IN THE MAGAZINE

DOLGIER - PART 2

By Richard Price

FROM THE NOVEL LUSH LIFE, TO BE PUBLISHED IN MARCH 2008.


When the white guy said whatever the fuck dumb thing he said, Little Dap saw Tristan go way too stiff and bughouse, Little Dap wishing he had the gun instead right then, in order to pistol-whip this hero into a different attitude. In fact, he was about to reach for the gun, take it from Tristan’s knotty grip, but then—pop—too late, the guy chest shot, looking up on impact as if someone had called his name from a window, then crumpling without ever looking back down, Tristan quick-stooping over him, like to take a bite out of his face, hissing, “Oh!” Little Dap hissing, “Go!” yanking him out of there, and then the two of them just flew straight south on Eldridge, booking so fast to the Lemlichs that Little Dap’s side-eye vision was just a blur of riot gates. They swooped around one drunk couple like whitewater past a rock, then came up on an old Chinese dude, the guy wide-eyed, automatically going for his wallet. But as soon as they hit the far side of Madison, Dap grabbed the back of Tristan’s hoodie, pulling him to a stop, “Walk,” the word a wheeze, then gasped, “Roof,” before walking away from him a half block down Madison to the corner of Catherine so they’d cross over to the Lemlichs unrelated, the both of them breathing through their mouths, staring straight ahead as if blind to each other’s existence, entering the grounds, then heading to 32 St. James, entering the lobby at the same time, fucked that up, then taking the separate stairwells on either side of the elevator bank, lunge-climbing the thirty half flights up to the fifteenth floor, then together silently taking the sole stairway to the roof door, pushing through to the gravel and almost walking into the two housing cops who had their backs to them, hunched over the riverside railing, taking five after a vertical patrol, tapping cigarette ash while discussing the view: Wall Street, the East River bridges, the Brooklyn Promenade, the Heights. “A kick-ass Trump view,” one cop said, then speculating how much it would go for on the open market. “All you have to do is lose the fifteen stories’ worth of shitskins living under it.”

Little Dap and Tristan hid behind the now wide-open roof door breathless, Tristan’s hand like a claw on the outside doorknob. The two of them remained in a frozen crouch until the cigarette butts were air-dropped over the edge and the cops turned, walking back, Little Dap praying they wouldn’t notice that the roof door was wide-open now, the two of them hunkered behind it; then at the last moment Little Dap had to yank Tristan’s hand off the outside doorknob so the cops could pull the fucking thing shut behind them.

Still in that crouch, they listened to the shuffling echo of footsteps heading down, then finally bolted for the west edge of the roof to look back at where they had come from. They couldn’t see through the snaggle of walk-ups, new green-glass high-rises, and towers of add-ons, nor could they hear sirens or any other sounds of alarm, but the body was out there, it was out there.

Tristan stood rooted in the pea gravel of the roof, his tongue dry as leather in his mouth, pictures and sensations jumping around in him; the small kick in his grip when he squeezed one off, the guy looking up on impact, the whites of his eyes all visible beneath, then again and again, that unexpected jolt in his hand like the snap of a dog as the .22 bucked. Did he mean to shoot? He didn’t know. He was OK though.

He surprised himself by going off into remembering when he was little and living in that other projects in Brooklyn with his grandmother, the time that him and those kids were messing around inside the elevator shafts, jumping from the top of the one car that was going up, to the top of the other car that was going down, when that boy Neville had slipped, got trapped between the cars going in opposite directions, how the feathers just exploded out of the back of his puffy coat when the edge of the up car slashed it open, slashed him open, then more feathers coming out later as the medics scissored it up the back trying to get at whatever was left inside.

“Are you deaf?” Little Dap hissed without turning his head from the view. “I said, give me the motherfuckin’ gun!”

Tristan reached into the pocket of his hoodie, panicking a second because there was nothing in there, then discovered that the .22 was still clutched in his right hand, had been in his right hand since he’d squeezed one off.

“OK.” Little Dap took it, still looking straight ahead in the direction of the body. “OK. You say anything?” Shaking his head wheezing, “You say to, like, anybody?” Taking a breath. “I got this now,” holding up the .22, “Got your prints all over it.”

Tristan had the thought, “Got your prints too with you holding it,” but figured it had to be more complicated than that. Didn’t it?

Then suddenly Little Dap had him from behind in a bear hug, was thrusting his crotch into the seat of his jeans and hissing in his ear, “You like this? It’s all day all night in there like this, you hear me? But you ain’t even gonna make it that far.” Tristan wanted to laugh at that, big gladiator-school man, but then Little Dap squatted behind Tristan’s legs, brought his hands in another bear hug around his thighs, and lifted him off the gravel, tilting him almost upside down over the too-low railing, Tristan mute with terror, the blood bubbling in his temples as he clawed for purchase on the outside metal grille that separated him from a fifteen-story drop.

“Nobody knows nothing. You don’t say nothing, it’s gonna stay that way.” Little Dap hissed, his grip slipping a little. Tristan jerked a few inches closer to the earth, his mind a screech. “Now. You know they gonna come in here knocking on doors looking, so don’t you give them a reason to knock on your door, look at you, you hear me? Because I am not going back to that place.” Even in his white shock, Tristan could hear the blubbery catch in Little Dap’s throat.

Little Dap hauled him back up, Tristan silently dropping to one knee just to feel the gravel beneath him.

“I’m goin’ downstairs,” Little Dap said, his voice still shaky. “You wait twenty minutes, then you come down.” He started to walk to the roof door, then turned again. “And now on? You don’t even look at me.”

Half an hour later Tristan ninja-walked past his ex-stepfather’s bedroom to the one he shared with the three hamsters, all four mattresses packed so close it was like one wall-to-wall bed. Tristan’s bed was the third or the second in, depending if you were counting from the window side or the closet. The boy, Nelson, to his left was six; the girl Sonia, to his right, five; the baby, Paloma, three.

There was a note on his pillow: DON’T THINK YOU WON’T PAY FOR THIS, written in the same painstakingly fancy print as the House Rules pushpinned to the bedroom wall.

Tristan went into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. After a long moment, he turned on the hot water, running it as quietly as possible, reached inside the medicine chest for his stepfather’s disposable, and started to shave for the first time since he was old enough to grow the goatee. When he was done, the fat white lightning bolt still ran in a jagged S-curve from his left cheek to the corner of his mouth then out the opposite corner and down to the right side of his jawline. The tight beard had covered enough so that at least it wasn’t the first thing he saw whenever he happened to catch his own reflection in a store window, but the sight of it now completely exposed after all this time was a raw shock, kicking up some more unasked-for memories.

Heading back to the bedroom he pulled his spiral beat book out from beneath the mattress and tried to put down some lines.


Touch me once ill touch you twice.


But nothing else came to mind so he put the notebook back in its hiding place.

A few minutes later when he finally lay flat on his back, he heard the first bird out there, the first bird in the world, sunrise in a half hour, school business a half hour after that.

Closing his eyes he once again felt the buck of the .22, saw the guy’s eyes going up, up, then listened to that bird again, its insane tweety song. Turning his head to the window, he saw its trembling, magnified silhouette against the lightly flapping manila shade; monster bird.

He stared at the ceiling for a bit, then closed his eyes again.

He was OK.


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