South by South Bronx (3 page)

Slam.

Those big
camiones
,
dando pa'tras
.

Mink walked out of the Greek's. He was no man of inaction and was thinking about what he was going to do to put things right. Should he have said such a thing to Monk—that there was nothing in his head? It could have stung Monk way too deep to hear the truth … More writers kill themselves annually than painters. It was a fact. No matter how much they fought in the past, Monk always came back with the counter-punch. It wasn't like him to not even call. Mink refused to be responsible for such a thing. He was imagining what Monk would say as he headed for his stoop, when he spotted Alex coming out of the building. Mink froze to the spot.

Alex looked dishevelled, shuffling along in old loafers, his hair tall grass wild. A sleepwalker, not looking right nor left. Alex was a good buddy of Monk's. The two were pretty tight. Monk was always talking about doing a book about him. Is that what was going on? Maybe Monk had gotten together with Alex last night to brainstorm for his book. This thought was enough to redirect Mink away from the stoop, to fall right into step with Alex. The slow walk to the corner, sun so bright. Alex gave Mink a wide-eyed stare like everything was happening too fast for him.

“I decided fuck it,” Mink said. “I'm not playing his game.”

A groan of approval from the group of red-eyed men as the riot gates on the liquor store rolled upwards.

“Okay,” Alex said.

5.

Mink knew Alex because of Monk.

Mink used to throw a lot of parties, and weekly. There was that big roof, the glittery skylight, a South Bronx veranda decked with Chinese lanterns and lush plants of various persuasions. The perfect place for all-night
lechón
roasts and FANIA ALL-STARS. The locals could crank up a nice vibe and friends from downtown completed the show. (Mink used to bus in the white folks from a club downtown.) Monk was a regular who one night last year walked in with Alex.

The moment Alex appeared, something happened to all the women in the room. It started with their eyes, looking at him. They walked up to him, talked to him, got him drinks, followed him from room to room. Alex was oblivious and concentrated on the next drink. Mink and Monk were transfixed, watching the room empty of ladies every time Alex stepped out—kitchen, living room, the long blue hallway lined with Mink's paintings: He moved, they moved. Up on the roof, they started dancing. Amidst flashing lights he was mixing drinks, a line of women waiting to get
mojitos
from him. These ladies, whether spandex crinoline panty hose or combat boots, all were drawn to him—white not white class no class and even a few models. Monk talked about doing a book about him, Mink already with a possible cover—that sketch of his lean angular face trapped in a prism of female torsos.

It was a running joke with them, that he was never with the same girl twice. That changed last spring, when Belinda came to live with him. No telling what buttons she pushed to get to stay, but there he was, time and again with the same woman. He brought her to the parties, was seen going with her to the movies, shows, strolls through St. Mary's, snacking on slices at the pizzeria. Mink and Monk placed bets on how long this would last. It wasn't that they didn't like her. She was smart, funny, unbearably cute. She came, and she came to stay. But there was something troubled about the Alex they found sitting in his apartment, surrounded by flowered curtains, fistfuls of daisies, and those embroidered
tapetes
she knitted.

Three months later, Alex was appearing at parties by himself again. Belinda was gone. Spotted him some mornings, sitting on the stoop. A vague stunned look and a cigarette. A mass of furniture outside the building one day. Carpets, two bureaus, a full-length mirror, boxes of books, magazines, kitchen stuff, knick-knacks, a bed complete with headboard and box spring. Mink took the love seat. It was cushy and retro, a sad bronze color.

A week after that, Alex was walking down 149th Street with a Dominican
trigueña
named Sandra, talkative about past lives and her penchant for
Santería
. Three days later it was Alicia, who dressed like Shakira but sounded like Cher. On the fourth day, Tina. (Monk kept up with his notepad.) Alex talked less and drank more. He withdrew, but the less he spoke the more women were drawn to him. He frequently forgot things. Sometimes a vague medicinal smell about him, as if his pores sweated 100 proof. What happened when, he didn't want to talk about. He could just stay quiet a long time until that moment of insight, muttered words after cigarette puff. Mink thought he was disappearing, a little unconscious, unable to add the parts, or unwilling. He seemed to be wherever he was by chance, adrift and waiting to adapt to the next swing, the down pitch of the boat. Was it the liquor? Only his cousin Benny could bring up questions like that. Most times Alex would just smile vague, eyes misted over like the addict fighting sleep. He had that look this very morning. There was nothing unwelcoming about it. Mink walked with him like it was all part of the plan.

The liquor store was air-conditioned. There was already a line inside. Three scruffies waiting for their fix. Smell of moldy cardboard. A thick glass that separated the rows of bottles from customers. The guy lurking behind the glass looked as shady as any drug dealer. The bells on the door tinkled shrill.

“Well, Sir Alex Rodriguez,” Mink said. “Up at noon on a Sunday? I don't believe it.”

Alex squinted. His T-shirt was inside out.

“Mink Ravel Presario Melendez.” He said it slow, like he was memorizing. “How fun, seeing you without a Monk attached.”

“We're fighting,” Mink said.

“What's new about that?”

“What do you want?” the guy behind the glass yelled to the first scruff.

“Hey, speaking of, have you seen Monk? He didn't show last night. I'm a little worried about the guy. You know, on account of, he's been a little bit of a mess lately.”

The first scruff stuck his dollar bills in a hole in the glass. He walked out with his crumpled plastic bag.

“I haven't seen him, no. I stopped by his door on the way down.”

“What do you want?” the guy behind the glass yelled.

“I knocked but he wouldn't open.”

“Ahh, man, you see what I mean? The guy's in bad shape. Did you call the cops or anything? Maybe we should call the cops.”

Alex grinned. The third scruff turned and left with his goods.

“Cops?”

“Yeah, man. Fucking guy could be hanging from the ceiling already.”

“What did you do to him?”

“Nah, don't you know more writers kill themselves annually than painters? It's a fact.”

“What?” the guy behind the glass yelled.

Alex counted out the bills. He thrust them through the hole in the glass. “He's not dead,” he said. “He's typing.”

Mink felt a deep shudder. Turbulence rocked the plane.

“He's
what
?”

“He's hitting those keys hard and fast. You ever been on the island during one of those
aguaceros
, bro? Raindrops blasting hell on a tin roof. You can feel that shit in your chest.”

“The typing?”

“The rain, man. The rain.” Alex collected his bag of clinking bottles at the hole in the glass. “Do you always tune out when I talk about Puerto Rico?”

If Monk was typing, he was writing. He had six typewriters and he only used them for writing. The computer was for other stuff, like e-mails and scripts. Prose was what came out of the typewriters at Monk's house, and if the typewriters were going, there was prose. This feeling inside of Mink was like a burning and a freezing both at once.

“Puerto Rico?” They were outside again. “We weren't talking about no Puerto Rico. We were talking about typing. You said Monk is typing?”

Slow grin. A shake of the head. “Okay,” Alex said, fishing around in his bag. “After I have a drink, we head up there. You can hear for yourself.”

The sun climbed higher. A
piraguero
planted his cart on a corner by the bus stop, his block of ice gleaming like a diamond. Youngsters clutching towels and a big red cooler rounded the corner to the subway. A pair of moms parked strollers under the bodega awning to have a chat, heads bumpy with curlers. Clack clack clack, a pounding machine sound interrupted only by that little DING and then the sharp carriage SNAP back to more clack clack. Hadn't even reached Monk's floor but they could already hear the clatter batter. As they reached the door, a lull. A moment of quiet in the stairwell.

Alex pulled out the plastic pint of vodka. He uncapped it with a twist and took the first gulp. Shut his eyes a moment, almost breathless calm. Leaned up on the wall by Monk's door. When he opened his eyes, he looked grateful.

“Sunday mornings,” he said, “I get the shakes some. The sense of never-ending
ñoña
. Maybe the blurry-vision thing. After that first dose, I have to just be calm a moment. Wait for the brains to come back.”

He passed Mink the bottle. Mink waited. Would Monk hear them? Would he come to the door? Why that exciting sense that he was doing something wrong? Now he heard: another sheet of paper scrolled into the machine. Mink figured it must be that big gray Royal typewriter, that archaic paperweight that he noticed many times on top of the radiator in the living room. Monk must have moved it to the kitchen table for it to sound so loud. The typing began again, steady waves of clatter. It was action and speed, a solidly forward momentum.

Mink put bottle to lips. Took a deep swallow that burned a steaming path to his empty stomach. Bubbling lava. “Raindrops blasting hell on a tin roof,” he said.

“I'm waiting for a book,” Monk was always saying. On the stoop on the street by the coal-black bridge. “I'm waiting for a book.” Squinting into the distance. This clatter must be the sound of that big locomotive thundering into the station.

Alex's eyes blank. Nodding slow like he heard a good riff. Mink stopped him from knocking. The typing slowed to a trickle.

“But I thought you—”

“Forget it,” Mink whispered. The typing picked up speed. It was a motorboat now, chugging away from dock. Monk was doing something, and Mink—standing there like a peeping tom—was doing nothing.

He passed the bottle back. A warm fuzzy spreading out from his chest. The typing. Heavy rain thumping against an umbrella.

“I was going to ask him,” Alex said, motioning with his head.

Mink slowly registered the words. “Ask him?”

“You both. You're out on the street lots of the time when I come back from … dates.”

“Yes.” Mink felt like he was reminiscing. “We all know about your crazy Saturday nights. We always place bets on whether you'll come home with a blonde or a brunette.”

“That's just what I wanted to ask him. Ask you. Did you happen to notice? Last night?”

“Last night?”

“Yeah. What I came home with.”

Mink accepted the bottle. Two, three gulps of dazzling vodka burn. “I told you.” He passed it back. “Monk and I had a fight last night. We didn't get to the hangout part.”

Alex shut his eyes. Trying to recall. Answers on a test. “There was this lesbian circus act,” he said. “A Puerto Rican woman named Lourdes and a black woman named Sharon.”

“So
whoah
. There are two women in your crib right now?”

Alex took a calm sip.

“Nah, just one. A blonde.”

“That creep Monk. Now he owes me fifty bucks.”

The typing started again.

Mink thought about how strange it was, how mystical, to be right outside while Monk typed, like they were sharing the experience, like he was somehow part of it. Passing the bottle, celebrating the moment. A strange “being there.”

“A white girl,” Alex said.

“A white girl.” Mink now dizzy swirl from his earlymorning empty-stomach drunk, the vodka setting off fireworks behind his eyeballs. The typewriter clack clack. Like being on a train. “A white girl. Where did you pick that up?”

Alex shook his head. Tired laugh. “I don't know.”

Mink chuckled through spinning fiery vodka burst. He had thrown some crazy parties over the years but could only remember one time he woke up with someone he didn't know. The tequila smokes and those heavy doses of Pernod. He left her alone for an hour and she stole three of his paintings.

“Hey, man, you mean you left some strange woman alone in your house? Suppose she steals your stuff?”

“What stuff?”

Mink shrugged, recalling the empty Alex hut. God knows how he ever got all that stuff downstairs. Here today, gone tomorrow. He never asked them for help.

“Hey, you like blondes, right?” Alex was looking at him. Something insistent. A pimp baiting a john. “I'm thinking maybe you know her. She looks just like one of those model types that come to your parties.” Alex was already moving down the stairs. He capped the bottle and slipped it back into the bag that clinked with his other bottle friends. He was going down the stairs and Mink was following him. The sound of typing followed, lost in the stairwell. Replaced by pots and pans door slams and that lilting slow
bachata
creeping from old man Confesor's apartment.

“Come on up and see her,” Alex said.

Mink felt a blast of melancholy. He couldn't hear the typing anymore but knew it was still going on. The sense of momentum stayed with him, made him hate the narrow stairwell, the fragrance of coffee and, somehow, burned toast. He didn't want to be alone now. He followed Alex, thinking about the last time the guy had invited him to come up and “look” at a woman. It was just weeks after Belinda left. Her touch had been everywhere. The colorful curtains in the living room, the tasteful doilies under lamps, and fresh flowers. She adored daisies, their bright chatter killing any semblance of bleak. What a difference after she had gone, so much tunnel and blank. Alex had taken him straight to the bedroom to meet the woman. There was a fat spliff, some laughs, too much tequila. It was their first threesome, a sudden falling in. The thought of it gave Mink a stomach burn.

“Maybe this isn't such a good idea,” he said.

“Just come and look at her.”

“But you know what happened last time.”

“Last time what?”

Mink sighed. A definite advantage to blackouts. Alex moved fast, there was no hesitation to him. They had to go down to the lobby to cross to the stairwell on the other side. It was a big lobby, kept immaculate by Iris, the skinny beanpole daughter of the super. She had single-handedly found a way to restore the glittery old chandelier which had hung toothless for so many years until the day she found just the right crystal pieces to replace the missing. Now a return to the glory days of old, and how she shined up those big mirrors, frosted archaic and flowing up to the ceiling. Mink always paused to glance up at, to see himself faintly in the smoked glass. Up another stairwell to the top, the floors slick from a fresh mopping. Mink fought off thoughts. Liquor sometimes depressed him, robbed him of energy. He couldn't get that typewriter clack clack out of his head.

The apartment felt warmer than he would have expected for a place so empty. The living room was all windows, curtainless. A furry recliner in front of the TV. A VCR lay a few feet away, snaking its cables along the wood floor like umbilical cords. At the foot of the chair a bottle, empty but still standing post.