Dreams Underfoot

The people take care of their neighborhood, no differently than their parents did before them.

North of Gracie a bunch of developers got together and planned to give the area a new facelift. I’ve seen the plans—condominiums, shopping malls, parks. Basically what they wanted to do was shove a high class suburb into the middle of the city. Only what happened was their backers pulled out while they were in the middle of leveling about a square mile of city blocks, so now the whole area’s just a mess of empty buildings and rubblestrewn lots.

It’s creepy, looking out on it from Gracie Street. It’s like standing on the line of a map that divides civilization from noman’sland. You almost expect some graffiti to say, “Here there be dragons.”

And maybe they wouldn’t be so far off. Because you can find dragons in Upper Foxville—the muy malo kind that ride choppeddown Harleys. The Devil’s Dragon. Bikers making deals with their junkies.

I think I’d prefer the kind that breathe fire.

I don’t like the open spaces of rubble in Upper Foxville. My true self—the way I see me—is like an alley cat, crouching for shelter under a car, watching the world go by. I’m comfortable in Crowsea’s narrow streets and alleyways. They’re like the barrio where I got my street smarts. It’s easy to duck away from trouble, to get lost in the shadows. To hang out and watch, but not be seen. Out there, in those desolate blocks north of Gracie, there’s no place to hide, and too many places—all at the same time.

If that kind of thing bothered Lori, she sure wasn’t showing it. She was all decked out in fatigues, hiking boots and a khakicolored shoulderbag like she was in the Army Reserves and going out on maneuvers or something. Ruth was almost as bad, only she went to the other extreme. She was wearing baggy white cotton pants with a puffed sleeve blouse and a trendy vest, lowheeled sandals and a matching purse.

Me? That morning I dressed with survival in mind, not fashion. I had my yellow jeans and my red hightops, an old black Motorhead Tshirt and a scuffed leather jacket that I hoped would make me look tough. I had some of my hair up in a topknot, the rest all low, and went heavy on the makeup. My camera—a barato little Vitoret that I’d borrowed from Pipo last fall and still hadn’t returned yet—was stuffed in a shapeless canvas shoulderbag. All I wanted to do was fit in.

Checking out the skateboarders and other kids already clogging up Gracie’s sidewalks, I didn’t think I was doing too bad a job. Especially when this little muchacho with a pink Mohawk came whipping over on his board and tried to put the moves on me. I felt like I was sixteen again.

“Well, I’m going straight up Yoors,” Lori said. “Everybody got their cameras and some film?”

Ruth and I dutifully patted our purse and shoulderbag respectively.

“I guess I’ll try the Tombs,” I said.

It only took a week after the machines stopped pushing over the buildings for people to start dumping everything from old car parts to bags of trash in the blocks between Lanois and Flood north of MacNeil. People took to calling it the Tombs because of all the wrecked vehicles.

I’d had some time to think things through over a breakfast of black coffee this morning—a strangely lucid moment, considering the night before. I’d almost decided on getting my friend Izzy from the apartment downstairs to hide out in an ape suit somewhere in the rubble, and then it hit me. Lori probably had something similar planned. She’d have Ruth and I tramping around through the rubble, getting all hot and sweaty, and more than a little tense, and then she’d produce a photo of some friend of hers in an ape suit, snapped slightly out of focus as he was ducking into some rundown old building. It’d be good for a laugh and a free dinner and it was ust the kind of stunt Lori’d pull. I mean, we could have been doing some serious shopping today ....

My new plan was to head out towards the Tombs, then work my way over to Yoors where I’d follow Lori and take my picture of her and her pal in his monkeysuit. Mama didn’t raise any stupid kids, no matter what her neighbors thought.

So I gave them both a jaunty wave and set off down Gracie to where Lanois would take me north into the Tombs. Lori went up Yoors. Ruth was still standing by the stairs going down to the subway station by the time I lost sight of her, looking back through the crowds. My pink Mohawked admirer followed me until I turned up towards the Tombs, then he went whizzing back to his friends, expertly guiding his skateboard down the congested sidewalk like the pro he was. He couldn’t have been more than thirteen.

7

When you’re a nina—and maybe twentyone is still being a kid to some people—it’s not so weird to be worrying about who you are and how you’re ever going to fit in. But then you’re supposed to get a handle on things and by the time you’re my age, you’ve got it all pretty well figured out. At least that’s the impression I got when I

was a nina and twentyone looked like it was about as old as you ever wanted to get.

Verdad, I still don’t know who I am or where I fit in. I stand in front of the mirror and the muchacha

I see studying me just as carefully as I’m studying her looks older. But I don’t feel any different from when I was fifteen.

So when does it happen?

Maybe it never does.

Maybe that explains Poland.

8

All things considered—I mean, this was Upper Foxville—it wasn’t a bad day to be scuffling around in the Tombs. The sun was bright in a sky so blue it hurt to look at it. Good thing I hadn’t forgotten my shades. Broken glass shimmered and gleamed in the light and crunched underfoot.

What’s this thing people have for busting windows and bottles and the like? It seems like all you need is an unbroken piece of glass and rocks just sort of pop into people’s hands. Of course it makes such an interesting sound when it breaks. And it gives you such a feeling of ... oh, I don’t know. Having cojones, I suppose. What’s that song by Nick Lowe? “I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass.” Not that I’m into that kind of thing —okay, at least not anymore. And better it be in a place like this than on the sidewalk or streets where people have to walk or go wheeling by on their bikes.

I was feeling pretty punky by the time I’d been in the Tombs for an hour or so. That always happens when I wear my leather jacket. I may not be a real machona—or at least not capable of violence, let’s say—but the jacket makes me feel tough anyway. It says don’t mess with me all over it. Not that there was anybody there to mess around with me.

I spotted a few dogs—feral, mangylooking perros that kept their distance. The rat that surprised me as I came around a corner was a lot less forgiving about having its morning disturbed. It stood its ground until I pitched a rock at it, then it just sort of melted away, slinky and fast.

It was early for the junkies and other lowlifes that were out in full force come late afternoon, but the bag ladies were making their rounds, all bundled up in layers of coats and dresses, pushing their homes and belongings around in shopping carts or carrying it all about in plastic shopping bags. I passed winos, sleeping off last night’s booze, and hoboes huddled around small fires, taking their time about waking up before they hit the streets of Foxville and Crowsea to panhandle the Saturday crowds. They gave me the creeps, staring at me like I didn’t belong—fair enough, I guess, since I didn’t—obviously thinking what the hell was I doing here? Would you believe looking for Bigfoot? Didn’t think so.

Did I mention the smell? If you’ve ever been to a dump, you’ll know what I mean. It’s a sweetsour cloying smell that gets into your clothes and hair and just hangs in there. You could get used to it, I guess—it stopped bothering me after the first fifteen minutes or so—but I wouldn’t want to have to be sitting next to me on El Sub going home.

I guess I killed an hour or so before I worked my way west towards Yoors Street to look for Lori. It was kind of fun, playing Indian scout in the rubble. I got so involved in sneaking around that I almost ran right into them.

Them. Yeah, I was right. Lori was sitting on what was left of some building’s front steps, sharing a beer with a guy named Byron Murphy. Near Byron’s knee was a plastic shopping bag out of which spilled something that looked remarkably like a flat ape’s arm. I mean the arm was flat, because it was part of a costume and there was nobody in it at the moment. Come to think of it, that would make it a flat ape, wouldn’t