Visitation Street (22 page)

“And none of your stupid lies are going to change that,” Val screams, swiping Erin’s lunch tray to the floor. She rushes toward the door of the cafeteria. No one stops her. No one prevents her from leaving the school. At the end of the street she turns back to see if Mr. Sprouse is following her, but the street is empty. Then she rounds the corner and heads toward Red Hook.

Val doesn’t bother to keep an eye out for Cree. He’s kept away from her long enough for her not to get her hopes up. She winds up in the park near Valentino Pier. She stops in front of the shrine to June at the foot of the pier. June’s school photo is streaked and pale. The glass jars holding the seven-day candles are filled with rain. How stupid was she to have imagined her babyish rituals would bring June back, that her dumb games, her ordering and organizing, had any significance over an event that happened months ago?

Val picks up a photo of June. She wipes the dirt from the cracked glass. She punches the frame, splintering the glass, reopening the wounds on her knuckles.

She runs to the end of the pier. She holds the frame like a Frisbee and hurls it into the water in the direction of Governors Island. It wobbles, before stabilizing, cresting through the air in a neat arc, then crashing into the water.

On the way back home, she passes by the Dockyard. The windows are fogged and when the door swings open, it reveals a dangerously dark interior that smells of rotting wood and stale beer. She knows Mr. Sprouse hangs out in there. She’s seen him outside smoking and talking to a couple of the disheveled artist types who drive Paulie nuts. Her father would kill her if she ever went in there—not that she’d have the courage to push open the door anyway. But she wants Mr. Sprouse to whisper to her again, so that she cannot just ignore her classmates, but push thoughts of June below the surface and figure out a way to move on without her.

At home Val cleans her bloody knuckles. Then she grabs Rita’s nail scissors and begins to cut her hair. She watches the strands hit the sink. She cuts what she imagines will be choppy bangs. Then she goes to work on the back, removing chunks and dropping them in the toilet. Her arms ache. Her thumb and middle finger chafe against the scissors’s small loops.

Since Anna DeSimone’s party, Val has avoided the mirror. She washes her face and brushes her teeth keeping her eyes on the sink. She does not want to see June staring back at her. Val drops the scissors and rubs her hands through the jagged remains of her hair. She is startled by her reflection, how the choppy strands make her neck look long, her ears jump out, her forehead widen.

Her parents are sitting in the living room watching a police procedural.

“Jesus, fuck!” Paulie says when he sees Val standing in the doorway to the living room.

She scuttles into the kitchen, but he catches her. He wheels her around so they are face-to-face. “You look like you escaped the nuthouse.”

Val shakes off her father’s grip. He smells like aftershave.

“How come you want everyone thinking you’re a little bit crazy?” Paulie runs a hand over Val’s hair. “Fuck I’m gonna do with this?”

“You don’t have to do anything with it.”

“I’m gonna have a daughter running around looking like a schizo? You think I want people in this neighborhood thinking Paulie Marino’s got a girl looks like a junkie?”

“I don’t look like a junkie.”

“You do. Like one of those crazy girls who stays up all night in the bar. You want that to be your life? I’m not having a low-life barfly for a kid. You’re a beautiful girl. My beautiful girl.” He tugs her hair again. “But I’m fixing this mess.”

Paulie is famous at his firehouse for giving good haircuts. The boys used to call him Vidal Sassoon until he told them exactly who they could call Vidal Sassoon and it wasn’t him. But he kept cutting hair, giving the regulation crops a little something extra that the boys could be proud of.

Val waits until Paulie returns with his clippers, scissors, a towel, and a bowl of water. He opens the door to the stoop and pushes Val out.

“You’re going to cut my hair here?” She looks up and down the street.

Maureen, the art therapist who inherited the house next door from her grandmother, is watering her plants. She’s got two yappy dogs that look like grimy lambs. Paulie keeps her at a distance. It doesn’t matter that her father was a longshoreman and VFW member. It doesn’t matter than her grandmother organized the rummage sales at the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Maureen’s been keeping company with a flashy customer from the Houses, a sleek, black man who’s been visiting her late and staying until morning.
It’s about boundaries
, Paulie explains.
There’s the projects and there’s the neighborhood
.

Paulie ignores Maureen as he makes Val sit on the bottom step. He takes a seat a couple of steps up, puts a hand on her head, cupping it in his rough palm, bowing it to her chest. He turns on the clippers and runs them along the base of Val’s scalp. Her ears vibrate and the shaved skin prickles.

Val likes the feel of her father’s fingers on her head, the pleasurable pain when they tug the longer strands of her hair. She likes how his large hands probe her scalp, searching for symmetry in the mess she’s made. Finally he stands up and walks in front of her to even her tiny bangs.

“You look a little like a boy but you don’t look nuts.”

Maureen has finished watering her plants. “Nice haircut,” she says.

Val stares at her, trying to figure out if this woman with her messy salt-and-pepper curls and long batik skirt is fooling with her.

“I said,
nice haircut
,” Maureen says. “Not a lot of girls can pull off short hair. You’re lucky.”

Lucky?
Maureen is crazier than Val thought.

After dark it begins to rain. Val lies on her bed, tugging at the remains of her hair, listening to the wind whipped up by the water. The windowpane rattles. Val pulls back the curtain to watch the storm.

There is someone is standing in front of the converted church across the street. Val can feel the person staring into her window. At first she thinks she has summoned June home—that by giving up on her she had brought her back. She pulls back the curtain wider. There’s an adjustment in the vines as the watcher pulls back out of sight.

Val drops the curtain and turns off her bedroom light, then she peeks through the small gap where the curtain doesn’t reach the sill. The watcher steps forward. Val cannot make out a face. Then in the quick, tapered flame of a lighter, she sees Mr. Sprouse. The light goes out, replaced by the ember of a cigarette. Val crouches on the ground, not daring to disturb the curtain as she watches her watcher, thrilled that he will stand guard even in the rain.

I
n the mornings, Fadi no longer walks from the subway, but takes the bus, riding close to the window on the right-hand side, hoping the driver maintains the speed necessary to bring Renton’s work to life.

When his cousin Heba helps him out in the store, Fadi hurries through the Houses to Smith Street. He stands across from the painted columns and squints, jerking his head from right to left, trying to make Ren’s jumper leap across the wall. He tries jogging down the block. At the corner, he has to sit down to recover his breath. Eventually a woman pokes her head out from the candy factory and glares at Fadi. In the daylight Renton’s painting is nothing more than a jigsaw of black on a white background.

Fadi searches for a way to capture the mural for his newsletter but his digital camera only reveals the building’s dormant façade. So he writes a small item, telling the neighborhood about the mural, urging them to look for art among their buildings. “RunDown,” he writes, “captures the beauty of Red Hook.”

Ever since the morning they ran into each other on Smith Street, Renton’s been hanging around the store. Fadi can’t ignore the kid’s hunger—the way he looks at Fadi’s lunches, never asking, vanishing until Fadi has worked his way through fried rice and boneless ribs or a medium pepperoni pie, before reappearing in time to catch the leftovers.

Fadi throws odd jobs Ren’s way. He offers him thirty bucks to mop up the back room—a job that allows Ren to make use of the sink to clean himself up. He gives him another twenty to restack the beer in the coolers, imports to the left, domestic to the right, pricey microbrews at eye level, cheap swill down low. Ren always refuses Fadi’s offer to let him work the register. “I keep my business behind the scenes,” Ren told him.

Ren usually performs his tasks when the store is empty. If customers come in, he often finds something in the back room that needs doing. During an afternoon lull, Ren finds some Windex and begins cleaning the glass fronts of the coolers. When he’s finished, he climbs up on a stepladder, takes down all the toilet paper and paper towels so he can dust the tops of the refrigerators. When he’s done, he meticulously restacks the paper goods.

“No one looks up there,” Fadi says.

“The ship’s coming in, boss,” Ren says. “You can’t be too careful.” He’s a stickler for order, for making sure Fadi’s products are evenly spaced and neatly displayed. He’s even more fastidious than Fadi, double-checking the white squares of tile to make sure no dirt shows. The shop is cleaner than ever, the shelves more organized.

Ren finishes reorganizing the toilet paper and paper towels and starts aligning the beer in the coolers. He makes sure not to get prints on the newly polished glass. He’s nearly done when the wino enters. When he sees Ren, he freezes. “
Cerveza
,” he says, pointing first to Fadi, then to the back of the store. “
Quiero mi cerveza. Es tiempo
.” He touches his wrist.

“English,” Fadi says.

“
Cerveza
. Beer.”

“It’s always
tiempo
for
cerveza
. Go.” Fadi waves toward the back.

“No.” The wino hops from foot to foot.

“No?”

“
Tu
.” He points at Fadi.

“Me what? Just get your
cerveza
.”

“
Traeme mi cerveza
.”

“What?” Fadi says.

“He wants you to get him his beer,” Ren says. He’s come partway down the aisle.

The wino stops dancing. He recoils a few steps as if he’s been stung.

“Please just take your beer,” Fadi says. He’s been considering banning the wino for good. He wants to get rid of him before the cruise ship docks.

The wino tiptoes backward until he is standing outside the store. He curls his fingers and puts them in his mouth. He blocks the entrance. He points a finger at Fadi. “
La recompensa es mia
.” He dances from foot to foot as if he’s walking on hot coals. “
La recompensa es mia
.” His voice is getting louder, a sharp, birdlike shriek. Fadi’s having enough trouble keeping his own customers and attracting new ones without the wino adding to the problem.

“You want your
cerveza
or not?”

“Sí.”

“Go get your beer or get out.”

The wino looks at Ren and shakes his head. “
La recompensa es mia
,” he says. Fadi watches two young women cross the street and enter the Puerto Ricans’ store.

“Renton, choose him a beer,” Fadi says.

“No, no!” He points at Fadi. “
Tu
.”

Fadi goes to the cooler and fetches a forty of Bud. When he returns with the beer, the wino is still cowering in the door, glancing at Ren, then stutter-stepping backward when Ren returns his stare. Fadi hands him the beer. The wino snatches it, stuffs a couple of crumpled bills into Fadi’s hand, and scurries away. On his way out the door, he rips down the poster of June, crumples it, and shoves it in the pocket of his trench coat.

Fadi lunges after him.

“Slow down, boss,” Ren says. “The girl’s gone. Only greedy folk care about rewards.”

“You wouldn’t care about the money if you found her?”

“There’s no way the police would hand over that cash to me even if I led them to her body. They’d cuff me the second I stepped into the station.”

“So you wouldn’t risk it for the fifteen grand?” Fadi asks.

“No.” Ren puts his hands in the pouch of his sweatshirt.

Ren crosses to the plexiglass cabinet on the counter on which Fadi tapes his local news clippings. He points to a picture of the
Queen Mary
docked in the Red Hook cruise terminal. “Forget the girl, boss. You see that? That’s where the money is. You’ve got to be ready. Shipshape.”

While Ren takes inventory of the soda, Fadi opens the suggestion box and combs through this week’s complaints. Among the twenty slips of paper only one pertains to June.

Tomorrow will mark the two-month anniversary of the disappearance of June Giatto. Please light a candle for her
.

Fadi gets out his old laptop and begins to type up the grievances from all over Red Hook—the people from the Houses who want their streetlights fixed, the green thumbs who want people to stop sneaking into the community vegetable garden after dark, the person who wants the Dockyard shut down.

Two of the submissions make him laugh.

Yo, RunDown, you mess with one of my pieces again, I’m going to come after you
.

“Creative” as it may be, graffiti is a crime and RunDown is a vandal. Stop defacing our buildings
.

Ren finishes with the sodas and sits on a camp chair with the newspapers. The rhythmic rustle as he turns each page creates a comfortable rhythm for Fadi’s work. He is almost done cataloging this week’s complaints when he pulls a suggestion out of the box that makes him curse aloud.

“You cool, boss?”

Fadi nods and Ren returns to the paper.

Dear Citizens of Red Hook—do you know that our self-appointed community leader employs a dangerous criminal in his store?

Fadi stares at the slip of paper. He turns it over. It’s written on a torn sheet of loose-leaf paper. The handwriting tells him nothing. He crumples the paper and drops it in the garbage. This is the first time he’s rejected one of his submissions. But calling a graffiti artist a dangerous criminal seems ridiculous even by the standards of his newsletter.