South by South Bronx (22 page)

“She would be alive,” he said, looking at Ava, “if she had been with someone else.”

Ava stared at him. She didn't say anything.

Alex tossed the cigarette and started the car. He shifted, and it jumped forward, shivering slightly.

“I know a place we can go,” he said.

25.

“Fear pushes you forward.” Somebody said that. Was it Anne Sexton, pushing her way through dark rooms? Phantoms of some trouble, pursuing her? Voices? The mood could change in a snap. Could be bravery. Bravery is when you're too stupid to think twice, think it over, think again. All of a sudden you're emptying machine-gun clips and pulling grenade pins with your teeth. Maybe it was Audie Murphy who said that. Maybe it was a Sam Fuller film. A door, and you run through.

This door, two doors down from the Dominican restaurant. A thin narrow hall. Wooden stairs. The strong smell of glue, paper, machine oil. It felt far from the street on that metal landing with its lone lightbulb on a string. It was as if she had gone subterranean. There was a knot in her stomach. There was that gun in her purse. There was that Alex beside her, with his strong guardians and his way of saying nothing. Strange truths showed in his eyes. She was always checking in there. He was right not to want to go back to his apartment. It could be the first place One-Eye would come looking for them, though she told him it was unlikely he would mount a big search. One-Eye would probably be trying very hard not to be found. If Alan found him, he sure wouldn't have to use scopolamine to get him to talk. Alex thought of calling someone named Monk, but as Monk lived in the same building, he would call the next best thing, he said. A guy named Mink, who lived down the block. His door was painted with the most interesting rendition of the universe she had ever seen. It was lustrous black with silver stars and shimmery belts of planets. The Milky Way, the Big Dipper, they were all there. The thing was, the planets the stars and all other things of substance were blocks and cubes. Not just flat squares with tight lines but three-dimensional objects of weight and depth. Real, unreal. Unseen before, but completely familiar. She stood there quite awhile after the door had opened, weaving her way past planets she knew, running her fingers over their stubby shapes, those vivid colors, those strange, glowy pulsations.

“Take your time,” Mink said. “There's more inside.”

Mink Presario Ravel Melendez; “Just call me Mink.” Shook with both hands, like a statesman. A paint-spattered Ice Cube shirt. A way of looking into her eyes that made her feel he was standing closer than he actually was. He had the manner of a garrulous host at a gala opening, words all rush rush rush. Big, sweeping gestures, and a voice that filled the room. When Alex introduced them, Mink's face tilted when he heard the name.

“Your name is Ava?”

“Yes. Ava as in Gardner, not Gabor.”

“Or Braun.”

“Excuse me?”

“I've actually seen you before,” he said.

“Really?”

“Yes. I went upstairs with Alex on Sunday morning. You were asleep. Alex wanted me to get a look at you because, well, frankly, sometimes Alex has problems with his memory and doesn't always recall where he picked up his last … He thought I might know you from somewhere.” He turned to Alex. “You didn't tell her?”

“You kind of beat me to it.”

“Well. You actually did pop up on the boy, he was really a little baffled—” Mink looked at Alex and cut his words short. The three of them stood there a moment, not saying anything. “We're used to him baffled,” he added. “It's nothing new.”

She had barely entered the place. The hallway was paint cans and piles of wood, canvases up against the wall. A box of tools. An empty fish tank, some bricks and colored rocks. Entryway to a kitchen as big as any found in a restaurant. Everything in there bright silvery steel, industrial strength refrigerator, gleaming Metro shelves. It was just a glimpse.

“So where's Monk?” Alex asked, into the weird quiet. “It's the second time I see you without a Monk attached.”

“He was just here,” Mink said. “He left after taking one look at the picture I just painted. Said he had a book to finish, and ran out.”

“I couldn't get him on the phone.”

“You can forget about that.” Mink looked at Ava like he had just remembered she was standing there. “Did I tell you? He's writing a book about Alex. He's been wanting that for about a year now. Hadn't really been able to start it until this weekend. He needed a spark. Saturday night we should've been together someplace getting drunk. Instead we had a fight. He went home and was looking out his window around 4 in the morning, when he saw this blond woman in a minidress climbing up the fire escape.”

“Really,” Ava said, face showing no emotion.

“That's right,” Mink said. “Some blonde climbing up to Alex. And maybe that was what he needed to start his book. I don't know if that's exactly what he's writing, but, you know … a spark. I've got some water on. Would you like any tea?”

He had walked them into the living room, a wide space that yawned out from the narrow entrance. Ava's mouth dropped. She did not know where to look first.

“Sure,” she answered.

“You make yourself comfortable,” he said to her, pulling on Alex's arm. “You come help.”

The living room was lit from above by some shimmery sun through a skylight. Not dingy frosted glass like you see at the top of some stairwells but beautiful bright glass full of sky and old rain that collected like tears along the cracks. She looked up, she spun around, she was Alice in fucking Wonderland.

“What the fuck?” Mink said, once he had Alex in the kitchen. “Is that woman safe to be around?”

“Yes.”

“Right. Like Monk didn't tell me she hit you twice.”

“She's been through a lot.”

“You sure she's not going to go psycho on us or some shit?”

“I'm sure.”

“Why doesn't she go to the cops?”

“Trust me. The cops can't help her.”

“I'd believe that if she was a spick like us. She's a white girl, Alex. I never took you for the naïve type.” Mink came closer and lowered his voice. “How do you know she didn't off that guy in the paper? How do you know she's not standing in my living room right now with a gun in her hand?”

Alex let those night images wash over him, of Ava moving in the moon dark. Of Ava lying beside him in bed. Of his fingers touching her wet face.

“I just know,” he said, right as the tea kettle started to whistle.

It was warehouse size, it was loft without the tepid grandeur of Soho. It was Grand Central Station, the high ceilings all starry starry night, the smell of acrylic and wood. Stars zipped across walls, leaving trails like the kind she remembered seeing in children's books. A big leather couch. A group of theater seats swiped from somewhere, four in a row placed directly in front of the flat-screen TV.

Mink grabbed some mugs, popped teabags into them.

“When I first saw her face,” he said, “I saw things there, even in sleep. It's a beautiful face. It has a smooth purity, like a black-and-white film sequence from a '30s film. It made me think briefly of Tamara de Lempicka, maybe of her
Sleeping Woman
painting or maybe
Young Girl with Gloves
, without, of course, that trademark tagliatelle hair. But there's something else, Alex. A hardness. A knowingness. She pulled strings. She's no curly haired innocent who just washed up on an island. She has a past, a heavy one.”

“Everybody has a past,” Alex said, picking up the tea kettle and pouring hot water into mugs. “Did you ever meet somebody and feel like you've already known them? Just from the get, have a sense of what they're capable of, and of what they're not?”

“No,” Mink said, “I haven't.”

“Me neither,” Alex said.

There, bookcases full of art books exploding outwards across chairs, and end tables burdened with magazines and newspapers. A fat ashtray loaded with butts and roach clips. The paintings, up on the walls around her. She could spin around and around and still not take it all in. She sat down on the couch. Barely had she settled before she noticed, nudging against her with a papery crackle, a copy of today's EL DIARIO, a paper she hadn't seen, hadn't picked up, already folded to page five, all those Spanish words about her and that big picture of her and David. That sudden deep stomach spasm.

“Oh boy,” she said, looking up. There were those green vines hanging down. Were those fake, or had she stepped into Mesopotamia?

“Actually, the Babylonians had the hanging gardens,” Mink said. Green lush hanging from sky lit by nature so jungle she expected to hear birds, the flapping of wings.

Mink slipped a warm mug into her hand. She pushed the newspaper away but he saw, he knew. She was bracing for questions, she was looking at Alex, but he sat beside her on the couch clutching his mug, that calm face showing no sign of tension.

“I hope you like chamomile,” Mink said to her.

“Yes, thank you.” She took a slow sip. “I know these paintings from somewhere.”

“Those on the far wall are some of my personal favorites: ALBIZU CAMPOS SKIMMING STONES WITH ALGER HISS; BULLET-RIDDLED BLOCKS AND CUBES NO. 6, and HECTOR LOVOE CAN FLY. They've made the rounds at shows and catalogs but I haven't sold them. My agent is furious, but I refuse to sell them, even though some are pretty well-known. That one there is called HE BELIEVES IN BOOTY. It was featured in a Björk video.”

“What is this?” Alex said, tasting his tea.

“That's green tea. Helps fight off those free radicals. Why do they have to call them ‘free radicals,' incidentally? Why not ‘free conservatives'?”

“Conservatives are never free,” Alex said, starting to roll a cigarette. “They always charge something.”

“Have you been painting a long time?”

“Since 1993 or so, after dropping out of college. But I haven't really painted in about a year.”

“I thought it was two years,” Alex said.

“Will you stop nit-picking? The fact is, I just finished my first real painting in over a year. It's vastly different from anything I've ever done. I'm a little nervous about it, really.”

Alex's phone rang. He whipped it out, checked the screen. “Hello,” he said.

“I know where I saw you,” she said, snapping her fingers. “It was freaking TIME magazine.”

“I was in there, yeah.”

“There was a picture of Kurt Cobain wearing a shirt you made, with these blocky cubes on it.”

Mink was laughing. “Yeah, yeah, I have that picture around here someplace. He autographed it for me.”

Alex snapped the phone shut. They both looked at him. “It was my boss,” he said. “I kind of walked off the job today.”

“Shit, that's right,” she said. “I got you in trouble again.”

“No you didn't. I told him I had an emergency.”

“I'm sorry, Alex. I didn't want to—”

“Forget it.”

“No, I really feel bad.”

“Just stop, okay?”

Mink watched them. Smiling to himself, he reached over to a nearby end table and pulled a framed picture out from under some magazines. He handed it to her.

“Ah shit,” she said, her face softening.

It was the picture of Kurt Cobain, guitarist and lead singer of Nirvana. He had short blond hair and darkrimmed glasses, his big blue eyes staring back earnestly. He was wearing the blocks and cubes T-shirt and had signed the picture.

“Boy, I miss him,” she said. “I was nineteen when he died. So many of the people I admire have killed themselves.”

“Oh yeah?”

Alex lit his cigarette.

“Yeah. Kurt Cobain, Marilyn Monroe, van Gogh. And a poet named Anne Sexton.”

Alex's eyes seem to glaze over for a moment. He puffed on the cigarette. He was thinking about how suicide must be the meanest trick one person could pull on another, a painful stabbing, a forever jab. Maybe a way to get back, a way to get even. A way to leave a throbbing wound that never heals. He passed Ava the cigarette.

“You never stop blaming yourself,” he said.

Ava puffed deep. Cigarette tip blazed orange angry. She didn't say anything. Mink noticed that just for a moment they both looked incredibly similar. Something in the eyes, the face. The way they passed that cigarette back and forth.

“Anne Sexton,” Mink said slowly, as if trying to recall an image. “I've heard the name, but I don't know her.”

The poem she recited was “Music Swims Back to Me.” She rolled out the lines effortlessly, as if they came from the moment and not from the pages of some book, digested long ago. Mink's eyes went round and troubled. Alex took pensive puffs. It seemed a poem about being institutionalized. It seemed a poem about Ava herself.

After the words died down, there was a moment of silence, just for Anne.

“Wow,” Alex said, passing the cigarette.

“How do you do that,” Mink asked, “memorize a whole poem? I'm lucky I can memorize my phone number.”

“I have a photographic memory. I know all of Anne, all of her.”

“Can you just look at a page and know it?”

Ava grinned at Mink. “I can read a page, then give it back to you, word for word.”

Something crossed Mink's face. It was puzzlement or suspicion or just the need to rise to a challenge. He fished around under the pile of magazines and pulled out a paperback. It was
American Psycho
by Bret Easton Ellis. Mink opened the book, picked a page, and handed it to her. “Let's see,” he said.

Alex sighed, looking at Mink as if to ask, is it really the time for this? Ava took the book. Took a moment. Read the page. Then she shut the book and handed it back.

Mink laughed. “But shit, I lost the page!”

“It's page 278,” she said.

There were four major air disasters this summer, the majority
of them captured on videotape, almost as if these events had been planned, and repeated on television endlessly. The planes kept crashing in slow motion, followed by countless roaming shots of the wreckage and the same random views of the
burned, bloody carnage, weeping rescue workers retrieving body parts. I started using Oscar de la Renta men's deodorant, which gave me a slight rash.