Rage Is Back (9781101606179) (26 page)

“So, yeah, Yale,” she said.

“Wait, what?”

“I got in.”

“Holy shit. When did you find out?”

“Two days ago. I left you a message. I thought that's why you were calling.”

“If I'd checked my voicemail, it would've been. Congratulations.”

“Thanks.” She drained the glass. “So what are you going to do, Dondi?”

I was walking in little circles, in front of Vex's building. “Make history, for starters. Nobody's ever pulled something like this off.”

“Okay. I mean, great. And then?”

“Ask me on Tuesday.”

Awkward pause.

“Your dad must be ecstatic,” I said, “daughter following in his footsteps and everything. You know, Skull and Bones is co-ed now. You could join. Find out if the head of Geronimo that Preston Bush stole from that museum really has magic powers, like they say.”

She sighed. “Dondi . . .”

“Yeah?”

“Nothing. It's Prescott Bush. Not Preston.”

“See? You're halfway there already. Just promise you'll teach me the secret handshake, the one Dubya gave Kerry before the last debate.”

I was under no illusion that I was making sense. Nor, probably, was the Uptown Girl. This was her cue to tell me she had to go, that she was in the middle of dinner. I could feel it coming.

Wrong.

“I spoke to Moya today.”

My peer mentor. Remember? Studying art history at Columbia?

“Oh, yeah?”

“She's friendly with a guy who works in the admissions office.”

I let it hang there for about a five-count. A courtesy of sorts, like giving somebody a head start before you throw a rock at them.

“So?”

“Maybe there's—”

“I already got in, Kirsten. The fuck is Moya's friend gonna do?”

“I just thought—”

“Yeah, well, think again. Better yet, don't. Fuck college. I don't even wanna go anymore. That shit's for losers.”

“Thanks.”

“Sorry.”

“Whatever.”

“Look, I gotta go. Me and my parents, we've got a reservation at Nobu.”

“Really?”

“Fuck no.”

“You don't have to be an asshole, Dondi. It's not my fault.”

“What? What's
not your fault?”

Here came the shrug. She had a great shrug. Excellent clavicles.

“Anything.”

“I never said it was.”

I watched the old lady two buildings down carry her garbage to the curb, a little parcel tied up so neatly it could've been a present for her grandkids.

“Fine.”

“Fine. Congratulations, again. My best to Bill and Alexandra.”

Meaning: plenty of shit's your fault. You let your parents run your life. You let them break us up.

“Fuck Bill and Alexandra,” the Uptown Girl replied, and we proceeded to goodnights.

Vexer was playing the couch when I entered, a lit blunt in his hand.

He threw me a chin-nod. “Ay.”

“Hey. Everybody else go home?”

He nodded. “I'ma crash soon myself.” As in, I'm not trying to mack your mom.

In walked Karen, a beer in each hand. She didn't look like she expected him to toddle off to bed. But she didn't look like she understood that he might linger for reasons unrelated to smoke or strategy, either. Same old Karen.

“We got the paint,” she told me, handing Vex his bottle.

“Great. I'm going to sleep.”

“What? It's only nine-thirty. We're just about to start calling the first guard shift, the twelve-to-eight boys.”

“Yeah, well, what can I tell you? It's been a long day. See you tomorrow.”

I hit the futon full of dread and resignation, expecting to toss and turn and think. But as it happened, I caught a break: conked out within minutes and slept like I was getting paid to do it. Sometimes the body pulls rank.

13

ur crew had two hundred and twenty-nine cans of paint, four army rucksacks, eight hands, six working eyes, a bag of sandwiches, a bunch of water. Two Maglites, a welding torch and goggles, ten portable tape players, five prespun joints, two small ladders, a roll of toilet paper, three cell phones, one thing of pepper spray, one set of bolt-cutters, a shitload of extra batteries. Two watches, mine and Karen's, both of which read 4:37
P.M
.

We were sitting in a van outside the Coney Island Train Yard. Inside, Mop And Go, as Supreme Chemistry's advance strike team had come to be known, was getting acquainted with the guards who'd recently clocked in for their Saturday evening shift. The other nine crews were in position around the city, waiting their turns. We were shorthanded, so we were first.

Dengue, of course, would not be painting. Instead, he was running point for the whole operation, cell phone tricked out with a walkie-talkie feature that turned it into something like a CB radio. Each crew had one. Hitting the trains was up to Wren and Rage and me. Wren and Rage mostly, since fills and the occasional spot of light welding were the only things I was qualified to do, and in both cases
qualified
was pure speculation.

If we fell behind schedule, the plan called for Mop And Go to augment us after they finished their duties, but Billy and Karen scoffed at the idea that we'd need bailing out. The two of them were cockier and more buddy-buddy than I'd ever seen, talking shit all morning about how they we were going to finish so early they'd be able to paint a whole train's worth of burners.

That was the reward speed won you: knock out your allotted cars with time to burn, and you got time to burn, a chance to cap your marathon of simple blockbuster straight letters with a bona fide wildstyle or two. Who was going to rock the illest AMUSE piece was a subject of much discussion. At this very moment, everybody was probably sitting around sketching the outline they hoped to execute.

Even if Mop And Go mopped and went smoothly, some crews might not be working until eight or nine. There was a lot of grumbling about that, but not so much that a single squad opted to handle the guards themselves rather than avail themselves of M.A.G.'s talents. A felony assault charge—with a deadly weapon, maybe, never mind what the D.A. might slap on you for trickling cambiafuerza down a card-carrying, union-dues-paying city employee's throat—was not something guys were willing to risk.

Except for the guys who were thrilled to risk it, that is. M.A.G. was gelling into a real band of brothers. Supreme Chem had outfitted his squad in fatigues and black facemasks—I swear, the dude must've run an army surplus store on the low—and as if that weren't enough, they were all done up with war paint
underneath
the masks, à la Martin Sheen shortly before he hacks up Marlon Brando. The horror, et cetera.

Mop And Go was being chauffeured from one yard to the next by a cat named Zebno, long-dormant founder of the Crazy Fresh Crew. He painted houses now, out in Queens, owned a van that seated fifteen uncomfortably, and had agreed to pull transpo duty throughout the weekend. Coffee runs, high-speed getaways, whatever.

A burst of static erupted over Dengue's phone. Flaw in the technology; it happened whenever someone was about to speak.

“Yo, Fev, y'all niggas still waiting?”

The Ambassador lifted the mic until it brushed his lips. “‘Y'all niggas still waiting,'
what
?”

“My bad, my bad. Are you still waiting, over?”

“Affirmative. Over.”

“The fuck is taking M.A.G. so long, man? You think they got a problem? Over.”

“No. Stay off the line unless it's important. Over.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Over. I mean, out. Over and out, good buddy.”

Dengue shook his head. “Give 'em radios, they gotta act all
Dukes of Hazzard
and shit.”

“Here we go,” said Karen, and tapped the window. Somebody, Klutch One I think, was jogging toward us.

“They look like a postapocalyptic boy band,” I said. I'd been saving it. Nobody laughed.

The masked man beckoned. “Let's go.” We grabbed our gear and followed. He yanked back the flap they'd cut into the fence, motioned us past.

Karen glared. “What are you doing? Didn't you take their keys?”

“This is faster.”

“Money, I asked you a question. You're supposed to take their keys. You want one of these assholes locking himself in the booth? You take the radios, at least?”

It's easier than you'd think to read somebody's expression through a mask.

“Yeah, yeah, we got the radios. But look, once you see these dudes, you'll understand. Ain't no way they fitting no keys to no locks.”

We followed him inside—a misnomer, since inside was still outside, a massive open-air holding pen topped with coils of razor wire. There were two guards' booths, one by the tunnels that opened into the yard and one halfway across the lot. The only other buildings were a few scattered maintenance sheds, where workers stored their equipment and maybe watched a little TV if they had some downtime.

Otherwise, it was all trains. Rows of them, stored end to end and side by side. A sea of steel, pristine and glistening. I was probably the only person there without a hard-on.

To move through the yard, you had to find the gap between the front of one train and the back of the next. They were parked haphazardly, so it was a matter of instinct, whether a left turn or a right was faster. And the alleys between them were so narrow that you could extend your arms and touch two trains at once.

“Any problems?” asked Billy.

“Nah, easy. We all got these.” He pulled a blackjack from his pocket, held it up. “Guards were in their booths, so we just creeped up and banged 'em.”

“You knocked them out.” Billy sounded grim, as if he knew he was asking questions to which he wouldn't like the answers.

“Knocked 'em out, gave 'em the stuff, got 'em both inside a train. Waited twenty minutes for it to kick in, like you said, then gave 'em the smelling salts.”

“They throw up?”

“
Did
they.”

“And now?”

We took a right, and stopped before the lead car of an F. “See for yourself.”

The doors were open. Two paunchy, middle-aged white men in guards' uniforms lay on the floor, eyes pinwheeling in their skulls.

“I don't see any puke.”

“We moved them.”

“These guys shouldn't be alone.” Billy spoke in his thinking-out-loud voice. “What they're seeing is very powerful.”

“Aah,” said Karen. “Forget about it. They're fine. Happy as pigs in shit.” She looked around. “Where'd everybody go?”

Her answer was a vigorous
clicka-clacka
from the other side of the train.

“Tryna help you ninjas out!” somebody called—Supreme Chem's word, but not his voice. We all stepped over to the other side of the train. There stood the rest of M.A.G., one man to a car, paint cans in motion.

Until that moment, I'd never really thought about spraypainting—the act itself, the kinetics. I'd never seen it live. Just lots of sped-up, Charlie Chaplin–looking videos of legal murals being produced, and maybe a few minutes' worth of hazy footage from the yards.

In real time, it's mesmerizing. Like tai chi or something. The paint-hand is the focal point, but the entire body's involved. Each movement is deliberate, calibrated, fluid. The knees bend. The toes point. The shoulders roll. Form follows form; the writer dances the word onto the surface. Paint arcs only as wide as the arm holding it, a line breaks only when the rhythm is ruptured. And that rupture is built into the design, the same way it's hardwired into everything my parents' generation of New Yorkers invented. They expected to get fucked with, so they wove interruption into their art, embraced it, made it fly, from the b-boy's freeze to the DJ's backspin.

I couldn't even see what the four of them were painting, because of my angle, but it didn't matter. Billy and Karen and I just stood and watched for about a minute. Dengue, he listened. Each writer had a distinct physical style, covered space at a different rate, made of himself a unique paintbrush. But they all seemed to move together, like dancers in the same ballet. The matching costumes helped.

Karen snapped out of it first. “You all better get the fuck on.”

Nobody answered, but the duress wrought an instant change in the lines of their limbs, the speed of their movements. I wondered how many gears a writer had, and which one this was.

Supreme Chemistry finished first, stepped back, nodded at his piece the way you'd acknowledge an acquaintance from across the street. The can dropped into a pocket.

“One-minute warning,” he called, and sauntered over to us. “Brothers needed a taste. Gotta keep your troops happy.” He handed me a roll of duct tape. “Here. In case those guards give you any problems. Dengue, where we at with canceling the next shift?”

“Eighteen down. Still can't reach the last two. We'll keep trying.”

“A'ight, well, keep me posted.”

“Will do. And hey, nice work.”

“Much obliged.” He lifted his arm, and made an all-in motion. “Posse up, yo. Time to roll.” The arm dropped, then rose to elbow Billy in the ribs. “Don't forget to have fun, ninja.” And M.A.G. was out. The Immortal Five controlled the yard.

“Follow me,” my father said. “I've got a job for you.” He glanced down the line at Karen. She was already painting. He frowned.

“We really shouldn't leave them alone.”

“Dengue can watch them. Fever, what are you doing, making calls?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you do it in the car with the guards?”

“Guess so.”

“Need help getting there?”

“I'll find it.”

I turned to Billy. “There. Done.”

The worry didn't leave his face, but he pulled three cans from the rucksack by his feet, and offered me a silver. We trudged over to the next train, stood before the last car.

“Okay, what you're going to do is just paint over all the windows.” He took the can, removed the nozzle, replaced it with a fatcap. Climbed the train's undercarriage, reached up, and covered the window in one continuous motion, left to right and back again.

“Nice and easy, like that.” He shook the can, handed it over.

“That's it?”

“The train's already silver, right? So if you cover the windows, I can do top-to-bottoms with just an outline. Watch.” He fatcapped a red, tested it with three short blasts into the air. A wind I couldn't feel grabbed the paint particles, carried them a few feet, made them disappear.

Billy squared up to the train, crouched, and brought a line of color into existence along the baseline. He swept it up into a swirl that fell back over itself like an ocean wave, then left it alone, straightened, leaned across himself, began something else. Finished, raised his arm above his head, painted a third thing. This letter was being built in sections, in a manner utterly contrary to the way I would have thought to do it. The connections came last, bottom to middle, middle to top—and suddenly this collection of flamboyant lines had coalesced into a rakish capital
E
nearly the height of the train, leaning back against a field of silver like a pimp behind the wheel.

It had taken Billy all of thirty seconds. I felt like I was watching one of those cooking shows where they mix up all the ingredients, put the pan in the oven, and take out a finished version at the same time.

They say a great chef can make the simplest dish revelatory. Cereal with milk—reimagined, reinvented, better than it's ever been.

The letter
E
—nasty as fuck, ready to scrap. And this was just a straight-letter. No bars, no bits, no arrows, legible to even the squarest civilian. Its attitude was a matter of minutiae, of math.

“See? Now a few highlights.”

He switched cans and doubled the inside curves in white, the line emerging thin and sharp. Shifted a few paces to the left, and embarked on his
S
.

I'd been trying to figure out what Billy's painting stance reminded me of, and now it hit me: fencing. I'd taken one class, during the blink-and-you-missed-it try-new-things phase that marked my first semester at Whoopty Whoo Ivy League We's A Comin' Academy, and I remember the teacher demonstrating the correct posture, telling us it allowed the quickest, longest reach. By the end of the hour I'd determined that while the sport might fulfill my gym requirement, an hour a week crossing blades with a coterie of greasy-faced Dungeons & Dragons types was not going to turn me into the dude from
Legend of the Liquid Sword
, so that was that.

“Go paint,” Billy said over his shoulder. “And don't try to climb the train. Use the ladder.”

“Yes sir.” It felt good to address my father as
sir
, to be under his command. I grabbed the ladder, set it up below the next window over, and quickly realized that was the wrong place for it. Climbed back down, moved it a few feet to the left so I could paint without being in my own way, reascended.
Clicka-clacka, psshht, psssht, clicka-clacka, psshht.
Descend, grab ladder, reposition, climb, repeat.