Paintings from the Cave (6 page)

T
hree days go by and I go to Bill’s each day and we work together. He studies me while I work the clay. He doesn’t do just one head, he does three, then four. All of me. But each one is different. In one I’m smiling because I was thinking of Layla having a baby. What the baby would be like. Cute, I know, ’cause it’s from Layla, and it’ll smile a lot. At Layla. And me.

Bill pays me ten dollars and gives me a pizza every day. I meet Layla every night and we sit in the dark and talk in whispers, sleep in the basement, stay away from her apartment and her ma, who still hasn’t found another night job.

“Petey’s looking for you,” Layla says the third night in the basement. “He came to my place looking for you.”

“Petey couldn’t find himself if he was looking in a mirror.”

“He’s mad, his eyes were twitching when he said your name.”

“Petey’s all talk.”

“I don’t know. He scares me.”

I want to say, You’re scared all the time, Layla. But I don’t. She’s right to be scared and I should listen.

I should have listened.

At Bill’s the next morning, I do two heads. Layla. Then Petey, but I don’t know why. Bill said to make what I think about most in my head, and Petey’s in there.

Every now and then Bill comes over to show me how to make my clay look better. He uses his thumb here or there and I can see what I was trying to do.

While we work he tells me about himself. He’s twenty and, he says, should be in college. Where I live, no one even makes it through high school. His parents are upset that he dropped out. I think on that for a while. Folks on my side of the block don’t get upset, hell, they don’t even notice when you stop going to school. He says he didn’t have enough time for art when he was going to classes and he’s applied for something he calls a grant. Like a loan, I figure.

“It’s enough to rent this place for a few years and buy the clay to work, get a few pieces cast in bronze from time to time. I’ll sell what I can, buy materials. Keep going.”

I might not know much about anything else he’s talking about, but I know what it means to keep going.

I work on the heads while he talks. After three days it seems like we’ve been doing this forever. I wish we could keep doing this forever.

Bill says, “You’re good, J.”

And I say, “No, you’re shining me on.”

But he says, “No, you’re really good. You have real talent. I mean, look at this Petey guy. He could pose for a statue of the devil. He just
looks
evil. And you caught it. I’ve never seen anybody without any training who could do anything like this. J, you really are amazing.”

It’s nice to have somebody tell you you’re good at something. I don’t think I ever heard anyone say anything like that to me before.

“I got to talk to Layla about this.”

“Of course. Tell her I said you have real talent and it would be a shame to waste it.”

Waste. I get a picture in my mind of a boy, a skinny boy with rat bites and bad teeth. I see that boy and how I could find him in the clay.

I know who the boy is.

And maybe written near the bottom of the statue, the word:

Waste
.

Then I see another head and body. My mother before she went away, on the couch, stoned. I can see another head, Layla’s ma, and then I see an old wino frozen
on the grate, and five-dollar crack whores working the street.

And I know, I
know
that I can do them all and call them all
Waste
.

But that was before Petey got Layla.

P
etey knows I have to come after her so he takes her and keeps her in his place on the ninth floor.

The way I find out is that I leave Bill’s building and I’m heading back with pizza and money for her. When I get to the alley, in the dark, a boy name of Mohamud is standing by the Dumpster.

He’s not seven years old and he works for Petey already. Skinny, near dead, always got snot dripping out his nose. He’s like a rat hiding back in the dark by the Dumpster.

I see him before he sees me. I smell him. He’s filthy. But I pay him no mind till he steps out.

“J—Petey says to come see him.”

I stop. “Now, why would I want to do that?”

“He says if you don’t come, he’ll beat Layla so she’s hurt on the inside.”

“Layla …”

“He’s got her up there. In his place on nine. He’s keeping her until you come.”

“You see her?”

“Yeah.”

“He hurt her?”

“Not yet. But he will if you don’t come. Said for me to tell you.”

“You told me. You go on out of here.”

I wait until he’s gone and I go into the basement where the furnace room is dark. I hide the pizza even though I know the rats will find it. I hope something will be left when we get back.

I think that. I really think I’m going to go up there and get her. I believe that I’ll get Layla and we’ll eat pizza together in the dark again.

The best way is to just give myself to Petey, promise him anything to let me take Layla away. He won’t kill me, he might beat me some, but I’ve been beat before. He’ll keep me alive to work for Blade. I’ll do anything, say anything, to get Layla right now.

My hands are shaking and my heart is pounding hard in my ears and my chest. I feel sweaty under my arms, but I’m cold and numb everywhere else.

I’ll go straight up to Petey right now and he’ll take me and let Layla go and that’s it. That’s the way this will play out.

This is the first time I go up the front of the building since I can remember. I walk like I own the stairs and head up to Petey’s place. I’m out of breath when I get up there and I think about Bill’s building, right next door, where the elevators work. No Petey, no Blade. You have trouble and you call the cops. They come.

Petey’s door.

I stop.

If I’d known what was in that apartment, I wouldn’t have knocked. If I’d known what was waiting I’d have walked backwards down the stairs and backed time up, a day, two days, four days, six days, to when Petey caught me and I got away. Before Bill. Before the clay. Then I’d let Petey take me, bust me up, give me to Blade.…

But I don’t know what’s in that apartment.

So I knock.

Petey opens the door. Smiles. “I knew you’d come.”

“Let Layla go.”

“Can’t do it right now, boy. She nodded off.” And he opens the door and I see her by the window in a chair. Head back funny. Mouth open.

“What did you do to her?”

Petey grabs me, drags me in the room and slams the door.

“She went crazy on me when I brought her up here. Ripped my face. So I had to quiet her down.”

I see a cut down his cheek still bleeding. I jerk free and go over to Layla.

I touch her cheek. Cold. I lean over her face and listen, shake her. No breath.

Petey laughs, wasted out of his mind. “Guess I quieted that girl down too much.”

Sometimes, I think, sometimes they bring them back. You see it on TV all the time. Call 911 and the ambulance drivers give them a shot and do something to their chest.…

No phone here.

Downstairs. Pay phone by the entry. Sometimes it works.

I hit Petey with a lamp from the table and when he bends over I hit him again in the side of his head. He stays down.

“I have to leave you, Layla. Gotta get the ambulance …”

But the phone is broke, and when I pound on doors and finally find somebody with a cell to call 911, I know, I know …

Too late. Too late.

I go back up there and sit by Layla, hold her hand. I don’t feel anything except cold.

Petey starts to come around and I hit him again with
the lamp. Hit him so hard that he never comes around again.

Then I go back and sit with Layla again until, finally, they come and take her. A man says, “Another overdose,” but I shake my head.

“No. Not Layla. Layla’s … she’s good. A good girl. She’d never …”

“What happened to the one on the floor?”

“He was keeping her here when she wanted to leave. I hit him.”

“I’ll have to call it in to the police.”

I nod. Doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

They put Layla in a bag. Black bag with a zipper. I see them zip it up past her face. She’s there, then she’s gone.

Then I’m gone. I hear more sirens and I know it’s the cops coming. Sure, they come now, called by the ambulance. Time for me to leave before the cops get here. Nothing I can tell them, anyway. Nothing to say to change anything. She’s still gone.

’Cept in my head. She’s there. I hear her laugh and I know that I will till I die, then some. Layla, I think, Layla.

Layla, I’m sorry.

S
ometimes you move to the left, sometimes you move to the right, and sometimes you stay still and wait until the bad passes.

You stop moving too long, you’re done.

I’m working for Blade now.

After they took Layla away in the black bag, I hid from the cops in the basement. I sat in the dark that whole night and then the next day. Rats ate the pizza I brought for Layla, ate the cardboard box, too, and I sat there missing her, thinking about her.

Thinking about Blade.

He’s the reason.

He paid Petey.

He made Petey hurt Layla.

He had to pay.

Someday.

I’d make him pay.

Someday.

But I’d have to go slow to get close to him.

The word was out that I killed Petey, and Blade liked that: killing Petey made me tough, so he asked me to work for him. My first job: standing on the corner with a cell to warn him if the cops come.

Fine.

I got time. Could take a day, could take a week. He pays me a little money, I hustle some more, I buy a Glock Nine with a magazine that holds more bullets than God made.

Someday.

Someday I’ll get close to Blade. Someday we’ll be alone. Doesn’t matter if it’s a week, a month, a year. When we’re finally alone, the very first second that we’re alone, Blade’s going to die.

Someday.

Meantime I work the street, make money, get good shoes, and every night I watch Bill.

I never go back to his apartment, never talk to him. But every night when I miss Layla and the hurt is bad, I go to my place in the basement and I sit in the dark and watch Bill across the fence.

Bill keeps making heads, some that look like me,
some from pictures. I sit in the dark every night and watch him.

It’s like he knows I’m there. He’ll turn and look out the window, look across the fence at the building I’m in, but I’m in the black night and he can’t see me. He’ll look sad, turn and go back to work, and I think … I think …

Someday, I’ll go back.

Someday Blade will be gone and I will go and sit in the window until Bill sees me.

I’ll say, “Hi, Bill.”

And he’ll smile and say, “Hi, J. Come over. I’ll order a pizza.”

Someday, I’ll go back.

Someday I will make Layla come out of the clay and then Bill will show me how to make her into bronze so she lasts forever, so there will always be a Layla like I see her in my head.

Someday.

When Blade is gone.

Someday.