Philadelphia Noir - Carlin Romano [19]
“What are you doing here?” Aja asked.
“My brother brought me.”
“That’s your brother?” Jess gestured with her head to Dahani, who stood with his hands in his pockets while Roger pantomimed wildly.
“You know him?” I asked.
“He’s down with my boys,” she said. I tried not to wince. “Speaking of which, hey, Adam! Can you bring Nzingha something to drink?”
We looked toward the end of the pool with the boys and the boombox. One of them, with a sharp-looking nose and a mop of wet blond hair sweeping over his eyes, yelled back: “Get it for her yourself!”
Jess’s face erupted in pink splotches. “He’s an incredible asshole,” she said.
“And this is news?” said one of the other girls. She had huge breasts, a smashed-in face, and a flat voice. Suddenly I remembered the name Adam. Aja had a flaming crush on him for nearly a year, and then Jess had started going out with him on and off. Last I heard they were off, but now Aja liked to pretend she’d never mentioned liking him.
“I don’t want anything to drink anyway,” I said.
Aja asked if I was going to swim and I don’t remember what I said because I was watching my brother walk down to the end of the pool where the boys were, trading pounds with wet hands. He reached into a red cooler and pulled out a 40. Roger stayed at the tall wooden gate.
“They think they’re gangsters,” Jess said, rolling her eyes in their general direction. “They call themselves the Gutter Boys. All they do is come here and smoke weed.”
“That’s not all,” the girl with the smashed-in face said with a smirk.
“Is my brother here a lot?” I asked.
“I’ve only seen him once. But this is only the third time I’ve been here, you know, after hours.”
My brother didn’t seem interested in swimming. I didn’t even know if he was wearing trunks. Instead he walked with a stocky swaggering boy toward the darkness of the locker room. Don’t go back there, I wanted to scream. But all I did was stand there in my street clothes at the water’s edge.
Adam cried out, “Chickenfight!”
“Not again,” said smashed-in face. “I’m way too fucked up.”
Adam swam over to us. “Look, Tanya, you’ll do it again if you wanna get high later.”
Tanya’s friend murmured something to her quietly. Tanya laughed and said, “Hey, Adam, what about this?” Then she and her friend began kissing. At first just their lips seemed to brush lightly, and then the quiet girl pulled her in fiercely. I stepped back, feeling an unpleasant arousal. The boys became a cursing, splashing creature moving toward us. “Dayummm!” called Roger, who began running over.
“Keep your eye on the gate, dude!” yelled one of the boys.
“Okay, you big lesbians get a pass,” said Adam when they finally broke apart. Then he turned to Jess. “What can you girls do for me?”
“I think we’re going to stick with the chickenfight,” said Aja, giggling. She still liked him. I could not relate.
While they sorted out who would carry whom, my brother emerged from the locker room. I waited until he and the stocky boy had parted ways before I began walking over.
“Dahani,” I called in a sharp voice.
“You ready to go?” he asked. I examined him. He didn’t seem jittery and he wasn’t sweating. This was what I knew of smoking crack from the movies.
“What are you looking at?” he asked.
I glanced back at the pool, where Adam, laughing, held Jess under the water. Aja sat forlornly on the shoulders of a round boy with flame-colored hair waiting for the fight to start. “I’m ready to go,” I said.
When Roger closed the gate the pool disappeared, and though “Looking at the Front Door” sounded raucous bouncing off the water, I couldn’t hear anything at all.
“Are you smoking crack?” I blurted.
Dahani came to a full stop and looked at me. “This is the last time I think I’m going to answer that dumb-ass question. No.”
“Are you selling it?”
He sighed in annoyance. “Nzingha. No.”
“But something isn’t right.”
“No, nothing is right,” Dahani said. “But this is where I get off.” We had reached