Let the Great World Spin

TAG

CATCH HIM HERE, IN THE CROOK of the carriages, with the morning already ovened up and muggy. Nine shots left on the roll. Nearly all the photos taken in darkness. Two of them, at least, the flash didn’t work. Four of them were from moving trains. Another one, taken up in the Concourse, was a pure dud, he was sure of it.

He surfs the thin metal platform as the train jags south out of Grand Central. At times he gets dizzy just anticipating the next corner. That speed. That wild noise in his ears. The truth is, it frightens him. The steel thrumming through him. It’s like he has the whole train in his sneakers. Control and oblivion. Sometimes it feels like he’s the one driving. Too far left and the train might smash into the corner and there’ll be a million mangled bodies along the rail. Too far right and the cars will skid sideways and it’ll be good-bye, nice knowing you, see you in the headlines. He’s been on the train since the Bronx, one hand on his camera, the other on the car door. Feet wide for balance. Eyes tight to the tunnel wall, looking for new tags.

He’s on his way to work downtown, but to hell with those combs, those scissors, those shave bottles — he’s hoping for the morning to open up with a tag. It’s the only thing that oils the hinges of his day. Everything else crawls, but the tags climb up into his eyeballs. PHASE 2. KIVU. SUPER

KOOL 223. He loves the way the letters curl, the arcs, the swerves, the flames, their clouds.

He rides the local just to see who’s been there during the night, who came and signed, how deep they got into the dark. He doesn’t have much time for the aboveground anymore, the railway bridges, the platforms, the warehouse walls, even the garbage trucks. Chumpwork that. Any chulo can do a throw-up on a wall: it’s the underground tags he’s grown to love the most. The ones you find in darkness. Way in the sides of the tunnels. The surprise of them. The deeper, the better. Lit up by the moving lights of the train and caught for just an instant so that he’s never quite sure if he’s seen them or not. JOE 182, COCO 144, TOPCAT 126. Some are quick scrawls. Others go from gravel to roof, maybe two or three cans’ worth altogether, letters looping like they want to keep from ending, as if they’ve taken themselves a lungful of air. Others go five feet along the tunnel. The best of all is an eighteen-foot stretch under the Grand Concourse.

For a while they were tagging with just one color, mostly silver so it’d shine in the depths, but this summer they’ve gone up to two, three, four colors: red, blue, yellow, even black. That stumped him when he saw it first — putting a three-color tag where nobody would see it. Someone was high or brilliant or both. He walked around all day, just turning it over in his mind. The size of the flare. The depth. They were even using different-size nozzles on their cans: he could tell by the texture of the spray. He thought of the taggers scooting in and ignoring the third rail, the rats, the moles, the grime, the stink, the steel dust, the hatches, the steps, the signal lights, the wires, the pipes, the split tracks, the John 3:16’s, the litter, the grates, the puddles.

The sheer cojones of it was that they were doing it underneath the city. Like the whole of upstairs had already been painted and the only territory left was here. Like they were hitting a new frontier. This is my house. Read it and weep.

Used to be, he dug the bombings, riding in a swallowed-up train, where he was just another color himself, a paint spot in a hundred other paint spots. Slamming downtown, through the rat alleys. No way out. He’d close his eyes and stand near the doors and roll his shoulders, think of the colors moving around him. Not just anyone could bomb a whole train. You had to be in the heart of things. Scale a yard fence, hop a track, hit a car, run off, send the steel out into the bright morning without a window to see through, the whole train tagged head to toe. He even tried a few times to hang out on the Concourse, where the ’Rican and Dominican taggers were, but they had no time for him, none of them, told him he didn’t jive, called him names again, Simplón, Cabronazo, Pendejo. Thing was, he had been a straight-A student all year long. He didn’t want to be, but that’s how it turned out — he was the only one who hadn’t cut classes. So they laughed him off. He slumped away. He even thought of going across to the blacks on the other side of the Concourse, but decided against it. He returned with his camera, the one he got from the barbershop, went to the ’Ricans, and said he’d be able to make them famous. They laughed again and he got bitch-slapped by a twelve-year-old Skull.

But then in the middle of summer, on his way to work, he stepped between the cars; the train had stopped just outside 138th Street, and he was tottering on the steel plate, just as the train started up again, when he caught the quick blur. He had no idea what it was, some enormous silver flying thing. It stayed on his retina, an afterburn, all the way through the barbershop day.

It was there, it was his, he owned it. It would not be scrubbed off. They couldn’t put an underground wall in an acid bath. You can’t buff that. A maximum tag. It was like discovering ice.

On the way home to the projects he rode the middle of the train again, just to check it out, and there it was once more, STEGS 33, fat and lonely in the middle of the tunnel with no other tags to brother it. It flat-fuck-out amazed him that the tagger had gone down into the tunnel and signed and then must just have walked straight back out, past the third rail, up the grimy steps, out the metal grating, into the light, the streets, the city, his name underneath his feet.

He walked across the Concourse then with a swagger, looked across at the taggers who’d been aboveground all day. Pendejos. He had the secret. He knew the places. He owned the key. He walked past them, shoulders rolling.

He began to ride the subway as often as he could, wondering if the taggers ever brought a flashlight down with them, or if they moved in teams of twos and threes, like the bombers in the train yards, one on the lookout, one with the flashlight, one to tag. He didn’t even mind going downtown to his stepfather’s barbershop anymore. At least the summer job gave him time to ride the rails. At first he pressed his face close to the windows, but then began surfing the cars, kept his gaze on the walls, looking for a sign. He preferred to think of the taggers working alone, blind to the light, except for a match here and there, just to see the outline, or to jazz up a color, or to fill in a blank spot, or to curve out a letter. Guerrilla work. Never more than half an hour between trains, even late at night. What he liked most were the big freestyle wraparounds. When the train went past he froze them tight in his head, and pulled them around in his mind all day long, followed the lines, the curves, the dots.

He has never once tagged a thing himself, but if he ever got a clear chance, no consequences, no stepfathersmack, no lockdown, he’d invent a whole new style, draw a little black in the blackness, a little white on deep white, or stir it up with some red, white, and blue, screw with the color scheme, put in some ’Rican, some black, go wild and stump them, that’s what it was all about — make them scratch their heads, sit up and take notice. He could do that. Genius, they called it. But it was only genius if you thought of it first. A teacher told him that. Genius is lonely. He had an idea once. He wanted to get a slide machine, a projector, and put a photograph of his father inside. He wanted to project the image all around the house, so that at every turn his mother would see her gone husband, the one she kicked out, the one he has not seen in twelve years, the one she’d swapped for Irwin. He’d love to project his father there, like the tags, to make him ghostly and real in the darkness.

It’s a mystery to him if the writers ever get to see their own tags, except for maybe one step back in the tunnel after it’s finished and not even dry. Back over the third rail for a quick glance. Careful, or it’s a couple of thousand volts. And even then there’s the possibility a train will come. Or the cops make it down with a spray of flashlights and billy clubs. Or some long-haired puto will step out of the shadows, white eyes shining, knife blade ready, to empty out their pockets, crush and gut. Slam that shit on quick, and out you go before you get busted.

He braces against the shake of the carriage. Thirty-third Street. Twenty-eighth. Twenty-third. Union Square, where he crosses the platform and switches to the 5 train, slips in between the cars, waits for the shudder of movement. No new tags along the walls this morning. Sometimes he thinks he should just buy some cans, hop off the train, and begin spraying, but deep down he knows he doesn’t have what it takes: it’s easier with the camera in his hands. He can photograph them, bring them out of the darkness, lift them up from the alleys. When the train picks up speed he keeps his camera under the flap of his shirt so it doesn’t bounce around. Fifteen pictures already gone from a roll of twenty-four. He’s not even sure any of them will come out. One of the customers in the barbershop gave him the camera last year, one of the downtown hotshots, showing off. Just handed it to him, case and all. Had no idea what to do with it. He threw it behind his bed at first, but then took it out one afternoon and examined it, started clicking what he saw.

Got to like it. Started carrying it everywhere. After a while his mother even paid for the photos to get developed. She’d never seen him so caught up before. A Minolta SR-T 102. He liked the way it fit in his hands. When he got embarrassed — by Irwin, say, or by his mother, or just coming out into the schoolyard — he could shade his face with the camera, hide behind it.

If only he could stay down here all day, in the dark, in the heat, riding back and forth between the cars, taking shots, getting famous. He heard of a girl, last year, who got the front page of The Village Voice. A picture of a bombed-out car heading into the tunnel at the Concourse. She caught it in the right light, half sun, half dark. The spray of headlights came straight at her and all the tags stretched behind. Right place, right time. He heard she made some serious money, fifteen dollars or more. He was sure at first it was a rumor, but he went to the library and found the back issue and there it was, with a double spread on the inside too, and her name in the bottom corner of the photos. And he heard there were two kids from Brooklyn out riding the rails, one of them with a Nikon, another with something called a Leica.

He tried it once himself. Brought a picture to The New York Times at the start of summer. A shot of a writer high on the Van Wyck overpass, spraying. A beautiful thing, all caught in shadow, the spray man hanging from ropes, and a couple of puffy clouds in the background. Front-page stuff, he was sure. He took a half-day from the barbershop, even wore a shirt and tie. He walked into the building on Forty-third and said he wanted to see the photo editor, he had a surefire photo, a master shot. He’d learned the lingo from a book. The security guard, a big tall moreno, made a phone call and leaned across the desk and said: “Just drop the envelope there, bro.”

“But I want to see the photo editor.”

“He’s busy right now.”

“Well, when’s he unbusy? Come on, Pepe, please?”

The security guard laughed and turned away, once, then twice, then stared at him: “Pepe?”

“Sir.”

“How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“Come on, kid. How old?”

“Fourteen,” he said, eyes downcast.

“Horatio José Alger!” said the security guard, his face open with laughter. He made a couple of phone calls but then looked up, eyes hooded, as if he already knew: “Sit right there, man. I’ll tell you when he passes.”

The lobby of the building was all glass and suits and nice smooth calf muscles. He sat for two straight hours until the guard gave him a wink. Up he went to the photo editor and thrust the envelope in his hand. The guy was eating half a Reuben sandwich. Had a piece of lettuce on his teeth. Would have been a photograph himself. Grunted a thanks and walked out of the building, off down Seventh Avenue, past the peep shows and the homeless vets, with the photo tucked under his arm. He followed him for five blocks, then lost him in the crush. And then he never heard a thing about it after that, not a thing at all. Waited for the phone call but it didn’t come. He even went back to the lobby at the end of three shifts, but the security guard said he could do nothing more. “Sorry, my man.” Maybe the editor lost it. Or was going to steal it. Or was going to call him any minute. Or had left a message at the barbershop and Irwin forgot. But nothing happened.

He tried a Bronx circular after that, a shitty little neighborhood rag, and even they flat-out said no: he heard someone chuckling on the other end of the telephone. Someday they’d come crawling up to him. Someday they’d lick his sneakers clean. Someday they’d be clambering over themselves to get at him. Fernando Yunqué Marcano. Imagist. A word he liked, even in Spanish. Made no sense but had a nice ring to it. If he had a card, that’s what he would put on it. FERNANDO Y. MARCANO. IMAGIST. THE BRONX. U.S.A.

There was a guy he saw once on television who made his money knocking bricks out of buildings. It was funny, but he understood it in a way. The way the building looked different afterward. The way the light came through. Making people see differently. Making them think twice. You have to look on the world with a shine like no one else has. It’s the sort of thing he thinks about while sweeping the floor, dunking the scissors, stacking the shave bottles. All the hotshot brokers coming in for a short back and sides. Irwin said there was art in a haircut. “Biggest gallery you’re ever going to get. The whole of New York City at your fingertips.” And he would think, Ah, just shut up, Irwin. You ain’t my old man. Shut up and sweep. Clean the comb bottles yourself. But he was never quite able to say it. The disconnect between his mouth and his mind. That’s where the camera came in. It was the unspoken thing between him and the others, the brush-off.

The train shudders and he presses nonchalantly with the palm of his hands on each car to keep himself steady, and the engine gets going, but then stops again with a quick halt, a screech of brakes, and he is shunted sideways, his shoulder taking the brunt of the whack and his leg presses hard against the chains. He quickly checks the camera. Perfect. No problem. His favorite moment, this. Stopped dead. In the tunnel, near the mouth. But still in the dark. He catches the metal lip of the door with his fingers. Rights himself and leans once more against the door.

Nonchalance. Ease. In the dark of tunnel now. Between Fulton and Wall Street. All the suits and haircuts getting ready to pile out.

There is no new rumble from the train and he likes these silences, gives him time to scope out the walls. He takes a quick look down the car to make sure there’re no cops, places one foot on the chains and shunts himself up, grabs the lip of the car, one-arms himself high. If he stood on the roof he could touch the curve of the tunnel — good place for a tag — but he holds on to the lip of the car and peers out over the edge. Some red and white markings on the walls where they curve. A few yellow lights sulfurous in the distance.

He waits for his eyes to adjust, for the little retina stars to leave. Along the rear distance of the train, small bars of color bleed out from the edge of each car and spray outward. Nothing on the walls, though. A tagging Antarctica. What did he expect? Hardly going to be any writers downtown. But you never know. That would be the genius. That would be the point. Buff this, maricón.

He feels the chain jiggle beneath his feet, the first warning of movement, and he holds a little tighter to the rim of the car. None of the bombers ever get the ceiling. Virgin territory. He should start a movement himself, a brand-new space. He looks out along the length of the train, then goes a little higher on his toes. At the far end of the tunnel, he spies a patch of what could be paint on the east wall, a tag he hasn’t seen before, something quick and oblong, with what looks like a tinge of red around silver, a P or an R or an 8, maybe. Clouds and flames. He should make his way back through the cars — among the dead and dreaming — and get closer to the wall, decipher the tag, but just then the train jolts a second time and it’s a warning signal — he knows it — he hops back down, braces himself. As the wheels grind, he trills the sighting through his mind, matches it up against all the old tags in other parts of the tunnel, and he figures it’s brand new, it must be, yes, and he gives a quiet fist pump — someone’s come and tagged downtown.

Within seconds the train is in the pale station light of Wall Street and the doors are hissing open, but his eyes are closed and he is mapping it out, the height, the color, the depth of the new tag, trying to put a geography on it for the way home, where he can take it back, own it, photograph it, make it his.

A radio sound. The static moving toward him. He leans out. Cops. Coming up from the end of the platform. They’ve seen him, for sure. Going to drag him out, give him a ticket. Four of them, belts jiggling. He slides open the door to the car, ducks inside. Waits for the slap of a hand on his shoulder. Nothing. He leans back against the cool metal of the door. Catches sight of them sprinting out past the turnstiles. Like there’s some fire to get to. All of them clanging. Handcuffs and guns and nightsticks and notepads and flashlights and God knows what else. Someone’s bought it, he thinks. Someone’s gone and bought it.

He squeezes sideways through the closing doors, holding the camera sideways so it doesn’t get scratched. Behind him, the door hisses shut. A jaunt in his step. Out the turnstile and up the stairs. To hell with the barbershop. Irwin can wait.

ETHERWEST

IT’S EARLY IN THE MORNING and the fluorescents are flickering. We’re taking a break from the graphics hack. Dennis gets the blue-box program running through the PDP-10 to see if we can catch a good hook.

It’s Dennis, Gareth, Compton, and me. Dennis is the oldest, almost thirty. We like to call him Grandpa — he did two tours in ’Nam. Compton graduated U.C. Davis. Gareth’s been programming for must be ten years. Me, I’m eighteen. They call me the Kid. I’ve been hanging out at the institute since I was twelve.

— How many rings, guys? says Compton.

— Three, says Dennis, like he’s already bored.

— Twenty, says Gareth.

— Eight, I say.

Compton flicks a look at me.

— The Kid speaks, he says.

True enough, most of the time I just let my hackwork do the talking. It’s been like that since I sneaked in the basement door of the institute, back in ′68. I was out skipping school, a kid in short pants and broken glasses. The computer was spitting out a line of ticker tape and the guys at the console let me watch it. The next morning they found me sleeping on the doorstep: Hey, look, it’s the Kid.

Nowadays I’m here all day, every day, and the truth is I’m the best hacker they got, the one who did all the patches for the blue-box program.

The line gets picked up on the ninth ring and Compton slaps my shoulder, leans into the microphone, and says to the guy in his smooth clip so as not to freak him out: Hi, yeah, don’t hang up, this is Compton here.

— Excuse me?

— Compton here, who’s this?

— Pay phone.

— Don’t hang up.

— This is a pay phone, sir.

— Who’s speaking?

— What number’re you looking for …?

— I have New York, right?

— I’m busy, man.

— Are you near the World Trade Center?

— Yeah, man, but…

— Don’t hang up.

— You must’ve got a wrong number, man.

The line goes dead. Compton hits the keyboard and the speed dial kicks in and there’s a pickup on the thirteenth ring.

— Please don’t hang up. I’m calling from California.

— Huh?

— Are you near the World Trade Center?

— Kiss my ass.

We can hear a half-chuckle as the phone gets slammed down. Compton pings six numbers all at once, waits.

— Hi, sir?

— Yes?

— Sir, are you in the vicinity of downtown New York?

— Who’s this?

— We’re just wondering if you could look up for us?

— Very funny, ha-ha.

The line goes dead again.

— Hello, ma’am?

— I’m afraid you must have the wrong number.

— Hello! Don’t hang up.

— I’m sorry, sir, but I’m in a bit of a hurry.

— Excuse me …

— Try the operator, please.

— Bite me, says Compton to the dead line.

We’re thinking that we should pack it all in and go back to the graphics hack. It’s four or five in the morning, and the sun’ll soon be coming up. I guess we could even go home if we wanted to, catch a few zees instead of sleeping under the desks like usual. Pizza boxes for pillows and sleeping bags among the wires.

But Compton hits the enter key again.

It’s a thing we do all the time for kicks, blue-boxing through the computer, to Dial-A-Disc in London, say, or to the weather girl in Melbourne, or the time clock in Tokyo, or to a phone booth we found in the Shetland Islands, just for fun, to blow off steam from the programming. We loop and stack the calls, route and reroute so we can’t be traced. We go in first through an 800 number just so we don’t have to drop the dime: Hertz and Avis and Sony and even the army recruiting center in Virginia. That tickled the hell out of Gareth, who got out of ’Nam on a 4-F. Even Dennis, who’s worn his OCCIDENTAL DEATH T-shirt ever since he came home from the war, got off on that one big-time too.

One night we were all lazing around and we hacked the code words to get through to the president, then called the White House. We layered the call through Moscow just to fool them. Dennis said: I have a very urgent message for the president. Then he rattled off the code words. Just a moment, sir, said the operator. We nearly pissed in our pants. We got past two other operators and were just about to get through to Nixon himself, but Dennis got the jitters and said to the guy: Just tell the president we’ve run out of toilet paper in Palo Alto. That cracked us up, but for weeks afterwards we kept waiting for the knock on the door. It became a joke after a while: we started calling the pizza boy Secret Agent Number One.

It was Compton who got the message on the ARPANET this morning — it came over the AP service on the twenty-four-hour message board. We didn’t believe it at first, some guy walking the wires high above New York, but then Compton got on the line with an operator, pretended he was a switchman, testing out some verification trunks on the pay phones, said he needed some numbers down close to the World Trade buildings, part of an emergency line analysis, he said, and then we programmed the numbers in, skipped them through the system, and we each took bets on whether he’d fall or not. Simple as that.

The signals bounce through the computer, multifrequency bips, like something on a flute, and we catch the guy on the ninth ring.

— Uh. Hello.

— Are you near the World Trade Center, sir?

— Hello? ’Scuse me?

— This is not a joke. Are you near the World Trades?

— This phone was just ringing out here, man. I just… I just picked it up.

He’s got one of those New York accents, young but grouchy, like he’s smoked too many cigarettes.

— I know, says Compton, but can you see the buildings? From where you’re standing? Is there someone up there?

— Who is this?

— Is there someone up there?

— I’m watching him right now.

— You what?

— I’m watching him.

— Far out! You can see him?

— I been watching him twenty minutes, more, man. Are you…? This phone just rang and I—

— He can see him!

Compton slaps his hands against the desk, takes out his pocket protector, and flings it across the room. His long hair goes flying around his face. Gareth dances a little jig over by the printout table and Dennis walks by and takes me in a light headlock and knuckles my scalp, like he doesn’t really care, but he likes to see us get our kicks, like he’s still the army sergeant or something.

— I told you, shouts Compton.

— Who’s this? says the voice.

— Far out!

— Who the hell is this?!

— Is he still on the tightrope?

— What’s going on? Are you messing with me, man?

— Is he still there?

— He’s been up there twenty, twenty-five minutes!

— All right! Is he walking?

— He’s going to kill himself.

— Is he walking?

— No, he’s stopped right now!

— Standing there?

— Yeah!

— He’s just standing there? Midair?

— Yeah, he’s got the bar going. Up and down in his hands.

— In the middle of the wire?

— Near the edge.

— How near?

— Not too near. Near enough.

— Like what? Five yards? Ten yards? Is he steady?

— Steady as shit! Who wants to know? What’s your name?

— Compton. Yours?

— José.

— José? Cool. José. ¿Qué onda, amigo?

— Huh?

—¿Qué onda, carnal?

— I don’t speak Spanish, man.

Compton hits the mute button and punches Gareth’s shoulder.

— Can you believe this guy?

— Just don’t lose him.

— I’ve seen SAT questions with more brains than this one.

— Just keep him on the line, man!

Compton leans into the console and takes the mike again.

— Can you tell us what’s happening, José?

— Tell you what, man?

— Like, describe it.

— Oh. Well, he’s up there …

— And?

— He’s just standing.

— And …?

— Where’re you calling from, anyway?

— California.

— Seriously.

— I am serious.

— You’re fucking with me, right?

— No.

— This a hoax, man?

— No hoax, José.

— Are we on TV? We’re on TV, ain’t we?

— We haven’t got TV. We’ve got a computer.

— A what?

— It’s complicated, José.

— You telling me I’m talking to a computer?

— Don’t worry about it, man.

— What is this? Is this Candid Camera? Are you looking at me right now? Am I on?

— On what, José?

— I’m on the show? Ah, come on, you’ve got a camera here somewhere. Come clean, man. For real. I love that show, man! Love it!

— This is not a show.

— Are you Allen Funt, man?

— What?

— Where’re your cameras? I don’t see no cameras. Hey, man, are you in the Woolworth Building? Is that you up there? Hey!

— I’m telling you, José, we’re in California.

— You’re trying to tell me I’m talking to a computer?

— Sort of.

— You’re in California …? People! Hey, people!

He says it real loud, holding the receiver out, and we can hear voices chattering, and the wind, and I guess it’s one of those pay phones in the middle of the street, covered in stickers with sexy girls and all, and we can hear some sirens going in the background, big high whoops, and a woman laughing, and a few muffled shouts, a car horn, a vendor roaring about peanuts, some guy saying he’s got the wrong lens, he needs a better angle, and some other guy shouting: Don’t fall!

— People! he says again. I got this nutjob here. Guy from California. Go figure. Hey. You there?

— I’m here, José. Is he up there still?

— You’re a friend of his?

— No.

— How did you know, then? If you’re calling in?

— It’s complicated. We’re phreaking. We hack the system … Man, is he still up there? That’s all I want to know.

He pulls the phone away again and his voice sways.

— Where you from again? he shouts.

— Palo Alto.

— No kidding?

— Honestly, José.

— He says the guy’s from Palo Alto! What’s his name?

— Compton.

— The guy’s name is Compton! Yeah, Comp-ton! Yeah. Yeah. Just a minute. Hey, man, there’s a guy here wants to know, Compton what? What’s his last name?

— No, no, my name is Compton.

— What’s his name, man, his name?

— José, can you just tell me what’s happening?

— Can I have some of what you’re on? You’re tripping, aren’t you? You really a friend of his? Hey! Listen up! I got some whackjob on the phone from California. He says the guy’s from Palo Alto. The tightrope walker’s from Palo Alto.

— José, José. Listen to me a moment, please, okay?

— We got a bad line. What’s his name?

— I don’t know!

— I think we got a bad connection. We got some nutjob. I don’t know, he’s jabbering, man. Computers and shit. Oh, holy shit! Holy shit!

— What, what?

— Holy freakin’ shit.

— What? Hello?

— No!

— José? You there?

— Jes-us.

— Hello, you there?

— Jesus H.

— Hello?

— I can’t believe it.

— José!

— Yeah, I’m here! He just hopped. Did you see that?

— He what?

— He, like, hopped. Holy freakin’ shit!

— He jumped?

— No!

— He fell?

— No, man.

— He’s dead?

— No, man!

— What?

— He hopped from foot to foot! He’s wearing black, man. You can see it. He’s still up there! This guy’s awesome! Holy shit! I thought he was a goner. He just went up on one foot and the other, oh, man!

— He hopped?

—’Zactly

— Like a bunny hop?

— More like a scissors thing. He just… Man! Fuck me. Oh, man. Fuck me running backwards. He just like did a little scissors thing. On the wire, man!

— Far out.

— Can you freakin’ believe that? He a gymnast or something? He looks like he’s dancing. Is he a dancer? Hey, man, is your friend a dancer?

— He’s not really my friend, José.

— I swear to Christ he must be tied to something, or something. Tied to the wire. I bet he’s tied. He’s up there and he just did the scissors thing! Far freakin’ out.

— José. Listen up. We’ve got a bet going here. What’s he look like?

— He’s holding it, man, holding it.

— Can you see him well?

— Like a speck. Like a little thing! He’s way the fuck up there. But he hopped. He’s in black. You can see his legs.

— Is it windy?

— No. It’s muggy as shit.

— It’s not windy?

— Up there it’s gotta be windy, man. Jesus! He’s, like, all the way up there. I don’t know how the fuck they’re going to get him down. They got pigs up there. Lots of ’em.

— Huh?

— They got cops. Swarming ’round the top. On both sides.

— They trying to get him?

— No. He’s way the fuck out there. He’s standing now. Just holding the bar. Oh, no way! No!

— What? What is it? José?

— He’s crouching. Check this shit out.

— Huh?

— You know, kneeling.

— He’s what?

— He’s sitting now, man.

— What d’you mean he’s sitting?

— He’s sitting on the wire. This guy is sick!

— José?

— Check it out!

— Hello?

There’s another silence, his breath against the mouthpiece.

— José. Hey, amigo. José? My friend …

— No way.

Compton leans in closer to the computer, the microphone at his lips.

— José, buddy? Can you hear me? José? You there?

— Untrue.

— José.

— I ain’t shittin’ you …

— What?

— He’s lying down.

— On the wire?

— Yes on the fucking wire.

— And?

— He’s got his feet hooked in under him. He’s looking up at the sky. He looks … weird.

— And the bar?

— The what?

— The pole?

— Across his stomach, man. This guy is unfuckingreal.

— He’s just lying there?

— Yup.

— Like taking a nap?

— What?

— Like a siesta?

— Are you trying to mind-fuck me, man?

— Am I… what? ’Course not, José. No, no way. No.

There’s a long silence on the phone, like José has just transported himself up there, alongside the tightrope walker.

— José? Hey. Hello. José. How’s he going to get back up, José? José. I mean, if he’s lying down, how’s he going to get back up? Are you sure he’s lying down? José? You there?

— Are you saying I’m a liar?

— No I’m just, like, speaking.

— Tell me this, man. You’re in California?

— Yeah, man.

— Prove it.

— I can’t really …

Compton mutes himself once again.

— Can someone pass me the hemlock?

— Get someone else, says Gareth. Tell him to give the phone to someone.

— Some guy who can read, at least.

— His name’s José and the dude can’t even speak Spanish!

He leans right back in.

— Do me a favor there, José. Can you pass the phone along?

— Why?

— We’re doing an experiment.

— You calling from California? No shit? You think I’m a retard? Is that what you think?

— Give me someone else there, will ya?

— Why? he says again, and we hear him pull the phone away from his mouth again and there’s a crowd around him, jabbering away, oohs and ahhs, and then we hear the phone drop, and he says something about a freakball, and something else faint and whispery, and then he’s shouting as the phone swings around, and the voices get caught in the wind.

— Anyone want to talk to this fruitcake? He thinks he’s calling from California!

— José! Just pass the phone, man, will you?

The phone must be swinging in the air but it’s getting slower, the voices steady, and behind them, some sirens, someone shouting now about hot dogs, and I can see it in my mind’s eye, they’re all down there, milling about, and the taxis are stopped and the necks are craned upwards and José is letting the phone swing at his knees.

— Oh, I don’t know, man! he says. It’s some dipshit from California. I don’t know. I think he wants you to say something. Yeah. About it, like, what’s happening. You wanna …?

— Hey! José! José! Pass it along there, José.

After a second or two he picks up the phone and says: This guy’s gonna talk to you.

— Oh, thank Christ.

— Hello, says a guy in a very low voice.

— Hi, this is Compton. We’re out here in California …

— Hello, Compton.

— I’m just wondering if you could describe things for us there.

— Well, that’s difficult right now.

— Why’s that?

— Something terrible happened.

— Huh?

— He fell.

— He what?

— Smashed to the ground. Terrible commotion here. D’you hear that siren? You can’t hear that? Listen.

— It’s hard to hear.

— There’s cops running through. They’re crawling all over the place.

— José? José? Is that you? Did someone fall?

— He smashed here. Right here at my feet. It’s all blood ‘n’ shit.

— Who’s this? Is this José?

— Listen to the sirens, man.

— Get outta here.

— He splattered all over the place.

— Are you shittin’ me?

— Man, it’s horrible.

The phone slams, the line goes dead, and Compton looks around at us, eyes bugging.

— You think he bought it?

— Of course not.

— That was José! says Gareth.

— That was a different voice.

— No it wasn’t. It was José. He was doggin’ us! I can’t believe he dogged us.

— Try the number again!

— You never know. Could be true. Could’ve fallen.

— Try it!

— I’m not paying any debt, Compton shouts, unless I hear it live!

— Oh, come on, says Gareth.

— Guys! says Dennis.

— We gotta hear it live. A bet’s a bet.

— Guys!

— You’re always welching on your bets, man.

— Try the number again.

— Guys, we’ve got work to do, says Dennis. I’m thinking that we could maybe even get that patch tonight.

He slaps me on the shoulder and says: Right, Kid?

— Tonight is already tomorrow, man, says Gareth.

— What if he did fall?

— He didn’t fall. That was José, man.

— The line’s busy!

— Get another one!

— Try the ARPANET, man.

— Get real.

— Get a pay phone!

— Bounce it.

— I can’t believe it’s busy.

— Well, unbusy it.

— I’m not God.

— Then find someone who is, man.

— Aww, brother. They’re all just ringing out!

Dennis steps over the pizza boxes on the floor and passes the printout machine, slaps the side of the PDP-10, then thumps his chest, right by his OCCIDENTAL DEATH.

— Work, guys!

— Ah come on, Dennis.

— It’s five in the morning!

— No, let’s find out.

— Work, guys, work.

It’s Dennis’s company after all and he’s the one who doles out the cash at the end of the week. Not that anyone buys anything except comics and copies of Rolling Stone. Dennis supplies everything else, even the toothbrushes in the basement bathroom. He learned everything he needed to know over there in ’Nam. He likes to say that he’s in on the ground level, that he’s making his own little xerox of Xerox. He makes his money on our hacks for the Pentagon, but the file-transferring programs are his real thing.

One of these centuries we’re all going to have the ARPANET in our heads, he says. There’ll be a little computer chip in our minds. They’ll embed it at the base of our skulls and we’ll be able to send each other messages on the electronic board, just by thinking. It’s electricity, he says. It’s Faraday. It’s Einstein. It’s Edison. It’s the Wilt Chamberlain of the future.

I like that idea. That’s cool. That’s possible. That way we wouldn’t even have to think of phone lines. People don’t believe us, but it’s true. Someday you’ll just think something and it’ll happen. Turn off the light, the light turns off. Make the coffee, the machine kicks on.

— Come on, man, just five minutes.

— All right, says Dennis, five. That’s it.

— Hey, are all the frames linked? says Gareth.

— Yeah.

— Try it over there too.

— Have tone, will phone.

— Come on, Kid, get your ass over there. Call up the blue-box program.

— Let’s go fishing!

I built my first crystal radio when I was seven. Some wire, a razor blade, a piece of pencil, an earphone, an empty roll of toilet paper. I made a variable capacitor from layers of aluminum foil and plastic, all pressed together using a screw. No batteries. I got the plans from a Superman comic. It only got one station, but that didn’t matter. I listened late at night under the covers. In the room next door I could hear my folks fighting. They were both strung out. They went from laughter to crying and back again. When the station kicked off the air I put my hand over the earphone and took in the static.

I learned later, when I built another radio, that you could put the antenna in your mouth and the reception got better and you could drown out all the noise easily.

See, when you’re programming too, the world grows small and still. You forget about everything else. You’re in a zone. There are no backward glances. The sound and the lights keep pushing you onwards. You gather pace. You keep on going. The variations comply. The sound funnels inwards to a point, like an explosion seen in reverse. Everything comes down to a single point. It might be a voice recognition program, or a chess hack, or writing lines for a Boeing helicopter radar — it doesn’t matter: the only thing you care about is the next line coming your way. On a good day it can be a thousand lines. On a bad one you can’t find where it all falls apart.

I’ve never been that lucky in my life, I’m not complaining, it’s just the way it is. But, this time, after just two minutes, I catch a hook.

— I’m on Cortlandt Street, she says.

I swivel on the chair and pump my first.

— Got one!

— The Kid’s got one.

— Kid!

— Hang on, I tell her.

— Excuse me? she says.

There’s bits of pizza lying around my feet and empty soda bottles. The guys run across and kick them aside and a roach scurries out from one of the boxes. I’ve rigged a double microphone into the computer, with foam ends from packing material, the stand from a wire hanger. These are highly sensitive, low distortion, I made them myself, just two small plates put close to each other, insulated. My speakers too, I made them from radio scrap.

— Look at these things, says Compton, flicking the big foam ends of the mike.

— Excuse me? says the lady.

— Sorry. Hi, I’m Compton, he says, pushing me out of my seat.

— Hi, Colin.

— Is he still up there?

— He’s wearing a black jumpsuit thing.

— Told you he didn’t fall.

— Well, not exactly a jumpsuit. A pantsuit thing. With a V-neck. Flared trousers. He’s extremely poised.

— Excuse me?

— Getouttahere, says Gareth. Poised? Is she for real? Poised? Who says poised?

— Shut up, says Compton, and he turns to the mike. Ma’am? Hello? It’s just the one man up there, right?

— Well, he must have some accomplices.

— What d’you mean?

— Well, surely it’s impossible to get a wire from one side to the other. On your own, that is. He must have a team.

— Can you see anyone else?

— Just the police.

— How long has he been up there?

— Roughly forty-three minutes, she says.

— Roughly?

— I got out of the subway at seven-fifty

— Oh, okay.

— And he’d just begun.

— Okay. Gotcha.

He tries to cover both mikes at once, but instead draws back and circles his finger at his temple like he’s caught a crazy fish.

— Thanks for helping us.

— No problem, she says. Oh.

— You there? Hello.

— There he goes again. He’s walking across again.

— How many times is that?

— That’s his sixth or seventh time across. He’s awfully fast this time. Awfully awfully fast.

— He’s, like, running?

A big round of applause goes up in the background and Compton leans back from the mike, swivels the chair sideways a little.

— These things look like goddamn lollipops, he says.

He turns back to the microphone and pretends to lick it.

— Sounds crazy there, ma’am. Are there many people?

— This corner alone, well, there must be six, seven hundred people or more.

— How long d’you think he’ll stay up there?

— My word.

— What’s that?

— Well, I’m late.

— Just hang on there a minute more there, can you?

— I mean, I can’t stand here talking all the time …

— And the cops?

— There are some policemen leaning out over the edge. I think they’re trying to coax him back in. Mmm, she says.

— What? Hello!

No answer.

— What is it? says Compton.

— Excuse me, she says.

— What’s going on?

— Well, there’s a couple of helicopters. They’re getting very close.

— How close?

— I hope they don’t blow him off.

— How close are they?

— Seventy yards or so. A hundred yards, at most. Well, they’re backing off right now. Oh, my.

— What is it?

— Well, the police helicopter backed off.

— Yes.

— Goodness.

— What is it?

— Right now, this very moment, he’s actually waving. He’s bending over with the pole resting on his knee. His thigh, actually. His right thigh.

— Seriously?

— And he’s fluttering his arm.

— How do you know?

— I think it’s called saluting.

— It’s what?

— A sort of showboating. He bends down on the wire and he balances himself and he takes one hand off the pole and he, well, yes, he’s saluting us.

— How do you know?

— Oops-a-daisy, she says.

— What? You okay? Lady?

— No, no, I’m fine.

— Are you still there? Hello!

— Excuse me?

— How can you see him so clearly?

— Glasses.

— Huh?

— I’m watching him through glasses. It’s hard to balance glasses and the phone at once. One second, please.

— She’s glassing him, says Dennis.

— You’ve got binoculars? asks Compton. Hello. Hello. You’ve got binocs?

— Well, yes, opera glasses.

— Getouttahere, says Gareth.

— I went to see Marakova last night. At the ABT. I forgot them. The glasses, I mean. She’s wonderful by the way. With Baryshnikov.

— Hello? Hello?

— In my handbag, I left them there all night. Fortuitous, really.

— Fortuitous? says Gareth. This chick’s a hoot.

— Shut the hell up, says Compton, covering my mike. Can you see his face, ma’am?

— One moment, please.

— Where’s the helicopter?

— Oh, it’s way away.

— Is he still saluting?

— Just a moment, please.

It sounds as if she’s holding the phone away from herself for a moment, and we hear some high cheers and a few gasps of delight, and suddenly I want nothing more than for her to come back to us, forget about the tightrope man, I want our opera-glasses woman and the rich sound of her voice and the funny way she says fortuitous. I’d say she’s old, but that doesn’t matter, it’s not like a sexy thing, I don’t like her like that. It’s not like I’m getting off on her or anything. I’ve never had a girlfriend, it’s no big deal, I don’t think that way, I just like her voice. Besides, it was me who found her.

I figure she’s about thirty-five or more, even, with a long neck and a pencil skirt, but, who knows, she could be forty or forty-five, older, even, with her hair sprayed into place and a set of wooden dentures in her purse. Then again, she’s probably beautiful.

Dennis is over in the corner, shaking his head and smiling. Comp-ton’s doing the finger-circling thing and Gareth is cracking up. All I want to do is push them out of my chair and stop them using my stuff — I got a right to my own stuff.

— Ask her why she’s there, I whisper.

— The Kid speaks again!

— You okay, Kid?

— Just ask her.

— Don’t be a drip, says Compton.

He leans backwards and laughs, covering my mike with both hands, starts bouncing back and forth in my chair. His legs are kicking up and down and the pizza boxes are scattering at his feet.

— Excuse me? says the lady. There’s noise on the line.

— Ask her how old she is. Go on.

— Shut up, Kid.

— Shut up you, your goddamn self, Compton.

Compton smacks my forehead with the heel of his hand.

— Listen to the Kid!

— C’mon, just ask her.

— The beloved American right to the pursuit of horniness.

Gareth starts laughing his ass off and Compton leans into the mike again and says: Are you still there, ma’am?

— I’m here, she says.

— Is he still saluting?

— Well, he’s standing now. The policemen are leaning out. Over the edge.

— The helicopter?

— Nowhere near.

— Any more bunny hops?

— Excuse me?

— Did he do any more bunny hops?

— I didn’t see that. He didn’t do any bunny hops. Who did bunny hops?

— From foot to foot, like?

— He’s a real showman.

Gareth giggles.

— Are you taping me?

— No, no, no, honestly.

— I hear voices in the background.

— We’re in California. We’re cool. Don’t worry. We’re computer guys.

— As long as you’re not taping me.

— Oh, no. You’re cool.

— There are legal issues about that.

— Of course.

— Anyway, I really should …

— Just a moment, I say, leaning all the way across Compton’s shoulder.

Compton pushes me back and asks if the tightrope walker’s looking nervous and the woman takes a long time to answer, like she’s chewing on the whole idea and wondering whether to swallow it.

— Well, he looks rather calm. His body, that is. He looks calm.

— You can’t see his face?

— Not exactly, no.

She’s beginning to fade, like she doesn’t want to talk to us much anymore, evaporating down the line, but I want her just to hang on, I don’t know why, it feels like she’s my aunt or something, like I’ve known her a long time, which is impossible of course, but I don’t care anymore, and I grab the microphone and bend it away from Compton and I say: You work there, ma’am?

Compton throws his head right back to laugh again and Gareth tries tickling my nuts and I mouth the word asshole at him.

— Well, yes, I’m a librarian.

— Really?

— Hawke Brown and Wood. In the research library.

— What’s your name?

— Fifty-ninth floor.

— Your name?

— I really don’t know if I should …

— I’m not trying to be rude.

— No, no.

— I’m Sam. I’m out here in a research lab. Sam Peters. We work on computers. I’m a programmer.

— I see.

— I’m eighteen.

— Congratulations, she laughs.

It’s almost like she can hear me blush on the other end of the phone. Gareth is bent over double with laughter.

— Sable Senatore, she says finally in a voice like soft water.

— Sable?

— That’s right.

— Can I ask …?

— Yes?

— How old’re you?

Silence again.

They’re all cracking up, but there’s a sweet point in her voice, and I don’t want to hang up. I keep trying to imagine her there, under those big towers, looking upwards, opera glasses around her neck, getting ready to go to work in some law firm with wood paneling and pots of coffee.

— It’s eight-thirty in the morning, she says.

— Excuse me?

— Hardly time for a date.

— I’m sorry.

— Well, I’m twenty-nine, Sam. A little old for you.

— Oh.

Sure enough, Gareth starts hobbling around like he’s using a walking stick, and Compton is doing little caveman howls, even Dennis slides up against me and says: Loverboy

Then Compton shoves me sideways from the table and says something about his bet, he’s got to get the bet resolved.

— Where is he? Sable? Where’s the guy now?

— Is this Colin again?

— Compton.

— Well, he’s at the edge of the south tower.

— How long’s the distance between the towers?

— Hard to judge. A couple of hundred … oh, there he goes!

A great big noise all around her and whooshing and cheering and it’s like everything has become undone and is lapsing into babble, and I think of all the thousands off the buses and the trains, seeing it for the first time, and I wish I was there, with her, and I get a wobbly feeling in my knees.

— He lay down? asks Compton.

— No, no, of course not. He’s done.

— He stopped?

— He just walked right in. He saluted again and waved and then walked right in. Very fast. Ran. Kind of.

— He’s done?

— Shit.

— I win! says Gareth.

— Aww, he’s done? You sure? That’s it?

— The police at the edge are taking him in. They have the pole. Oh, listen.

There are huge hoots and a tremendous round of applause from near the phone. Compton looks annoyed and Gareth snaps his fingers like he’s snapping money. I lean in and take the microphone.

— He’s finished? Hello? Can you hear me?

— Sable, I say.

— Well, she says, I really must…

— Before you go.

— Is this Samuel?

— Can I ask you a personal question?

— Well, I guess you already have.

— Can I get your number? I ask.

She laughs, says nothing.

— Are you married?

Another laugh, a regret in it.

— Sorry, I say.

— No.

— Excuse me?

And I don’t know whether she’s said no to giving me her number, or no to being married, or maybe both at once, but then she lets out a little laugh that flutters away.

Compton is digging in his pocket for money. He slides a five-dollar bill across to Gareth.

— I was just wondering …

— Really, Sam, I must go.

— I’m not a weirdo.

— Toodle-pips.

And the line goes dead. I look up, and Gareth and Compton are staring at me.

— Toodle-pips, roars Gareth. Get a load of that! He’s poised!

— Shut up, man.

— That’s fortuitous!

— Shut up, asswipe.

— Touchy, touchy.

— Someone fell, says Compton with a grin.

— I was just messing with her. I was just fooling.

— Toodle-pips!

— Can I get your number, please?!

— Shut your mouth.

— Hey. The Kid gets angry.

I step over to the phone and hit the enter key on the keyboard again, but it just rings and rings and rings. Compton’s got this strange look on his face, like he’s never seen me before, like I’m some sort of brand-new guy, but I don’t care. I dial again: it just keeps ringing. I can see Sable, in my mind’s eye, walking away, down the street, up into the World Trade Center towers, to the fifty-ninth floor, all woodwork and file cabinets, saying hello to the lawyers, settling down at her desk, putting a pencil behind her ear.

— What was the name of that law firm again?

— Toodle-pips, says Gareth.

— Forget about it, man, says Dennis.

He’s standing there in his T-shirt, hair all askew.

— She ain’t coming back, says Compton.

— What makes you so sure?

— Women’s intuition, he says with a giggle.

— We got to work on that patch, says Dennis. Up and at it.

— Not me, says Compton. I’m going home. I haven’t slept in years.

— Sam? How about you?

It’s the Pentagon program he’s talking about. We’ve signed a secrecy agreement. It’s an easy enough thing to do. Any kid could do it. That’s what I’m thinking. You just use the radar program, key in the gravitational pull, maybe use some rotation differentials, and you can find out where any missile will land.

— Kid?

When there’s a lot of computers going all at once, the place hums. It’s more than white noise. It’s the sort of hum that makes you feel that you’re the actual ground lying under the sky, a blue hum that’s all above and around you, but if you think about it too hard it will get too loud or big, and make you feel no more than just a speck. You’re sealed in by it, the wires, the piping, the electrons moving, but nothing really moving, nothing at all.

I go to the window. It’s a basement window that doesn’t get any light. That’s one thing I don’t understand, windows in basements — why would anyone put a window in a basement? Once I tried to open it, but it doesn’t move.

I bet the sun is coming up outside.

— Toodle-pips! says Gareth.

I want to go across the room and hit him, a punch, a real punch, something that’ll really hurt him, but I don’t.

I settle down at the console, hit Escape, then the N key, then the Y key, leave the blue-box hack. No more phreaking today. I open up the graphics program, use my password. SAMUS17. We’ve been working six months on it, but the Pentagon’s been developing it for years. If there comes another war, they’ll be using this hack, that’s for sure.

I turn to Dennis. He’s already hunched over his console.

The program boots. I can hear it clicking.

There’s a high that you get when you’re writing code. It’s cool. It’s easy to do. You forget your mom, your dad, everything. You’ve got the whole country onboard. This is America. You hit the frontier. You can go anywhere. It’s about being connected, access, gateways, like a whispering game where if you get one thing wrong you’ve got to go all the way back to the beginning.

THIS IS THE HOUSE THAT HORSE BUILT

THEY DIDN’T LET ME GO to Corrigan’s funeral. I woulda walked the bakery line to get there. They put me back in the pen instead. I weren’t crying. I laid straight out on the bench with my hand over my eyes.

I saw my rap sheet, it’s yellow with fifty-four entries. Typed up not so neat. You see your life with carbon copies. Kept in a file. Hunts Point, Lex and Forty-ninth, West Side Highway, all the way back to Cleveland. Loitering. Prostitution offense. Class A misdemeanor. Criminal possesion controlled substance 7th degree. Criminel trespass 2nd degree. Criminal posession narcotic drug, Class E felony. Prostitution solicitation, Class A, Misdemeaner Degree 0.

The cops musta got a D in spelling.

The ones in the Bronx write worse than anyone. They get an F in everything except pulling us up on our prop’rties.

Tillie Henderson alias Miss Bliss alias Puzzle alias Rosa P. alias Sweet-Cakes.

Race, sex, height, weight, hair color, hair type, complexion, eye color, scars, marks, tattoos (none).

I got a taste for supermarket cakes. You won’t find that on my yellow sheet.

The day they arrested us, Bob Marley was on the radio, singing, Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights. A funny-ass cop turned the volume higher and grinned over his shoulder. Jazzlyn shouted: “Who’s gonna look after the babies?”

I left the spoon in the baby formula. Thirty-eight years old. There ain’t no prizes.

Hooking was born in me. That’s no exaggeration. I never wanted no square job. I lived right across from the stroll on Prospect Avenue and East Thirty-first. From my bedroom window I could see the girls work. I was eight. They wore red high heels and hair combed high.

The daddies went by on their way to the Turkish hotel. They caught dates for their girls. They wore hats big enough to dance in.

Every pimp movie you’ve ever seen has them pulling up in a Cadillac. It’s true. Daddies drive Kitties. They like whitewall tires. The fuzzy dice don’t happen so often, though.

I put on my first lipstick when I was nine. Shiny in the mirror. My mother’s blue boots were too big for me at eleven. I could’ve hid down inside them and popped my head out.

When I was thirteen I already had my hands on the hip of a man in a raspberry suit. He had a waist like a lady’s, but he hit me hard. His name was Fine. He loved me so much, he didn’t put me on the stroll, he said he was grooming me.

My mother had religious readings. We were in the Church of the Spiritual Israel. You had to throw your head back and speak in tongues. She’d been on the stroll too. That was years ago. She left it when her teeth fell out. She said, “Don’t you do what I done, Tillie.”

So I done exactly that. My teeth haven’t fallen out yet but.

I never tricked until I was fifteen. I walked into the lobby of the Turkish hotel. Someone gave a low whistle. Everyone’s head turned, ‘specially mine. Then I realized they were whistling at me. Right there I began walkin’ with a bounce. I was turning out. My first daddy said: “Soon as you finish breakin’ luck, honey, come on home to me.”

Hose, hot pants, high heels. I hit the stroll with a vengeance.

One of the things you learn early on is you don’t let your hair fall down in the open window. You do that, the crazy ones grab you by the locks and pull you in and then they beat you silly.

Your first daddy, you don’t forget. You love him until he beats you with a tire iron. Two days later, you’re changing wheels with him. He buys you a blouse that makes your body go out and around in all the right places.

I left baby Jazzlyn with my mother. She kicked her legs and looked up at me. She had the whitest skin when she was born. I thought first she wasn’t mine. I never knew who her Daddy was. He coulda been any on a list long as Sunday. People said that he mighta been a Mexican, but I don’t recall no Pablo sweating on me. I took her up in my arms and that’s when I said to myself, I’m gonna treat her good all her life.

The first thing you do when you have a baby is you say, She’s never gonna work the stroll. You swear it. Not my baby. She’s never gonna be out there. So you work the stroll to keep her off the stroll.

I stayed that way nearly three years, on the stroll, running home to her, taking her in my arms, and then knew what I had to do. I said: “Look after her, Momma. I’ll be right back.”

The skinniest dog I ever seen is the one on the side of the Greyhound buses.

The first time I saw New York, I lay down on the ground outside Port Authority just so I could see the whole sky. Some guy stepped right over me without even looking down.

I started hooking my very first day. I went to the fleabag hotels over on Ninth. You can make a sky out of a ceiling, that’s no problem. There were a lot of sailors in New York.

I used to like dancing with their hats on.

In New York you work for your man. Your man’s your daddy, even if he’s just a chili pimp. It’s easy to find a daddy. I got lucky early on and I found TuKwik. He took me on and I worked the best stroll, Forty-ninth and Lexington. That’s where Marilyn’s skirt blew high. Up by the subway vent. The next best stroll was way over on the West Side, but TuKwik didn’t like it, so I didn’t go over there much. There wasn’t as much scratch to be made on the West Side. And the cops were always throwing their badges, strictly on a prop’rty basis. They’d see how long it was since you was in jail by asking the date on your sheet. If you hadn’t been inside in a while they’d curl their fingers and say, Come with me.

I liked the East Side, even if the cops were hard-asses.

They didn’t get many colored girls on Forty-ninth and Lex. The girls were whiteys with good teeth. Nice clothes. Hair done fancy. They never wore no big rings because big rings get in the way. But they had beautiful manicures and their toenails sparkling. They looked at me and shouted: “What the fuck you doing here?” And I said, “I’m just doin’ here, girls, that’s all.” After a while, we didn’t fight no more. No more nails scraping flesh. No more trying to break each other’s fingers.

I was the first nigger absolute regular on that stroll. They called me Rosa Parks. They used to say I was a chewing-gum spot. Black. And on the pavement.

That’s how it is in the life, word. You joke a lot.

I said to myself, I said, I’m gonna make enough money to go home to Jazzlyn and buy her a big house with a fireplace and a deck out the back with lots of nice furniture. That’s what I wanted.

I’m such a fuck-up. No one’s a bigger fuck-up than me. No one’s gonna know that, though. That’s my secret. I walk through the world like I own it. Watch this spot. Watch it curve.

I got a cell mate here, she keeps a mouse in a shoe box. The mouse is the best friend she has. She talks to it and pets it. She even kisses it. Once she got bit on the lip. I laughed my ass off.

She’s in for eight months on a stabbing. She won’t talk to me. She’ll be upstate soon. She says I ain’t got no brains. Me, I’m not going upstate, no way, I made my deal with the devil — he was a little bald man with a black cape on.

When I was seventeen I had a body that Adam woulda dropped Eve for. Hot-potato time. It was prime, no lie. Nothing in the wrong place. I had legs a hundred miles long and a booty to die for. Adam woulda said to Eve, Eve, I’m leaving you, honey, and Jesus himself woulda been in the background saying, Adam, you’re one lucky motherfucker.

There was a pizza place on Lexington. A picture on the wall of all these guys in tight shorts and good skin and a ball at their feet — they were fine. But the guys inside were fat and hairy and always making jokes about pepperonis. You had to dab their pizza with a napkin just to get the oil off. The syndicates used to come around too. You didn’t want to mess with the syndicates. They had a crease in the trousers of their suits, and they smelled of brilliantine. They might bring you for a nice Guinea meal and then you end up taking a dirt nap.

TuKwik was flash. He had me on his arm like a piece of jewelry. He had five wives, but I was Wife Número Uno, top of the Christmas tree, freshest meat on the stack. You do what you can for your daddy, you light up fireworks for him, you love him to sunset, and then you go strolling. I made the most money of all, and he treated me nice. He had me ride in the front seat while the other wives watched from the street, steaming.

The only thing is, if he loves you more, he beats you more too. That’s just the way it is.

One of the doctors in the emergency ward had a crush on me. He stitched together my eye after TuKwik beat me with a silver coffeepot. Then the doctor leaned down and kissed it. It tickled right on the part where the thread was coming through.

On a slow day, in the rain, we’d fight a lot, me and the other wives. I ran down the street carrying Susie’s wig with a bit of flesh still lodged inside it. But most of the time we were a big family, word. No one believes it, but it’s true.

On Lexington, they got hotels with wallpaper and room service and real gold paint on the rim of plates. They got rooms where they put chocolates on the pillows. They got businessmen come in for a day. Whiteys. In tighteys. They lift up their shirts, you can smell the husband panic off them, like their wife is gonna come out of the TV set.

The chambermaids put mints on pillows. I had a handbag full of green wrappers. I left the room with green wrappers and men already sweating out their marriage license.

I was strictly a lie-down girl, a flatbacker. Plain screwing was all I knew, but I made them feel like no one else. Oh, baby, let me feel you. You make me so hot. Don’t take that bone to another dog.

I had a hundred little stupid sayings. It was like I was singing an old song. They lapped it up.

“Are you okay there, SweetCakes?” “Goddamn, but you make me feel fine!” (One minute thirty, ace, that’s a record.)

“Gimme some sugar, sugar.” “Aww, man, you’re too kissable to kiss.” (I’d rather lick the pipe in the sink.)

“Hey, girl, don’t I do it good?” “Oh, you do it good, oh, yeah, you do, so good it’s good, yeah, good.” (Pity ’bout your little pork sword, though.)

On the way out of the Waldorf-Astoria I tipped the hotel detectives, the bellman, and the elevator boy. They knew all the girls on the stroll. The elevator boy had a thing for me. One night I blew him in the walk-in fridge. On the way out he stole a steak. Slipped it in under his shirt. Walked out, saying he always liked it medium-rare.

He was a cutie. Winked at me, even if the elevator was full.

I was a bug on keeping clean. I liked to shower before every time. When I got the trick to shower, I’d soap him all over and watch the dough rise. You’d say to him, “Honey, I want some’a that bread.” Then I brought him to the oven, where he just about popped.

You try to get him finished after fifteen minutes, most. But you try to keep him going at least two minutes or so. Guys don’t like it if they pop early. They don’t get value. They feel dirty and cheap. I never had a guy who didn’t come, never once. Well, not never, but if he wasn’t coming I’d scratch his back and speak real nice to him, never dirty, and sometimes he’d cry and say, “I just wanna talk to you honey, that’s all I wanna do, I just wanna talk.” But then sometimes he’d turn over and get all vicious and scream, “Fuck you, I knew I could never get it on with you, you black bitch.”

And I’d keep all pouty like he broke my heart, then I’d lean real close and whisper to him that my daddy was in the Panthers with lots of nigger dogs, and he wouldn’t like to hear that sort of talk, dig? And then they’d pull up their trousers quick and get outta there lick lick lickety-split.

TuKwik got himself into fights. He carried a knuckle-duster in his sock. He had to be knocked down before he could get it. But he was smart. He oiled the cops and he oiled the syndicate and he kept all the rest for himself.

The smart daddy looks for the girl who walks alone. I walked alone for two weeks. Ohio. O-hi-o.

I became a modern woman. I took the Pill. I didn’t want no new Jazzlyn. I sent her postcards from the office on Forty-third. The guy behind the counter didn’t recognize me at first. Everyone was hollering at me for skipping the line, but I just went right on up to him, swinging my ass. He blushed and slipped me some free stamps.

I always recognize my tricks.

I found a new daddy who was a famous player. His name was Jigsaw. He had a flash suit. He called it his vine. He kept a handkerchief in his pocket. His secret was that inside the handkerchief he had taped a row of razor blades. He could take it out and make a puzzle of your face. He had a little crimp in his walk. Everything perfect’s got a flaw. The cops hated him. They arrested me more when they knew Jigsaw was mine.

They hated the idea of a nigger making money, especially if it’s off a whitey, and it was nearly all whiteys on Forty-ninth Street. That was Chalktown.

Jigsaw had more scratch than God. He bought me a foxtail chain and a string of jade beads. He paid up, cash bonds. He even had a one-up on a Cadillac. He had a Rolls-Royce. Silver. That’s no lie. It was old but it rolled. It had a wooden steering wheel. Sometimes we rode up and down Park Avenue. That’s when being in the life was good. We rolled down the windows outside the Colony Club. We said, “Hi, ladies, anyone want a date?” They were terrified. We drove off, hollering, “Come on, let’s go get ourselves some cucumber sandwiches.”

We drove down to Times Square, howling. “Cut the crusts off ’em, baby!”

I got the most beautiful things from Jigsaw. He had an apartment on First and Fifty-eighth. Everything was boosted, even the carpets. Vases all over the place. And mirrors with golden edges. The tricks, they liked coming there. They walked right in and said, Wow. It was like they thought I was a businesswoman.

All the time they was looking for the bed. The thing is, the bed came down out of the wall. It was on electronic control.

That place was flash.

The guys who paid a hundred dollars, we called them Champagnes. Susie would say: “Here comes my Champagne,” when a fancy car pulled up on the street.

One night I had one of them football guys from the New York Giants, a linebacker with a neck so big they called him Sequoia. He had a wallet too, like none I ever seen, fat with C-notes. I thought, Here comes ten Champagnes all at once. Here it comes, bubbly, the mighty G.

Turned out he just wanted a freebie, so I got down on the ground, bent down, looked between my legs, said, “HIKE!” and threw him a room-service menu.

Sometimes I just crack myself up.

I was calling myself Miss Bliss then, ’cause I was very happy. The men were just bodies moving on me. Bits of color. They didn’t matter none. Sometimes I just felt like a needle in a jukebox. I just fell on that groove and rode in awhile. Then I’d pick the dust off and drop again.

The thing I noticed about the homicide cops is that they wore real nice suits. And their shoes were always polished. One of them, he had a three-legged shoeshine box right under his desk. Rags and black polish and all. He was cute. He wasn’t looking for a freebie. He only wanted to know who iced Jigsaw. I knew, but I wasn’t telling. When someone buys it, you keep your mouth shut. That’s the law on the street, zip zip goes your mouth, zip zip not saying a word, zip zip zip zip zip.

Jigsaw walked into three neat bullets. I saw him lying there, on the wet ground. He had one in the center of his forehead, where it blew his brains open. And when the paramedics opened up his shirt it was like he had two extra red eyes in his chest.

There was blood spatter on the ground and on the lamp post and on the mailbox too. This guy from the pizza shop came out to clean the passenger-side mirror of his van. He was scrubbing it with his apron, shaking his head and muttering under his breath, like someone had just burned his calzones. As if Jigsaw meant to leave his brains on the guy’s mirror! Like he did it deliberate!

He went back into the shop and the next time we went in the shop for a slice, he was like: “Hey, no hookers in here, get outta here, get your sellin’ asses O-U-T, especially you, you N-I-G-G-E-R.” We said, “Oh, he can spell,” but I swear to God, I wanted to twist his Guinea balls up in his throat and squeeze them into one and call it his Adam’s apple.

Susie said she hated racists, especially Guinea racists. We laughed our heads off and marched right on down to Second Avenue and got us a slice at Ray’s Famous. It was so delicious we didn’t even have to dab the oil off. After that we never went back to the place on Lex.

We weren’t gonna give business to no racist pig.

Jigsaw had all that scratch, but he was buried in Potter’s Field. I seen too many funerals. I guess I’m no different than nobody else. I don’t know who got Jigsaw’s money, but I’d say it was the syndicate.

There’s only one thing moves at the speed of light and that’s cold hard cash.

Couple of months after Jigsaw got scrambled, I saw Andy Warhol coming down the block. He had eyes that were big and blue and schizoid, like he just came from a day of token-sucking. I said, “Hey, Andy honey, you want a date?” He said, “I’m not Andy Warhol, I’m just a guy wearing an Andy Warhol mask, ha ha.” I pinched his ass. He jumped back and went, “Ooohh.” He was a bit square, but then he talked to me must’ve been ten minutes or more.

I thought he was going to put me in a movie. I was all jumping up and down in my stilettos. I woulda kissed him if he put me in a movie. But in the end he didn’t want nothing except to find himself a boy. That’s all he wanted, a young boy he could take home and do his thing with. I told him that I could use a big pink strap-on and he said: “Oh, stop, you’re getting me hot.”

I went around all night, saying: “I turned Andy Warhol on!”

I got another trick I thought I recognized. He was young but bald on top. The bald spot was very white, like a little ice rink on his head. He got a room in the Waldorf-Astoria. The first thing he did was he pulled the curtains tight and fell on the bed and said: “Let’s get it on.”

I was like, “Wow, do I know you, honey?”

He looked at me hard and said: “No.”

“Are you sure?” I said, all cutesy and shit. “You look familiar.”

“No,” he said, real angry.

“Hey, take a chill pill, honey,” I said. “I’m only axing.”

I pulled off his belt and unzipped him and he moaned, Ohyeahyeahyeah, like they all do, and he closed his eyes and kept on moaning, and then I don’t know why, but I figured it out. It was the guy from the weather report on CBS! Except he wasn’t wearing his toupee! That was his disguise. I finished him off and got myself dressed and waved goodbye but turned at the door and said to him, “Hey man, it’s cloudy in the east with the wind at ten knots and a chance of snow.”

There I was, cracking myself up again.

I used to love the joke where the last line was: Your Honor, I was armed with nothing more than a piece of fried chicken.

The hippies were bad for business. They were into free love. I stayed away from them. They stank.

The soldiers were my best clients. When they came back they just wanted to pop — popping was the only thing on their minds. They’d had their asses handed to them by a bunch of half-baked slanty-eyed motherfuckers and now they just needed to forget. And there ain’t much better to help you forget than popping with Miss Bliss.

I made up a little badge that said: THE MISS BLISS SOLUTION: MAKE WAR, NOT LOVE. Nobody thought it was funny, not even the boys who were coming home from ’Nam, so I threw it in the garbage can on the corner of Second Avenue.

They smelled like small little graveyards walking around, those boys.

But they needed loving. I was like a social service, word. Doing my thing for America. Sometimes I’d hum that kiddie song while he scraped his fingers down my back. Pop goes the weasel! They got a kick outta that.

Bob was a pross cop with a hard-on for black girls. I musta seen his shield more’n I had hot breakfasts. He arrested me even when I wasn’t working. I was in the coffee shop and he threw the badge and he said, “You’re coming with me, Sambette.”

He thought he was funny. I said, “Kiss my black ass, Bob.” Still he took me down the pen. He had his quota. He got paid overtime. I wanted to slice him up with my nail file.

Once I had a man a whole week long at the Sherry-Netherlands. There was a chandelier surrounded with grapes ‘n’ vines in the ceiling and violins carved outta the plaster and all. He was small and fat and bald and brown. He put a record on the player. Sounded like snake music. He said, “Isn’t this a divine comedy?” I said: “That’s a weird thing to say.” He just smiled. He had a nice accent.

We had crystal cocaine and caviar and champagne in a bucket. It was a blow date, but all he had me do was read to him. Persian poems. I thought maybe I was already in heaven and floating on a cloud. There was a lot of things being said about ancient Syria and Persia. I laid out on the bed buck naked and just read to the chandelier. He didn’t even want to touch me. He sat in the chair and watched me reading. I left with eight hundred dollars and a copy of Rumi. I never read nothing like that before. Made me want to have a fig tree.

That’s long before I went to Hunts Point. And that’s long before I ended up under the Deegan. And that’s long before Jazz and Corrie rode that van to doom.

But if I was given one week to live, just one week again, if that was my choice, that week at the Sherry-Netherlands is the one I’d repeat. I was just lying on the bed, naked and reading, and him being nice to me, and telling me I was fine, that I’d do well in Syria and Persia. I never seen Syria or Persia or Iran or whatever they call it. Someday I’m going to go, but I’ll bring Jazzlyn’s babies and I’ll marry an oil sheik.

Except I been thinking about the noose.

Any excuse is a good excuse. When they ship you off to prison they give you a syphilis test. I came back clean. I was thinking maybe I wouldn’t be clean this time. Maybe that’d be a good excuse.

I hate mops. I hate sweeping brushes. You can’t trick your way outta prison. You have to wash windows, clean the floor, sponge the showers. I’m the only hooker in C-40. Everyone else is way upstate. One thing for sure, there ain’t no pretty sunsets out the window.

All the butches are in C-50. All the femmes are where I am. The lesbians are called jaspers, I don’t know why — sometimes words are weird. In the canteen, all the jaspers want to do is comb my hair. I’m not into that. Never have been. I won’t wear no Oxfords. I like to keep my uniform short, but I won’t wear a bow in my hair either. Even if you’re going to die, you might as well die pretty.

I don’t eat. At least I can keep my figure. I’m still proud of that.

I’m a fuck-up but I’m still proud of my body.

They wouldn’t serve the food to dogs anyway. The dogs would strangle themselves after reading the menu. They’d start howling and puncture themselves dead with forks.

I got the keyring with the babies on it. I like to hang it on my finger and watch them twirl. I got this piece of aluminum foil too. It’s not like a mirror, but you can look in it and you can guess that you’re still pretty. It’s better ’n talking to a mouse. My cell mate shaved the side of the bed in order to put the mouse in wood shavings. I read a book once about a guy with a mouse. His name was Steinbeck — the guy, not the mouse. I ain’t stupid. I don’t wear the dunce cap just ’cause I’m a hooker. They did an I.Q. test and I got 124. If you don’t believe me, ask the prison shrink.

The library cart squeaks around once a week. They don’t got no books I like. I asked them for Rumi and they said, “What the hell is that?”

In the gym I play Ping-Pong. The butches go, “Ooohh, look at her smash.”

Most of the time, me and Jazz, we never robbed nobody. Wasn’t worth it. But this asshole, he took us all the way from the Bronx to Hell’s Kitchen and promised us all sorts of scratch. Turned out different, so all we done was we relieved him of the chore, that’s the word, relieved him. Just lightened his pockets, really. I took the rap for Jazzlyn. She wanted back with the babies. She needed the horse too. I wanted her off it, but she couldn’t go cold. Not like that. Me, I was clean. I could take it. I’d been clean six months. I was banging coke here and there, and sometimes I sold some horse that I got from Angie, but mostly I was clean.

In the station house Jazz was crying her eyes out. The detective leaned across his desk to me and said: “Look, Tillie, you wanna make things right for your daughter?” I’m like: “Yeah, babe.” He said: “All right, gimme a confession and I’ll let her go. You’ll get six months, no more, I guarantee it.” So, I sat down and sang. It was an old charge, robbery in the second degree. Jazz had jacked two hundred dollars from that guy and syringed that straight off.

That’s how it goes.

Everything flies through the windshield.

They told me Corrigan smashed all the bones in his chest when he hit the steering wheel. I thought, Well at least in heaven his Spanish chick’ll be able to reach in and grab his heart.

I’m a fuck-up. That’s what I am. I took the rap and Jazzlyn paid the price. I am the mother and my daughter is no more. I only hope at the last minute that at least she was smiling.

I’m a fuck-up like none you’ve ever seen before.

Even the roaches don’t like it here in Rikers. The roaches, they’ve got an aversion. The roaches, they’re like judges and district attorneys and shit. They crawl out of the walls in their black coats and they say, Miss Henderson, I hereby sentence you to eight months.

Anyone who knows roaches know that they rattle. That’s the word. They rattle across the floor.

The shower stall is the best place. You could hang an elephant from the pipes.

Sometimes I bang my head off the wall long enough that I just don’t feel it anymore. I can bang it hard enough I finally sleep. I wake with a headache and I bang again. It only stings in the shower when all the butches are watching.

A white girl got sliced yesterday. With the filed-down side of a canteen tray. She had it coming. Whiter than her whiteness. Outside the pen it never used to bother me: white or black or brown or yellow or pink. But I guess the pen is the flip side of real life — too many niggers and not many whiteys, all the whiteys can buy their way out of it.

This the longest I ever spent inside. It gets you to thinking about things. Mostly about being such a fuck-up. And mostly about where to hang the noose.

When they first told me ’bout Jazzlyn I just stood there beating my head against the cage like a bird. They let me go to the funeral and then they locked me back up. The babies weren’t there. I kept asking about the girls but everyone was saying: Don’t worry about the babies, they’re being looked after.

In my dreams I’m back in the Sherry-Netherlands. Why I liked him so much I don’t really know. He wasn’t a trick, he was a john — even with the bald head he was fine.

Men in the Middle Eastern life dig hookers. They like to spoil them and buy them things and walk around with the sheets wrapped around them. He asked me to stand by the window in silhouette. He positioned the light just so. I heard him gasp. All I was doing was standing. Nothing ever made me feel better than him just looking at me, appreciating what he saw. That’s what good men do — they appreciate. He wasn’t fooling with himself or nothing, he just sat in the chair watching me, hardly breathing. He said I made him delirious, that he’d give me anything just to stay there forever. I said something smart-ass, but really I was thinking the exact same thing. I hated myself for saying something disrespectful. I coulda had the floor swallow me up.

After a moment or two he relaxed, then sighed. He said something to me about the desert in Syria and how the lemon trees look like little explosions of color.

And all of a sudden — right there, looking out over Central Park — I got a longing for my daughter like nothing else before. Jazzlyn was eight or nine then. I wanted just to hold her in my arms. It’s no less love if you’re a hooker, it’s no less love at all.

The park got dark. The lights came on. Only a few of them were working. They lit up the trees.

“Read the poem about the marketplace,” he said.

It was a poem where a man buys a carpet in the marketplace, and it’s a perfect carpet, without a flaw, so it brings him all sorts of woe ‘n’ shit. I had to switch on the light to read to him and it spoiled the atmosphere, I could tell straight off. Then he said, “Just tell me a story then.”

I turned off the light and stood there. I didn’t want to say nothing cheap.

I couldn’t think of anything except a story I heard from a trick a few weeks before. So I stood there with the curtains in my hands and I said: “There was this old couple out walking by the Plaza. It was early evening. They were hand in hand. They were about to go into the park when a cop blew his whistle sharp and stopped them. The cop said, ‘You can’t go in there, it’s gonna get dark, it’s too dangerous to walk around the park, you’ll get mugged.’ The old couple said, ‘But we want to go in there, it’s our anniversary, we were here forty years ago exactly.’ The cop said, ‘You’re crazy. Nobody walks in Central Park anymore.’ But the old couple kept walking in anyway. They wanted to take the exact same walk they took all those years before, ’round the little pond. To remember. So they went hand in hand, right into the dark. And guess what? That cop, he walked behind at twenty paces, right around the lake, just to make sure them people weren’t tossed, ain’t that something?”

That was my story. I stayed still. The curtains were all damp in my hands. I could almost hear the Middle Eastern man smile.

“Tell it to me again,” he said.

I stood a little closer to the window, where the light was coming in real nice. I told it to him again, with even more details, like the sound of their footsteps and all.

I never even told that story to Jazzlyn. I wanted to tell her but I never did. I was waiting for the right time. He gave me that Rumi book when I left. I shoved it in my handbag, didn’t think much of it at first, but it crept up on me, like a street lamp.

I liked him, my little fat bald brown man. I went to the Sherry-Netherlands to see if he was there, but the manager kicked me out. He had a folder in his hand. He used it like a cattle prod. He said, “Out out out!”

I began to read Rumi all the time. I liked it because he had the details. He had nice lines. I began saying shit to my tricks. I told folks I liked the lines because of my father and how he studied Persian poetry. Sometimes I said it was my husband.

I never even had a father or a husband. Not one I knew of, anyways. I ain’t whining. That’s just a fact.

I’m a fuck-up and my daughter is no more.

Jazzlyn asked me once about her Daddy. Her real Daddy — not a daddy Daddy. She was eight. We were talking on the phone. Long-distance from New York to Cleveland. It cost me nothing because all the girls knew how to get the dime back. We learned it from the vets who came back from ’Nam all messed up in the head.

I liked the bank of phones on Forty-fourth. I’d get bored and ring the phone right beside me. I picked it up and talked to myself. I got a big kick outta that. Hi, Tillie, how you doin’, baby? Not too bad, Tillie, how you? Swingin’ it, Tillie, how’s the weather there, girl? Raining, Tillie-o. No shit, it’s raining here too, Tillie, ain’t that a kicker?!

I was on the drugstore phone on Fiftieth and Lex when Jazzlyn said: “Who’s my real Daddy?” I told her that her Daddy was a nice guy but he went out once for a pack of cigarettes. That’s what you tell a kid. Everyone says that, I don’t know why — I guess all the assholes who don’t want to hang around their kids are smokers.

She never even asked about him again. Not once. I used to think he was gone for cigarettes an awful long time, whoever the fuck he was. Maybe he’s standing around still, Pablo, waiting for the change.

I went back to Cleveland to pick Jazzlyn up. That was ′64 or ′65, one of them years. She was eight or nine years old then. She was waiting for me on the doorstep. She wore a little hooded coat and she was sitting there all pouty and then she looked up and saw me. I swear it was like seeing a firework go off. “Tillie!” she shouted. She never really called me Mom. She jumped up from the step. No one ever gave me a bigger hug. No one. She like near smothered me. I sat right down beside her and cried my eyes out. I said, “Wait’ll you see New York, Jazz, it’s gonna blow you away.”

My own mother was in the kitchen giving me snake eyes. I handed her an envelope with two thousand dollars. She said: “Oh, honey, I knew you’d come good, I just knew it!”

We wanted to drive across country, Jazzlyn and me, but instead we got a skinny dog all the way from Cleveland. The whole time there she slept on my shoulder and sucked her thumb, nine years old and still sucking her thumb. I heard later, in the Bronx, that was one of her things. She liked to suck her thumb when she was doing it with a trick. That makes me sick to the core. I’m a fuck-up and that’s all. That’s about all that matters.

Tillie Fuck-Up Henderson. That’s me without ribbons on.

I ain’t gonna kill myself until I see my baby’s baby girls. I told the warden today that I’m a grandmother and she didn’t say nothing. I said, “I want to see my grandbabies — why won’t they bring my grand-babies?” She didn’t bat an eyelid. Maybe I’m getting old. I’ll have my thirty-ninth birthday inside. It’ll take a whole week just to blow them candles out.

I begged her and begged her and begged her. She said the babies were fine, they were being looked after, social services had them.

It was a daddy who put me in the Bronx. He called himself L.A. Rex. He didn’t like niggers, but he was a nigger himself. He said Lexington was for whiteys. He said I got old. He said I was useless. He said I was taking too much time with Jazzlyn. He said to me that I looked like a piece of cheese. He said, “Don’t come down by Lex again or I’ll break your arms, Tillie, y’hear me?”

So that’s what he did — he broke my arms. He broke my fingers too. He caught me on the corner of Third and Forty-eighth and he snapped them like they was chicken bones. He said the Bronx was a good place for retirement. He grinned and said it was just like Florida without the beaches.

I had to go home to Jazzlyn with my arms in plaster. I was in convalescence for I don’t know how long.

L.A. Rex had a diamond star in his tooth, that’s no lie. He looked a bit like that Cosby guy on TV, except Cosby has some funky-ass sideburns. L.A. even paid my hospital bills. He didn’t put me out on the stroll. I thought, What the fuck is up with that? Sometimes the world is a place you just can’t understand.

So I got clean. I got myself housing. I gave up the game. Those were good years. All it took to make me happy was finding a nickel in the bottom of my handbag. Things were going so good. It felt like I was standing at a window. I put Jazzlyn in school. I got a job putting stickers on supermarket cans. I came home, went to work, came home again. I stayed away from the stroll. Nothing was going to put me back there. And then one day, out of the blue, I don’t even remember why, I walked down to the Deegan, stuck out my thumb, and looked for a trick. I got a thump in the back of my head from a daddy called Birdhouse — he was wearing a surefire fuck-off hat that he never once took off ’cause he didn’t like anyone to see his glass eye. He said, “Hey, babe, what’s shakin’?”

Jazzlyn needed school books. I’m almost sure that’s what it was.

I wasn’t a parasol girl down on Forty-ninth and Lex. The parasol was a thing I started in the Bronx. To hide my face, really. That’s a secret I won’t tell nobody. I’ve always had a good body. Even for all those years I stuffed junk into it, it was good and curvy and extra delicious. I never had a disease I couldn’t get rid of. It was when I got to the Bronx that I took up the parasol. They couldn’t see my face but they could see my booty. I could shake it. I had enough electricity in my booty to jump-start the whole of New York City.

In the Bronx I got in the car quick and then they couldn’t say no. Try kicking a girl out of your car unpaid: you might as well suck raindrops from a puddle.

It’s always been the older girls that work the Bronx. All except Jazzlyn. I kept Jazz around for company. She only went downtown now and then. She was the most popular girl on the stroll. Everyone else was charging twenty, but Jazzlyn could go all the way to forty, even fifty. She got the young guys. And the older guys with the real bread, the fat ones who want to feel handsome. They came on all starry-eyed with her. She had straight hair and good lips and legs that went up to her neck. Some of the guys they called her Raf, ’cause that’s what she looked like. If there’d’ve been trees under the Deegan she’d’ve been up there giraffing with her tongue.

That was one of the nicknames on her rap sheet. Raf. She was with this British guy once and he was making all these dive-bomber sounds. He was pumping away, saying shit like: “Here I am, rescue mission, Flanders one-oh-one, Flanders one-oh-one! Coming down!” When he was finished he said, “See, I rescued you.” And Jazzlyn’s like: “You rescued me, is that right?” ’Cause men like to think they can rescue you. Like you got a disease and they got the special cure just waiting for you. Come in here, honey, don’t ya want someone to understand you? Me, I understand you. I’m the only guy knows a chick like you. I got a dick as long as a Third Avenue menu but I got a heart bigger’n the Bronx. They fuck you like they’re doing you a big favor. Every man wants a whore to rescue, that’s the knockdown truth. It’s a disease in itself, you ask me. Then, when they’ve shot their wad they just zip up and go and forget about you. That’s something fucked up in the head.

Some of these assholes think you got a heart of gold. No one’s got a heart of gold. I don’t got no heart of gold, no way. Not even Corrie. Even Corrie went for that Spanish broad with the dumb little tattoo on her ankle.

When Jazzlyn was fourteen she came home with her first red mark on the inside of her arm. I as good as slapped the black off her, but she came back with the mark between her toes. She didn’t even smoke a cigarette and there she was, on the horse. She was running with the Immortals then. They had a beef with the Ghetto Brothers.

I tried keeping her straight by keeping her on the streets. That’s what I was thinking.

Big Bill Broonzy’s got a song I like, but I don’t like to listen to it: I’m down so low, baby, I declare I’m lookin’ up at down.

By the time she was fifteen I was watching her shoot up. I’d sit down on the pavement and think, That’s my girl. And then I’d say, Hold on a goddamn motherfucking second, is that my girl? Is that really my girl?

And then I’d think, Yeah that’s my girl, that’s my flesh ‘n’ blood, that’s her, all right.

I made that.

There were times I’d strap the elastic around her arm to get the vein to pop. I was keeping her safe. That’s all I was trying to do.

This is the house that Horse built. This is the house that Horse built.

Jazz came home one Friday and said: “Hey, Till, how’d you like to be a grandma?” I said, “Yeah, Grandma T, that’s me.” She started blubbering. And then she was crying on my shoulder — it woulda been nice if it weren’t for real.

I went down to Foodland but all they had was a cheap-ass Entenmann’s.

She was eating it and I looked at her and thought, That’s my baby and she’s having a baby. I didn’t even take a slice until Jazz went to bed and then I wolfed that motherfucker down, got crumbs all over the floor.

Second time I came a grandmother, Angie organized a party for me. She talked Corrie into borrowing a wheelchair and she wheeled me along under the Deegan. We were high on coke then, laughing our asses off.

Oh, but what I shoulda done — I shoulda swallowed a pair of handcuffs when Jazzlyn was in my belly. That’s what I shoulda done. Gave her a heads-up about what was coming her way. Say, Here you is, already arrested, you’re your mother and her mother before her, a long line of mothers stretching way back to Eve, french and nigger and dutch and whatever else came before me.

Oh, God, I shoulda swallowed handcuffs. I shoulda swallowed them whole.

I spent the last seven years fucking in the inside of refrigerator cars. I spent the last seven years fucking in the inside of refrigerator cars.

Yeah. I spent the last seven years fucking in the inside of refrigerator cars.

Tillie Fuck-Up Henderson.

I get a call that I got a visitor. I’m, like, primed. I’m fixing my hair and putting on lipstick and making myself smell fine, jailhouse perfume and all. I’m flossing my teeth and plucking my eyebrows and even making sure my prison duds look good. I thought, There’s only two people in the world ever going to come see me. I was bouncing down the prison steps. It was like coming down a fire escape. I could smell the sky. Watch out, babies, here comes your Momma’s Momma.

I got to the Gatehouse. That’s what they call the visiting room. I’m looking all ’round for them. There are lots of chairs and plastic windows and a big cloud of cigarette smoke. It’s like moving through a delicious fog. I’m standing up on my toes and looking all around and everyone’s settling down and meeting their honeys. There are big oohs and ahhs and laughing and shouting going on, all over the place, and kids screaming, and I keep standing up on my tiptoes to see my babies. Soon enough there’s only one spot left at the chairs. Some white bitch is sitting opposite the glass. I’m thinking I half know her, but I don’t know from where, maybe she’s a parole officer, or a social worker or something. She’s got blond hair and green eyes and pearly-white skin. And then she says: “Oh, hi, Tillie.”

I’m thinking, Don’t Hi, Tillie me, who the fuck’re you? These whiteys, they come on all familiar. Like they understand you. Like they’re your best friends.

But I just say, “Hi,” and slide onto the chair. I feel like I got the air knocked out of me. She gives me her name and I shrug ’cause it don’t mean nothing to me. “You got any cigarettes?” I say, and she says no, she quit. And I’m thinking, She’s even less good to me than she was five minutes ago, and five minutes ago she was useless. And I say, “Are you the one who got my babies?” She says, “No, someone else is looking after the babies.” Then she just sits there and starts asking me about prison life, and if I’m eating good, and when am I going to get out? I look at her like she’s ten pounds of shit wrapped in a five-pound bag. She’s all nervous and stuff. And I finally out and say it so slow that she raises her eyebrows in surprise: “Who — the — fuck — are — you?” And she says, “I know Keyring, he’s my friend.” And I’m like, “Who the fuck is Keyring?” And then she spells it out: “C-i-a-r-a-n.”

Then the cherry falls and I think, She’s the one came to Jazzlyn’s funeral with Corrigan’s brother. Funny thing is, he’s the one who gave me the keyring.

“Are you a holy roller?” I ask her.

“Am I what?”

“You on a Jesus kick?”

She shakes her head.

“Then why you here?”

“I just wanted to see how you were.”

“For real?”

And she says: “For real, Tillie.”

So I let up on her. I say, “All right, whatever.”

And she’s leaning forward, saying it’s nice to see me again, the last time she saw me she just felt very badly for me, the way the pigs put me in handcuffs and all, at the graveside. She actually said “pigs,” but I could tell she wasn’t used to it, like she was trying to be tough but she wasn’t. But I think, Okay, this is cool, I’ll let it slide, I’ll let fifteen minutes drift, what’s fifteen, twenty minutes?

She’s pretty. She’s blond. She’s cool. I’m telling her about the girl in C-40 with the mouse, and what it’s like when you’re a femme not a butch, and how the food tastes terrible, and how I miss my babies, and how there was a fight on TV night over the Chico show and Scatman Crothers and if he’s a cardboard nigger. And she’s nodding her head and going, Uh-huh, hmm, oh, I see, that’s very interesting, Scatman Crothers, he’s cute. Like she’d get it on with him. But she’s hip to me. She’s smiling and laughing. She’s smart too — I can tell she’s smart, a rich girl. She tells me she’s an artist and she’s dating Corrigan’s brother, even though she’s married, he went to Ireland to scatter Corrigan’s ashes and came right back, they fell in love, she’s getting her life together, she used to be an addict, and she still likes to drink. She says she’ll put some money in my prison account and maybe I can get myself some cigarettes.

“What else can I get for you?” she says.

“My babies.”

“I’ll try,” she says. “I’ll see where they are. I’ll see if I can get them to visit. Anything else, Tillie?”

“Jazz,” I say.

“Jazz?” she goes.

“Bring Jazzlyn back too.”

And she goes white at the gills.

“Jazzlyn’s dead,” she said, like I’m some fucking idiot.

She’s got a look in her eyes like she just been kicked. She’s staring at me and her lip is quivering. And then the goddamn bell goes off. It’s visiting time over and we’re saying good-bye to each other behind the glass, and I turn to her and say, “Why did ya come here?”

She looks down at the ground and then she smiles up at me, lip still quivering, but she shakes her head, and there are little teardrops in the corner of her eyes.

She slips a couple of books across the table and I’m like, Wow, Rumi, how the fuck did she know?

She says she’ll come again, and I beg her again to bring the babies. She says she’ll ask around, they’re with social services or something. Then she waves bye-bye, scrubbing her eyes dry as she walks away. I’m thinking, What the fuck?

I was walking up the stairs again, still wondering how she knew about Rumi, and then I remembered. I started laughing to myself, but I was glad I didn’t say anything to her about Ciaran and his little pork sword — what’s the point? He was a good guy, Keyring. Anyone who’s a brother of Corrie’s is a brother of mine.

Nothing’s righteous. Corrigan knew the deal. He never gave me no shit. His brother was a bit of an asshole. That’s just a plain fact. But lots of people are assholes and he paid me well for the one time and I blinded him with Rumi. Corrigan’s brother had some serious scratch in his pockets — he was a bartender or something. I looked down and I remember thinking, There’s my dark tit in Corrigan’s brother’s hand.

I never saw Corrigan naked, but I imagine he was swell even if his brother was a Tweety Bird.

First time we saw Corrigan, we just flat-out knew he was undercover. They got Irishes undercover. Most of the cops’re Irish — guys going a little to fat, with bad teeth but still a sense of making the world funny.

One day Corrigan’s van was filthy and Angie wrote with her finger in the dirt: DON’T YOU WISH YOUR WIFE WAS THIS FILTHY? That had us crying we laughed so hard. Corrie didn’t notice it. Then Angie wrote a smiley face and TURN ME OVER on the other side. He was scooting around the Bronx with that crazy shit written on his van and he never even saw it. He was in a world of his own, Corrie. Angie went up to him at the end of the week and showed him the words. He got all blushy like the Irish guys do and he began stammering.

“But I don’t understand — I haven’t got a wife,” he said to Angie.

We never laughed so much since Christ left Cincinnati.

Every day we were hanging out with him, pleading with him to arrest us. And he was going: “Girls, girls, girls, please.” The more we got to hugging on him the more he’d go, “Girls, girls, come on, now, girls.”

Once, Angie’s daddy broke us up and grabbed Corrie by the scruff of the neck and told him where he should go. He put a knife up under Corrie’s neck. Corrie just stared at him. His eyes were big but it was like he didn’t have no fear. We were like: “Yo, man, just leave.” Angie’s daddy flicked the knife and Corrie walked away with blood coming down his black shirt.

A couple of days later he was down again, bringing us coffees. He had a little bandage on his neck. We were like: “Yo, Corrie, you should get-the-fuck, you’ll get tossed.” He shrugged, said he’d be all right. Down came Angie’s daddy and Jazzlyn’s daddy and Suchie’s daddy, all at once, like the Three Wise Men. I saw Corrie’s face go white. I never seen him go that white before. He was worse’n chalk.

He held his hands up and said: “Hey, man, I’m just giving them coffee.” And Angie’s daddy stepped forward. He said: “Yeah well, I’m just giving you the cream.”

Corrie got the daylight kicked out of him seven ways to Sunday, I don’t know how many times. That shit hurt. It hurt bad. Even Angie was hanging off her daddy’s back, trying to scratch his eyes out, but we couldn’t stop him. Still Corrie came back, day after day. Got to where the daddies actually respected him for it. Corrie never once called the cops, or the Guards, that’s what he called them, that was his Irish word for the police. He said: “I’m not calling the Guards.” Still the daddies knocked the shit out of him every now and then, just to keep him in line.

We found out later he was a priest. Not really a priest, but one of those guys who lived somewhere because he thought that he should, like he had a duty thing, morals, some sort of shit like that, a monk, with vows and shit, and that chastity stuff.

They say boys always want to be the first with girls, and girls always want to be the last with boys. But with Corrie all of us wanted to be the first. Jazz said, “I had Corrie last night, he was super-delicious, he was glad I was his first.” And then Angie’d go: “Bullshit, I had that motherfucker for lunch, I ate him whole.” And then Suchie’d go: “Shit, y’all, I spread him on my pancakes and sucked him down with coffee.”

Anyone could hear us laughing, miles away.

He had a birthday once, I think he was thirty-one, he was just a kid, and I bought him a cake and all of us ate it together out under the Deegan. It was covered in cherries, musta been a million and six cherries on it, and Corrie didn’t even get the joke, we were popping cherries in his mouth left and center and he’s going, Girls, girls please, I’ll have to call the Guards.

We almost wet ourselves laughing.

He cut up the cake and gave a piece out to everyone. He took the last piece for himself. I held a cherry over his mouth and got him to try to bite on it. I kept moving it away while he kept trying to snag it. He was stepping down the street after me. I had my swimsuit on. We musta looked a pair, Corrie and me, cherry juice all over his face.

Don’t let no one tell you that it’s all shit and grime and honkypox on the stroll. It’s that, all right, sometimes, sure, but it’s funny sometimes too. Sometimes you just hang a cherry out in front of a man. Sometimes you got to do it, sometimes, for putting a smile on your face.

When Corrie laughed he had a face that creased up deep.

“Say fuhgeddboudit, Corrie.” “Fergetaboutit.”

“No no no, say fuhgeddboudit.” “Fergedboutit.” “Oh, man, fuhgeddboudit!” “Okay, Tillie,” he said, “I’ll fuh-get-bout-it.”

The only whitey I ever woulda slept with — genuine — was Corrigan. No bullshit. He used to tell me I was too good for him. He said I’d chuckle at his best and whistle for more. Said I was way too pretty for a guy like him. Corrigan was a stone-cold stud. I woulda married him. I woulda had him talk to me in his accent all the time. I woulda taken him upstate and cooked him a big meal with corn beef and cabbage and made him feel like he was the only whitey on earth. I woulda kissed his ear if he gave me a chance. I woulda spilled my love right down into him. Him and the Sherry-Netherlands guy. They were fine.

We filled his trash can seven, eight, nine times a day. That was nasty. Even Angie thought it was nasty and she was the nastiest of all of us — she left her tampons in there. I mean, nasty. I can’t believe Corrie used to see that stuff and he never once gave us shit about it, just dumped it out and went on his way. A priest! A monk! The tinkling shop!

And those sandals! Man! We’d hear the slap of him coming.

He said to me once that most of the time people use the word love as just another way to show off they’re hungry. The way he said it went something like: Glorify their appetites.

He said it just like that, but in his delicious accent. I could’ve eaten everything Corrie said, I coulda just gobbled it all down. He said, “Here’s a coffee, Tillie,” and I thought it was the nicest thing I ever heard. I went weak at the knees. He he was like a Motown whitey.

Jazzlyn used to say she loved him like chocolate.

It’s been a long time since that Lara girl came to visit, maybe ten or thirteen days. She said she’d bring the babies. She promised. You get used to people, but. They always promise. Even Corrie made promises. The drawbridge shit and all.

A funny-ass thing happened with Corrie once. I’ll never forget. It’s the only time he ever brought us a trick to look after. Along he comes, real late one night, opens the back of the van and lifts out an old guy in a wheelchair. Corrie’s all cagey and all. I mean, he’s a priest or whatever and he’s bringing us a trick! He’s looking over his shoulder. He’s worried. Feeling guilty, maybe. I said: “Hey, Daddy-o,” and his face goes white, so I stayed quiet and didn’t say nothing. Corrie’s coughing into his fist and all. Turns out it’s the old guy’s birthday and he’s been pleading and pleading and pleading with Corrie to take him out. Says he hasn’t been with a woman since the Great Depression, which is like eight hundred million years ago. And the old guy’s real abusive, calling Corrie all sorts of names ‘n’ all. But it just rolls off o’ Corrie. He shrugs his shoulders and pulls the hand brake on the chair and leaves Methuselah there on the sidewalk.

“It’s not my call, but Albee here wants servicing.”

“I told ya not to tell ’em my name,” shouts the old guy.

“Shut up,” says Corrie, and he walks away.

Then he turns around once more and looks at Angie and says: “Just don’t rob him, please.”

“Me, dice him?” says Angie, with her eyes all starry and shit.

Corrie raises his eyes to heaven and shakes his head.

“Promise me,” he says, and then he slams the door of his brown van and sits inside, waiting.

Corrie turns on the radio real loud.

We get down to work. It turns out Methuselah’s got enough scratch to keep us all going awhile. He musta been saving for years. We decide to give him a party. So we lift him into the back of a fruit-and-vegetable truck and make sure his brake is on, and we take our clothes off and get to dancing. Shaking it in his face. Rubbing him up and down. Jazzlyn’s jumping up and down on the fruit crates. And we’re all naked, playing the Hike! game with bits of lettuce and tomatoes. It’s hilarious.

The funny thing is, the old guy, he’s about nineteen hundred years old at least, just closes his eyes and sits back against his wheelchair, like he’s breathing us all in, a little smile on his face. We offer him whatever he wants, but he just keeps his eyes closed, like he’s remembering something, and he’s got that grin on his mug the whole time, he’s in heaven. Eyes closed and nostrils flaring. He’s like one of those guys who likes just to smell everything. He says to us something about being hungry and how he met his wife when he was hungry and then they crossed some border together into Austria and then she died.

He had a voice like Uri Geller. Most of the time when tricks say anything, we just say, “Ah-ha,” like we understand them perfectly. He had tears rolling down his face, half of them were tears of joy, and half of them were something else, I don’t know what. Angie shoved her titties in his face and shouted: “Bend this spoon, motherfucker.”

Some girls like old guys because they don’t want a lot. Angie don’t mind them. But, me, I hate old guys, especially when they got their shirts off. They got these little droopy tits like icing off the side of a cake. But, hey, he was paying us and we kept telling him how good he looked. He was getting all red in the face.

Angie was shouting, “Don’t give him a heart attack, girls — I hate the emergency ward!”

He let the brake on his wheelchair go and when we were done he paid us all twice as much as we asked. We lifted him out the truck and this old guy started looking for Corrie: “Where’s that pussy asshole?”

Angie said: “Who you calling a pussy, you pussy-ass, shrivel-dick?”

Corrie switched off the radio and came out of his brown van, where he sat waiting, and said thank you to us all, and just pushed that old guy back to his van. Funny thing is, there was a piece of lettuce stuck to the old guy’s wheelchair, inside the wheel. Corrie pushed him to the truck and the piece of lettuce went round and round and round.

Corrie was like: “Remind me never to eat salad, ever ever ever again.” That cracked us up. That was one of the best nights we ever had under the Deegan. I suppose Corrie was helping us out. That old guy was made of cash. He smelled a bit bad, but he was worth it.

Every time I get a piece of lettuce in the prison chow now, I just have to laugh.

The boss matron likes me. She had me in her office. She said: “Open your jumpsuit, Henderson.” I opened it up and let my tits hang out. She just sat in her chair and didn’t move, just closed her eyes and started breathing heavy. Then after a minute she said: “Dismissed.”

The femmes have a different shower time than the butches. That don’t make no difference. There’s all sorts of crazy shit goes on in the showers. I thought I’d seen it all, but sometimes it looks like a massage salon. Someone brought in butter once from the kitchen. They had it already melted down. The matrons with their nightsticks love getting off on it. It’s illegal but sometimes they bring the guards in from the male prison. I think I’d jerk them off just for a pack of cigarettes. You can hear the oohs and ahhs when they come around. But they don’t fuck or rape us. They stop at that. They just stare and get off on it, like the boss matron.

I had a British trick once, and he called it getting me jollies. “Hey, luv, any chance of gettin’ me jollies?” I like that. I’m gonna get my jollies. I’m gonna hang myself from the pipes in the shower room and then I’ll get my jollies.

Watch me dance from the jolly pipe.

Once I wrote Corrie a letter and left it in his bathroom. I said: I really dig you, John Andrew. That was the only time I ever called him by his real name. He told it to me and said it was a secret. He said he didn’t like the name — he was named after his father, who was an Irish asshole. “Read the note, Corrie,” I said. He opened it up. He blushed. It was the cutest thing, him blushing. I wanted to pinch his cheeks.

He said, “Thanks,” but it sounded like Tanks, and he said something about how he had to get himself good with God, but he liked me, he said, he really did, but really he had something going with God. He said it like he and God were having a boxing match. I said I’d stand ringside. He touched my wrist and said, “Tillie, you’re a riot.”

Where are my babies? One thing I know, I used to sugar them up way too much. Eighteen months old and they were already sucking on lollipops. That’s a bad grandmother, you ask me. They’re gonna have bad teeth. I’m gonna see them in heaven and they’re gonna be wearing braces.

First time I ever turned a trick I went and bought myself a supermarket cake. Big white one with frosting. I stuck my finger into it and licked. I could smell the man on my finger.

When I first sent Jazzlyn out, I bought her a supermarket cake too. Foodland special. Just for her, to make her feel better. It was half eaten by the time she came back. She stood there in the middle of the room, tears in her eyes: “You ate my goddamn cake, Tillie.”

And I was sitting there with icing all over my face, going, “No I didn’t, Jazz, not me, no way.”

Corrie was always talking that shit about getting her a castle and all. If I had a castle I’d let down the drawbridge and allow everyone to leave. I broke down at the funeral. I shoulda kept my ’posure, but I didn’t. The babies weren’t there. Why weren’t the girls there? I woulda killed to see them. That’s all I wanted to see. Someone said they were being looked after by social services, but someone else said that it’d be all right, they said the babies got a good babysitter.

That was always the hardest thing. Getting a babysitter so we could hit the stroll. Sometimes it was Jean and sometimes it was Mandy and sometimes Latisha, but the best of them all woulda been nobody, I know that.

I shoulda just stayed at home and ate all the supermarket cakes until I couldn’t even get outta the chair.

I don’t know who God is but if I meet Him anytime soon I’m going to get Him in the corner until He tells me the truth.

I’m going to slap Him stupid and push Him around until He can’t run away. Until He’s looking up at me and then I’ll get Him to tell me why He done what He done to me and what He done to Corrie and why do all the good ones die and where is Jazzlyn now and why she ended up there and how He allowed me to do what I done to her.

He’s going to come along on His pretty white cloud with all His pretty little angels flapping their pretty white wings and I’m gonna out and say it formal: Why the fuck did you let me do it, God?

And He’s gonna drop His eyes and look to the ground and answer me. And if He says Jazz ain’t in heaven, if He says she didn’t make it through, He’s gonna get himself an ass-kicking. That’s what He’s gonna get.

An ass-kicking like none He ever got before.

I ain’t gonna whine either before or after I do it. Well, I guess there’d be no whining after anyway. If you think of the world without people it’s about the most perfect thing there ever is. It’s all balanced and shit. But then come the people, and they fuck it up. It’s like you got Aretha Franklin in your bedroom and she’s just giving it her all, she’s singing just for you, she’s on fire, this is a special request for Tillie H., and then all of a sudden out pops Barry Manilow from behind the curtains.

At the end of the world they’re gonna have cockroaches and Barry Manilow records, that’s what Jazzlyn said. She cracked me up too, my Jazz.

It weren’t my fault. Peaches from C-49 came at me with a piece of lead pipe. She ended up in the infirmary with fifteen stitches across her back. People think I’m easy ’cause I’m cute.

If you don’t want it to rain, don’t fuck with the clouds over Tillie H. I just hit her one good whack. It weren’t my fault. I didn’t want to juice her up, that was all. I’m not into that. Simple fact is she needed an ass-kicking.

The boss matron was up in my face. She said I was gonna have to go upstate. She said: “We’re shipping you upstate for the last few months of your sentence.” I was like: “What the fuck?” She said: “You heard me, Henderson, no cursing in this office.” I said: “I’ll take it all off for you, boss, every stitch.” She shouted: “How dare you! Don’t insult me! That’s disgusting.” I said: “Please don’t send me upstate. I want to see my babies.” She said nothing and I got nervous and said something not too polite again. She said, “Get the hell out of here.”

I went around the side of her desk. I was just going to open my jumpsuit to pleasure her, but she hit the panic button. In came the screws. I didn’t mean to do what I done, I didn’t mean to get her in the face, I just lashed out with my foot. I knocked her front tooth out. I guess it don’t matter. I’m going upstate now for sure. I’m on the pony express.

The boss matron didn’t even beat the shit out of me. She lay there on the floor a moment and I swear she almost smiled, and then she said: “I’ve got something real nice for you, Henderson.” They put me in cuffs and they arraigned me, all formal and everything. They put me in the van and booked me and brought me to Queens court.

I pleaded guilty to assault and they gave me eighteen months more. That’s near two years all together with time served. The defense lawyer told me it was a good deal, I coulda gotten three, four, five years, even seven. He said, “Honey, take it.” I hate lawyers. He was the sort who walks around with a stick so far up his ass you could’ve waved a flag under his nose. Said he pleaded with the judge and all. He said to the judge: “It’s just one tragedy after another, Your Honor.”

I told him the only tragedy is that I don’t see my babies nowhere. How come my babies weren’t in the courtroom? That’s what I wanted to know. I shouted it out. “How come they ain’t here?”

I was hoping somebody would be there, that Lara girl or somebody, but there was nobody at all.

The judge, he was black this time, he must’ve gone to Harvard or something. I thought he woulda understood, but niggers can be worse on niggers sometimes. I said to him, “Your Honor, can you get me my babies?

I just wanna see them once.” He shrugged and said the babies were in a good place. He never once looked me in the face. He said: “Describe to me exactly what happened.” And I said: “What happened is that I had a baby and then she had some babies of her own.” And he said, “No, no, no — with the assault.” And I said, “Oh, who the fuck cares a flying fuck about the fucking assault, god fucking damn it fuck me fuck you and fuck your wife.” Then my lawyer shut me up. The judge looked down over his glasses at me and sighed. He said something about Booker T. Washington, but I wasn’t listening too good. Finally, he said there was a specific request from a warden to put me in a penitentiary upstate. He said the word penitentiary like he was lording it over me. I said to him: “And fuck your parrot too, asshole.”

He snapped his gavel on the bench and that was that.

I tried to scratch their eyes out. They had to put me in restraint and bring me to the hospital wing. Then on the bus upstate they had to restrain me again. Even worse, they didn’t tell me they was going to move me from New York. I kept shouting out for the babies. Upstate woulda been okay, but Connecticut? I’m no country girl. They had a shrink meet me and then they gave me a yellow jumpsuit. You’d need a shrink for sure if you wanted to wear a yellow jumpsuit.

I was brought into an office and I told the shrink that I was real happy to be in suburban Connecticut. Real real happy. I said if she gave me a knife I’d show her just how happy. I’d trace it out on my wrist.

“Lock her up,” she said.

They give me pills. Orange ones. They watch them go down. Sometimes I can fake it and tuck one of them in the hole in the back of my teeth. Someday I’m going to take them all together like one great big delicious orange, and then I’ll reach up to the jolly pipe and say sayonara.

I don’t even know my cell mate’s name. She’s fat and wears green socks. I told her I’m gonna hang myself and all about the jolly pipe and she said, “Oh.” Then a few minutes later she said, “When?”

I guess that white woman, Lara, worked things out, or someone did, somehow, somewhere. I went down to the waiting room. The babies! The babies! The babies!

They were sitting there on the knee of a big black woman, long white gloves on her and a fancy red handbag, looking for all the world that she just woke up from the Lord’s bed.

Down I ran straight to the glass wall and stuck my hands in the bottom opening.

“Babies!” I said. “Little Jazzlyn! Janice!”

They didn’t know me. They were sitting on that woman’s lap, sucking their thumbs and looking over her shoulder. Like to broke my heart. They kept snuggling into her bosom, smiling. I kept saying, “Come to Grandma, come to Grandma, let me touch your hands.” That’s all you can do through the bottom of the glass — they got a few inches and you can touch someone’s hands. It’s cruel. I just wanted to hug on them. Still they wouldn’t budge — maybe it was the prison duds, I don’t know. The woman had a southern accent, but I knew her face from the projects, I seen her before. I always thought she was a square, used to stand in the elevator and turn away. She said she was rightly conflicted whether she should bring the babies in or not, but she heard I really wanted to see them and they were living in Poughkeepsie now with a nice house and a nice fence, and it wasn’t too far away. She’d been fostering them awhile now, she got them through the Bureau of Child Welfare, they had to spend a few days in a Seaman’s home or something like that, but now they were being well looked after, she told me, don’t you worry.

“Come to Grandma,” I said again.

Little Jazzlyn turned her face into the woman’s shoulder. Janice was sucking on her thumb. I noticed their necks were scrubbed clean. Their fingernails too were all perfect and round.

“Sorry,” she said, “I guess they’re just feeling shy.”

“They look good,” I said.

“They’re eating healthy.”

“Don’t feed them too much shit,” I said.

She looked at me a second from under her eyebrows, but she was cool, she was. She wasn’t about to say nothing about me cursing. I liked her for that. She wasn’t a stuck-up, she wasn’t making judgments.

We were silent awhile and then she said that the girls have got a nice room in a little house on a quiet street, much quieter than the projects, she painted the baseboards for them, they got wallpaper with umbrellas on it.

“What color?”

“Red,” she said.

“Good,” I said, because I didn’t want them having no pink parasols. “Come to Tillie and touch my hands,” I said again, but the babies never once got off her lap. I begged and begged but the more I begged, the more they turned towards her. I guess maybe the prison frightened them, the guards and all.

The woman gave a smile that pinched her face some and said it was time for them to get going. I wasn’t sure if I hated her or not. Sometimes my mind sways between good and bad. I wanted to lean across and smash the glass and grab her nappy hair, but then again, she was looking after my babies, they weren’t in some horrible orphanage, starving, and I could’ve kissed her for not giving them too many lollipops and rotting their teeth.

When the bell rang she held the babies across to kiss me, against the glass. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the smell of them coming in through the little slot at the bottom of the glass, so delicious. I poked my little finger through and little Janice touched it. It was like magic. I put my face against the glass again. They smelled like real babies, like powder and milk and all.

When I was walking back out the courtyard to the pen I felt like someone came and carved my heart out, then put it walking in front of me. That’s what I thought — there’s my heart going right out in front of me, all on its own, slick with blood.

I cried all night. I ain’t ashamed. I don’t want them working no stroll. Why did I do what I done to Jazzlyn? That’s the thing I’d like to know, Why did I do what I done?

What I hated the most: standing under the Deegan among all those splotches of pigeon shit on the ground. Just looking down and seeing them like they was my carpet. I flat-out hated that. I don’t want the babies to see that.

Corrie said there are a thousand reasons to live this life, each one of them fine, but I guess it didn’t do him no good now, did it?

My cell mate ratted me out. Said she was worried about me. But I don’t need no prison-house shrink just to tell me that I ain’t gonna be alive if I leave my feet dangling in the air. They pay her for that shit? I missed my calling. I coulda been a millionaire.

Here comes Tillie Henderson with the shrink hat on. You been a bad mother, Tillie, and you’re a shitass grandmother. Your own mother was shitty too. Now give me a hundred bucks, thank you, very good, next in line please, no I don’t take checks, cash only, please.

You’re manic-depressive and you’re manic-depressive too and you, you’re definitely manic-depressive, girl. And you over there in the corner, you’re just plain fucking depressive.

I’d like to have a parasol the day I go. I’ll hang myself from the jolly pipes and look all pretty underneath.

I’ll do it for the girls. They don’t need no one like me. They don’t need to be out on the stroll. They’re better off this way.

Jolly pipe, here I come.

I’ll look like Mary Poppins swinging underneath.

They got these religious meetings take place in the Gatehouse. I went this morning. I was talking to the chaplain about Rumi and shit, but he’s like, “That’s not spiritual, that’s poetry.” Fuck God. Fuck Him. Fuck Him sideways and backwards and any which way. He ain’t coming for me. There ain’t no burning bushes and there ain’t no pillars of light. Don’t talk to me about light. It ain’t nothing more than a glow at the end of a street lamp.

Sorry, Corrie, but God is due His ass-kicking.

One of the last things I heard Jazz do, she screamed and dropped the keyring out the door of the paddy wagon. Clink it went on the ground and we saw Corrigan coming out to the street with a muscle in his step. He was red in the face. Screaming at the cops. Life was pretty good then. I’d have to say that’s one of the good moments — ain’t that strange? I remember it like yesterday, getting arrested.

There ain’t no such thing as getting home. That’s the law of living far as I can see. I bet they don’t have no Sherry-Netherlands in heaven. The Sherry-Never-lands.

I gave Jazzlyn a bath once. She was just a few weeks old. Skin shining. I looked at her and thought she gave birth to the word beautiful. I wrapped her in a towel and promised her she’d never go on the stroll.

Sometimes I want to stab my heart with a stiletto. I used to watch men with her when she was all growed up. And I’d say to myself, Hey that’s my daughter you’re fucking. That’s my little girl you’re pulling into the front seat. That’s my blood.

I was a junkie then. I guess I always have been. That ain’t no excuse.

I don’t know if the world’ll ever forgive me for the bad I slung her way. I ain’t gonna sling it the way of the babies, not me.

This is the house that Horse built.

I’d say good-bye, except I don’t know who to say it to. I ain’t whining. That’s just the fuck-off truth. God is due His ass-kicking.

Here I come, Jazzlyn, it’s me.

I got a knuckle-duster in my sock.

THE RINGING GROOVES OF CHANGE

BEFORE THE WALK, HE WOULD go to Washington Square Park to perform. It marked the beginning of the city’s dangerous side. He wanted the noise, to build up some tension in his body, to be wholly in touch with the filth and the roar. He secured his wire from the ribbed edge of a light pole to another. He performed for the tourists, tiptoeing along in his black silk hat. Pure theater. The sway and fake fall. Defying gravity. He could lean over at an angle and still bring himself back to standing. He balanced an umbrella on his nose. Flipped a coin in the air from his toe: it landed perfectly on the crown of his head. Forward and backward somersaults. Handstands. He juggled pins and balls and flaming torches. He invented a game with a Slinky — it looked like the metal toy was unwrapping itself along his body. The tourists lapped it up. They threw money in a hat for him. Most of the time it was nickels and dimes, but sometimes he’d get a dollar, or even five. For ten dollars he would jump to the ground, doff his hat, bow, throw a backflip.

On the first day the dealers and junkies hovered near his show. They could see how much he was making. He stuffed it all in the pockets of his flares, but he knew they’d roll him for it. For his final trick he scooped up the last of his money, put the hat on his head, rode a unicycle along the rope, then simply pedaled off the ten-foot drop, onto the ground and away through the Square, down Washington Place. He waved over his shoulder. He came back the next day for his rope — but the dealers liked the trick enough that they let him stay, and the tourists he brought were easy hits.

He rented a cold-water apartment on St. Marks Place. One night he strung a simple rope across from his bedroom to the fire escape of a Japanese woman opposite: she had lit candles on the ironwork for him. He stayed eight hours, and when he emerged he found that some kids had tossed shoes up on the wire, a city custom, the laces tied together. He crawled out on the wire, which had grown loose and dangerous, but was still taut enough to hold him, and walked back in through his window. He saw immediately that the place had been ransacked. Everything. Even his clothes. All the money was gone from the pockets of his pants too. He never saw the Japanese woman again: when he looked across the candles were gone. Nobody had ever stolen from him before.

This was the city he had crawled into — he was surprised to find that there were edges beneath his own edge.

Sometimes he would get hired to go to parties. He needed the money. There were so many expenses and his savings had been plundered. The wire itself would cost a thousand dollars. And then there were the winches, the false I.D.’s, the balancing pole, the elaborate ploys to get it all up to the roof. He’d do anything to get the money together, but the parties were awful. He was hired as a magician, but he told the hosts that he couldn’t guarantee that he’d do anything at all. They had to pay him, but still he might just sit there all night. The tension worked. He became a party regular. He bought a tuxedo and a bow tie and a cummerbund.

He’d introduce himself as a Belgian arms dealer, or an appraiser from Sotheby’s, or a jockey who’d ridden in the Kentucky Derby. He felt comfortable in the roles. The only place he was entirely himself, anyway, was high on the wire. He could pull a long string of asparagus from his neighbor’s napkin. He’d find a wine cork behind the ear of a host, or tug an endless unfolding scarf from a man’s breast pocket. In the middle of dessert he might spin a fork in the air and have it land on his nose. Or he’d teeter backward on his chair until he was sitting on only one leg, pretending he was so drunk that he’d hit a nirvana of balance. The partygoers were thrilled. Whispers would go around the tables. Women would approach him in a cleavage lean. Men would slyly touch his knee. He would vanish from the parties out a window, or the back door, or disguised as a caterer, a tray of uneaten hors d’oeuvres above his head.

At a party at 1040 Fifth Avenue he announced, at the beginning of dinner, that he would, by the end of the evening, tell the exact birth dates of every single man in the room. The guests were enthralled. One lady who wore a sparkling tiara leaned right into him. So, why not the women as well? He pulled away from her. Because it’s impolite to tell the age of a lady. He already had half the room charmed. He said nothing more the whole night: not a single word. Come on, the men said, tell us our age. He stared at the guests, switched seats, examined the men carefully, even running his fingers along their hairlines. He frowned and shook his head, as if baffled. When the sorbet came out, he climbed wearily into the middle of the table, pointed at each guest one by one and reeled off the birth dates of all but one in the room. January 29, 1947. November 16, 1898. July 7, 1903. March 15, 1937. September 5, 1940. July 2, 1935.

The women applauded and the men sat, stunned.

The one man who hadn’t been pegged sat back smugly in his chair and said, Yes, but what about me? The tightrope walker whisked his hand through the air: Nobody cares when you were born.

The room erupted in laughter and the walker leaned over the women at the table and, one by one, he removed their husbands’ driver’s licenses, from their handbags, from their dinner napkins, from under their plates, even one from between her breasts. On each license, the exact birth date. The one man who hadn’t been pegged leaned back in his chair and announced to the table that he’d never carried his wallet, never would: he’d never be caught. Silence. The tightrope walker got down from the table, pulled his scarf around his neck, and said to the man as he waved from the dining room door: February 28, 1935.

A flush went to the man’s cheeks as the table applauded, and the man’s wife gave a half-wink to the tightrope walker as he ghosted out the door.

THERE WAS AN ARROGANCE in it, he knew, but on the wire the arrogance became survival. It was the only time he could lose himself completely. He thought of himself sometimes as a man who wanted to hate himself. Get rid of this foot. This toe. This calf. Find the place of immobility. So much of it was about the old cure of forgetting. To become anonymous to himself, have his own body absorb him. And yet there were overlapping realities: he also wanted his mind to be in that place where his body was at ease.

It was so much like having sex with the wind. It complicated things and blew away and softly separated and slid back around him. The wire was about pain too: it would always be there, jutting into his feet, the weight of the bar, the dryness at his throat, the throb of his arms, but the joy was losing the pain so that it no longer mattered. So too with his breathing. He wanted his breath to enter the wire so that he was nothing. This sense of losing himself. Every nerve. Every cuticle. He hit it on the towers. The logic became unfixed. It was the point where there was no time. The wind was blowing and his body could have experienced it years in advance.

He was deep into his walk when the police helicopter came. Another small gnat in the air, but it didn’t faze him. Together both helicopters sounded like ligaments clicking. He was quite sure they would not be so stupid as to try to approach. It amazed him how sirens could overtake all other sounds; they seemed to drain upward. And there were dozens of cops out on the roof now, screaming at him, running to and fro. One of them was leaning out from the side of the columns on the south tower, held by a blue harness, his hat off, his body leaning outward, calling him a motherfucker, that he better get off the motherfucking wire right motherfucking now before he sent the motherfucking helicopter in to pluck him from the motherfucking cable, you hear me, motherfucker, right motherfucking now! — and the walker thought, What strange language. He grinned and turned on the wire and there were cops on the opposite side too, these ones quieter, leaning into walkie-talkies, and he was sure he could hear the crackle of them, and he didn’t want to taunt them but he wanted to remain: he might never walk like this again.

The shouting, the sirens, the dull sounds of the city. He let them become a white hum. He went for his last silence and he found it: just stood there, in the precise middle of the wire, one hundred feet from each tower, eyes closed, body still, wire gone. He took the air of the city into his lungs.

Someone on a megaphone was screaming at him now: “We’ll send in the helicopter, we’re sending the ’copter. Get off!”

The walker smiled.

“Get off now!”

He wondered if that was what the moment of death was about, the noise of the world and then the ease away from it.

He realized that he had thought only about the first step, never imagined the last. He needed a flourish. He turned toward the megaphone and waited a moment. He dropped his head as if in agreement. Yes, he was coming in. He lifted his leg. The dark form of his body showing to the people below. Leg held high for drama. Placed the side of his foot on the wire. The duck walk. And then the next foot and the next and then the next until it was pure machinery and then he ran — as quickly as he had ever run a highwire — using the center soles of his feet for grip, toes sideways, the balancing bar held far out in front of him, from the middle of the wire to the ledge.

The cop had to step back to grab him. The walker ran into his arms.

“Motherfucker,” said the cop, but with a grin.

For years afterward he’d still be up there: slippered, dark-footed, agile. It would happen at odd moments, driving along the highway, or shuttering down the cabin window with boards before a storm, or walking in the fields of long grass around the shrinking meadow in Montana. In midair again, the cable taut through his toe. Cross-weaved by the wind. A sense of sudden height. The city beneath him. He could be in any mood or any place and, unbidden, it returned. He might simply be taking a nail from his carpenter’s belt in order to hammer it into a piece of wood, or leaning across to open a car’s glove compartment, or turning a glass under a stream of water, or performing a card trick at a party of friends, and all of a sudden his body would be drained of everything else but the bloodrush of a single stride. It was like some photograph his body had taken, and the album had been slid out again under his eyes, then yanked away. Sometimes it was the width of the city he saw, the alleyways of light, the harpsichord of the Brooklyn Bridge, the flat gray bowl of smoke over New Jersey, the quick interruption of a pigeon making flight look easy, the taxis below. He never saw himself in any danger or extremity, so he didn’t return to the moment he lay down on the cable, or when he hopped, or half ran across from the south to the north tower. Rather it was the ordinary steps that revisited him, the ones done without flash. They were the ones that seemed entirely true, that didn’t flinch in his memory.

Afterward, he was immediately thirsty. All he wanted was water and for them to unsnap the wire: it was dangerous to leave it there. He said: “You must take down the wire.” They thought he was joking. They had no clue. It could tighten in the wind, snap, take off a man’s head. They pushed him toward the center of the roof. “Please,” he begged. He saw a man step toward the winch to loosen it, to take off the tension. He felt an enormous relief and tiredness sweep over him, sliding into his life again.

When he emerged from the towers, handcuffed, the onlookers cheered. He was flanked by cops, reporters, cameras, men in serious suits. The flashbulbs went off.

He had picked up a paper clip in the World Trade Center’s station command and it was easy enough to open the cuffs: they clicked with a little lateral pressure. He shook out his hand as he walked, then raised it to a cheer. Before the cops even realized what he had done, he snapped the handcuffs shut again, behind his back.

“Smart-ass,” said the cop, a sergeant, pocketing the paper clip. But there was admiration in the sergeant’s voice: the paper clip would be a story forever.

The walker passed on through the gauntlet across the plaza. The squad car was waiting at the end of the steps. It was strange to revisit the world again: the slap of footsteps, the call of the hot-dog man, the sound of a pay phone ringing in the distance.

He stopped and turned to look at the towers. He could still make out the tightrope: it was being hauled in, slowly, carefully, attached to a chain, to a rope, to a fishing line. It was like watching a child’s Etch A Sketch as the sky shook itself out: the line kept disappearing pixel by pixel. Eventually there would be nothing left there at all, just the breeze.

They were crowding him, shouting for his name, for his reasons, for his autograph. He stayed still, looking upward, wondering how the onlookers had seen it: what line of sky had been interrupted for them. A journalist in a flat white hat shouted, “Why?” But the word didn’t come into it for him. He didn’t like the idea of why. The towers were there. That was enough. He wanted to ask the reporter why he was asking him why. A children’s rhyme slipped through his mind, a riffle of whys, good-bye, good-bye, good-bye.

He felt a gentle shove on his back and a pull on his arm. He looked away from the towers and was guided toward the car. The cop put his hand on the top of his head: “In you go, buddy.” He was guided down onto the hard leather seats, handcuffs on.

The photographers put their lenses against the car window. An eruption of light against the glass. It briefly blinded him. He turned to face the other side of the car. More cameras. He stared ahead.

The sirens were turned on.

All was red and blue and wail.