Malbech mixed with a handful of Cinnamon Toast Crunch tastes like a mulled cider. Camel lights and a Diet Coke together, taste like dirt in the mouth after a fight.
I had spent the day cleaning and waiting and drinking various concoctions. Mia had called six times before I had risen to put me on the task of getting us into the Whitney Art Party. She believed that I, having just worked with Blake Lively, a host for the evening, could finagle something.
I showered, considered our options and yielded to the easiest. I emailed Blake, almost knowing that she wouldn’t respond to an assistant from a film that she no longer worked on.
For most of the day I was infatuated with the idea of the party. Art, hors d’oeuvres and an open bar were the perfect reason to get dressed up. I wanted to be a young socialite. I found the lifestyle enviable. I also hadn’t really eaten in quite some time and loved the idea of free, especially when others were paying four hundred for admittance.
To take some time away from my obsessive computer searching, I went house ware perusing with my roommate. We found little of interest.
When we returned I opened more wine, knowing that I wouldn’t be entertaining any time soon. I had been saving it for when Jeffrey came to pick up his duvet and return my belt. I hadn’t heard from him in a few days, so I thought it was time to drink for me. I snatched a handful of the nourishing sugary carbohydrate cereal, and something compelled me to put it in my wine.
I put on a size two model cut Diane Von Furstenberg black mini, organized my apartment and called my mother to tell her I was cross dressing in expensive outfits. She laughed, told me to watch the Celtics play tonight and asked that I call her tomorrow. I set up furniture and looked through paperwork, then put my pants back on.
With the Malbech finished I grabbed a Diet Coke and I then went to my front stoop.
A boy had been passing by for a few days now. Normally he would make a comment. Still out there smoking? Don’t you do anything? Do you live in that building or on those stairs? This time, he stopped.
He introduced himself as Kenneth and sat a few steps below me. He was between fifteen and seventeen, clad in baggy shorts, nearly white socks and athletic sandals. His hair was almost fair. He was too young to smoke, but not too young to flirt with every woman that left my building.
I asked him to be nice. He told me he was just letting them all know how beautiful they were. It would make their day. I thought along the same lines so I let it continue.
He took out a dime bag filled with a decaying lemon lime sort of weed. He emptied its contents onto a dollar bill folded width wise. He then asked me to hold onto it.
We were quickly joined by a bartender from a corner dive. He was double both our ages and toting a large nylon bag of laundry. He placed it down and he disappeared with Kenneth. I sat on my steps holding the boy’s pot and watching the man’s laundry, almost eagerly awaiting their return. None of my neighbors came or went.
A few minutes passed before Kenneth returned and reintroduced himself as Killah.
I was an 88 now, or at least, that’s what he told me.
I asked him what an 88 was and he said it was the gang that he started in order to stay out of other people’s gangs. My eyes went to my boat shoes, up my skinny jeans, stopped momentarily on my white cardigan with no undershirt, my kerchief, brass ring with African sea glass and finally I took off and analyzed my hat. It was a Boshi-Basiik, made of felt. It was in the form of a Panda bear, with the eyes resting on my forehead and two felt ears sticking up. As if he understood that I didn’t feel like I fit the gang scene, he told me, “you’re an 88 for life.”
I asked him what our gang did.
“We don’t rape. We don’t kill. We just make money.”
Naturally, I wanted to know what my role would be.
“A lookout, a cover. You’re a ghost and then you’re a gentleman.” Something about those words struck me. I knew I was both, but I enquired as to what he meant.
“Cops, see, they’re our enemy. They are the biggest gang in the world. When they see me they think what’s going on here? How does that little nigger have money? They don’t see you like that. They don’t even see you. And then maybe when you get into some shit, then they’ll see you and say sir, what’s going on here? Is everything all right?”
“Me, I’ll either have a bullet in my head or end up back in jail.”
“You’ve been?” I asked.
“I’m out on bail. Armed robbery. It wasn’t. It was a shady drug deal.” He laughed.
He took his pot back from me and rolled a blunt. He then proceeded to light it up on my front stoop. He offered me a hit, but I told him I only do prescription drugs.
We then sat in silence while he smoked, occasionally making comments at people being walked by their dogs. For a minute I managed to convince him that the elderly Asian woman who was watching us from across the street had a thing for him.
When all was said and smoked he told me he was going to kill me that night.
I told him many people would cry.
He said if I could name five people before he could count to ten he would spare my life.
“My mother.”
“My roommate.”
“Maggie.”
“Mia.”
“Owen”
“Owen’s sister.”
He stopped me. I could have continued for hours.
“Four people would cry if I dropped dead right now. But at least my funeral would get my mother and my father out to see me.”
I asked if they lived in the complex down on the other side the block as well.
“The projects,” he said, “no, just my aunt.”
After some silence and an odd exchange of expressions he said goodbye. I went upstairs, suspending my hope that I would get into the Art Party – this year.
