I was sure it was God, the word of God, God's voice, The Great Mystery, Sistine Chapel Big Guy extending his hand.

But it's not the truth.

It was just Harry, New York's only Irish Catholic homosexual, holding a chocolate cake and singing Happy Birthday in a bar.

It was not God.

It was only Manhattan.

And I knew, right then. In all the world. Finally.

Hey, Charlie! I yelled. It's me, Will! I'm home!

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER
FIVE

O
ne time it wasn't Ruby on the phone. It was True Shot. What do you say we go get a doughnut? True Shot said.

In the unrelenting Dunkin Donuts fluorescence, True Shot looked green and my skin looked beige.

No Charlie 2Moons in Dunkin Donuts.

True Shot sat down at the counter, his shoulders hunched over. I asked him what was wrong and True Shot told me he was feeling poorly because Ruby'd ripped off the petty cash for Spirit Schleppers.

Spent the whole day, True Shot said, Trying to find that damn guy.

Fucking junkie! I said.

True Shot's mirrors were snake eyes on me. On his mirrors, my nose was big and my mustache was a hairy arch of brown hair. Bug eyes.

Be careful with your words, True Shot said. Words are real things. Ruby is our brother.

In the fluorescence, my baseball cap was the only shade for miles.

My mother's nerves.

But Ruby, I said, Calls me all the time. I said, And he don't speak. Every night, I said. My answering machine is street noise and Ruby coughing.

True Shot drums left-hand silver rings against the Formica countertop. In his right hand at his neck, the buckskin bag with the blue-beaded horizontal and the red-beaded vertical.

In this world, True Shot said, There is no one like Ruby Prestigiacomo, and he needs our help. Besides, True Shot said, I promised a friend of mine I'd take care of Ruby.

I went to say
What friend
? but just then, down the Dunkin Donuts counter from us, the cop tipped his cup up and drank, set the cup down on the saucer, did something with his gun on the side of him, stood up, threw a quarter down on the counter, and walked toward us, his one eye on me, the other on True Shot. A big guy, red hair, drank green
beer on Saint Patrick's Day, his roll of fat I thought a bullet-proof something around him. Still, True Shot made two of him.

The cop tilted his cap back, said, You, Brave Arrow, mind taking those Foster Grants off for me?

True Shot said, Yes, sir, Officer, and took his mirrors off, and looked right into the eyes of the cop. Cop looked back. The staredown.

That's the first time I noticed True Shot's eyes. They were the color of jade. And something else. True Shot's eyeballs did not hold still. Back and forth, back and forth, up and down too. Saint Vitus Dance eyes.

Driver's license, please, the cop said.

When True Shot put his hand in his extra-lovely black leather jacket pocket, the cop put his hand on his gun.

The cop took True Shot's driver's license, looked at it close. Then the cop took the rain slick he had draped over a chair, put on his rain slick, said to True Shot, After you.

The cop followed True Shot out the door into the rain. I went to follow them out and the cop said, You stay inside. Have a cup of java, the cop said. On me.

So I stayed inside while True Shot and the cop walked out to the van, looking at myself in the window looking out at True Shot talking to the cop, showing the cop the registration, then going through the brake lights, the turn signals, low beams and high beams.

True Shot stood in the rain while the cop was in the patrol car, talking on the radio, the static radio sound coming all the way inside Dunkin Donuts.

When the cop took off, I took True Shot's Maple Bar and coffee out to the van. True Shot was sitting, rain on the roof, staring straight ahead, Dunkin Donuts' fluorescence on the surface of his mirrors.

True Shot took a bite out of the Maple Bar and started the van.

All Dodges sound the same when you start them up.

I punched in the Sioux tape.

At the Interborough Parkway, True Shot doubled back onto Broadway, the ticket the cop gave True Shot stuck under the plastic Virgin Mary on the dashboard next to the photo of Brigitte Bardot in the green-sequined frame.

Obstructed view.

True Shot's designer mirrors were obstructing the view.

Back over the Brooklyn Bridge, the steel grating under the tires, the vibration up through Door of the Dead van was like an airplane landing on top of the van—so loud I couldn't hear myself think.

Do cops give you so much shit because you're Indian? I asked.

The dashlights were amber and green on True Shot's mirrors.

What cops smell when they see me, True Shot said, Is their own asshole. Only thing that keeps a cop from being an outlaw is his badge. Cops see me and their dirty shorts just start stinking.

You weren't doing anything, I said. You were just sitting there.

That cop wasn't as bad as some, True Shot said. A classic case. White kid, football player—probably time in Vietnam—now carrying twenty extra pounds from dunking his donut and driving around, wondering what his wife's doing while she's home alone. Red-blooded American boy who believes that without him, without the law, mankind would turn into the savage beasts they truly are.

And this young Donut Dunker, True Shot said, Knows a lot about savage beasts, because what his life has come down to is him sitting in his patrol car at four in the morning.

The cop has looked, True Shot said, And what he found was a beast inside his tiny Catholic heart too savage to name.

Inside Door of the Dead van: rain and windshield wipers,
too savage to name
, the hole in the floorboard, the plastic Virgin Mary, the green-sequin-framed photo of Brigitte Bardot, the ticket for obstructed view, the amber and green in True Shot's mirrors.

Why do your eyes do that? I said.

Astigmatism, True Shot said. That's what the white doctor said.

What the Injun doctor said is different, True Shot said. A Hopi medicine man told me my eyes don't stop moving because I'm looking for the space in between, and someday I'm going to find that space in between, and when I do I'll be able to disappear into it.