Slow Motion Riot (9 page)

Just before
midnight
a stumpy woman with a microphone stood at the base
of 1 Times Square on
Forty-second Street
.
The headline parade of the day's news stories revolved on the brightly lit
"zipper" sign over her head.

"Brothers and sisters,"
she said. "You don't have to go to hell."

A tall man wearing a short sequined
dress, high heels, and a blond wig paused to stare at her.

Richard Silver, driving a navy blue
Audi across town, was stopped at the nearest red light. He rolled down his
window to watch the scene that was unfolding across the street on his left.
"Homosexuals," he said. "Another thing I don't understand."

Jessica Riley, sitting beside him
in a Tiffany necklace and a short black Galanos dress worth five thousand
dollars, said nothing. In the backseat, his son, Leonard, wiped his nose with
his shirt sleeve.

"I mean, how could you allow
such a thing to be done to you?" Richard Silver said without taking his
eyes off the man in the sequined dress. "It's humiliating, some of the
things they do."

"Well, I don't think you'd
have much choice if you were in prison," Jessica said pointedly. "You
know, some people go to prison when they do bad things, Richard."

"Thank you for saying that in
front of my son," Richard Silver told her.

Leonard wasn't listening anyway. He
was too busy pressing his nose against the back window, making the pig face for
the people in the car behind them. Jessica checked her makeup in the mirror and
crossed her skinny legs.

"So did you hear back about
the
Long Island
thing?" she asked.

"I gotta meet the guy on July
Fourth," Richard Silver said. "Can you believe that?"

"Couldn't you do it another
time?"

"They're gonna have a
hemorrhoid in
Chicago
if we don't
do this soon," he explained. "They're already worried."

"So what'd you tell
them?"

"I told them to relax and
avoid impure thoughts," Richard Silver said. "What am I supposed to
do?"

The eastward traffic wasn't
budging. He stuck his head out the window and saw tightly packed cars for at
least two blocks ahead. On the far corner a crowd of people were gathered in
front of the Off-Track Betting outlet. In the rearview mirror Richard Silver
saw a movie marquee that said "Desire Me Wet." A neon ad for a
Japanese camera company splashed green light over the street.

"You don't have to be unclean
or live a life in darkness," the stumpy woman with the microphone shouted.
"You don't have to buy or rent pornography."

The transvestite, who was standing
there listening to her, moved his purse from his right shoulder to his left
shoulder.

"Let me ask you
something," Richard Silver said to his son. "You understand that play
tonight?"

"Yes," said Leonard
Silver, who had brown bangs, braces, and his father's eyes. He had just turned
thirteen. "I think it was about imperialism."

"What?" His father winced
like he'd been hit on the head by a frying pan.

"Like the Oriental guy who was
dressed like a girl, he was like
China
,
you. know?" Leonard said in a thin voice that meandered up and down his
vocal register. "And the French diplomat, he was like the symbol of
Western imperialism, trying to colonize her."

"Hey, Leonard," his
father said, "all I want to know is how you could sleep with a guy for
twenty years and think it was a lady."

Jessica Riley shook her head
dismissively. "Did you like the play, Leonard?" she asked, turning
around to look at him in the backseat.

He slumped down a little when she
spoke to him. "It was okay, I guess," he mumbled.

"I thought it was filth,"
Richard Silver volunteered.

"Mom said she liked it,"
Leonard said tentatively.

"Oh she did, did she?"
said his father.

"Yeah." Leonard made
squeaking noises on the windows with the tips of his fingers. "She thought
I should see it."

"I told you she was poisoning
him," Richard said angrily to Jessica.

The light changed once more, and
traffic still did not move. Across the street, a car pulled up near the preacher
woman and a group of young white men wearing tight T-shirts and hair that was
carefully sprayed back and shaved on the sides got out. The transvestite did
not notice them. He was too busy looking through his purse like he wanted to
give the woman, with the microphorie some money.

"You don't have to be
depraved," the stumpy woman cried. "You don't have to be a drug
addict. Or homeless."

"She's trying to turn him
against me," Richard Silver told Jessica. "She'll do anything to hurt
me."

His son banged his knees together
in the backseat. "Dad, we're missing Friday Night Videos."

"Leonard, what do you want me
to do? Get out and push the other cars out of the way?" Richard Silver
turned to Jessica and lowered his voice. "You see what I mean? She's
spoiling him too."

Leonard stared silently out his
window. On the other side of
Forty-second Street
,
one of the young white men with sprayed-back hair got a tire iron out of the
trunk of his car and approached the preacher woman and the transvestite. His
brow was knit and his arms were like sides of beef hanging off his shoulders,

The transvestite saw the young
white men coming and began to edge away. "You don't have to give in to
temptation," the preacher woman said.

"I'll tell you one thing,
Leonard," his father said as traffic finally began to move. "It's a
free country and you can grow up to be anything you want, but if you turn out
to be a homosexual, I swear I'll cut my own throat and hold your mother
personally responsible."

The transvestite broke into a run
with the pack of well-groomed men in pursuit. He clattered across the street on
his high heels and almost got hit by Richard Silver's car as it rolled forward.
"Fuckin' imbecile," Richard Silver said.

The transvestite made a left at the
Travelers Aid bureau and then ran across Broadway. As the light turned red
again, he tried to disappear into the three-card monte crowd standing in front
of Off-Track Betting, but the man with the tire iron and his friends followed.
The crowd quickly parted and then the men with the sprayed hair were all over
the transvestite, kicking him and beating him with the tire iron.

As Richard Silver drove by, he saw
the transvestite lying in a bloody, burbling heap of sequins on the sidewalk.

"You don't have to be a sinner,"
the stumpy woman's voice said over a loudspeaker somewhere behind him.

"What a life," Richard
Silver said.

Having convened with the likes of
Darryl King and Tommy Markham earlier in the evening, I am in no mood for brie
wheels, corny Motown tapes, and long discussions about interior design. What I
need is a slump-breaking drunk and a lively fuck.

Instead, I get belligerently stewed
and nearly ruin my ex-girlfriend's engagement party. I can't seem to get along
with anybody anymore. Most of my old friends are in business now and our lives
have nothing to do with each other. They're all busy moving to the suburbs
where they'll be safe from people like my clients. I get into a stupid argument
with the fiance about coddling criminals and nearly take a swing at him.

I wake up on Saturday afternoon
alone in my apartment with my pants off and my shoes still on. My mouth feels
sore and I can't remember how I got home. In my left hand, I'm clutching a
miniature Grenadian national flag.

I think I need to make some
changes.

I shower, shave, drink two cups of
coffee, and swallow three aspirins. Calling to apologize for last night will
probably just make things worse, I decide. I put on side two of the
Ramones
Road
to Ruin album and try to get myself reanimated.
The phone rings in the middle of the second song.

Maria Sanchez, finally asking if
I'll help her move.

"When?" I ask in a groggy
voice.

"Right now," she says.

A girlfriend from school is going
to let her stay with her and her family on
Edgecombe
Avenue
until Maria gets settled. But we have to do
it immediately. Her uncle, who's sexually abused her for all these years, will
be home by five. If he finds out what we're up to, he'll be good and pissed,
and he might not hesitate to use his gun.

I call my old pothead friend Terry
Greene and wake him up. After twenty minutes of threatening and cajoling, I
convince Terry to borrow his parents'
Toyota
.

By
3:30
Terry, wearing a pair of shades and a "Butthole Surfers" T-shirt, is
waiting outside with the car. One thing about Terry: He never went upscale.
While my other friends are making their way up the corporate ladder or working
out of some back office in
Bergen
County
,
Terry is still straggling along as a free-lance photographer, specializing in
pictures of bar mitzvahs and cockfights. A half-smoked cigarette dangles from
his lips as he holds the passenger side door open for me.

"You look like shit," he
says as I get in.

Catching my dark red eyes in the
rearview mirror, I have to agree. "Go pretty slow, all right. Otherwise,
I'm gonna throw up all over your inside."

"Y'know you better watch it
with that drinking," Terry says, peering at me over his sunglasses as he
eases the car over a beer can and a dead bird on Avenue B.

"Tell me about it," I
say. "The last thing I remember last night I was quoting Lillian Hellman
to you about anti-Semitism and professional ice hockey."

"What's the matter? Why'd you
get so fucked up?"

I stick my head out the window and
inhale deeply. "I dunno. I'm kind of having a hard time at work, you know.
Just a mild case of the doubts, I guess."

"I thought you liked it so
much," Terry says, aiming the car uptown. "With the interestingly
dysfunctional people and all."

"You know what I wish
sometimes?" I say, lighting a cigarette and blowing a trail of smoke out
the window. "I wish I had a really simple job. Like drilling holes for a
car's transmission or something. Just stand there all day with the machine.
Then after it's done, you got a car and it just goes. And then after five years,
it breaks down like it's supposed to, and you get another one."

"Oh, you don't know anything
about cars," says Terry. I notice he has a new purple streak going down
the back of his hair. "I had a Honda Accord after college and I had it in
the shop every other month, and that's supposed to be like the most reliable
car in the world."

"I thought you drove a
Chrysler."

"Honda Accord," he tells
me. "Stick with being a probation officer."

"Well, I'm probably not gonna
be doing that forever."

"Since when did you start
saying that?" Terry asks in a surprised voice while he switches lanes and
his glasses start to slide down the bridge of his nose.

"Long time ago," I tell
him as the jackhammer in my brain gets going. "Between the time I left the
curb and when I got in the car."

Traffic is bad going north, so we
get on the
FDR Drive
. Right
away, a dark blue Cressida starts threatening to shove us off on to the
shoulder. There's a furious argument going on in the yellow Mercedes ahead of
us. The woman in the passenger's seat keeps hitting the guy driving in the back
of the head with the back of her palm. Off to the side, the
East
River
shimmers turbulently and a barge full of new cars sails by.
The sun makes the old upholstery stink in Terry's car and I have to lean out
the window again to get a good clean breath.

"So what else are you gonna
do?" Terry asks, pushing the shades back up on his nose.

"There's a lot
of things I can do," I say, flicking my cigarette out the window.
"I'm going into this Field Service Unit, so that could turn into something.
And you remember I used to talk about becoming a lawyer." Some of the
ashes fly back in my face.

"Sell out, sell out, sell
out," Terry chants as he grips the steering wheel.

"It's not selling out," I
say, more than a little defensively. "I'm just thinking maybe there are
other ways to do good work without getting burned out."

"Yeah," says Terry.
"Like not getting fucked up so much. You know you got a real ugly side
that comes out when you drink. That was really stupid that fight you had with
Jamie's fiancé..."

He fiddles with the radio until he
gets a station playing "Institutionalized" by Suicidal Tendencies and
I decide that maybe I will look into those law school applications. Not
committing myself: just checking it out.

Traffic has come to a complete stop
for some reason. I'm starting to feel the future bearing down on me. Once I
thought I could do anything with my life. Even if things looked bad at any
given time, there was still a chance I might pull myself together and be
somebody. But I'm almost thirty now and every day I'm getting a little closer
to becoming the person I'll always be. Which scares the shit out of me.

As traffic lightens, we shoot past
the heliport, the imposing
Waterside
Plaza
apartment complex, and a high stone wall with an empty playground on top. It's
like a fortress for the rich, well out of reach for the Bronx-bound. On the
horizon up ahead, I catch a glimpse of one of those obnoxious glass towers
Richard Silver helped put up. I think it's blocking the view of another smaller
building that I used to like, but now I can't even remember what it was.

When we come off the
Ninety-sixth
Street
exit, though, time seems to stand still.
The taller, newer buildings are all behind us. What's ahead are old anonymous
gray projects and tenements. I spot the name "PACO" spray-painted in
huge black letters on a brick wall. It's probably been there since the 1950s.
Paco was probably a brash young stud when he wrote it. I'll bet he's a
doddering old fool now.

"What I don't
understand," Terry is saying, "is how you can tell your clients how
to run their lives when you drink like that?"

"Enough with the
drinking!" I say, slapping the dashboard as another skinhead anthem blasts
from the radio. "You do drugs, don't you?"

"I did Ecstasy last
night," Terry says with a smile.

"Doesn't that affect your
ability to reason?"

"Not at all." Terry
shakes his head violently. "I had a perfectly coherent conversation with
somebody about God and the Druids."

"And would you have had that
conversation if you hadn't taken Ecstasy?"

"Well," says Terry.
"It might not have gone on three or four hours."

Just before four, we arrive at the
building on
106th Street
,
where Maria and her family live. Upstairs, everyone is in hysterics. They're
sure the uncle is about to show up with his gun and blow them all away. He is
said to be especially angry with me. Maria, Terry, and I manage to get the car
loaded with her stuff in less than twenty minutes. But then she spends an hour
crying and hugging people in the doorway. It's very sweet, but Terry and I are
hopping up and down with fright, because the uncle is supposed to show up at
any minute.

We're lucky to get rolling before
sunset, I figure. But halfway to the new address, I'm looking up at the
rearview mirror and swearing to Terry that a green Mazda is following us.

"My uncle drives a green
Mazda," Maria says.

"Fuck him."

I'm sweating, Terry's cursing, and
Maria can't stop crying. The car bounces wildly over potholes and through
detours around Sugar Hill and
West Harlem
. A group of
windshield-washing kids surround us at a stoplight. I try to fend them off with
my department badge, but they spray the glass anyway and don't bother to wipe it
off.

Finally we arrive at Maria's
girlfriend's house. It's just after six. We bring everything upstairs and the
family welcomes us like heroes. Their home is a warm, comfortable place. Salsa
plays on the stereo, a large blue, red, and white Puerto Rican national flag
hangs on the wall next to the front page of EJ Diario. An elderly couple plays
on the living room floor with five very young grandchildren. Two televisions
blare in English and Spanish. The smell of rich, spicy food is in the air.
Maria's girlfriend calls Terry and me into the smoky kitchen and serves us red
beans, yellow rice, and green plantains. We eat standing up against the
counter, and for the moment everyone is very happy. End of the story, I hope.
We'll do the violation on the uncle and then Maria will be on her way in life.

"Call me if you hear from your
uncle," I say, turning toward the door. "You got my number at
home."

"Can I call you if I
don't?" Maria asks.

I don't know what to say.
"Sure," I mumble. "I'm around."

She hugs both of us good-bye. Terry
holds on to her for a little longer than is necessary, I think. I slap his back
and we race each other down five flights of stairs and burst out laughing at
the bottom.

Walking outside, I get a settled
feeling inside I haven't had in months. It looks like it's going to be a cool,
starry night, I'm with a friend, and for once I've done a single, unambiguous
good thing with a tangible result.

"Ayyyiyii, ave Maria,"
says Terry, opening the door on his side of the car. "How come you never
told me what a babe she was?"

"Come on, Terry, she's one of
my clients."

"Yeah, right. I heard that
business about calling you at home."

I blink twice. "All my clients
can call me at home."

"Yeah, right."

"I speak the truth." I
give him the scout's honor salute.

"You mean to tell me you'd
just as soon take a call at home from one of those drooly guys who hang around
the bus terminal as from that beautiful babe upstairs."

I take the safety belt off the seat
and sit down in the car. "Sure," I say. "That's what I'm
supposed to do."

Terry puts the key in the ignition.
"Then some of you probation officer types must be more fucked up than your
clients."

I stare at him for a long time
before I slam down the lock on my door. "No shit, Sherlock," I say.