“No he don’t.”
He wears a tank under a Sammy Sosa Cubs jersey open so you can see the thick chains around his neck. “Ah-ight, forget it then. I ain’t asking you for nothin no more, ah-ight?”
“See why you gotta be actin like I don’t do shit for you?” she says.
“You don’t.”
“I sleep at your place when you want me to and I don’t when you don’t want me to.” He shrugs with no retort. “I got no money. You hearin me? No cuartos, papi.”
One time I saw her throw her sneaker off the third-floor fire escape and nail him right in the chest. He picked it up and started walking off. She climbed back in her window and a few seconds later busted through the front door and chased him down the block—not like he was running. She yanked the back of his sweatshirt then he flipped around and lifted all of maybe ninety pounds of her by her waist onto the hood of a parked car. She pounded on his shoulders with half-clenched fists until he grabbed them. Then she stared into him like the only thing that would calm her down was locked in his mouth, and he opened it for her.
Now he says, “I’m outta here. Like that I’m outta here.” He spreads his arms, raises his shoulders and backpedals. “You watching me go? Cause I’m going.”
She’s like, “Uh huh, uh huh.”
“Ah-ight,” he says as a final warning. “I’m out.”
He passes by me. “Fuck you lookin at?”
“I live here.”
“Then go live.” He keeps walking.
She yells, “It’s like that?” as more a threat than a question. “It’s like that?” He doesn’t stop. “Ah-ight go head. Go head.” And with every go head she seems to be asking him to come back. Until he’s around the corner and she stops yelling for him.
Now it’s just me, her, and my table. She sits on the steps to our apartment trying to shrink away from the scene she just caused: head almost between her legs, arms crossed at her stomach. I stand on the sidewalk making like I didn’t really hear anything and when it feels time I push my table over to the stoop, and lift it off the dolly that I kick near the garbage cans. I heave the slate up a stair at a time. She doesn’t move. When I get close enough I feel a sadness coming off her like heat. It’s wrapped its hands around her neck and pulls her whole body down toward the stoop. I ask her if she’s OK.
She takes her time deciding to answer me. Without lifting her head or eyes, she says, “You ever get tired?” I would not have put money on hearing that line.
I say, “It’s pretty much how I go through life.”
“That’s how I am. Fuckin tired.” She’s dropping most of the tough girl act she laid on her boyfriend; her melancholy now seeps through the cracks in her voice.
I lean the slate against the door, wipe a chalky hand on the thigh of my pants, then once across my chest. I hold it out above her head. She sees it coming out the corner of her eye and doesn’t flinch, so I lower it the rest of the way. Her hair is slicked back in an off-center part that breaks her head into two uneven sections. The surface is shiny black, and hard like plastic. When I touch her her eyelids beat fast time for a second then close. She drops her head further, tightens her arms around her stomach, and presses her knees together like she’s trying to suffocate something. I run my palm back to her ponytail then let go. I grab my table again and ask if she’ll be all right.
She makes a hissing sound through the corner of her lips telling me I’m stupid for thinking she’ll be otherwise.
I tell her I’ll see her around and lift my slate.
“What you doin with that thing?” she says, still looking down at the stoop.
At risk of cutting our strange connection short I say, “Long story.”
“Ah-ight,” she tells me, accepting that as the entire answer.
“I’m JT.”
“Wus up.”
That’s all we offer each other.
She keeps looking at the steps, I keep looking at the top of her head.
“Who are you?”
“Stephanie.”
I nod. “By the way, the Cubs suck.”
She forces a laugh through her nose.
I lift the keys from my pocket, balance the slab with one hand, and unlock the door with the other. I slide into the lobby as the door slams behind me and wipes out the last moment of this scrunched-up girl.
Now I got five flights above me. This might be the hard part. First floor I go step by step: eighty pounds, eighty pounds, and eighty pounds to the top. In the second floor hall I hear a woman in her apartment talking to her dogs like they can hold a conversation in perfect English. “No, Jasper. I don’t know why he hung up on her. Why can’t you let the show happen in its own time? Look at your sister, she’s not making a racket. I’m not trying to compare you to her, but she knows how to behave.” I wonder if her dogs understand the concept of borderline personalities.
I look up the third-floor staircase, testosterone myself up, lift the slate maybe a foot off the ground, and run up about ten, twelve stairs without stopping. I crash it on the top step and my momentum tips it over. It smacks against the wall and echoes through the entire building. I should probably go back to the one-step-at-a-time method.
Ralphie, the super—and the guy Stephanie lives with who I’m pretty sure is her uncle—opens his door to see what’s up. “What you do?”
“Sorry Ralphie, I’m just getting this to my apartment.”
“Whas dat?”
“It’s, uh … it’s gonna be a table?”
He squints in confusion. “Ah ha.” Ralphie’s all of five-foot nothing, but muscularly compact, energetic, with eyes as playful and vicious as a terrier’s. He shoots Spanish/English blend out of his mouth like a Chinese waiter yelling short orders to a cook. He’s the reason I even have this apartment.
It went like this: I moved down to Manhattan from Yonkers—more like trickled down here intending to be homeless. I’d just got the job working for the landscaping company by using a fake address—easy enough since they don’t mail our checks, we pick them up at the office. I’d been sleeping in Tompkins Square Park, showering after work with the hose behind the company’s office. I wasn’t in the best of shape, but at least I wasn’t shooting heroin. So, one night, mid-autumn, this guy I knew from the park—nineteen, from Philly, discs in his earlobes, we used to shave each other’s heads—was walking with this other guy who was nodding out on his own feet. The Philly guy was telling him to fight through it, to use his will, but the guy’s will gave out and he collapsed. Philly called me over and asked if I would help carry the guy to the hospital. After a few blocks of hauling the guy I realized I smelled as much like a dog run as both of them, and that I had zero desire to someday be the one getting carried to a hospital. I helped Philly get the guy close enough to the emergency room door then let him do the rest. On my walk back to the park I thought, winter’s coming, my hair looks like shit, I own two shirts—this whole thing isn’t really me. So I started looking for a place to live. One day after combing the streets for for rent signs I wound up resting on Ralphie’s stoop. I jumped when he opened the door behind me with a broom in his hand. “You no sit here,” he said. I got up and apologized. He started sweeping.
“You don’t have any apartments in there, do you?”
“No,” he said. “We got nothing here.”
“I have a job,” I said, in case that was the issue.
“Good,” was all he said.
“I don’t have a