Raven waved a hand around her forehead. “Didn’t he move out there?” To me she added, “He was staying here last year in Gibby’s space.”
“Oh, right,” Lee, a big guy with long dreads, chuckled, “the laaaadies’ man.”
“I didn’t meet Jimmy.” I made quick stitches around the patch.
Raven watched over my shoulder. “Jimmy’s a total fashion punk, and he’s always got girls all over him. Everyone thought he was with Abby and then he brought this chick back here one night, the bartender from Sophie’s, you know that, like, biker-looking girl? And Abby kicked up a shit-fit and wouldn’t let them in the house, and the whole block was outside and the cops came and everything. It was nuts. Abby got him kicked out.”
“Oh, great.”
“Why?”
“I guess me and this kid Lorenzo are moving in there. To the Bakery squat.”
“Oh rad, you got a house!” She leaned back to give me a high five. “Lorenzo from Disguerro?”
“Yeah.” I smiled at the patch, liking how that sounded.
“No shit, I saw him earlier.”
“You did?”
“He was with that girl from Dos Blocos . . . what’s her name, with the little dog? Did she and Brian break up?”
“I wouldn’t know.” I pulled the thread into a knot and handed her the jeans.
“Kick ass!” Raven jumped up and pulled her shorts off. She wasn’t wearing underwear. Somehow, being so lithe and sun-browned, she made being naked look innocent and childlike. She shimmied into the jeans and twisted around to look at the new patch, blending in with all the others.
A pretty girl with white-blond hair and tiny dots tattooed up her sides leaned in the doorway. Abby. I’d met her before but she didn’t look at me. There were other people with her. “You coming, Raven?”
Raven dropped down to give me a hug. “Sid, thanks, babe, I gotta go!”
I heard her voice float down the stairs, her footsteps mingling with those of people I didn’t know. I stuck Raven’s sewing needle carefully into her spool of thread and looked for someplace safe to put it.
* * *
“Is this a bad time?” I asked Veronica from the pay phone on her corner a couple blocks south of Rot-Squat. No, it was perfect, she just needed half a dozen things from the deli. Of course I could get them for her, what else did I have to do? Her explanation of which deli to go to and which deli not to go to took so long it cost me another quarter. And then I stood in front of 9th Street Squat waiting for what felt like forever, too cheap to waste another quarter. I wasn’t going to yell up to the fourth floor either; this building intimidated me too much. I just stood there sweating until Veronica leaned out her window.
“I couldn’t get off the phone!” She tossed down the key in a sock with an easy shrug.
I let myself in and climbed the wide stairs. I had been here to a workday earlier in the summer, naive enough to think I could ease into a space that way. It was totally out of my league. Over the years the squatters had rebuilt this whole building—floors, walls, plumbing, electricity—all to code. It looked like a real apartment building inside, every space had a locked door and its own bathroom. The condescending guy who “orientated” all of us for the workday said the building was looking for a family of color with young children for the next open apartment, to improve diversity. But we could put in some hours anyway. It would be noted. It would have been a total waste of time if I hadn’t met Veronica. She was all into it that I was a single woman who was tough and wanted to squat. She was so cool, with her huge necklaces and hair wrapped in a big scarf and cordless drill on a holster on her hip. Instead of acting like a guy, she made working with power tools look femme.
I sipped herbal iced tea at her table while Veronica worked in her kitchen. “Brooklyn!” She waved her whisk in the air, “Of course! I knew that was the place for you.”
“Yeah?”
“I mean, forget the city unless you were here years ago. Seriously. You’re going to love Brooklyn.”
I looked at her skeptically while she poured batter into a pan. Brooklyn wasn’t a prize. We both knew that. She was surprised I’d found anything at all.
She slammed the oven door and settled across from me at the table, fanning her face. “It’s too hot to be baking, I don’t know why I said I’d make a cobbler. It’s Jessie’s birthday. You know Jessie? No? Anyways, that happened fast, huh? What’s their process, are you a full house member?”
“Oh, well . . .” I thought of my long silent walk down two flights of stairs with Mitch and wondered how I’d even dare go back there again.
“Find out. Seriously. It’d suck if you put a lot of work in and then you find out you’ve been on trial or something.”
“I don’t think it’s like . . . that formal . . .”
“What are they, consensus? Majority?” She leaned forward on her arms, looking at me through her little cat-eye glasses. “Will you have say in adding new house members or are they, like, going to offer a room to any Joe who wanders in?”
I bit my lip. “That’s a good question.”
She lifted her dreads off the back of her neck, twisting them into a tighter knot on top of her head. Her armpits were unshaven. “The city must own the building, right? Since it’s been squatted a few months already? I mean, it’s got to be like on the Lower East Side, right, or is it different out there, can you squat privately owned stuff?”
“Oh, I don’t—”
When Veronica’s timer dinged I felt like a relieved kid at the final bell. She put her cake pan in a basket and we walked down the well-lit stairs together. She was heading east to Avenue D, and assuming I was going to the L train, she asked me to post a letter on 14th Street. I wasn’t headed that way but I didn’t tell her. It was easier just to do it.
When I got back to ABC No Rio and climbed up to the roof, I was exhausted and it wasn’t even dark yet. I flopped down on top of my sleeping bag. Looking south I could see the Williamsburg Bridge, steel and lights, rising up above the buildings. I had to go for it. This was the only chance that had come my way after three months in the city. I had to make it work, no matter how awkward or hard it might be. With Lorenzo or without. What was the alternative? Staying here on the roof, sweating my ass off, waking up at dawn with the sun, waiting for winter to come? I rolled up my sleeping bag and walked to the J train.
* * *
On Rodney Street I heard my name. Skip waved from the basketball court next to the highway, still in his dress shoes, with a sweatband around his stringy hair. Mitch dribbled a ball. He was wearing green nylon shorts with his Air Jordans. He jumped to make a shot, his knees together.
“You play horse?” Skip cupped his hands around his mouth so I could hear him over the traffic.
I dropped my backpack by the edge of the chain-link fence and pushed my armbands and bracelets up my wrists. Mitch tossed the ball
