the row of tiny dots tattooed up her slender sides. A wild mess of white-blond hair hid her face. A girl with dark dreads pulled into a knot wore sports socks with pink pom-poms with her beat-up Adidas and miniskirt. I loved that, it was totally Mad Max tennis player. A girl named Jessica wore a dog collar with spikes around her neck.
Once the girls had joined me, Jimmy lost no time sauntering over. He pointed at me with disco fingers, singing, “Housemaaate! Where’re y’all going now?” I remembered that he’d had a thing with Abby that had ended badly, but it looked to me like he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
I waved over Jimmy’s shoulder to Veronica, who stalked toward us in clunky heels and striped knee socks. She gave me a hug, “Not bad for a first show!”
“How’s the new job?” I asked her.
Veronica was working construction. Getting jobs wasn’t the hard part, plenty of guys thought it was great to get a chick on their crew.
“I thought I’d learn about carpentry but I’ve just spent, like, two weeks sanding the stair rails,” she complained. “Seriously! I’m still on the third floor! The money these jerks spend on their balusters would build a whole house for regular people . . . How’s your place coming along?”
“Great! When are you coming to see it?” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lorenzo leave the stage, sweat and excitement glowing on him, his dreads pushed behind his ears. Kids high-fived as he passed, threading toward me, like he felt the same magnetic pull I did. He winked at me and joy spiked into my brain.
Veronica dangled a key in front of my eyes to get my attention back. “I have my boss’s van! We can go now!”
“To Brooklyn?” I clapped my hands. “Jimmy! Lorenzo! Veronica’s driving us to Brooklyn!”
Raven cried, “Let’s all go!”
Lorenzo led the way out of the club like the Pied Piper. Stumps was out on Houston Street leaning against Veronica’s van. He was the guy I thought of as the doorman at Rot-Squat; always on the stoop keeping an eye on things. His housemates told him we were going to Brooklyn and he took charge, directing us all to buy beer at the deli next door because there might not be stores out in Brooklyn. I didn’t drink much, one beer would make me giddy, but everyone else grabbed armloads of forties like they were going to be trapped in the boroughs for a week.
I sat up front next to Veronica to give directions. Lorenzo leaned between us to talk about the show. I’d never seen him so hyped up. The guitarist had started the second song on the wrong chord, he said. Did we see that kid in front throwing beer around? Did we see the dude from Missing Foundation was there? Lorenzo’s euphoria was contagious. This was it, I thought, I’m really doing it. Living in the city, rattling home over the brightly-lit bridge with my friends.
* * *
When we pulled up in front of the Bakery, Veronica glanced into the back of the van and saw Stumps swigging from a bottle. “Did you guys open beers in the car? I could lose my license!”
Stumps laughed, spewing beer through his gold teeth.
“Sorry,” Raven apologized, but Veronica was out already, slamming her door.
Jimmy sang to Stumps, “Bitch alert!” and cackled, Beavis and Butthead style.
Inside, I ran to put on some lights while Veronica stood in the doorway. She squinted through her cat-eye glasses at the old braided rug next to my patchwork quilt–covered bed, the lamp on a stack of suitcases. I had made a little island of street-scored hominess adrift in the space. You didn’t want to get too near to the crumbling, damp walls. We still had to figure out how to seal them. Lorenzo and I had a line dividing our spaces. It was like The Brady Bunch, that episode where they put the masking tape down the middle of the room. But we didn’t have tape; just bags of garbage and metal scraps. Way in back, under the window, was Lorenzo’s bare mattress and sleeping bag, backpack of clothes, a folding chair.
Lorenzo squeezed past Veronica, followed by everyone else, and turned on his boom box.
Veronica asked to see the rest of the house. “Why don’t you have a phone here?” she asked.
“Mitch said he tried and they wanted some big deposit or something . . .”
“Who’d he call? They can’t refuse service just because it’s a squat.”
The stairs were dark and narrow, but when we emerged on the open second floor with streetlights filtering through the windows, we found Skip waiting for us. He looked worried. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“Nothing, we just brought some people over.” I ran my hand through my hair. “Lorenzo’s band played, so—”
“I didn’t know that. Was Jimmy there?”
Crap. Lorenzo had specifically told me not to tell Skip about the show. Lorenzo was all chummy and cool to Skip’s face, so Skip thought they were pals.
Veronica saved me by introducing herself. She told Skip she lived at 9th Street Squat, opening with her credentials, and watched his face to gauge his reaction. “When we moved in there, it looked a lot worse than this.”
“Did you see Sid’s mural?” Skip asked, and led her to the wall.
I’d been too busy cleaning out the first floor to work on it since the night I’d started it. You couldn’t even see what it was supposed to be, it was just a sketch, but Skip was always talking about it like it proved something about the building. He told Veronica about his vision for the second floor, how it should be an art space, where everyone in the house could work on art projects and collaborate. He used the word art like it was religion, which made me cringe. A serious squatter like Veronica would be more impressed if we were running a soup kitchen or teaching bike repair to disadvantaged youth. Finally, I got so uncomfortable I cut Skip off.
“Let’s show Veronica upstairs,” I suggested.
The third floor was the best part of the house. Jimmy’s room was in front, right above the street, and Mitch’s room was way in back against the far wall. Between their rooms was a loft-like space with big windows overlooking the BQE. Mitch had installed his woodstove back by the kitchen near his room. At the kitchen table, Mitch, shirtless, was drinking from an orange juice box.
“This would make a better art space than downstairs!” Veronica said. “All those windows! The high ceiling!”
“But the artists should work in the center of the house,” Skip insisted.
“What’s this, an inspection?” Mitch asked.
Skip laughed nervously. “Veronica’s from 19th Street Squat.”
“It’s actually 9th—” I started.
“Whatever.” Mitch turned to head into his room. “Maybe she should go back there and tell them how to run their building.” His pale, naked back was an accusation.
Downstairs, Skip kept apologizing to Veronica for Mitch, making it worse by not letting it go. Veronica crossed her arms and looked bored. In my discomfort, I took the bong Stumps handed me and dragged a long toke. Pot was supposed to relax you, right? Then I passed it to Skip, who, like me, rarely smoked. But I
