Philadelphia Noir - Carlin Romano [31]
“It’s okay. You can see the river, which you can’t really from down here. Sometimes you can.” He was aware that he was high, that he smelled like weed, and took a step farther away along the curb. He didn’t know how she’d feel about that, him being high. She might be cool, but the black-and-white work uniform and the way she held herself made her look somebody who was strict. You never knew about girls.
The kid with the bag got in the car and the guy behind the wheel stomped on the accelerator, almost clipping a van making the turn from Midvale. The Chevy was an old convertible with green metallic paint that glittered, a comet disappearing down Ridge toward Manayunk in a ribbon of green. Jimmy smiled, suddenly conscious of the neighborhood coiled on the hills above them, getting that way you could get under a head full of dope. Everything seemed connected; dark forces were at work moving cars and people around like pieces on a game board.
He turned back to Grace, but she was walking back inside, throwing away a cigarette. Her fingernails looked the same pale color as her fingers, some color that wasn’t yellow and wasn’t brown. There was a thin red stain on the white shirt at her hip. She wore tight black jeans and he let himself picture her stepping into them, her long legs that pale cream shade that he didn’t know what to call. He was suddenly too lonely to head back upstairs and walked around the corner to Buckets for a drink.
He stood at a window at Buckets, trying to see inside, to see who was behind the bar. A few weeks before he had swiped some change from off the counter and thought the girl bartender might have seen him do it, so now he only went in when she wasn’t there. While he was standing there, squinting through the dark glass, he saw Evan walking up toward the front door and stop. Evan waited for a short girl with hair dyed white-blond except for hard black roots and dark eye makeup. She was standing between two parked cars, rooting in her purse. He nodded at Jimmy, who smiled, his tongue out, and raised a hand.
“Hey, man. You getting a drink?”
“Oh, hey.” Evan looked at the bar, then doubtfully at Jimmy. “Ah, yeah. Well, no. Just getting something to eat.” The girl came over and hooked her arm around his. “Well, see you.”
“Man, you ever see Jesús and them?”
“Nah.” The blond girl moved a step toward the door, pulling Evan. “I got a job. At the Rite Aid.”
“Stacking boxes and shit?”
“Ah, I’m the manager. At night. You know.” Evan looked apologetic. “Anyway, Jesús went in the army.”
“No shit. Remember that time we took that grader and ran it in the creek? That was fucking retarded.”
“Yeah. Well.” He nodded his head. “I gotta go.”
Jimmy fished in his pockets and held out a bottle of blue nail polish to the girl. There was a long pause, then the girl fluttered her fingers to show him the rose tips.
“Sorry, not my color.” She turned to the door, her arm still hooked to Evan’s like they were chained together.
Evan lifted his shoulders, as if he wanted to stay and bullshit but he had to go. “Hey,” he said, looking at the bottle in Jimmy’s hand. “We carry that stuff.”
Jimmy got up the next afternoon and went to see his aunt to get more money. He walked up Stanton along the back of St. Bridget’s, feeling the heat coming up through his sneakers. The kids were in school, and he thought it was funny you could tell without seeing any sign of them, like the building gave off a kind of hum when it was full of people. He had dated a girl, Cheryll, who said he had a shaman aura, some kind of power to tell about things, a sense other people didn’t have. She had a tattoo of a tree and an owl and a pyramid with an eye in it. When he got pinched and sent to the Youth Study Center, he had been trying to steal a huge wheel of wire from the cable TV place where her brother worked. Jimmy thought she was in love with him. She was always saying what a dick her brother