Teen Angst? Naaah ... (16 page)

It's addictive, especially when accompanied by free beer, which Poppy never stopped providing. As my new friend handed me a second, third, and fourth Bud—no questions asked—I began to understand how things worked on East Fourth Street. Poppy was the king. He had free rein at the
bodegas:
^*
he could have complimentary chips, salsa, beer, gum, whatever. If I offered to pay for these items, he would give an automatic staccato response: “No,
cabron
, everything has been bought and paid for in
full!
”

The other players were almost as entertaining as Poppy. We had Fumo, the silent Confucius look-alike who sat in for two games and left promptly, as if he had a meeting to get to. Poppy said he was homeless. Then there was Old Tony or Old Frankie—I forget which—a timeless geezer who kept a cigarette drooping from his lips at all times and didn't seem to care if it was lit.

Other members of the East Fourth Street community came to see Poppy—not to play dominoes, but to pay tribute. They slapped him on the back, made sure he was doing all right, gave him beer, talked about the weather, and left with a handshake.
Sometimes, to Poppy's delight, they asked him about President Clinton and Monica.
^*

Poppy had strong opinions about the Clinton and Monica scandal. Whenever someone mentioned it, he began howling, “
Clinton y Mooonica! Ayyy!
I tell you, these Republicans,
cabron
, awful. They try to kill the president for nothing! Clinton, he did not even do it to her, just a little thing with a cigar!” The cigar was of particular interest. Poppy would rhapsodize about it. “He should have smoked it! Destroy the evidence!
Aaaa!
”

I stayed at East Fourth Street for three hours that day, and I made a point of coming back all through August and September. I liked Poppy; I loved dominoes; I didn't mind the free beer;
^**
I enjoyed spending my time with nutty old men; and for the low, low round-trip price of three dollars subway fare, this wasn't a bad way to spend a summer evening.

One Saturday, a homeless black dude with a shopping cart came by the dominoes table.

“Major!” Poppy greeted him, jumping up. “Major, long time we have not seen you. Meet my new best friend, ah, wha's your name?”

Poppy needed to be retold my fake name every time I visited. “John,” I said.

“Ah, yes, John. John, meet Major.”

I shook his hand.

“Ya wanna see my cart, right?” Major asked. I nodded.

Major led me into the street and beckoned me to a shopping cart. Like many homeless people, he made his living filling his cart with bottles and recycling them. “Ain't you never heard of Major's cart?” he beamed. “I got the best cart in the city. Man, this here's the
Cadillac
of carts.”

I had to admit it was nifty. He had partitioned it with wooden planks, sorting his bottles by color. “Nobody messes with my cart, man. They just see it, and they go, ‘Hey, that's Major's cart!' and they leave it alone. You know how much weight I can pull in this cart?”

“Forty pounds.”

“Twenty-one
hundred
pounds, man! I pulled that much when the cops was chasing me.”

“That's a lot of bottles.”

“Damn right. Thing was full.”

Another time, a friend of Poppy's came by the table and introduced himself as the world-famous French ballet composer, “Pierre.” (He gave me his
business card. It read, “Pierre. Dance.”) I also shook hands with a self-proclaimed descendant of Peter Stuyvesant, who said he'd made millions in currency trading. (“Yeah, a millionaire, right, so what is he doing here?” Poppy asked.)

But in late September, I stopped going to play dominoes. It got cold, so no one showed up anymore. Also, I had to go to school.

Around December 23, I returned to East Fourth Street looking for Poppy. I wanted to wish him a Merry Christmas, plus I craved a real game with Fumo and Old Frankie (or Old Tony). Poppy wasn't out on the sidewalk—it was far too cold—but I found him in the back room of his favorite bodega, sitting at a folding table. A jagged scar ran down his forehead, the stitches still in place.

“Whoa, Poppy, what happened to you?”

“Ay,
cabron
,” he smiled at me. “You come at a bad time.” He pointed at his face. “I get stabbed in the head with a bottle.”

“What?”

“Yes, yes, with a
bottle!
Happened a few days ago. These drug dealers come to my block; they mess with me.”

“Oh, man.” I sat down next to him.

“It's not bad,” Poppy said, waving his hands at
me. “It's shown me many things. For example, my friend, I have stopped with the bottle. It is no good for my health. No good for my pocketbook.”

I couldn't believe it; Poppy could pack away a lot of beers.

“No more!” he yelled, standing up. Then he sat down and pulled me close. “You know, John”—this was the first time he remembered my name, I swear—“They used to call me a ‘street father.' I am friendly to everyone, get people things, right? Not anymore. Too much drug dealers, too much everything, I get
stabbed in the head
.” He pointed to his wound. “Now I say, let these people buy their own beer! Let everybody play dominoes by themselves! Merry Christmas!”

Poppy stood up, drew himself a glass of water, and turned on his radio to the Spanish station.

“I like you very much, John,” he told me. “But it's no more dominoes for a while.”

“Okay.” Not much I could say. I shook his hand. “Feel better, I guess.”

As I walked out of the bodega, Poppy told me I could have some free chips, so I took barbecue. I had this urge to tell him my real name. I turned around to do so, more than once, but I was too embarrassed—of my real name and of the fact that I'd lied for so long.

I
was ashamed of the NYPD. Turnstile jumping is the sort of crime they've vowed to rub out, but there I was, having jumped to and from Manhattan for an entire summer, and nothing. No cops. No alarms. No token booth ladies kicking open their doors and chasing me down. Truth is, I was reassured when I got caught.

It was a Friday night; I was leaving a disappointing local concert with my semiconscious friend Hector. It was warm and misty out; for some reason, a lot of people were fighting. On our way to the subway, we saw a scruffy white guy hit a businessman with an umbrella and two huge black dudes with cell phones throwing punches outside a bar.

“You know, Hec,” I said as we approached the F train, “I have no money.”

He shrugged. “I have enough for one token.”

I wasn't listening: I was confessing. “Hec, I really don't want to jump tonight. I've jumped too much lately. It's the law of averages. I'm gonna get caught sooner or later.”

He repeated, “I have enough for one token. You
can slip in after me.” But I don't like slipping in after people. It looks stupid, plus you can give your hip a nasty bang on the turnstile.

We headed into the F station; I picked up speed. You don't need a running start to jump turnstiles, but it goes more smoothly that way. I flew by the token booth, planted my hands over the MetroCard slits, and vaulted sweetly over the bars. Hector did the same, even though he had money.

As soon as my feet hit the ground, I heard the cops yelling,
“Hey!
Yeah,
you two!”

I stopped. I'd seen this coming, hadn't I? I flashed forward through the consequences: me explaining my arrest to my parents, me with a criminal record, unable to get a good job, kicked out of high school, living on the street. But if I was apologetic and nice, maybe I'd come out okay.

I looked at the cops. Damn, they looked like cops. Both were Italian; one, a pudgy guy in his forties; the other, young and jumpy. They had brown hair and mustaches. They were in plainclothes. At some point, they must have produced badges, but they didn't need to. They were movie cops, perfect for the part.

“C'mere,” the young, jumpy one said. He was standing in front of an open chrome door, one of those unlabeled doors in subway stations, which I
had thought led to janitor's closets. There were little slits in the door, and I realized: the cops had been
sitting
in there! They stared through those slits all day, keeping watch for offensive citizens. It was a setup!

Hector and I walked through the door. There was a room with a table, a bench, a lot of pipes, and some cop stuff like radios and jackets. The young officer aimed himself at Hector, the older one turned to me. They both pulled out pads of paper.

“How old are you?” mine asked.

“Seventeen,” I nodded as I said it.

“And how old are you?” Hector's cop asked, shaking his pen.

“Uh …” Hector seemed really flustered. “Sixteen—no wait, I mean seventeen.”

“
Excuse me?
Is it sixteen or seventeen?”

“Seventeen.”

“Are you
sure?
”

“Yeah. I get a little confused because I just turned—”

“I hope you're not lying to me. Because I don't like being
lied
to. If you start that, we're gonna have problems.”

“I know you don't believe me—”

“You're right. I
don't
believe you.” Now it was
clear. Just like in the movies: there was a nice cop and a mean one, and Hector had gotten the mean one.

“What school do you go to?” my cop asked. His nameplate said, “Patillo.”

“Stuyvesant.” I showed my I.D. card.
^*
Patillo studied it.

“What does that say?” He pointed at the lettering. The words were in an unintelligible gothic font—to give my school some class, I guess.

“It says ‘Stuyvesant High School.' ” I indicated each word.

“How come they write it that way?” he sounded suspicious, as if I'd faked the card.

“I dunno.”

“Any other I.D.?”

I emptied my pockets. Standard nerd fare: a paperback version of
The Two Towers
, a floppy disk, a graphing calculator. Patillo eyed the calculator as if it were a bomb. He wrote down my address and my phone number and told me to sit down next to Hector, who'd finished his interview.

“You guys sit tight. We're putting a call in to headquarters to find out what to do with you,” the jumpy cop said. He and Patillo walked out, leaving me alone with Hector. We twiddled our thumbs—literally, like
in a Norman Rockwell painting:
Caught Jumping Turnstiles
. Hector traced patterns in the bench with his fingernail.

“What are they gonna do to us?” I asked him.

“I think we get a ticket. Like a parking ticket.”

“Do we get a criminal record?”

“Nah. Not unless they fingerprint us.”

I started calculating the economics. A token costs a dollar fifty; I'd jumped turnstiles since June, which meant maybe forty free rides. So as long as my ticket was less than sixty bucks, I would come out ahead. That was comforting.

“All right, kids,” the two officers said as they returned. “You're both old enough to be issued summonses so you're getting summonses. We'll notify your parents of this incident by mail.” Well, that wasn't going to be fun, but I'd live. I was handed a sixty-dollar ticket that looked exactly like a parking violation.

“As for
you
,” the mean cop said, turning to Hector. “Don't you
ever
lie about your age to a police officer. You do not know how close I was to taking you down to central booking. Do you have
any idea
what that's like? Do you have
any idea
how humiliating it is to be brought in and strip-searched? To spread your cheeks?” I had known that was coming. Before we could be released, the cops had to bring up the
most compelling threat of our justice system: spreading one's cheeks.

“You're free to go.” They opened the chrome door and shooed us out. I glanced at my ticket and started to chuckle.
Exactly
sixty dollars. Which meant I was repaying my debt to society, give or take a buck. I felt clean, like I should pay the ticket right there. I was proud of the police, and New York in general, for catching me.

“What are you laughing at?” Hector asked.

I couldn't tell him the sappy stuff so I said, “You know, Hec, high school and summer camp and girls are all different from the way they are on TV. But cops. Cops are exactly the same.”

I
should have spent the summer before senior year volunteering in a soup kitchen or practicing violin five hours a day, but instead I disrupted a television show, played a lot of dominoes, and painted houses with a guy named Carlo. That didn't serve me well when it came time to apply for college.

The colleges, you see, want a lot these days. They don't just want you to be a good student. They don't just want dedication, good-naturedness, and self-sacrifice. They want you to be
angular
. That's a real term; I read about it in
The Wall Street Journal
. Today's colleges are looking for angular students—passionate about a field of interest they've discovered in high school. They don't want well-rounded; they want you to be exclusively devoted to one thing—if you say you're into computers, you'd better have won some high-tech award.