Hipster Death Rattle Page 2

  “The one here on Bushwick Avenue?”

  “Right at the corner,” she said. “They close. Now I have to walk three more blocks.”

  “It’s important to get those ninety-nine-cent bargains.”

  Picking up on the sarcasm in his voice, she said, “Smartypants. They cheap. Everything is so expensive at the supermarket.”

  “You’re completely right. It’s probably going to turn into another CVS or TD Bank,” Tony said. “Just what the world needs.”

  “You want some more spaghetti?”

  His plate was still half full. “Give me time to eat this, Ma. What’s up with the landlord, by the way? Anything happen with that?”

  “They still going to raise my rent. Nine hundred dollars! That’s double.”

  “Almost double.” Tony couldn’t help correcting her. “You’ve been very lucky so far. But that’s why you need a lease. Needed. I told you.”

  “I live here ten years with no lease.”

  “That was with Norma’s mother. But Margarita died, and now Norma can do whatever she wants because you didn’t sign a lease.”

  “Margarita was my friend. She no raise my rent for eight years.”

  “I know, Ma. When would the new lease start?”

  “No sé. She said maybe August.”

  “You know,” he said, “you could move in with Jerry.” Tony’s brother Geraldo—who insisted on being called “Jerry”—was a successful stockbroker who left the neighborhood the first chance he got. He lived in six-bedroom McMansion in Montclair. “You’d have to babysit his four kids.”

  “They nice kids.”

  “You called them dirty brats. And you hate his wife.”

  Tony’s mother shrugged. “She’s nice.”

  “First of all, you called her a two-face and a drunk.”

  “A little.”

  “Second, they have two cats.”

  “Ai, gatos!”

  “The brats and the wife are fine,” said Tony. “But it’s the cats that upset you.”

  “We see,” she said, patting his hand. “I love this apartment. This is my home.”

  “I know, Ma, but it’s not a horrible idea to move to Jerry’s. I have no room at my place.”

  “Ai, but you could move back here. You eat good every night. Your room is there ready.”

  Tony’s mother had moved here from the apartment where he had been born (literally, in the kitchen) and raised in Los Sures (the Southside), after the landlord had hiked her rent. Somehow she had kept his old bedroom intact, like a museum exhibit, all those years.

  Moving back home made financial sense, but it had taken him years after college to save enough to move out, and there was no way he was coming back, not for all the spaghetti and chicken and beer in the world. “Not happening, Ma.”

  After dinner, she watched her favorite novela while Tony read through the news on his laptop.

  First, the Daily News. Groping teacher’s aide. Shooting at a concert. Owner of hipster BBQ spot stole overtime pay. Nothing on the slasher attacks. The Post, same. Gothamist, New York Times, nada. He worked on the Times crossword.

  When Tony got up to leave, his mother said, “Already?”

  “Yep.”

  At the door, she said, “You have to be careful. Somebody cut those people on the news. Two people got stabbed.”

  “Technically, they were slashed. But, Ma, those happened late at night, way on the other side of the neighborhood. You don’t have to worry.”

  “That girl they got was by the big bank, right over here.”

  “That’s a mile away. And it’s not the Williamsburgh Savings Bank anymore. It’s a gallery. Or a CVS. Or a TD Bank. Something like that.”

  “They said it was a guy on a bicycle.”

  “I also heard it was ten guys on motorcycles. I don’t know which one is true. Maybe they used hoverboards.”

  “You have to be watching. Remember what happened to my friend Rosa.”

  “That was a year ago and completely unrelated.”

  “You should find out what happened. You could do it.”

  “Not my job, Ma. Not anymore. I’ve got smaller fish to fry.”

  “You want some ice cream before you leave?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Tony’s mother served him a bowl of ice cream, and when he finished it he asked her if she was okay for rent. She said she was fine. He kissed her goodnight and took his last ten bucks and handed it to her.

  “You keep it,” his mother said, gently pushing it back to him.

  “Ridiculous. Take it.”

  “I’m not ridiculous. You’re ridiculous,” she said. “You need it more than me.”

  She was right, of course. He said, “About your rent—”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I find a way.”

  On his way home from the L, Tony stopped at a corner to change his music. Too much Tom Waits and your brain turns to cigarette tar. The night air was dense with humidity, and Tony pinched and pulled the front of his T-shirt to unstick it from his skin.

  The traffic light was against him, and like any New Yorker he would have crossed anyway, but there was a car service car, a couple of Titanic-sized SUVs, then a Mini Cooper, and so he waited. He felt the weight of the pétanque balls, the laptop in his bag, the thick sweat on his face.

  Directly across the street, some dude, wearing huge headphones and texting away, walked straight into the traffic. A car screeched around him.

  “Just asking to get killed,” Tony said to himself. As the oblivious dude walked past, Tony gave the dirtiest look he could muster.

  So Tony didn’t see the cyclist rocketing down the sidewalk behind him until he zipped by, inches in front of him. The spokes of the bicycle wheels ticked madly away.

  “Sesquiculus,” Tony swore. Asshole and a half!

  He remembered then what Gary had said and what his mother had said. Tony liked to think of himself as brutally logical, but he couldn’t stop the goosepimples rising along his arms and the hair standing up on the back of his neck. Ridiculous.

  CHAPTER THREE

  On his way to work at the Williamsburg Sentinel, Patrick Stoller skateboarded up Bedford Avenue. One of Brooklyn’s major arteries, Bedford was usually filled with cars and buses and jaywalkers. All those vehicles, all those people were a total killjoy and turned skateboarding from a pure hum of a ride into ugly, jagged noise.

  But that early on a Saturday morning, the streets were empty, except for a truck or car, a few homeless people, and stragglers getting home late or starting the day early.

  Patrick skateboarded past South 3rd, South 2nd Street, South 1st, Grand Street. Back in Allentown, PA, he used to glide every day along the smooth and steep blacktop of “Weed” Avenue. (It was really Tweed Avenue, but someone would cross out the “T” every time the street sign was replaced.) That’s what Bedford was like this early in the morning, smooth sailing from door to door.

  He jumped a curb at North 1st to cut in front of a galumphing B62 bus whose driver, perhaps not wanting to break the sweet tranquility of the morning, gave him a half-hearted honk.

  Patrick wore a dirty mint-green Mets baseball cap over his curly red hair. He wore glasses with thick, black frames; navy blue velvet sneakers; and a too-small black T-shirt that read “Does NY ❤ You Back?”

  He intentionally stopped at the corner of Bedford and North 7th to check his iPhone. His background pic was of his ex-girlfriend Kirsten (in that lacy pink teddy of hers, grrrr). He’d have to change that picture someday. She lived a block from where he was standing, in a walkup above The MeatLoaf Shoppe. But she’d be sleeping off her bartending gig right about then. No chance he’d run into her, although what would be the harm of just riding past her window?

  There it was.

  There it went slowllllly.

  At the corner, he stopped again, kicking up his board and heading into a bakery. He ordered a yogurt muffin and a chai latte.

  But back on the blacktop, he
hit a divot and the bag of latte and muffin flew—crashing and splashing into the street.

  “Double fuck,” he said. He used the stop as a chance to check his phone again.

  Patrick had moved to Brooklyn six years ago, to live in the city where some of his all-time favorite writers use to work and love and dream. Auster! Wolfe! Eggers! Klosterman! A friend had had a place in Greenpoint, a two-bedroom with crooked floors and more roaches than Patrick had ever seen in his life. Colonies of them! He crashed on the couch there. Five roommates. No heat in the winter. But at least it wasn’t Allentown. At least it was a step closer to his literary dreams.

  There was a bodega up the corner from the office, one of those old-fashioned ones with a red corrugated metal awning and yellow panels of lettering announcing “Hot & Cold Sandwiches,” “Comida Latina,” “Meat & Groceries.” He usually avoided bodegas because the first time he had gone into one the cashier didn’t speak English, or pretended she didn’t, and she totally over-charged him. But he was too hungry now to be picky.

  Inside, an old man stood behind a clear plastic wall on the counter. The wall was lined with cubbyholes filled on the lower levels with candy and on the top levels with band-aids, aphrodisiacs, and more candy. Skateboard in hand, Patrick asked for a coffee. The old man behind the counter pointed, and Patrick turned to see a coffeemaker and a column of cups.

  “Whoa, styrofoam,” Patrick said.

  But where was the milk? He turned to the old man, who was already pointing at the refrigerator case.

  Patrick looked around the counter for food. He couldn’t identify some orange things with rainbow sprinkles in the plastic case, so he grabbed what appeared to be an apple turnover in cellophane.

  “I get a bag?” he said, not looking at the cashier but down at his iPhone again.

  The Williamsburg Sentinel inhabited a storefront on Roebling Street. It lived in two small backrooms of the copy shop/real estate/notary public business of Bobbert Swiatowski, the publisher of the Sentinel. Patrick came in almost every day but got the most work done on weekends, when Bobbert was not around and constantly asking about ad sales.

  Of the two back rooms, one was all Bobbert’s. It was piled high with thirty years of back issues. As managing editor, Patrick had his desk in the other room, a cramped ten-by-twelve space he shared with three old metal desks for the freelancers. An archaic air conditioner loudly kept the room tolerable. But when the freelancers came in, as they liked to do on weekends, it would get crowded and hot in there. Another reason he liked to arrive early.

  He thought he might work on his novel before the freelancers showed up. He checked in in the airless, windowless little bathroom they had, then he put his iPhone right on the desk next to his mouse, stuck in his earbuds.

  Just after 10 a.m., Tony Moran came in carrying his messenger bag, in shorts and a faded T-shirt. He looked grumpy. But he always looked grumpy.

  “Hey, Tony,” Patrick said. “Listen, I got some things that need revising, and, uh, I was wondering, would you mind ghostwriting Psally the Psychick’s column again? She’s still in Budapest, and she says she’s not feeling inspired, so…”

  “But she’s the one with the magical powers. I just used fortune cookies and Oprah quotes.”

  “Can you please write it? You did so good with it in the last issue.”

  “As long as I get the same rate she does.”

  “Of course.”

  “When do you need this by?”

  “Today?”

  “Oh boy,” Tony said. “I’ve got four other stories to turn in. I can squeeze this in. After this though, I’m retiring my psychic powers.”

  “Understood. You’re a pal, Tony, you really are.”

  “Don’t get emotional on me.”

  A half hour later, Gabrielle walked in, in a haze of auto-tuned music that screeched from her earbuds. She wore gray leggings, beach flip-flops, an oversized T-shirt. Her hair was pulled back severely into that smooth head and ponytail that Latinx women seemed to like to do. She mumbled a “Good morning.”

  Patrick could smell the fast food in her bag. He saw her eat a yogurt. Once. At times, he had smelled the liquor and cigarettes on her from the night before. She plopped herself down at her usual desk by the door.

  Tony, popping out his earbuds, said to her, “Did you oversleep again or are you just coming back from a rave?”

  “A rave? Shut up. I got a mad headache,” she said. “Hey, guess what I saw on the subway this morning?”

  “What?”

  “A guy with a suit made out of grass. Real grass, I swear!”

  Patrick thought this sounded totally cool, but before he could say anything, Tony said, “You’re kidding. He was wearing a lawn?”

  “Yes! I’m mad serious.”

  “That’s Williamsburg for you,” Tony said. “Halloween all year long. I hope he likes his job at the art gallery and/or coffee shop.”

  “Lolz.”

  In the early afternoon, everyone in the room worked in their own little worlds, earbuds on. Gabrielle worked on ad sales, but on weekends she helped to proofread articles. Although she never found any mistakes.

  A loud spaceship alarm went off. Patrick’s iPhone. He rushed to pick it up, almost knocking it on the floor. It was a call.

  Jackie Tomasello was a real estate queen in charge of Tomasello Management, one of the paper’s biggest advertisers. She emailed them all her ads. If she was calling, it was to complain.

  “Patrick, how are you?” she said. Without waiting for him to answer, she said, “There’s a typo in my ad on page six in the last issue. It’s a one-bedroom on Berry Street, not Berry Stret. It’s a full-page ad, Patrick, with a mistake in it. It cost me a lot of money. I’m not paying for this ad, you understand? I get page six next month again. Free. Tell your boss. Thank you.” She hung up.

  Bobbert would not be happy about this. But it wasn’t unusual. She got a lot of free placement in the paper all the time. They needed to fill the pages anyway.

  As he went to put his phone down, it sounded again—a teletype noise. He gripped the phone tightly. That meant a text. This was it.

  The text read: “Kent + S 3. 1AM 2nite.”

  “1AM?” Patrick texted back.

  “2nite or never.”

  “It’s cool. I’ll b there,” he texted back. Then he added: “How will I know u?” Which felt like a cliché, amateur question as soon as he sent it.

  “I no u.”

  Patrick didn’t know how to respond, so he just typed, “k.” Out of habit, he was about to add a smiley face but stopped himself.

  He stared at his phone screen. It was actually going to happen.

  At his desk, he tried to concentrate. He put back all the contractions he had removed from a profile of a local mayonnaise artisan.

  Gabrielle yelled from across the small room. “I read what you gave me. I didn’t find any mistakes,” she said.

  Patrick thanked her.

  “So I’m going to go.”

  When she left, Tony told her to “Get home safe.”

  She answered, “Yeah, right.”

  They laughed, but Patrick didn’t see what the joke was. These two always had their in-jokes. He had tried to hang out with them a couple of times, to be more of a friend than a co-worker, but they never seemed to click.

  Soon afterward, Tony packed up to go. Patrick stopped in the middle of editing and swiveled around.

  “Hey, Tony, listen. Uh, you busy tonight? I’m working on something, something for the paper, something long range, and I could use some help.”

  Tony looked up, eyebrows raised high. “Nope. Sorry. Got plans. What is it? A rewrite? Maybe I can help out tomorrow.”

  “Um, nah, that’s okay. No worries. It’s nothing. I can do it.”

  “All right. See you next week.”

  Tony stopped at the door. “I was going to ask you—anything happening with Rose Irizarry? You know, the old lady who disappeared.”

  “Y
eah, I know who you’re talking about. What do you mean? Why the interest?”

  “No, no real interest. Funny thing is my mother asked me about it again. They knew each other from church. Not good friends, but she’s always bringing it up to me as an example of rampant crime in the neighborhood. Anyway, it’s been a year since this lady’s disappearance. Are we going to do a follow-up story on the anniversary, where the investigation is, that kind of nonsense?”

  Patrick flipped his hands up, accidentally sending the red pencil in his hand flying. As he bent to look for it on the floor, he said, “Oh, totally. It’s going to be a cover piece. It’s important not to let her be forgotten, you know? Why do you ask? Did you—” He found the pencil and held it up like an exclamation point. “Did you want to help on it?”

  “Nah,” Tony said. “It’s not my sort of thing. I was just curious.”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  It was late when Tony left, and Patrick was left alone in the office. He tried to work. The room felt very warm and very quiet.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  At a quarter to one in the morning, Patrick shut down his computer and locked up the office. He boarded down the streetlamp-lit sidewalk on Metropolitan Avenue. The heat had relaxed, but the humidity was still thick. People were out, walking hand in hand or in shoulder-to-shoulder groups. He had to skateboard through and around and right in front of them.

  On the stoops and in front of tenement buildings, Latinx families were gathered together. How family-oriented those people were, how tightly knit. Totally cool, Patrick thought, totally nice.

  He zigzagged across Berry Street, onto South 1st, then Wythe, South 2nd, and finally came to stop at the corner of Kent Avenue and South 3rd. Almost no one was around. There was an empty lot across the street, a closed store on the other side. Behind him, an abandoned factory blocked the glittery and valuable view of Manhattan. Prime real estate. It wouldn’t be abandoned for long. Through its fences, past years of discarded cans and weeds cracking through the concrete, he could still see the East River crawling along, black and viscous.

  It was quiet on that corner. The usual Billyburg crowds were probably at home being lulled to sleep by their air conditioners.