Philadelphia Noir - Carlin Romano [30]
One September night he burned a couple of joints and went downstairs, two bottles of blue nail polish that he’d lifted from a bin at the Rite Aid in his pockets. He dropped down the narrow stairs, his feet bouncing, the muscles in his legs quivering. His friend Jesús had a black Epiphone bass that was called a Nikki Sixx Blackbird, and sometimes Jimmy would put his hands on it while Jesús plucked the wound metal strings. When he was high the feeling in the wires and cords in his legs was like that, a resonant buzzing and snapping that made him smile and put pictures in his head of running through alien landscapes populated by shiny, sexed-up female robots.
In front of the Imperial people came and went with their orders or guys would walk out picking their teeth and patting their bellies, like it wasn’t enough to be full, you had to put on a play about it for your friends. He wanted to ask them why they did it, but half of life seemed like that to Jimmy, like people didn’t want things as much as they liked to dance and sing about how much they wanted them. Jimmy’s theory was that was why people liked movies and videos, because everyone was starring in their own movie all the time. When he’d first escaped from the Youth Study Center up on Henry, he’d spent three days hiding at the movie house at the end of Main Street in Manayunk just going from theater to theater and there was always some scene where a guy is about to take on the bad guys, or just lost his wife, or his best friend, or his dog or something, and the music that’s supposed to make you cry is going and the guy’s just barely holding it together. People loved that moment, Jimmy thought, and they wanted it in real life too.
The real reason to come down from the apartment was because sometimes Grace Lei would step out and take her break, smoke a cigarette and stare out at the traffic. Jimmy liked to watch her, try to catch her eye, try to make her laugh.
“So what’s the difference between sesame chicken and General Tso’s?” he asked her, wishing she’d turn and look at him.
“The seeds.” Grace Lei watched the street. She was tall, and he stood straighter. Her hair hung down to her shoulders. He pictured running his finger along the ends of her hair and wondered if it would be soft, or maybe stiff, like bristles. Nothing would surprise him. He wanted to take the nail polish out and pass it to her, and watched her hands move as she smoked, trying to see if there was color at the tips of her fingers.
“The seeds, huh. That’s it? They should call it General Tso Plus Seeds.”
Jimmy watched through the glass as a Latino kid came out of the back of the restaurant and dropped a plastic bag on the table nearest the door.
Grace turned to Jimmy. “Where do you live? You’re always here.”
“Upstairs.”
A car pulled up, an old Chevy he’d seen before. A kid got out, an Asian kid with a red ball cap on backward and baggy jeans. Gold chains on his wrists and around his neck. He said something to Grace, but she just looked at the street, or at the firemen washing the trucks, or at nothing at all. The kid went into the Imperial and came back out again holding his order up to his face and miming hunger for his friends in the car.
She said to Jimmy, “Yeah, what’s it like up there?”
He turned to Grace, who he thought had never really looked at him before. He kept his body angled away and stole glances at