The Warriors (19 page)

Then somebody laid down a barrage of big firecrackers at one end of the platform and people were running and yelling, and a lot of transit cops came charging down, and he had to take off fast because the Headbusters would stiff anyone who looked like he might have set it off. He couldn't run right because his shoe was busted and his heel was bloody and he ran in a long hop, skip, and a shortstep, and he hoped the shoe wouldn't fall off because he couldn't walk around in his socks. He ran up a flight of stairs, turned once, ran down a tile-lined passage, and then found himself in a dead end with a door at the end marked W
OMEN
. But, instead of being closed, it was half-open and he ran in to hide. The place was crowded; all kinds were there—men, women, kids, fags, girls, lesbos, young and old. The air was heavy with a sweet-smoke smell and he knew what that was—marijuana. Alonso used to take it before he had gone on to better things. Someone had a portable radio and it was playing that wild, high-voiced savage stuff, jazzed, big-beat tribal shoutsinging with falsetto choruses, right out of the jungle. But it was oddly cooler here, maybe because of the tile walls. Everyone looked like they were something else, from another world. Hinton couldn't place it; it wasn't only the costumes. But he didn't dare to stare because they might interpret it as an offense and then . . .

A huge stud stood up against the wall. He was brutal, six foot six or so, wide, with a look on his face like the world had to dig
him.
He looked like someone out of the old past wearing an archaic black leather jacket decorated with bars, stars, leaves,
and zipper-gear. He wore a visored speedboy cap, engineer stomp-boots, blond sideburns down to the lower part of his stickout ears, unfashionable blue jeans, and he had gloves stuck into the epaulets of his jacket. Nobody dressed like that any more, Hinton thought scornfully, but the man was just too big to put down. Next to the giant was a grinning young boy wearing a black suit; it took a second to see it was a girl.

They all stopped and turned to look at Hinton, no one saying anything at all. There was a grunting noise, a slurping noise, a panting wheeze, all the sounds going on steadily like machinery. Toilets flushed and a cry of pain, or pleasure, sounded hollowly off the walls. Hinton moved on in like he had been coming here in the first place. He was scared but he kept his face set and hard because to show them fear would mean being dragged down.

“Here's one,” a voice said.

Somebody answered, “Well, he'll want it white.”

The giant pushed off from the tile wall and came to him, took his arm by the elbow and led him to the back. As he passed the first booth, the door was open. A girl was sitting. She was Negro, naked. She sat in the toilet seat, legs crossed, her elbow on her knee and her face, which moved up and down while she chewed gum, rested in her hand. Five or six booths were closed.

They took Hinton back to a booth in which there was a tired-looking little white girl. She was very skinny; her chest bones showed and she was almost breastless. Her blonde hair had un-dyed black raying through it. She smiled and stood up; her pubic hair was platinumed. She wore low, gold lamé sneakers. She smiled. The giant's hand opened and he said, “Three.” Hinton dug in and felt three dollars out of his pocket because to show more was foolish. Even though he didn't want to, he wasn't going to get out of it unless he got it over with, and he could never show them he wasn't man enough.

A hand pushed him in. The door closed behind him; it was
half-dark here. There was a quick fumbling; they came together; it was stifling; urine had been spilled all over the place; he was gasping; his feet slid a little; he turned his head away and saw that her clothes were hanging on a hook at the side. She said a few words and panted and made a quick moan-sound; he was dizzied as their feet shuffled through muddy floor-grit. He thought he would keel over. When it was finished she moved away and sat down on the toilet seat and was pulling down toilet paper and began to wipe herself and he wasn't sure what happened. He turned to go. She pulled him by the coat tail. He turned back. She smiled; her lips were tucked in, mouth up at the side, chin puckered. She reached over and zipped up his pants, patted his fly-front, and said, “You can't go on out there like that,” smiling like a TV housewife saying goodbye to her hubby in the morning. He wanted to say something, but it was too hot and smelly, and he didn't know what to say, and if he talked, he was sure he'd cry. He felt for the door behind him, turned the knob, and left. The giant was leaning on the wall opposite the booth door and stared at him as he came out.

He turned to leave; the little boy-girl asked if he'd like a drink, a reefer, a fix, anything to fly-on a little. But they had tempted him with drugs before and he knew where that led. It meant to be
out
because the Family wouldn't tolerate addicts. How could you depend on somebody with a habit that could betray you? He knew; he had seen it happen to his half-brother, Alonso. He jostled past and the voice became mean, a couple of octaves lower than his, asking him if he wanted to tangle. He didn't say anything but moved on. And that was when the neat, normal-looking fag had asked the first time, “What is your name?” He kept on moving. The man walked with him. They went out the door together. He was free again. The homo asked, “What's your name?”

He said, “Hinton.”

“Pretty,” the man said. “Skin like chocolate and gray eyes. Milk-chocolate Hinton.”

But Hinton kept on walking, turning here and there, through the galleries, and shook the fag by going out through one of the heavy-bar, man-high turnstiles and came to stairs. A lot of distorts were there, their fix-faces weird, sitting on the staircase like they were in bleacher seats. They stared ahead as if watching some kind of performance. Hinton almost turned around to see what they were looking at. He couldn't go back, so he forced himself to go through them, and he soft-footed past and up, afraid he would step on one, or he would trip on another, or he would lose his shoe and have to grope for it, and they would drag him down and make him join them.

Then he was up and out in the street. Free. But he wasn't sure where he was. He could see he was a block from all the wild Broadway lights. He walked that way because there must be an entrance back to the subway there. The air was almost as hot outside, only it smelled of gasoline fumes instead of piss. He was a little knee-shaky. He couldn't stop perspiring. He was still hungry and thirsty. He came to 42nd Street and Broadway and turned left, into the lights. The clustered, movie and amusement lights and the crowds passing made it hotter.

He came to a food stand and the smell of frying fat made him hungry—the candy hadn't satisfied him at all. He stopped and ordered a hot dog and an orange drink. The first bite made his mouth spurt spit; his stomach contracted and churned. He had eaten nothing but candy since the morning, and then he only had a plateful of cold cooked beans at one of the Family cousin's homes. He ate the frank and sipped the orange, turning his back to and leaning his elbows on the counter. He stared out to the street through a curtain of hot lights. People walked back and forth; it didn't matter that it was late, almost four o'clock now, maybe more.

He watched. He had lived a few blocks away from here once, around Ninth or Tenth Avenue, but he had been too young to remember it now. His half-brother, Alonso, hung around here now. Alonso called the street no-turf. The cool cats and the hot, all the smartest cats, came here, Alonso said. Hinton couldn't see it. There were no warriors around. They all looked strange; Something Else. Small mob-fragments drifted by. Loner toughs leaned up against walls between store windows. Little handkerchiefed, short-skirted girls, tailed by hungry drifters, marched up and down in clumps, shrilling, giggling at some endless jokes. Drunks staggered, muttering, fighting their way through the heat and through their own sickness. Small explosions were going off all around; they were still celebrating here. He finished the drink and the food, but it left him unsatisfied, even hungrier. He ordered a hamburger and a grape juice. The counterman told him, “Give me the whole order at one time, will you? I can't keep trotting up and down, waiting on you all night.” Hinton wished he had the heart to tell him off. Hadn't he killed his man? Didn't he have rep now? But on the other hand he remembered the tunnel and was ashamed. But who knew about that? he asked himself. He did, he told himself. Hinton ate his hamburger and drank his grape juice and thought that if the Family had been here with him, that slave wouldn't dare to talk to him like that, because they would have taken the whole operation apart and drowned the creep in his own orange juice. Yes they would. But he knew he couldn't lip the man down alone. Not yet.

Wild fag-queens with powdermask faces flutterfooted by, their feet seeming to float along the ground, tails waggling past, jackets swishing on their shaky shoulders, shirts flapping on their arses; they wore dyed hair and their eyes looked through make-up rimholes. Grinning sailors followed and you could see the make-trouble look on their faces. Weren't they just going to give it to those fruits when they caught up with them? Well,
Hinton didn't like homos either, and he remembered the voice that had whispered to him, inviting. That was what they turned you onto if they got hold of you.

He finished eating and walked along. He passed a newsstand. A headline said something about resumed atom-bomb testing. He passed the pokerino places where gamblers played all night. Bored boys leaned around, waiting for anything to grow into action. He knew all about that kind of waiting. In the store windows, big-headed hula-dolls waggled their electric tails; thousands of must-go-now, two-ninety-nine Swiss watches ticked out different hours; ever-thirsty birds dipped their long beaks politely and drank perpetually from glasses. Hinton thought of buying one. Great, innocent-eyed, gauze-clothed dolls blinked ahead blindly and stayed unsmirched by what their blue eyes saw. A wire coil bunched from one end back to the other while a sign said, P
ERPETUAL
M
OTION
: H
OW
I
S
I
T
D
ONE
? Playing cards with big-tit naked girl backs were strung in rows. He saw more ragged people, too, a lot of them—begging—and these were the most frightening because their faces were odd, distorted, and their bodies seemed badly connected. They were still horrifying even though he had heard they were all fakes.

A kid, not much younger than him, came up and asked, “Mr., you got a dime so I could have a place to sleep?” Hinton didn't answer and the kid yelled, “Well, fuck you,” but not too angrily, more as if he was supposed to, and moved on. Tourists walked by, not seeing it for what it was. You could tell them by their gape-mouth look and their ever swiveling heads, and the fact that they had to see it
all
yet saw nothing at all, and that made them look crazy, too. A fat girl with orange hair beehived high walked by, offering for a price, looking satisfied with herself; that was because she was fat, Hinton thought, not like the urinal girl. Cops patrolled, club-swinging, always on the alert, but prepared only to see what was not paid for. But that was nothing
new, Hinton thought; that was the way it was wherever you went. And he could see the pushers passing around all kinds of dream, back and forth, and he knew that you could buy any kind of kick here, even those he had never heard or thought of. But he wasn't going to let happen to him what had happened to Alonso.

He came to the end of the block, at Ninth Avenue, turned right, crossed 42nd Street, and started back toward Broadway. He had to stop and have a few slices of pizza and a pineapple drink because the hunger had come back. He finished and walked on. He passed a lot of movie houses and looked at the titles and the photographs behind the glass cases on the walls. One place showed nudist movies all night; he wondered if he should go in. But then he might miss the Family. He passed a milk bar and went in and had a glass of milk. That didn't satisfy him and so he had a chocolate malted too. He might run out of money soon, but he couldn't help himself: He had to eat. He took out his money and started to count it. An old, slit-eyed bum gave him a hungry, no-teeth look, and he put the bread away again. He was sure he still had a lot left. His hunger kept getting worse. He walked a little further, went into a cigar store and bought a cheap cigar and some caramels. He lit the cigar, smoked it, sucked the caramel and went out to walk around some more.

He went downstairs into the subway. He passed through an amusement arcade, with a big eat-stand in the middle. He stopped and had an order of French-fries, a knish, and a papaya drink to wash it down. He left his cigar on the counter ledge beside his elbow while he ate. A jukebox played the top hits over and over again, but he couldn't make out the words over the sounds of speakers talking, trains rumbling, target shooting, game-noise, and whistling. He rocked and chewed in time to the beat. When he finished, he turned to pick up the cigar but it was missing. Someone had stolen it.

He went over to the arcade newsstand and looked at the big-breasted
girls on the magazine covers, but the newsstand owner watched him suspiciously, so he bought a lot of candies, stuffing his pocket with chocolates, cashew bars, chocolate-covered raisins, candied fruits. One of the newspapers showed that someone was suing a famous actress for divorce, because of adultery, and it had a full-page picture of a beautiful blonde with an innocent smile.

He walked around the arcade looking at the games. He saw someone pass close out of the corner of his eye and turned to see a dirty-suited weird little coolie tailing him. He looked closer and saw it was himself. He recognized himself because of the pin. He stared, thinking it might be one of those distorting funny-mirrors, but it wasn't. It was because of what he had been through, the night's journey, the running, the fighting; it had made his clothes ragged and dirty. No wonder the others looked at him like he was a slave, like all the other slaves he had run across down here. He stared again, straightened himself till he saw a warrior in the mirror, a Dominator, a Family man, and he moved on.