Anatomy of Fear

4

Nate is Spanish the way Madonna is Jewish.”

My friend Julio grinned at his wife, both junior partners at a downtown law firm where they each argued they were the token, Jessica the woman, he the Latino; their baby asleep in a nearby bassinette while we ate dinner ordered in from the local Chinese restaurant.

“Cálmate,” I said.

The truth was sometimes I didn’t know who I was-my Grandma Rose’s tatelleh or my Abuela Dolores’s chacho.

Hector Lavoe’s La Voz, the voice, was playing in the background, but only because I’d brought the newly reissued CD of the Puerto Rican salsa singer’s groundbreaking 1975 album with me. Otherwise it would have been Mozart or Beethoven, which I still couldn’t get used to hearing in Julio’s house.

I looked around at the leather couch, Persian rugs and antiques, two floors of a brownstone on Ninety-fourth between Fifth and Madison. Ironic, I thought, Julio living the good life only minutes away from the mean streets of El Barrio where he’d grown up.

“This place is too good for you, man.”

Julio made a fist, tapped his heart, and slid into the street talk of his youth. “Don’ worry, brothuh, even though I’m at the top, you still my main-mellow man, mi pana.”

Jess rolled her eyes. “Must you guys always act like teenagers when you get together?”

“Yo, mira, I think so.” Julio winked at me.

We’d been buddies forever. Julio’s aunt lived in the same tenement as my grandmother and he’d hang out there because it was better than the peeling paint and roaches of the project where he lived with his single mom, who worked day and night to keep a roof over their heads. We met one day in the stairwell, Julio hiding out so his aunt wouldn’t see and tell his mother that her son was smoking dope at age eleven, and he gave me a toke, my first. When I recovered from the coughing fit we started talking, bonding over the music of Prince and Carlos Santana. From that day on we were brothers.

After that I started going uptown all the time. El Barrio was an ugly ghetto, but compared to where I lived-the Penn South apartments on Eighth Avenue and Twenty-fourth, which was filled with old people and had about as much life as a funeral parlor-it was exciting. My parents didn’t like it, but I told them I was in search of my Spanish heritage. Of course that was bullshit. What Julio and I were searching for was alcohol and drugs-and we found them.

Julio would buy weed off the local salesman, some guy who hung around his junior high, then we’d get stoned and go lie around my grandmother’s apartment watching TV, playing Nintendo, and laughing. She was always asking “¿Qué es tan chistoso?’’ which would make us laugh even harder.

Julio asked if I was okay and I nodded, but a piece of my past had started to play and I couldn’t stop it. I was back in my parents’ apartment on Eighth Avenue and Twenty-fourth Street, reliving that night, seeing it all-my room with its posters of Che and Santana, but mostly the look on my father’s face.

It was inevitable that he would find out. Maybe I even wanted him to. I thought I was cool and dangerous, bringing shit home with me, grass and crack pipes, not bothering to hide them well. Ironic, you might say, me discovering drugs and my father being a narc with the NYPD. When he found the stash he went ballistic.

Don’t you know what I do for a living? Don’t you know every week I find kids like you dead, OD’d? What’s wrong with you?

He went on like that for a long time, face bright red, veins in his forehead standing out in high relief. He wouldn’t stop until I told him where I’d bought my stuff, then he stormed out in search of the guy who was turning his son into a junkie. I was scared shitless. I called Julio, told him to warn the dealer, and asked him to meet me uptown.

I came back to the moment, rubbing my temple.

“Headache, pana?”

“It’s nothing.”

I’d started getting headaches after things went bad. The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with me, so my mother sent me to a shrink. He told me it was displaced anger or guilt and I told him to shove it and never went back. But it wasn’t anger or guilt that was giving me a headache right now. It was a combination of my past and the nonspecific dread I’d felt earlier in the day that was still with me. I couldn’t shake either one of them.

Julio started talking about a lawsuit he was working on, and got all excited; Julio, the big real estate lawyer, it still surprised me.

“Hey, remember when we used to say you’d be a musician and I’d do your CD covers?”

“That was a long time ago,” said Julio.

“You mean you wouldn’t swap your career for Marc Anthony’s?”

“¡Nipa-tanto! Not even for that gorgeous wife of his, JLo.” He looked at his wife. “Who’s got nothing on Jess. And for your information, I love my job.” He smiled, zygomatic major muscles flexing his cheeks to the corners of his lips, muscles tightening around the eyes that accompanied a genuine smile, which was impossible to fake. It was true: He loved his job and loved his wife.

“And what about your dream of becoming an artist?”

“I am an artist,” I said.

“Yeah, mira, a cop artist,” he said, but smiled. “Jess, have I ever told you Nate was top of his class at the academy, got every award, special this, special that?”

“Yeah, I think you told her about a dozen times.” I looked at Jess and sighed. “Do not believe everything your husband says. Let me correct that. Do not believe anything your husband says.”

It was simple, why I gave up actual police work after six months on the street. I couldn’t take it. Period. I couldn’t take the sour coffee or the sour pimps or the sour prostitutes or the petty thieves or anything else. I hadn’t gone into it for the right reasons, and when it didn’t reward me by assuaging my guilt, I folded. End of story.

The baby started to fuss and I lifted him out of the bassinette and cooed him into silence.

“Yo, pana, you missed your calling. You should have been a wet nurse.”

“Be quiet,” said Jessica. “You’re a natural father, Nate.”

Julio’s eyebrows slanted up, his mouth down, “action-units” that suggested sadness or anxiety, and I wondered why.

Jess leaned across the table. “Nate, there’s this great girl at the office, Olivia-”

“Olivia? For Nate? No way.”

“Why not? She’s pretty, and-”

“She’s all wrong. Not Nate’s type.”

“What’s Nate’s type?”

“Not Olivia.”

“Hey, guys,” I said. “I’m still in the room, remember?”

“¿Y qué? Who cares?” said Julio, and laughed.

They went on like that, discussing this woman or that one as a possible match for me because when you’re single, couples feel it is their duty to get you married. I just listened while the baby fell asleep against my chest.

At the end of the night Julio was still wearing that sad-anxious expression and I wanted to ask him what was wrong, but he got me in a bear hug before I could.