No Time to Die (11 page)

He broke the roll open with his thumbs and stuffed it with the slices from the ham and the cheese packets he’d stolen during the day. That and a warm can of the cheapest soda he’d made a big show of paying for when he checked out. He ate in the murky glow of the fifteen-watt light near his bed, licking his fingers, then wiping them against the edge of the worn blanket.

He had eaten like this for days, weeks, months. Couldn’t remember when last he’d been in the kitchen to warm up a pot of soup or plug in a coffeepot. The last time, before he’d run up to the Bronx, he’d stepped in the kitchen in the middle of the night for a glass of water and witnessed a mass movement over the crusted dishes piled in the sink.

He had switched off the lights and sneaked back to his room, past his mother snoring on the couch in front of the blank television, and stuffed the cracks under his door with rags. But in the morning, every morning, he watched vermin scatter under the stained tile in the
bathroom when he switched on the light. He watched them fall thick and fast as he shook out his towel and sour facecloth at arm’s length. He held his toothbrush under boiling water, and when the water wasn’t hot, he didn’t bother to brush at all. No point in picking up more germs.

And he’d settled for the dinners patched together with stolen cold cuts. When he felt flush, he sat at the counter in Pan Pan’s in the last seat, breathing in the steam from a bowl of soup.

Hazel never noticed that she hadn’t cooked for her son in twenty years. She ordered out and alternated between pizza and Chinese and, when she was flush, barbecue dinners.

Occasionally one of her “overnighters”—all of whom she called “Pop” because they popped in and right back out, rarely staying more than twenty-four hours—brought a bucket of fried chicken.

When Ache had returned from the Bronx, it seemed that the same dishes were still in the sink and the same smelly cartons were still on the floor.

Now he placed the sandwich wrapping and empty can in a plastic bag and tied it in a tight knot. He thought of turning on a brighter light but the unshaded fifteen-watt ceiling bulb was too much for him. The light penetrated his head sometimes and made it hurt like all those lights in the store.

People starin’ like they had nuthin’ better to do
.

But he needed the job. Where could he go?

But I got to go somewhere. Somewhere else. Bitch come in the place tonight, just as we closin’. Funny eyes. Look right at me like she know somethin’. All the while, sweet-talkin’ that stupid-ass manager she want ice cream. He had the lock on the door and opened back up just for her. Fuckin’ ice cream can’t nobody even pronounce the name
of. And him grinnin’ from ear to ear watchin’ them long legs, watchin’ that ass move down the aisle like she got a engine in it
.

He squirmed on the bed, remembering how she had turned around, approaching him at the checkout, and the tight shrinking he’d felt when she’d gazed at him. At first, a shock had passed through him. He was staring at the eyes of Mercy Anne. He was back in the sixth grade once more, sitting directly behind her. Only now these eyes were different. They were stronger, bolder, unafraid.

And goddamn laughin’ like she saw somethin’ funny
.

He had felt the panic tighten his chest, cutting his breath, but at the same time, he fought to keep the elation under control. Mercy Anne. He never thought he’d get a second chance.

He watched her leave the store and he’d left the manager alone to struggle with the lock. Shit, that was his job anyway.

And he trailed the funny eyes, keeping to the shadows, several feet behind her. Strivers’ Row. Waited in the thick shadow of the trees across the street. Waited almost two hours.

And the bitch come back out trottin’ a fuckin’ horse. But I’m a do somethin’. Show her who to laugh at
.

He removed his shirt and pants and hung them on the nail behind the door, then sat on the bed again, his hands fingering the sagging edges of the mattress, waiting.

Finally, when the voice, a whisper in the dark, came to him, the message confused him at first.

Looka here, Ache. This time, you could get two for one. A two for one. You ain’t never did that before. This’ll put you over
.

The voice faded, leaving him alone in the silence.
Then he smiled and snapped his fingers at the brilliance of the idea.
Two for one. How ’bout that. Both of ’em got to go. Funny Eyes and that other one. Look right through me like I wasn’t there
.

He moved to lie down near the light and to read again the scrap of the article he’d torn out of the
Amsterdam News
two days earlier.

The museum. That ain’t nuthin’. I already been to her house. Couple times
.

But he had only seen her one time. It was the housekeeper or someone else who usually did the shopping who’d come to the door. Ms. Temple was too busy. The first time, he hadn’t known any better and went up the steps to the front door. When the lady who was probably the housekeeper opened it, he had caught a momentary glimpse of an eighty-foot expanse of polished hardwood floor flowing from foyer to living room to dining room filled with pictures and a style and abundance of furniture he’d never seen before.

The crystal chandeliers blinded him but that was not important. He could always escape from those kinds of light. The wood carvings were another matter. They were huge masks decorated with beads and shells and some kind of tangled straw. And empty space where sight should have been. But he imagined them angled down from the walls, looking at him.

“You must be new,” the lady who was probably the housekeeper said as she pointed over the brass railing. “The groceries are usually delivered through the downstairs entrance.”

She had smiled and said “son,” so the fear and anger that had ballooned in his chest dissolved to a dull ache. Now he felt nothing, no anger toward the housekeeper, a short, round woman who kept pushing her glasses back on her dark face and who could have been his grandmother—if he knew who his grandmother was. But he didn’t know. Didn’t know his grandfather either. Or his father for that matter.

He could not reach back in memory because there was nothing there, only a midnight that frightened him whenever he thought about it. So he remained in the present with his mother and her wall of rage. It was all he knew.

The lady had pointed and he had taken the box through the wrought-iron door under the steps, through the long, carpeted hall with the gleaming wainscoting, lugging the box to the kitchen at the back of the house where everything including the hanging pots and pans glowed silver.

“Remember to always bring it through this way,” the lady said as she reached into a vase on the pantry shelf for his tip.

He had waited impatiently, eyes roving, and saw the garden and the easel and the tall, thin lady who stepped away from the easel with her hand to her chin, like she was studying something only she could see.

He had stared at her brown skin and silver-white hair pulled back in a smooth ball. He could not guess how old she was, only that she was so beautiful he’d stopped breathing for a moment. Her jeans and T-shirt were paint-spattered but in the enclosure of greenery she looked like somebody in the movies.

Not … not like them skanks all spread out in those magazines
.

“Here you are,” the housekeeper said.

He reached for the two dollars, not knowing what to say, so he said nothing.

Outside, he looked up and down 136th Street for someplace to sit, to ease the tight feeling in his chest, but there were no benches, so he walked across St. Nicholas Avenue and sat near the park.

Faces with no eyes
.

He leaned over on the bench and felt the sweat run down the back of his neck and down his chest, causing the shirt to stick to his skin. He waited for the familiar voice to come and tell him what he should do but there was only silence.

He opened his eyes as a group of day campers wearing red and black T-shirts and black shorts passed by, escorted by three teenage counselors, one in the front, middle, and rear. The day campers held hands, laughed, and shouted nursery rhymes to a rap beat.

The sun bore down and his shirt felt clammy. He stared at the small faces through half-closed eyes, looking for the ugly one and wondering what the child was feeling. But all the faces were smiling, so it was hard to tell who the ugly one was. And who had been shut in darkness with nothing but a box of cereal.

He watched until they turned and disappeared into the park at 140th Street. His breathing was not so ragged now and his chest didn’t hurt as much, so he left the bench and made his way back to the store.

That had been two days ago. Now he lay on the bed in the dim glow thinking of the women. Mercy Anne and her dead white eyes had come back on those long legs to laugh all over again. And that woman in the garden, all that dead white hair rolled in a ball against her neck. And those stupid masks. She put them up there, to look down on him.

He folded the scrap of paper carefully and tucked it
in the space between the sagging mattress and box spring where he kept the other news clippings and the pages and ads from
Soldier of Fortune, Body Builder
, and
Hustler
.

Studio Museum. Okay
.

Loud laughter drifted down the hall and he heard Hazel stomp her feet a few times but he eventually managed to fall asleep. In his dreams, he had gotten two for one. The headlines blared. He was on television. He wasn’t Jeffrey Dahmer, but Geraldo was shaking his hand anyway, and he was famous.

And he did not wake when the dream morphed into something else. He was in school again, this time in the principal’s office, struggling to remain upright on a steeply angled treadmill. Someone turned the motor and it began to revolve faster and faster but his hands were tied to the railings and he could not free himself. Just ahead, a piece of paper dangled from somewhere just beyond his sight line. Then the print grew like the letters on an optician’s chart, small at the bottom, but large enough at the top and growing larger with each revolution of the treadmill to tell him how the free lunch pass that had guaranteed at least one meal a day had been taken away because his mother wouldn’t fill out the forms. She wouldn’t fill out the forms.

The chart dissolved and he was out of school, standing at a checkout counter, bagging groceries, and at the end of the day all the nickels and dimes he had earned had somehow slipped through his fingers.

The shadow of the Harlem State Office Building loomed large across Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard and cast a shade over the blockfront where the old RKO Alhambra movie theater once stood. The modernized facades, between 125th and 126th Streets, now housed the New York State Motor Vehicle Bureau, a billiard parlor, and a Masonic lodge.

On Sunday the bureau was closed and its doorway provided a niche for a Senegalese vendor to sell sunglasses. When Ache approached, the peddler dipped into his canvas bag and came out with nine different styles dangling from his fingers.

Ache chose the glasses with the darkest lenses and tried them on under the glow of the vendor’s brilliant smile. “It look good, brother. Look good.”

He said nothing but folded the glasses and slipped the vendor a ten-dollar bill. The vendor temporarily closed shop, keeping his eyes peeled for another customer or a roving “quality of life” patrol car, whichever came first.

He donned the glasses, made his way across the avenue,
and sat on one of the stone benches dotting the plaza and scrutinized the crowd. Several minutes later he moved slowly across 125th Street and, hidden behind the lenses, entered the museum.

In the corridor he stared in surprise at the smiling young woman behind the admission desk.

Five dollars. I got to pay five dollars to walk in here. Shit. Bust a hole in my pocket. Ten for the glasses and now five to get in. Shit
.

He felt the bile churn up in his throat and wondered whether he should swallow or bathe the smile off the girl’s face with the hot splash of his saliva. But a uniformed guard was standing at attention less than three feet away. And besides, he really did want to see the lady with the silver hair.

So he parted with the money and moved along the narrow corridor. He peeped in the store that sold books and beautiful souvenirs but the lights, too bright, kept him out. He could not remember a time when he’d liked bright lights. Perhaps when he had been very young; before his mother discovered the power of the locked closet.

The first time, he had screamed, banged his head against the door until stars danced before him. The second time, he had cried again but did not bang his head so hard. The times after that, he gradually accepted the darkness as a natural part of his world. He did not close his eyes, did not fold into the familiar knot, but stretched out on the fetid rags layering the floor.

When the voices began, they confused him at first because there had been so many. The one he liked best was the one who called him “Ache,” told him how smart he was to take darkness as a hideout.