“I’m telling you, I’ll put in a good word with Lou. No problem. I bet he’d even help you out with the money if I ask him nice. And talk to these Jersey thugs. He’s a popular guy. People love him.”
Tony gives a big, long sigh. “Give me a second.” He paces some more and then says, “You need anything? Like a glass of water?” I nod and he disappears into the kitchen.
The dog looks up at me as though we are old friends, then jumps on my lap, landing on my full bladder. Her collar jingles. It’s an ornate thing with a name tag and other assorted doggie bling. She starts licking my face. “Get off!” I try to shake her from my legs.
From the other room Tony yells, “Get down, Princess!”
A church bell rings from some distant street, signaling the approach of dawn. I recall something else about Johnny.
Like every other hipster kid, his skinny, undernourished body was plastered with tattoos. Nothing too strange, no Tweety Bird or names of ex-girlfriends drawn in Gothic lettering. He did have an awful tattoo on his ankle though. I spotted it the first night because of his rolled-up pant leg. A dog. A pug, to be exact.
“What’s that?” I’d asked.
“That’s Princess,” he said. “She holds the key to my heart.”
I told him to stop talking like a Danielle Steele novel and take off his tightie-whities already. Which he did.
Tony comes back into the room, holding a glass of water etched with daisies. It looks as though he’s reconsidered the situation. “Aw, shit. Aw, Christ. Look, I really just wanted to talk to you, but you bartenders are intimidating.”
I make my face as blank as possible. He sets the water glass down very carefully on one of the doilies.
“Listen, you can think about it, but I have to pee,” I tell him. “I have to pee right now and if you won’t let me use the bathroom, I will piss all over this velveteen cushion. You know how hard it will be to clean? I bet these are antique chairs. I bet this fringe is from the old country. Irreplaceable. How would you explain that to your ma?”
He shrugs, trying to shake off his look of concern. “The dog coulda done it.”
“That little thing?” The dog scratches itself, fancy pink collar jingling, and then begins grooming its private parts in earnest. “There is no way the amount I have to piss could come out of that runt. Trust me. I don’t know what time it is exactly, but I would guess I haven’t used the powder room in a good four hours.”
He looks torn, but finally he begins to untie me. I wish the knots were in the front, so I could kick him in his fat face.
When I’m free, I say, “We’ll work this out.” I try to walk casually and not bolt for the door.
I close and lock the bathroom door. I figure I have about one shot at knocking him out. I search the room. A toilet plunger isn’t going to do the trick and neither is a plastic lady torso whose skirts cover the extra toilet paper rolls. I could Aqua Net him to death or stab him in the eye with a bobby pin.
I catch sight of my face in the vanity mirror. I’ve got a nice purple shiner and a crust of blood on my upper lip. If I make it out of here, I’m going to treat myself to a real haircut, not one of those ten-dollar Chop Shop hatchet jobs.
Then I catch sight of it in the reflection of the mirror. A heavy-duty Virgin Mary statue with her hands outstretched as if she’s saying,
Tony hovers outside the door. “Okay, listen, you’ll talk to Ray then?” He sees what I’m carrying. “Hey, what’re you doing? Put that back! Ma will kill you!” I walk into the living room. He follows. “No kidding, don’t be smart.”
I put a little distance between us and then, with the VM held out in front of me like a bat, I spin around and smack him as hard as I can across the head. The statue stays in one piece. His head does not. He gives a little “Oh” of surprise and touches his temple in disbelief. He staggers and bleeds all over the plastic on the furniture. He looks more horrified about the mess he’s making than he does about losing his life.
When he sees the blood spill onto his Eagles shirt, his legs accordion and down he goes. I’ve never seen anyone bleed quite like that. We’ve had two guys drop dead at Ray’s, but neither were bleeders. The cut isn’t going to kill him, but it will buy me enough time to get out and make it to the storage space. I’m sure the money is there along with one or two of Johnny’s stupid bikes. The Jersey jerks will get to Tony soon enough. Or his own mother when she sees what he’s done to her living room.
Hey, I’m not a murderer, just an opportunist.
The Virgin Mary statue lies on her back on the pink shag carpet, staring up at the ceiling, still looking as if she’s just an innocent bystander. Except she’s not. In fact, she may have just changed my life. Now, I’m not going to start genuflecting and hanging out at the doors of St. John’s. I don’t believe much in that Catholic shit, but you never know. Maybe I’ll even buy a Virgin Mary night light from the Italian Market after I get the money and move out of my shitty apartment on Morris and into a slightly less shitty one further west.
I take hold of Princess’s collar-rabies vaccine, heart-shaped name tag, and a key. I remove it and slip it in my pocket.
I consider leaving the animal. It’s not like she’d be much of a watch dog for me. She doesn’t seem at all concerned that I cracked Tony in the head and he’s now bleeding on the carpet.
I look at the dog and she looks back at me with her poppedout googly eyes. She wags her stubby tail half- heartedly as though unsure about the deal too. “You’re not much of an accomplice,” I tell her. I could dump her on the streets. Some sappy grandma would take her in. Or she’d get hit by a bus just like Johnny. “All right, Princess, let’s go.” I pick her up. “You can stay with me,” I say. “For now.”
SCARRED. BY SOLOMON JONES
Thunder clapped, and the street went black as if God had blown out the candles. A single flash of lighting streaked across the sky. After that, the only sound was the rain.
That kind of quiet was rare at 33rd and Cecil B. Moore, the North Philly corner where a hodgepodge of crumbling housing and new development met the orchestrated greenery of Fairmount Park.
Most autumn evenings, the corner rumbled with the sounds of the 3 and 32 buses, danced with the laughter of children at the water ice stand, and banged with the clatter of tools at the used tire shop. There was music to this corner, and the tunes went far beyond the rhymes of Li’l Wayne or the gospel of Kirk Franklin. The music had a distinctive rhythm, like the jazz of John Coltrane, who’d once lived a block away.
But just like Coltrane’s house, the streets were empty and the rhythm was off, because the storm and the blackout had snatched the life from the streets, forcing everyone and everything indoors.
The occupants of the new lofts who’d arrived with the long-gone real-estate boom were huddled in darkness, just like their impoverished neighbors. As rain poured down and lightning flashed, their differences no longer mattered. They all waited nervously for the lights to come on, because somewhere deep down, they understood the power of the heavens.
But Richard and Corrine weren’t afraid. In their rehabbed three-story home at the end of a ramshackle block, the only power that mattered was love. And heaven? Heaven was between them, in every whisper, every kiss, and every touch.
As the storm raged outside their window, the newlyweds welcomed darkness into a bedroom that overlooked the water ice stand. While neighbors shut their eyes against the blackout, the husband and wife christened their new home, joining themselves like instruments in a symphony of passion.
The driving rain struck the windows as they poured themselves into one another, and as their bodies gave in to the moment, their whispers of love became shouts of joy. The harmony reached perfection. The symphony climaxed and ceased. Then their voices faded into the blackness of the night, with gasps and shudders and moans.
Afterward, they lay in each other’s arms, listening to the rain fall. Corrine reached up and twisted Richard’s blond hair around her fingers. Even without light, she knew every part of his face. His pink lips were thin and sculpted. His jaw was square and strong. His blue eyes were set wide on either side of his sharply pointed nose.
