“I’m Sid,” I introduced myself. “Your housemate said—”
“I gotta say,” his voice was higher than I expected, “I did not believe it.” He leaned against the door frame. “That’s something. A girl in a place like this!” He laughed like that was a great joke. “Eddie.” He reached out a hand. “Steady Eddie, six months clean and counting.”
Oh, great. AA. I knew too much about that from my mom.
“So you and your man gonna have a go at this first floor, huh?” He gestured at a black maw on the far side of the foyer. There was no door but the sunlight didn’t penetrate far inside. “I never even been in there.”
The building had once been a commercial bakery and the ovens had been down here. I stepped into the dark. There had been a fire and the space was destroyed. My eyes adjusted slowly and I saw a tiny window in back. One window. Through the piles of junk, rubble, old burnt wooden beams, trash, crap.
“Shit, I don’t know.” Eddie let out a whistle, holding his nose. “This is, like, toxic and shit. You got kids?”
“Kids?” Jesus, how old did he think I was? “No!”
“That’s cool,” he nodded at me with big sincere eyes, “I hear your man saved Mitch from some rabid dog, right?”
I started to tell him Lorenzo and I were just friends, but he put up his hands in defense, like I’d told him to mind his own business. “Oh shit, you don’t got to tell me!” He went back upstairs.
* * *
I had my whole box of garbage bags used up in a couple hours. The rubble and metal pieces were so heavy I could only put a few things in each bag, but I had to start somewhere. I looked up when a shadow blocked the light from the door. I recognized the powerful shoulders even before I could see his face.
“Hey, Mitch!” I rubbed my face, smearing black soot around.
He was holding one of the garbage bags I’d put outside and he dropped it with a thud. “You put this stuff on the curb?” I couldn’t see his face in the shadow. “You think the city picks up our garbage?” I hadn’t noticed how strong his Boston accent was last night.
“Sorry.” I jumped up. “What should I do with it?”
Mitch was already heading up the stairs, one arm resting on the beam just over his head, one red-and-black high-top Air Jordan tapping on the next step. “I don’t know, go to the dump or whatever.”
“Dump? Where’s the—”
“You know what?” He continued up, shaking the brown bag in his hand at me. “I just got off work. I got a date with a pastrami sandwich.”
I stood in the doorway, listening to the floorboards creak on the second floor as he walked over my head. Then up the next stairway, then silence. I looked out at the curb at my pile of heavy bags. I brought them all back in, and then sat on a milk crate outside the door trying to cool off, totally defeated, hoping Lorenzo would show up already. Maybe he was practicing with his new band today. That’s what he had come to New York for, not to muck around in this filth. Who could blame him.
I was starving, out of water. But I couldn’t leave. I didn’t have a key, someone had to lock the door behind me. I lingered a little longer, hoping Mitch would come back down. Maybe he’d apologize for being so brusque, help me figure out what to do.
Finally, I tiptoed upstairs feeling like a kid going to the principal’s office. I crossed the second floor where the lamp we’d turned on last night still sat by the wall. There was another staircase and I climbed up higher. The third floor was even nicer than the second. It was a huge open space with a high ceiling and columns and tall windows that let a breeze through. Way in the back was a doorway, and I heard a radio playing Pearl Jam.
I called, “Mitch?” but there was no answer. I made myself march to the open doorway. Mitch was lying on his bed with his shirt off and his eyes closed, one arm wrapped around a pillow behind his head. The skin of his chest was so pale it was almost translucent. When I knocked on the doorframe he opened his eyes slowly, unsurprised, like he knew I was there.
“Can you lock me out? I gotta . . . uh . . . go out . . .” The tremor in my voice was pathetic.
* * *
I went to ABC No Rio and saw that Lorenzo’s sleeping bag and backpack were gone. I went through my stuff and found two novels I’d borrowed from Raven, a girl I’d met at Food Not Bombs. I figured I’d go return them; I loved talking to Raven, she’d cheer me up. No matter what came up, she had a position on it. When I got blisters from wearing Chuck Taylors with no socks, she said I should pee on my foot every morning to stave off infection. That cracked me up.
Not very many people lived at ABC No Rio, and those who did were older and almost normal-looking. But you could tell Rot-Squat was a punk house from a block away. A narrow-eyed guy in a spiked vest and newsboy cap was on the stoop drinking from a grimy Gatorade bottle. I knew him, his name was Stumps. He was like a doorman, with keys and dog tags around his neck. He let me pass and I climbed up the crooked stairs that looked like they’d been built by the Little Rascals.
Raven wasn’t in her room on the second floor so I kept going. Her crew hung out upstairs a lot. When I knocked on Lee and Jessica’s open door, it was Raven’s head—shaved except for three long dreadlocks sprouting from her crown—that appeared around the corner.
“Hey, girl!” she cried, and waved me in. She was sitting on the floor. At least three people and one dog were sprawled in a pile on the bed. The room was done in classic squat style: crudely sheetrocked walls, no joint tape or paint, drooping plastic over pink insulation on the ceiling, clothes and books scattered on the plywood floor. There was a loud fan in the window, pulling in more hot air.
“I forgot all about these!” Raven said when I handed her the books.
I eased down next to her on the floor, stiff and awkward. My body didn’t fold up all supple like Raven’s. She had her legs stretched out in front of her like a dancer and I remembered her telling some square girls carrying mats on St. Mark’s that it was fucked up for Westerners to do yoga, it was like culture stealing.
“These shitheads took all the QFT that was left.” Raven gestured at the bed, clicking her tongue piercing against the rings in her lip.
“Q what?”
“Horse tranquilizers.” Raven looked at the bed longingly. “That was good shit.”
“What’re you working on?”
She looked down at the pile of jeans on her lap. “Abby gave me this patch.” She held it up: Eat the Rich. “But I keep sewing the legs together.”
“Give it here.” I wiped my sweaty hands on my T-shirt, then cut her thread with my Leatherman so I could start over. “Have you heard of this squat called the Bakery in Williamsburg?”
I slipped one of her paperbacks into the jeans to keep the needle from going through the leg.
“You’re a fucking genius!” Raven said. “Brooklyn? Yeah, wait . . .” She nudged the bed with a very dirty, very tan bare foot. “That kid Jimmy lives there, right?”
