Reckless Endangerment (16 page)

Marlene gave him a look that could have fused quartz and said some disrespectful things about the Deity in Sicilian, a sure sign that deeds, not words, were required of the husband. Dropping his ball, Karp scooped up his sons and headed for the showers.

Some hours later, with the kitchen squared away, the table set, and no sound in the loft louder than the ticking of a clock and the eternal city rumble from outside, Marlene went into the bedroom and found the male units of her family sprawled on the big bed fast asleep, their tiny or gigantic limbs spread out and entwined, as in casualty photographs. He really was a darling man, thought Marlene, far better than she deserved, and what an amazing bit of luck to wind up with, considering her early track record with the other sex. A pang of guilt in there too, because she got to do exactly as she pleased, while he, natively a chauvinist of the true German-Jewish variety, had to cope around her. But of course, she told herself, there was all that nice food.

She leaned over carefully and kissed his cheek. He started awake, with a look of apprehension, just like Zak.

“What?”

“Food,” she whispered, “and if we’re extremely careful we can have a quiet meal by ourselves.”

Which they did, with candles. Lucy burst in while they were washing up, cheeks red and eyes aglow and stinking of gunpowder.

“Look!” she crowed, “I got a Ballantine,” and held up a shot-up silhouette target, pointing out the place where, indeed, three bullet holes merged into one.

“Very nice,” said Marlene, Karp managing nothing more than a false smile. Marlene added, “Those don’t look like .22 holes.”

“No, Tran let me use the Tokarev. It was neat!”

“He did?” said her mother coldly. “Well, I wish he had asked me first.”

Lucy clapped her hand to her mouth. “Oh, no! I was supposed to ask you, but I forgot.”

“How convenient for you. Have you eaten?”

“Yeah, Tran took me to a Vietnamese restaurant. I had star shrimp and soup with limes.”

“I thought they ate dogs,” said Karp.

“They only eat dogs in the north, Daddy,” Lucy explained, as if to a retarded infant. “Tran is from the south.”

“Did you do your homework?” asked Marlene.

“I’ll do it tomorrow after church. Can I watch
Saturday Night Live
?

“Yeah, sure. Keep it down, though.” Lucy darted away.

Karp said, “What the hell is a Tokarev? Who
is
this guy, Marlene?”

“Don’t start,” said his wife.

Late that night, after two, Marlene was awakened by the sound of the elevator motor, and the door, and crashing in the kitchen and a grizzling noise that sounded like crying. She put on a robe and went to the kitchen. Posie was seated at the table with the cooking Gallo and a full glass. Her crying had pooled her too-heavy mascara around her eyes, giving her the look of a bedraggled raccoon. Her dress, a thrift-shop red acetate number that was too tight and too bright for her hefty figure, was ripped at the sleeve and her long, straight hair was matted in patches by some sticky substance that Marlene did not care to identify. Marlene sighed. It was like owning a big dog that ran out in traffic and chased skunks.

The story emerged between gasps and snuffles. A guy had picked her up at a club. He had some good dope, and they smoked it in the alley and got wrecked. He had taken her back to his place and they had balled. More dope and some pills. And wine. Posie had found herself on a soiled mattress, naked, with a guy other than the original guy—no, it was two other guys. That part was a little vague. In any case, it hadn’t been true love.

“All I want is a nice guy, Marlene,” Posie said through the tears. “He doesn’t even have to be cute. Just not a shit, you know?”

Marlene knew. Any number of improving lectures flashed through her mind: the Safe Sex one, the You Meet Nicer Guys in Places of Education Than in Clubs one, the For God’s Sake Learn How to Dress one, the Don’t Get Wasted with Guys You Don’t Know one, but Marlene had not the energy for these at the present time and simply hugged the girl and promised her that someday her prince would come and tried to avoid stroking her hair.

Noise from the nursery. Posie rubbed her face on her sleeve and rose.

“Thanks, Marlene. I’ll go take care of the boys.”

“No, I will,” said Marlene a bit too quickly. “Why don’t you just get cleaned up?”

After their big score Fatyma and Cindy bought into a group apartment off Tenth Avenue in the high thirties, which they shared with a mutable population of people somewhat older than themselves, who had graduated to one level above the street. Some of them even worked at jobs, and of these jobs, some were even legal. Fatyma had a heap of new clothes and a bag heavy with cosmetics and perfumes. As against these riches she had been thoroughly deprived of her innocence. After a few days of Cindy’s amused tutelage, she now understood not only what sleeping together meant, and what the cause of burning loins was, but she was also cognizant of the blow job, the rim job, the golden shower, and the Mexican three-way. She had learned, just through observation so far, the effects of nearly the entire bootleg pharmacopoeia. She had learned to avoid pimps and cops and to call Forty-second Street the Deuce. The sexual portion of this knowledge was as yet mere theory; she remained as intact, physically, as any good Arab girl should be, nor was she in a hurry to change that. Cindy had confirmed what she had known from the cradle, the value that certain men placed on what the older girl called the cherry, and her reading of the late Ms. Monroe’s life story had convinced her that the actress, whatever her later success, had traded it too cheaply and far too early. It would be time enough for that when she got to Hollywood. Despite all, she retained her belief in true love.

The floating population of males who occupied the apartment and the drifters on the street had quickly learned that Fatyma was not up for a casual quickie, or even a longie; those who had persevered had discovered the Knife. Nobody wanted to mess with the Knife. Cindy helped out by spreading the word that Franny did not swing that way, which assuaged the egos of the males and which Fatyma did not mind, having learned also what a dyke was.

Fatyma still went on tricks with guys in cars, with the same result, although she never made a score like the first one again. After a couple of weeks she had over six hundred dollars stuffed in the change purse she kept under the waistband of her new red lace panties. She had a new coat too, lush brown leather with a fur collar, bought out of the trunk of a car from a twitchy little man who did not collect the required sales tax. She was wearing a short skirt and white tights and black plastic shoes with a strap across the instep and a white shirt with frills and a round girlish collar, and she looked like the sort of girl who carried Juicy Fruit in her coat pocket instead of a big knife, which was the point.

It was seven or so, already dark, and the traffic was thinning on Ninth. The weather had turned chilly again, and damp, which she was still not entirely used to, even after years in New York, and the cars were not slowing down for a look as often as they had. She decided to take a break at the Ham & Eggs on Eighth and Forty-third Street. There would be whores there, real ones (Fatyma having copped to the hyperbolic aspects of her father’s nomenclature), but she didn’t think much of that. Cindy had gotten stoned after explaining the mechanics of whoredom; she had not yet covered the economics.

Fatyma was eating a sweet roll at the counter when she felt presences on either side of her. Looking up, she saw that it was Carlotta and Daneesha, two regulars on the Deuce. Carlotta was a large yellowish woman with a blond wig like a pile of snakes and an intelligent harvest-moon face. Daneesha was bigger, darker, wigged with black braids and was not strictly speaking a woman at all.

“Oooh, honey,” said Carlotta, “you better not sit with your back to the door. You in big trouble.
Big
trouble.”

“What?”

“Trouble, sugar. Death type trouble. Kingman looking for you.”

“I don’t understand. Who is Kingman?”

“Kingman the mack,” said Daneesha. “The pimp. He don’t like what you been pulling out on the avenue there.” She sat on the next stool and stretched out her long, lovely legs. They were encased in boots to the knee. “Let me explain, child, see if your little Puerto Rican brain can take this in—”

“Am not Puerto Rican. Am Arab.”

“Whatever, you a fool. Listen up. Carlotta, darling, am I the ho with a heart of gold to explain this so this baby don’t get herself killed?”

“Pure gold,” agreed the other.

“So, what it is, you be ripping off the Johns, sugar. With your little knife, dig? So the word get around, the other night this regular John tell the girl and the girl tell Kingman. Now Kingman, he got his business to run, he don’t want no little girl scaring the trade away, taking off the Johns like you been doing, dig? He be looking for you. He got his razor, he got his little bottle of acid. He find you, honey child, you gonna need a new face, dig?”

“I was you, girl,” added Carlotta, “I’d get small real fast. That Kingman a
mean
motherfucker. Where you from anyway?”

“Brooklyn.”

“No good. He
from
Brooklyn. Where you from before that?”

“Palestine.”

“Where the fuck’s that? Montana?”

“Is near,” said Fatyma.

“Then you best get your young ass the fuck
back
to Palestine while you still got it, sugar,” said Daneesha “And watch your back. You see a baby blue Cadillac in your rearview, thass the end.” Daneesha turned away and began to study her reflection in the mirror behind the counter, adjusting her braids just so.

Fatyma waited until they had gone, so as not to give them the satisfaction of seeing her frightened, and then went back to the shared apartment, keeping her head down and staying, where possible, in the shadows. Although she was a remarkably courageous girl by nature, the exposure of her recent ignorance had shaken her self-confidence, and she felt a strong need for another tutorial.

When she arrived, she found Cindy where she usually was, on the sagging brown corduroy couch she used as a bed, eyes closed, the Walkman earphones stuck in her ears, singing a song from
Purple Rain
in the peculiar wavering manner that emerges when people are stoned with headphones on. Fatyma looked around the room and curled her lip. Fast-food bags and wrappers littered the floor along with beer bottles, glassine envelopes, the cassette tape boxes, filthy sheets and pillows. A lavender condom, used, poked its head out from under the skirt of the couch. Fatyma yanked the plug from the Walkman. Cindy opened her eyes and frowned, slowly focusing her gaze on the other girl.

“Wha’?”

“I need your help. I am in big trouble.” Fatyma shook the older girl until she snarled and pulled away, and sat up, pouting like an infant, with a dirty red quilt hiked up around her.

The story poured out. Fatyma finished by asking, “Why does this mack want to hurt me, Cindy? There are plenty of joes. Every night they come in cars and cars.”

“Johns, not joes,” said Cindy. “And it’s, like, the principle of the thing. It’s his turf. He’s supposed to, like, control it, make it peaceful for business and stuff. Enough shit like this goes down and the cops get pissed and start cracking down on the Deuce again, and worse than that, the other pimps get on his case, how come he can’t take care of business and stuff. So he has to mess you up.”

“But what should I
do,
Cindy?”

Cindy shrugged and sniffed, and started feeling, casually, under the quilt for her stash bag. “Well, shit, you got to stay off the street a while, that’s for sure. And you can’t go ripping off Johns anymore. Like, see, Kingman might’ve just wanted to, like, scare the shit out of you. If you don’t rub it in his face anymore, he might forget about it, you know?”

“But then how will I get the money? If I don’t do this with the Johns?”

“Hell, kid, you gonna have to sell your ass like the regular people do,” Cindy said, with no small amount of satisfaction in her voice. She put the headphones back on and lay back again. Fatyma saw her slip something into her mouth and swallow.

Angry now, she walked out of the room and through the apartment to the kitchen. She had wanted to make herself a cup of tea, but the roaches and the smell and something a good deal bigger than any roach rooting through a plastic garbage bag drove her away. She couldn’t understand these people. They were Americans! Those left behind in Gaza, those in refugee camps, people with
nothing,
lived better than this, and these fools seemed proud of it, as if it were an accomplishment to be filthy and lazy and whore and take drugs. It was a mystery, but one she did not care to pursue at any length. All these, Cindy and the rest, were going down, and she herself wished to rise.

It did not take her long to pack, since she lived out of her suitcase. Some of her things had been taken, “borrowed” in the local cant, but she did not bother herself with a search through the personal piles of things in the closets and corners. The drug Cindy had just taken was one that prompted a rosy emotional tone and gushing sentimentality, and so Fatyma found herself tearfully embraced, begged not to leave, showered with good wishes and advice.

“You should check out the East Village,” Cindy said. “You might dig that scene better.”

Fatyma furrowed her brow. The word “village” conjured up to her mind a cluster of mud huts full of women draped in black and children covered with flies. “The village?”

“Yeah, like Tompkins Square, around there. They let you crash in the park.”

“I will go to Hollywood, I think,” said Fatyma with firm resolve and, picking up her suitcase, which was a lot heavier now than it had been when she arrived, she walked out.

She set out for the subway. After half a block the cheap plastic handle of the thing was cutting into her fingers so painfully that she stopped, dropped it, and began to look around for a taxi. It was fortunate that she did so, for she was thus able to see the pale blue car that had been following her stop abruptly at the curb, and see the heavy, shaven-headed black man spring from the driver’s side and rush toward her. Before she could move, he had snatched her up on his hip and was carrying her toward the car. The back door of the Cadillac opened, and a tan, tall man wearing a knee-length silver fox emerged and held the door open. Fatyma could see something sparkle in his mouth when he spoke. This must be, she thought, the pimp Kingman. He said, “Come on, come on, throw the bitch in here!”