Hot Pink in the City (19 page)

I look at my watch. It's been almost ten
minutes since we've seen Abe. "It's time," I say.

"Let's rock and roll," Nasreen says.

I push my sunglasses up. We march across the
street and into the store. I see the trio: Wahib and Tahir are
smiling at their newest customer, Abe, who has the familiar paper
bag in his hands. On cue, Abe pulls the video out of the bag.

"Thanks so much, guys," he says in a loud
voice. "I've been searching for porn, and this is the only store in
my area that has it!"

The brothers widen their eyes, alarmed at
Abe's slip.

"No, no," Tahir says.

"Be quiet!" Wahib says, pulling at Abe's arm.
He tries to steer Abe to the curtained area, but it's too late.

Abe resists, shaking Wahib's hands off him
and says, "I've got to go. But thanks again for selling me this
porn!"

He may dance and play basketball like a pro,
but he's a horrible actor.

Tahir laughs. "He's just kidding," he tells
us. "This is a dance video."

"Yeah, dirty dancing," Nasreen says.

"And we're not talking about Johnny and Baby
here," I say.

"Yeah!" Abe shrieks, wiggling his hips like
Elvis.

"The jig is up," I pronounce, pulling a
wallet from the back pocket of my black jeans. I open the wallet
and flash a badge, quickly closing it. I don't want the two men to
see that it's a cheap toy badge from Omar's stash of toys. Nasreen
does the same with her fake badge. Then we pull out the handcuffs.
Nasreen holds her pair up with menace in her eyes. She's so good at
being scary. On the other hand, I twirl my cuffs on my index
finger, and they drop on the floor. So much for being a suave
undercover detective.

Nasreen glares at me and I pick up the cuffs.
I've watched endless hours of
Cagney & Lacey
and
21
Jump Street
, and I believe I can pull this off, despite my
bumbling. "You've been caught red-handed in our sting operation," I
say.

"Yeah, we're undercover," Nasreen says.

"Impossible!" Tahir screeches. "You're too
young."

"It's a special operation of the NYPD," I
say. "We're young and unassuming enough to catch people like you in
criminal acts. Also, we lied about our age. We just look like
teenagers."

"But, but you were on that TV show."

"Cops don't dance? I can't have a hobby?" I'm
fast with the rejoinders, even though I'm trembling on the inside.
He wants to disprove me, but I won't let him. Today I'm a pretend
cop going after something I want.

"You're two businessmen who like to dabble in
the arena of naked ladies," Nasreen accuses.

"And you're trying to change the subject," I
say.

"That's not going to work," Nasreen intones.
"Boy, are you in trouble. I can't wait to book these two."

"It's going to be ugly for them when they're
in custody."

"I don't think they'll last a night in the
slammer."

"Whoa!" Abe says. "What's going on? Am I in
trouble?"

"No, no, this is just a misunderstanding,"
Wahib insists. He tries again to steer Abe into the backroom, but
Abe brushes his hands away. He isn't going to leave us alone with
these two men. He'll protect us if need be, and he's still playing
the role of the shocked, dopey customer.

"You're facing some serious charges," I say.
"Across the street from a school! You're violating, like, a dozen
statutes."

"Shocking!" Nasreen erupts. "Those poor
children are so close to this debauchery."

"What's going on here?" Abe yells. "I can't
be here! I'm already on parole, and my officer won't be happy if I
get into trouble again. I won't be happy, either!"

"No, no, there's no trouble and this is a
misunderstanding," Wahib repeats.

"Hold on, hold on, surely there's been a
mistake," Tahir says. "Gregory, can you please step aside so I can
talk to these young women?"

Gregory is Abe's acting name for this
performance. He finally allows Wahib to pull him behind the
curtains. While Wahib turns to us, he rubs his forehead and
disturbs his comb-over, his hair flying everywhere to show the
baldpate underneath. Tahir also rubs his face. The cockiness leaves
him and he looks nervous.

"Listen, we're running a business," Wahib
says when he steps back inside the main part of the store.

"And we're enforcing the law," I say.

"I promise you those are only dance videos,"
he says, his voice smooth and charming. What a fake.

"Why don't you play them?" Nasreen asks,
jutting her chin towards a TV and VCR.

"No, no, that's unnecessary," Tahir says.
"They're very long, and I'm sure neither of us has time to view
them. Also, some of them involve belly dancing -- this is a store
specializing in Middle Eastern entertainment -- and I wouldn't want
to offend you ladies. We're just running an innocent business, I
swear."

"Belly dancing my ass," Nasreen mutters under
her breath.

"We've already seen your business side when
you wanted to sell us that Umm Kulthum tape for a hundred bucks,
and when we couldn't afford it you wanted a sleazy trade," I say.
"You wanted me!"

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry about that," Wahib
says. "You can't say that you're unattractive and that no man would
take a chance like that. How about we strike a bargain? A real
one."

"I don't know, sir," Nasreen says. "We take
our jobs seriously."

"Yeah, we need to take you and your brother
down to the station," I say. "We'll also call in our team to
confiscate all your goods in the backroom."

"There's no need for that." Wahib flashes us
a charming smile. "We both can get what we want today."

***

It's done all the time, or so I've heard.
Businesses pay off mafia men or the police. We receive our own
bribe, and we leave with the tape. It's in my purse, like a block
of gold. I'm so happy I could cry. We're no fools, not anymore. We
played it before we left, listening with headphones from Tahir's
boom box. It's Umm Kulthum all right, the same songs that were on
the destroyed tape and five extra songs we'll leave out when we
make a copy. All it cost us were the subway tokens to get here,
because the men gave it to us for nothing. Nasreen also demanded
the tape of me on
NYC Dance Off
, which I'll ask her to put
in a safe place until I leave. My first instinct was to destroy it
in case someone found it, but I want memories of my first kiss with
a possible boyfriend.

We stand at a corner two blocks from the
store, waiting for Abe. A few minutes later, he walks out of the
store with a paper bag.

"They still let you keep that?" I ask him
when he joins us.

"Yes," he says. "They looked pissed but
apologized for the misunderstanding I saw. They also gave me my
money back to make up for the grief that was caused during that
scene."

Nasreen and I look at each other. We hug.
Then Abe joins us for a group hug. We make a collective sigh of
relief. Nasreen's hair is limp, as is mine. My limbs feel like
spaghetti. Even Abe is sweating bullets after his feat. It's not
every day that people pretend to be in a phony sting operation. We
weren't there long, but I'm exhausted.

"I have to ask my uncle if I can go with you
to the Madonna concert," I say. "That would be something. She's the
reason I'm in this predicament in the first place. Well, I'm to
blame, really."

"And I was your accomplice," Nasreen says. "I
should've been more careful with my dad's tapes."

The sun peaks out of the clouds. It's still a
grim, rainy day, with brief moments of sunshine. Abe rides with us
on the first train. I hold his hand until he has to get off at his
stop.

"Where do you want to go today?" Nasreen
asks. "You want to see Greenwich Village? There's also time to see
the Statue of Liberty."

"No," I say. "I don't want to go anywhere.
I've had enough adventure today."

"Me too."

"There are two more things to do during the
rest of my stay, and that's it for me," I say. "Go see Madonna and
get you out of New York."

Chap
ter Twenty-three

So much sneaking around. I'm tired of it.

Years ago when I was ten, my middle brother
Naveen and I broke one of my dad's records. Actually, I can't blame
him. It was all my fault. We had a pillow fight, which escalated
into throwing objects. He threw a teddy bear at me, and in a moment
of craziness I threw a record at him. It broke in half. My father
walked in and yelled at us. It was a disco record, something he
didn't care for. He told us to put the room straight, and that was
it. I didn't end up all over town looking for a replacement for the
record.

In a week I'll be back in Miami, where my
suburban life is nowhere close to being as exciting as
Miami
Vice
-- that's one exciting show, putting Miami in everyone's
minds, but unfortunately in the suburbs there's no Crockett and
Tubbs and all the action they bring. In New York, life is as
exciting as a TV show, but not in Miami. Life will be quiet. My
parents will shelter me, as they've been doing all along. I'll be
with my friends, who are goody-goodies like me, and my best friends
who constantly put me down. I'll play soccer and win games, in the
safe haven of my soccer team that's been stable with pretty much
the same players year after year, with new people to replace the
graduating seniors.

As crazy as my stay in New York has been, I
know I'll miss it. The fast pace, from meeting Abe on the plane to
the victory of getting the Kulthum replacement tape, has been
nonstop.

Back in Nasreen's bedroom, she mentions a
conversation she had with her parents.

"Hey, my mom and dad were talking about you
last night," she says. "They were thinking of calling your parents
to extend your stay since they like you being here, and they think
it's good to have someone my age to hang with. Maybe you can change
the date on your ticket and stay here for another week or two."

I shake my head. "No, I'm sorry, but I miss
Miami."

"I thought you said it was boring and there
wasn't much to do."

"It's still home." It's also a place where I
don't get into so much trouble, but maybe after what I've been
through I'll get into trouble more often. I love soccer, but it
can't be the focus of my existence. I need to seek out more things
-- people and situations -- in Miami, because surely I don't have
to go across the country to live it up. I should be able to do that
anywhere. Yes, I must step out of my comfort zone. I can't wake up,
go to school, go to soccer practice, and be back home doing
homework every single day with little or no variety to my schedule.
Not only was getting the tape uplifting, but this thought also
makes me smile: I can bring New York to Miami.

I'm touched that Uncle and Auntie want me to
stay longer, but I'm determined to go home. I'm wrapping things up
and winding down. Now I can breathe a little bit with this tape in
my possession.

Uncle's at work and Nasreen is doing her
audio magic in her closet. She copies songs from the tape onto a
blank one, to match the arrangement of songs of the tape we
destroyed. Following the songs on the original insert that we kept,
Nasreen is recording everything in order. We don't want to hear
Uncle say that anything is off, that he doesn't remember Song Y
going before Song X.

The music coming from the closet is loud, and
thankfully it doesn't bother anyone. It stopped raining, so Omar is
outside playing with his friends. Auntie's taking a nap. She's a
heavy sleeper and snores like a Mac truck. Good, because she won't
interfere with us and walk in asking Nasreen to taste things for
her. This makes me think that not only are we alone in our
thoughts, but we're living separate lives in the city, inside
homes, inside rooms of those homes. Yet sometimes everyone comes
together. One way we converge is through music. I haven't met
anyone who doesn't love it.

The music stops. My cousin bellows, "I'm
finished!" Nasreen has the insert and she then digs around her
closet for the case of the original... the original meaning Uncle's
bootleg. There's all this music floating around all over the world
in various media. An extraordinarily talented woman, who's no
longer with us, sang. And the world heard her. Thousands of miles
away from Egypt, in another country, two clueless teenage girls
destroyed a piece of her. Of course, people can replicate those
pieces ad infinitum. Yet from what I experienced trying to get her
music, it seems like her songs are as precious as diamonds.

"Found it," Nasreen says, emerging from her
closet. Her hair is flat on her head from scraping against heavy
coats until she found the cassette case.

"You have the insert too?" I ask.

"Yup."

"Where's the dubbed tape?"

I take the new bootleg cassette from her hand
and fit it into the case. Sure cassettes are supposed to fit into
holders without a hitch, but this juncture seems magical. It feels
like I've been solving the hardest jigsaw puzzle in the world and I
put in the last piece. Last year I solved a Rubik's cube by
breaking apart the pieces and putting them back together, which was
cheating. This isn't. I worked hard for this moment. Feeling
emotional, tears well up in my eyes. Looking at Nasreen, her face
becomes solemn as well.

"This is over," I say.

"This has certainly been an irregular
summer," she says.

"We did it."

"Yes, we did." Nasreen breaks out into a
grin.

I smile back, sniffling back the tears. We
hug each other and then leave the room to put the tape in its
rightful place, where Uncle can find it the next time he's in the
mood for his favorite singer.

Chapter Twenty-f
our