Kids of Appetite (8 page)

(SEVEN days ago)

“It's a tattoo shop,” said Baz.

Vic sipped his soda intentionally, angling the rim a bit off-center. “What is?”

“
Hang me from the Parlour
. The Parlour is a tattoo shop—a friend of ours works there. It's not far. We can head over when we finish eating.”

We sat in the back corner booth of Napoleon's Pub, wedged between a pool table and a dart board, talking about Vic's list and drinking sodas (except Baz, who always ordered water). Vic was nestled next to Coco and Zuz on one side of the booth, and I sat with Baz on the other.

“I still think we should have gone to White Manna,” said Coco. A Hackensack institution, White Manna was famous for its sliders. Just hearing the name of the restaurant conjured a Pavlovian response in my salivary glands; unfortunately for us, White Manna management had little patience for shenanigans, especially ones involving a short redhead stealing fries off the plates of other customers. “Best sliders this side of the Mississippi.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Have you ever been to the
other
side of the Mississippi, Coco?”

“I don't need to. White Manna is the best, and you know it.”

“Well, you should have thought about that before you decided to go around jacking other people's fries off their—”

As if on cue, a plate of steaming cheese fries appeared on the table before us. “Okay, guys, here you go. My world famous pepper jack fries.”

Margo Bonaparte was exactly as outlandish as her name suggested. She wore rain boots no matter the weather, tight-fitting bright-colored pants, and long pigtails (which looked more like flappy dog ears than hair), and seemed to have an endless supply of old Beatles T-shirts. Margo's father, Hubert Bonaparte, was the owner of Napoleon's Pub, so she could do pretty much what she wanted.

Except Baz. She couldn't do Baz no matter how bad she wanted to. Currently, Baz was seeing Rachel-something, a girl he worked with at Cinema 5. Apparently they had things in common—namely movies and baseball—making her different from the others. Baz usually had a girlfriend, though they rarely lasted, and they
never
came around. He and Rachel ate out a lot, stayed at her place sometimes, and occasionally went to Trenton to catch a Thunder game. I could hardly blame Baz for keeping
serious separation between his love life and Greenhouse Eleven.

“You lose my number again, Mbemba?” asked Margo Bonaparte. As far as I knew, Margo was the only one who used Baz's full name. She pulled a pen and a slip of paper from her apron, wrote her number down, and handed it to him. “I swear, you'd lose that beautiful head of yours if it weren't attached.” Then, to the rest of us: “Burgers okay? I can bring salads, too. We got an overload of lettuce in the last shipment, it's all gonna go bad soon. But, oh!
Guys.
Listen. You
have
to save room, okay? I've got a special treat for dessert. Promise me.”

We assured Margo that we would save room for her special treat, and off she went, pigtails flapping behind her.

“But
guys
,” said Coco, in a singsong voice. “
Listen.
We simply
must
save
room
.” She stuffed a forkful of cheese fries in her mouth, continued to talk with her mouth full. “Freak show, that girl. Still. What do you think, Zuz? She got some ice cream back there?”

Zuz snapped once.

Despite the name of the establishment, the only thing French about the place (other than its fries) was the trademark greeting of its waiters and waitresses. “
Bonjour, mes petits
gourmands
,” which translated to, “Hello, my small gluttons.” In a Venn diagram where set A = {People Who Speak French}, and set B = {Regular Patrons of Napoleon's Pub}, the intersection = {Basically No One}. Napoleon's Pub was preposterousness personified, which probably explained why we liked it so much.

The fries were gone in no time, and a few minutes later Margo brought the salads. It had been a while since our last Chapter, so we ate in silence for the most part, each of us
acclimating to the presence of another person at the table. Once done with the salads and cheese fries, we passed around the two items from the urn: the letter and the photograph.

I read a portion of it aloud. “‘You and Victor are my North, South, East, and West. You are my Due Everywhere
.
'” What I wanted to say was,
This is the sweetest fucking thing I've ever read
, but all that came out was, “Doris is your mother?”

Vic nodded, and I read aloud the locations on the list. “‘Hang me from the Parlour, toss me off the Palisades, bury me in the smoking bricks of our first kiss, drown me in our wishing well, drop me from the top of our rock.' Well, the Parlour we know. The Palisades are the cliffs, I assume.”

Baz nodded. “That one should be easy enough. We can get there from Englewood.” He looked across the table at Vic. “Do you have any idea about the other three places?”

“No,” he said, staring into his empty glass.

I passed the letter across the table; Coco grabbed it with cheesy hands and read it out loud between bites. When she got to the closing, she paused. “‘Till we're old-new.' What's that supposed to mean?”

“It's something they used to say,” said Vic. “I don't really— I don't know what it means.”

Vic's mannerisms, the tone of both language and body, suggested some deep embarrassment, as if we'd just broadcast his personal diary throughout the country. Though there was something intensely personal about the letter, his father's “Terminal Note.”

Zuz passed the Polaroid to me.

“Who put these things in your father's urn?” asked Baz. “And why would they do such a thing?”

“Mom must have,” he said. “The list, the photo, the ashes. She needed to keep all of him together, I think. Everything
in our house is different now. But those things are still him. Those things haven't changed.”

In the photograph, Vic's parents are on a rooftop, the familiar skyline of New York City behind them. There was a fair resemblance between Vic and his parents, but I wondered how much stronger it might have been were it not for the wall of hair he hid behind like a shield, a divider between himself and the world around him.

“They look really happy,” I said, looking back at the picture.

Vic pushed his glass away, reached across the table, took the Polaroid out of my hands. Just then Margo appeared with a tray full of burgers, setting a plate in front of each of us. She disappeared with an “
Au revoir, mes petits
gourmands
,” but I barely heard her. I watched Vic as he stared at that Polaroid in his hands, and I wondered what he was thinking.

I bet Mom asked a complete stranger to take this picture. She was always doing that, asking strangers to take photos.

Strangers stared hardest.

It was a real problem for me.

“They
were
happy,” I said. “We were happy.”

I
was happy.

Now? Shit. Singapore.

I put the photo down, stared at the burger in front of me. The weird waitress was gone, but no one was eating. I thought about what Baz had said, about the Parlour being a
tattoo shop, and in my Land of Nothingness I saw two compasses pointed at each other.
So we never get lost
, Dad used to say.

I knew Baz was right about it being a tattoo shop. It made so much sense. Which meant we would calmly finish our food and make our way to the Parlour, where I would begin a process whose end was
the
end. Dad's end.

And I felt like this: a shaken bottle of champagne; an angry volcano tired of humans building silly little houses on my arms and legs like I didn't exist, like I couldn't wipe them out whenever I wanted. I felt full of fiery things, and icy things too, things that bubbled and boiled and popped, things that begged for liberation.

“Mom and Dad started dating in high school,” I said. “Got married in college.”

I needed to be empty.

I needed someone to pour me out.

“They always said, ‘We fell in love silly young.' And I really miss that, you know?”

I looked around the table. None of them seemed fazed, which made me want to give my bubbles and anger to these kids who would listen, kids who would finally fucking listen and see me for me, and not some statue on a street corner, holding a sign that says,
Look at me, don't look at me, look at me, don't look at me
, over and over, but it's never over; it goes on forever, this desire to be both seen and unseen.

“Mom and Dad had all these sayings, all these sentences only they understood.
Till we're old-new
. I have no idea what that means.” I was crying now—rare, but not impossible. I relished the moisture, and thought,
Yes, this makes sense.
Get it out, get it all out with the lava and the champagne. Liberate all things. “There are times when I think I knew
him better than anybody, and then times when I feel I never knew him at all. And now it's too late. And he . . .
fucking
promised
me”—I shook myself up until the cap popped off,
fizz, fizz, bubble, bubble, pop
, take a breath now—“when I was little, Dad promised he'd never leave. He taught me how to think with my heart, how to hear the whispers—the really mean ones—how to take those and make myself stronger, how to be a Super Racehorse, and not some silly sideways hug. Well, how is he supposed to do all that when he's dead?” I grabbed a nearby napkin, wiped the liberation from my face. “And now the whole stupid world has moved on, including my mom, who I barely even recognize.”

. . .

. . .

. . .

Say it.

I am Northern Dancer, sire of the century, the superest of all racehorses.

. . .

Do it.

. . .

“Dad died of pancreatic cancer.”

. . .

Five words I'd never said before.

The first two were the only ones that mattered.

. . .

“He died two years ago.” Again, the first two words rendered the others pretty impotent. “Mom just got engaged. To someone who thinks Tolstoy wrote
The Brothers Karamazov
.”

. . .

. . .

“He didn't write it?” asked Coco.

The table breathed for the first time in what seemed like hours. I looked at Coco, tried to smile with my eyes, but I couldn't be sure it worked. “No, Coco. He didn't.”

Coco nodded in a very serious manner.

I looked across the table at Baz. “Yesterday I took the urn and ran. I was going to scatter him in the river, but then I found the note and the photo. I can't go home. Not until I see this through.”

. . .

“Do you remember my first question?” asked Baz.

“Yes.”

“Do you remember your answer?”

“Yes.”

“Say it again,” he said.

“I need help.”

“And again.”

“I need help.”

“And once more.”

I hoped Baz could see the smile in my eyes; I certainly saw the one in his.

“I need help, Baz.”

“And we will help you, friend.”

Friend
.

What a beautiful word.

Suddenly Singapore didn't feel so far away.

Baz carefully removed the top of the bun from his burger, then the bottom, setting them both on the side of his plate. He ate meat; he ate veggies; occasionally, if Coco fell asleep before finishing her ice cream (so
very
occasionally), he would eat her leftovers. But never bread.

“You watching your carbs?” asked Vic.

“Baz is anti-bread,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Anti-bread?”

I nodded. “He is against bread.”

Vic looked back at Baz. “I don't understand.”

Baz took a bite of ground beef and lettuce, swallowed. “You do not have to understand everything.”

I couldn't help but laugh at this. Baz had a way of taking very simple words and putting them together in a way that people weren't accustomed to hearing.
You do not have to understand everything
. The problem was people didn't know what to do with such forthright simplicity, because they had no practice with it. People expected backroom agendas, conversational Trojan horses that sneaked behind enemy lines and burned you from the high ground of moral ambiguity.

God. The longer I was a person, the less I wanted to be one.

Coco scribbled on her napkin while she ate—songwriting was a sort of hobby of hers, though I'd yet to actually hear a final product. Zuz looked over her shoulder, occasionally nodding or shaking his head at what she wrote. He was the only one privy to her creative writings, the only one she let in her circle of trust.

Eventually Margo brought out another plate of cheese fries, and we all ate while Baz told a story about the time
the air conditioner went out at the Cinema 5. “People were yelling very loud,” he said. “They wanted their money back, and all the rest. Later I was on break with a coworker named Russ. Russ remarked how hot it had been. I agreed it had been very hot. He said, ‘Aren't you from the Congo?' I said, ‘Well, I am an American citizen now, but yes—I was born in the Republic of the Congo. Why do you ask?' Russ said, ‘Oh, nothing, I just figured you would be used to the heat, having lived in the jungle.' I looked Russ in his eyes, asked him, ‘Are you from New Jersey?' ‘Yes,' said Russ, ‘born and raised.' I nodded. ‘So I assume you strip down to your underwear and make out with very tan girls in hot tubs.' Russ raised an eyebrow and smiled. ‘No,' he said, ‘why would you think that?' I said, ‘I have seen the television show
Jersey Shore
, so I am educated in the way all people from New Jersey live. Admit it. You strip down to your underwear and make out with very tan girls in hot tubs, do you not?'”

The table chuckled, but I couldn't. The day it happened, Baz had come back to the greenhouse in a mood, and when he told me what had happened, I really couldn't blame him. The shit he had to put up with.

“So, what did Russ say?” asked Vic.

“He had nothing more to say on the subject,” said Baz, smiling sadly. “It was not the first time, it won't be the last. People see movies or TV shows, and they think they know us.” He pointed to his brother across the table. “Nzuzi was too young to remember what we lost, praise God. I was also young, but I remember. Our mother was an English teacher, our father worked for the government. We had a nice house and nice things. It was a good life in Congo-Brazzaville.

“But war changes things. At nine, I did not understand oil or lust for power, or the measures countries would take to
have both. At nine, I only understood that the light had left my mother's eyes. I understood my father's fear, so thick, I could smell it on him. I understood the sound a bomb makes in the seconds before hitting the earth. I understood that when soldiers enter your home, tell you they are taking your table and chairs, your father's VCR and favorite movies, your mother's best dresses—and tell you to be grateful for this—you keep your eyes on the floor and say nothing. I understood the truth about nighttime, the urgency in my brother's and sister's cries. And when my own head hit the pillow and I drifted asleep to the violent lullaby—
pop! pop! pop!
—I understood I would not live to see the sun rise.”

The table was quiet as we watched him recount his old life. I'd heard this much before, but it didn't make the hearing of it any easier. If anything, the story grew considerably harder with each telling.

“You have a sister?” asked Vic.

Zuz put a hand on Vic's shoulder, lifted his head high, and put his other hand on his own heart. Baz said, “My brother is telling you about his twin—our sister, Nsimba. When we were very young, Mother sometimes called me by both names, Mbemba Bahizire. When Nsimba tried to say it, all that came out was Baz.” He smiled for a moment, but it soon became a frown. “I do not know if it is better or worse that I remember our lives from before the war. But I do—I remember our beautiful life in the Congo.” He stopped, took a sip of water. “Anyway. No one was living in a jungle. Not where we come from.”

“It's a shit job, the Cinema Five,” I said. “Plenty of places you could work until Renaissance Cabs is ready.”

Baz smiled again, but this one didn't need to turn into a frown; part of it already was. “My father loved movies. Being
there reminds me of him. And it's a good place to find new Chapters.”

“Okay,” said Vic. He'd been holding his burger, but he hadn't taken a bite for a while now. “So, what's a Chapter?”

Baz wiped his hands on a napkin, pushed away his empty plate. “I collect stories. For a book I'm writing. And books need Chapters.”

“Okay.”

“With your permission, Victor, I would like you to be one of them.”

A bit of barbeque sauce squirted out the sides of Vic's burger. He grabbed a napkin and wiped some off his shirt-sleeve, then looked back at Baz as if waiting for further explanation. Receiving none, he nodded once, said, “Okay.”

“I change names and places, of course,” said Baz.

“Okay.”

I understood Vic's hesitation. Most people didn't like the thought of their every move being observed, documented, organized, categorized—the idea that their actions and words might be recorded for all to read. I didn't really mind so much, which probably had something to do with my wanting to leave a mark, something to let the world know I was here long after I wasn't.

“So, I know I don't have to understand
everything
,” said Vic, “but I'd really like to understand this.”

Baz laughed, nodded. “Fair enough. A while back, some kids from the Chute were vandalizing Babushka's, breaking in after hours, smearing red paint across the windows so it looked like pig's blood. And customers stop coming. Norm, the owner, he comes to me for help. So I helped him.”

“How?” asked Vic.

“Ooh, ooh, let me tell it,” said Coco, looking up from her
napkin for the first time in ten minutes. “Okay, so get this. Baz takes his baseball bat and a single apple to the Chute. He asks around, ends up finding the kids who kept breaking into Babushka's. It's not hard, you know, they're all bragging about it, the bunch of meatheads. So anyway, he finds them, takes off his shirt—”

“Coke, I didn't take off my shirt.”

“Of course you didn't, because that would be ridiculous. I'm saying—for the book—you should write that you took off your shirt. Makes it better. So anyway, Baz
takes off his shirt
, tosses the apple into the air, and hits it with the bat, smashing it to smithereens. Then he looks at the kids and says, ‘The next person who vandalizes Babushka's will know what that apple felt.' Ha! Classic, right? Anyway, Norm hasn't had a single break-in since. In exchange, we get five pounds of meat a week, plus access to his back room.”

“And his story,” said Vic.

Baz shrugged. “We are all part of the same story, each of us different chapters. We may not have the power to choose setting or plot, but we can choose what kind of character we want to be.”

“So, where's the book?”

Baz pointed to his head. “I am working on it as we speak. And in the meantime, I'm reading a writing instruction guide by Dr. James L. Conroy. You've heard of him?”

Of course Vic hadn't heard of Dr. James L. Conroy. No one had heard of Dr. James L. Conroy, but that didn't stop Baz from talking about the man like he was the definitive voice in the midlevel writing tutorial handbook industry.

“Is there a title?” asked Vic.

I said, “
The Kabongo Chronicles
.”

“
The Book of Baz
,” said Coco.

Baz glared at us. “There is no title yet, but I have time. Nzuzi and I are saving for a car and, ultimately, a fleet of cars. Renaissance Cabs will be the premier taxi service in the greater Bergen County area. The way I see it, what better job for a collector of stories than a cabbie? Just imagine the Chapters.”

“Just imagine the freak shows, more like,” said Coco under her breath.

Vic looked at Coco. “What about you? Are you an early Chapter too?”

“No way, Spoils. What happened to me was my mom left when I was born, see. I never knew her. And her leaving, well, that made my dad really sad. Like sad in his bones, if that makes sense. The kind of sadness that takes time to really sink in, you know? Dad took care of me when I was little. He didn't jump right into being a lazy bum, I mean. He eased into it until eventually he just stopped getting out of bed in the morning. I cleaned the house, got myself ready for school every day, all that stuff. He hit me sometimes, and out of nowhere. He just didn't really wanna be a dad anymore, I don't think. He had this pretty good job at a bank, which he lost. Went from that to working at a convenience store. We were barely getting by, so he started looking for other ways to make money. Found out you got paid if you took in foster kids. Or at least, the government gives your taxes a break, or something. It's crazy, man. Anyway, Dad spent the next few days cleaning the apartment, cleaning himself, and stocking our pantry so full of food, I thought he'd hit the lotto. Then this lady is walking around our house taking notes, asking all kinds of questions, and the next thing I know—
bam
—I've got two brothers. Baz and Zuz. I mean, Baz didn't actually live with us, but he was there so much, it felt like he did.”

“I'd aged out of foster care,” said Baz. “Tried many times to get custody of my brother, but”—he shrugged, but it felt less like a gesture of nonchalance, more like an imitation of Atlas—“by the time they moved Nzuzi to Queens, he was almost eighteen, so I decided to stick close until he aged out too.”

“So yeah, anyway,” continued Coco. “They needed a family, they got us, which
I
was thrilled about. I just felt kind of sorry for them, getting paired up with my dad.”

“We were paired up with you, too, Coconut,” said Baz.

Coco blushed, went on. “So, then one day, Dad's gone. Poof. Left just like Mom. I was really sad at first. We'd just had this huge fight that morning. I don't even remember what I did to make him so mad, but I said something, and he hit me pretty hard, and then I left for school and that was the last I ever saw him. But you know—I figure he just needed to find his own thing. I mean, he wasn't happy with me or with the life he had, that's for sure. So I figure he went looking for a new one. And that was fine by me. I wasn't gonna stand around and cry like a baby. I thought,
Well, if Mom and Dad can go off and start a new life, so can I.
So I asked Baz and Zuz if they wanted to come to Hackensack with me. Baz got a job, we met Mad, and we all lived happily ever after in a motherfrakking greenhouse. The end.”

The table was eerily silent for a beat.

Vic cleared his throat. “I'm really sorry, Coco.”

Coco polished off her burger, licked her fingers. “About what? Things turned out great. I've never been part of a real family.” She motioned around the table. “Not like this, like us. Anyway, I'm no Chapter. If Baz wants to use my story, he's gonna have to get in line and pay for it. Man, that burger was good. Margo may be batshit, but girl can
grill
.”

My heart hurt like it got punched. Coco was far too young to have had a front-row seat to the horror show that was her life. I leaned across the table and hugged her neck right there in front of everyone.

“Love you, Coco.”

“Love you too, Mad.”

She'd told this story before, and while it probably wasn't far from the truth, it didn't take much to spot the holes. Clearly there were things Coco didn't know, things that had been kept from her. I could only guess what they were.

“Wait, why Hackensack?” asked Vic.

I sat back down in my seat. “Remember that commercial the city ran for, like, a decade, trying to promote Hackensack tourism?”

“The one that claimed Hackensack was ‘on the verge of a Renaissance,'” said Vic.

I winked. “Bingo.”

“Don't tell me . . .” Vic looked at Coco, then the Kabongos. “You guys came to Hackensack because of the ad?”

“It's coming, guys,” said Coco. “The Renaissance is just around the corner. I can feel it.”

I snorted in my straw, blew soda across the table.

“Keep making fun,” said Coco. “We'll see who's laughing when the Renaissance gets here. Baz and Zuz will start Renaissance Cabs, and I'll write a hit song about Renaissance stuff, and then I'll become rich and famous and the only people I'll invite to my Renaissance parties are people who don't laugh at me.”

Zuz snapped once.

Coco waved him off. “Yeah, Zuz, you're golden.”

“I didn't know you wrote songs,” said Vic. “What kind?”

“All kinds,” said Coco. “Rap, mostly. I like beats and
rhymes. I've been working on my Renaissance rap for a while now—it's basically awesome.”

Margo Bonaparte appeared out of nowhere. “All right, guys. Dessert's almost ready. Follow me.”