Ten Mile River (6 page)

He came in late. José was doing Grand Theft on the big screen. Scarface cheered him on from the small. Ray plopped onto the couch next to the J-man. José looked at him. ‘You're mad, right?'

‘You're a hickey with limbs.'

‘Yup, he's mad,' José said.

‘I'm only gonna ask you one thing. Do not ever talk smack about that chick with me.'

‘Hell you talkin about?'

‘Like, “Smell my fingers,” stupid shit like that.'

‘Number one, she ain't like that, you should know. And third of all, I ain't like that.'

‘You talk smack about chicks all the time!'

‘S'pose you're right. But not about her. She's so cool, Ray.'

‘I don' wanna know.'

‘C'mon, man, you're m' boy. I can't tell you, who'm I gonna tell?'

‘You love her, I know.'

‘How'd you know?'

‘I'm goin a bed.'

José rummaged through the Home Depot shopping bag. ‘Anythin to eat in here?'

‘I ain't even gonna answer that.' Ray kicked aside José's mountain of clothes to get to his ratty old juvie duffel, pulled out his Nets pj's. He was a Knicks fan, but Macy's only had Nets the day he and José had gone ‘shopping'.

José was wearing Nets jammies too. Even in summer the night breeze off the river threw a damp chill over everything. José dumped the Depot bag, sorted through Ray's gets. ‘Hell is this for?'

‘Well, it's a paint scraper, so I reckon it's for pickin teeth. Idiot.'

‘Raymundo Santiago, defender of New York City's mailboxes. Ray, you scratch it off, they gonna hit the box again that night. It's pointless.'

‘It ain't pointless.'

‘There's fifty million rotten things written all over Bronx mailboxes, and if I froze the world still to keep new ones from goin up, and then I gave you all the paint scrapers in the world, you'd still never get the job done. Now gimme some cigarette money.'

‘I hid it in the dog chow.'

‘Makin me fish through goddam dog food now.' José pulled on his jeans, grabbed some money, headed out, held up at the door. ‘Hey, Ray? If you didn't want me to go out with her, then why'd you set us up, man?'

A few seconds later Ray heard José whistling ‘Love Me Tender' on his way uphill. He had a great whistle. Ray couldn't whistle for shit. He looked at the paint scraper. ‘Fuck, man.' He chucked it into the garbage.

The dogs' ears went up. Out the window, in the weeds downhill, methamphetamine pipes flared. Ray grabbed his baseball bat. ‘Sing,' he whispered to the dogs.

The dogs howled. The junkies ran. Ray slept bat in hand.

Next morning Trini brought them breakfast. She was cool in front of Ray. She mussed his scalp as much as she mussed José's cornrows. ‘My cousin's coming up from the island, Raymond.'

‘Okay?' Ray said.

‘I told her about you. You wanna double-date like?'

‘Okay.'

‘She's stayin a month, comin up in three weeks.'

‘Okay.'

‘But you're gonna have to come on up to my t'a's. I don't want to bring her down here, no offense.'

The boys were quiet. José shrugged. ‘You don't like our house?'

Trini sat in the middle of the couch, patted the spaces at her sides. ‘Sit.'

The boys and six or so dogs climbed onto the couch. José started to shove them off but stopped. He made sure Trini saw he was petting them.

Trini looked around the stationhouse. ‘We got to get you boys into a real home.'

‘Anyplace you are, T-mamita, that's home to us,' José said. ‘That's got to be the smoovest dag thing I ever said.'

‘That was pretty smooth,' Trini said.

Ray wondered if the cousin looked like Trini. Even if she did, she wouldn't
be
Trini.

‘Let's eat,' Trini said. ‘Gentlemen, would you kindly set the table?'

‘Yes'm,' Ray said.

‘Yo, Mr. Man, git your lazy bones in gear and help.'

Dag, Ray thought, she's already calling him her man.

8

Trini hooked Ray up with a summer job at Yolie's, eight bucks an hour cash to run errands, sweep the shop, take out trash, fix things Yolie could never get her landlord to fix. Plumbing, electric, carpentry, Ray knew it all thanks to Home Depot freebies and juvie shop class. Using his hands for something other than thieving was fun. He liked being busy. A month passed fast.

Yolie was a good businesswoman. She imported hard-to-get beauty supplies from Puerto Rico on the side, hair relaxer, do-it-yourself dye and the like from this company Enrique Hormón. Ray chuckled as he delivered Hormón to the old ladies too sick to come into the shop
. I'm bringin Henry The Hormone to the
old gals
. Anyway, working for Yolie was better than working for Jerry, though the boys still were doing some of that.

Yolie would have made money if she didn't hand out so many freebies and pay-me-laters. If some kid came by selling candy for his ball team, Yolie gave him a twenty, told him to keep his candy and hit her a home run. She'd eye her stack of past due bills, shrug. ‘
Es la
vida
,' she'd say, and wink at Ray.

Ray dug being around chicks all day. He noticed they had a habit of smelling clean most of the time. Sometimes Ray would have to stop what he was doing, take it all in, the different perfumes, Bubble Yum grape from all that snap-cracked gum, the women's voices, a treeful of birds chirping.

Even José was gigging. Yolie had him at The Palace until she caught him sucking face with Trini one too many times and sent him down the street to her friend Romeo's shop, The Slice Is Right. José dug pedaling pie. ‘They pay me to ride my bike, Ray-Ray. Find a better job in this fool country of ours.' José was socking away his money to buy a motorcycle.

At day's end, going downhill to Ten Mile was tough for Ray. With José out on deliveries, late nights were lonely. Uphill here in the Heights life hummed 24/7.

And Trini was here.

She'd hang with José mornings, but she and Ray had the rest of the day together working in the shop. Trini was taking summer session physics to get a jump on junior year. Ray would hang with her after work, help her study, lose himself in her textbooks. ‘Please go back to school this fall?' she would beg.

And he would smile, look away, wonder if he should.

Yolie knew the boys had ditched school, but dropping out was common up here. She had dropped out herself. She told them, ‘Work hard, save your money, you be a'right.'

José skid-stopped in front of The Palace, a stack of pie boxes strapped to the back of his bike. He banged on the shop window. Ray swung out and José gave him a brown-bag slice. ‘Extra cheese?' Ray said.

‘Don't ever say I don't take care of my boy.' José was off with a smack to the back of Ray's shaved head.

Ray got back to sweeping a mountain of hair.

Yolie was working the register, giving a lady her change, when two kids waiting for cuts started a slap-fight with each other. They were pals horsing around, but the way the cussing was flying, you wouldn't know that. One kid tripped, knocked over a folding chair. Yolie grabbed her heart at the racket.

‘Yo,' Ray said to the kids.

‘What up?'

‘Y'all take it outside.' Six three, two sixty, shaved head. Ray was scary.

‘We're gettin haircuts,' the bigger one said.

‘Not here you're not,' Ray said. ‘Not until y'all learn some respectable language in the presence of a lady.'

‘Fuck you then,' the kid said.

Ray took one step, the kids flew.

Ray turned to Yolie, her hand on her heart, her eyes calm.

‘Sorry about that, ma'am,' Ray said. He righted the upended chair.

‘Amor, flip the sign to closed, lock the door, come upstairs. I want to talk with you.'

Ray turned out the lights, went outside to pull in the chairs Yolie left out there for the old folks to rest in while they were shopping, dragging their carts and walkers and clunky Velcro-strap Frankenstein shoes up and down the avenue.

‘Yo!' Ray heard behind him.

He spun to find a rock had been hurled at his face. He ducked. Over his head the rock smashed on the shop window and rained sticky yellow goo onto the back of his neck. Somebody had bulleted a rotten egg at him.

‘Yo faggot!' The two kids he'd just tossed out of the shop were at the sidewalk edge. They flipped him off and ran.

Ray pulled a workman's rag from his back pocket, wiped the egg off his neck, cleaned the mess from the shop window. ‘Goddam kids.'

Yolie collapsed exhausted into the old salon chair she'd had Ray bring to the upstairs kitchen, where after a full day of squeaky kids drooling over her
melones
she liked to sip herself a nice Brugal. Trini massaged her aunt's shoulders. The women were smiling.

Ray nodded his head respectfully as he came into the kitchen.

Yolie nodded back, appraised Ray. ‘I like having a big strong boy like you around. People respect you.'

‘Thanks, ma'am.' He wondered if she smelled the rotten egg on him.

‘You're a
man, me entiendes
?
Un hombre fuerte
.' Yolie tapped her heart with her knuckles.

‘'Preciate that.' Ray Mond, the
man
. Be shaving once a week soon.

‘I'm thinking about expanding my business,' Yolie said. ‘I'm gonna take Enrique wide, grow out from the Heights into Harlem and Inwood. I got
muñecas
up in The Bronx crying for el Hormón. I need someone to manage the orders and the deliveries. It's a big job. You gonna run it.'

‘Ma'am?'

Trini winked at Ray. She might as well have kissed him.

‘It's gonna be a lot of work,' Yolie said. ‘Long hours, but we gonna make a lot of money. You save, you buy you mami a house within five years, not vinyl, brick. On the perfume alone we be millionaires. Throw in the vitamin supplements, we own the city, the Trump got nothing on us.'

‘Missis Yolie, I'm just about to turn fifteen. I don't know if I can—'

‘Look at me. I started when I was fifteen. You good with numbers, you a hard worker, you fix anything, you don't give up, and I trust you. I'd be crazy not to make business with you. Yes or no?'

‘
Hell
yes.'

‘Good. Just have you mami gimme a call.'

Trini stopped massaging her t'a's shoulders.

‘My moms?' Ray said. ‘Wuh-why?'

‘You ain't gonna be home for dinner most nights. Weeks will pass and she won't see you. I just want to talk with her first, explain the opportunity, the sacrifice, make sure it's okay with her.'

‘Oh, it's okay with her, ma'am. I'm sure of it.'

Behind her t'a's back Trini folded her arms, gave Ray mean eyes, mouthed
Tt, Raymond!

Yolie reached over her shoulder, took Trini's hand, gently brought Trini to her side. ‘Why is he lying to me, and about what?'

‘I better go,' Ray said.

Yolie said, ‘Sit down, amor. Trinita, start talking.'

Trini told Yolie that Ray and José had no parents. She told her the boys were living on their own.

Yolie calmly took in the info. ‘And why now you're telling me this, Trinita? Why would you lie to me?'

‘I
didn't
lie. You never asked. I wouldn't
lie
to you. But now that it came up—'

‘Do I have to tell you with your A averages that holding back is lying, chica?'

‘Tt, I, like, was afraid you wouldn't let me hang out with them,' Trini said.

‘Because they have no parents? Is that what you think of me? And you, señor, why you were afraid to tell me these things?'

‘Sorry, ma'am.'

Yolie stared at Ray for a long time, her anger turning soft, her eyes beginning to get wet.

Now that Yolie had offered him a partnership in her business Ray wanted to tell her that he was on the lam, that he had a record, but Trini would freak out. She had no idea the boys had crime in their past.

Yolie seemed to decide not to cry, winked at Ray, sipped her Brugal. ‘Okay. Here's what we gonna do. You amors gonna come live here with us, you and the José.'

Trini mugged her t'a with kisses.

‘You gonna live in the attic,' Yolie said. ‘You got your own bathroom up there. Needs work, but you fix it.'

‘I ain't know what to say, ma'am.'

‘Say yes. I like that word. First thing you gonna fix for me? Put a lock on chiquita's door.'

‘My door?' Trini said.

Yolie nodded at Ray. ‘Him I'm not so worried about, but that José is a little wolf.'

Trini blushed. ‘He ain't like that, T'a.'

‘Oh, he's like that,' Yolie said. ‘Trust me. He wouldn't be a man if he wasn't.'

Then what's that make me? Ray wondered.

On the way to Ten Mile Trini chattered on about how they could fix up the attic, about how the boys would have a future now. That Enrique Hormón would make everybody rich, that the boys could go back to school, Ray to some fancy college someday. ‘You don't seem too excited,' she said.

‘Just thinkin,' he said.

‘About what?'

That you're about to find out José ain't comin uphill, not even for you. ‘Nothin.'

‘Raymond, what'd my t'a just say? No secrets. Do you want to live with us or not?'

More than anything. ‘I'm just wonderin what we're gonna do with the dogs.'

‘They're comin,
bato
. Think I'd let 'em starve down here? We got the yard out back. Come night, put a couple in my room, couple in the attic with y'all until we adopt 'em out into good homes. I got all these friends downtown at school, they're into the pet rescue thing big time. We keep a couple pups at The Palace, everything is everything.'

‘You got it all worked out, huh, uptown to downtown. You ought to run for mayor.'