Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson [44]
Now when Johnny and Rooster walked the streets together, they got nods, they got waves. Johnny knew their names. Jerry the Peddler, Mary, Froggy. Jones, who was always jonesing. Blind Jack’s friend Vinnie, who was going to die of AIDS any day. Soon enough Johnny’s own nickname was spoken with as much affection as ridicule, and Johnny liked it. He liked the goulash of his neighborhood, the alphabet soup, the insults spoken in foreign tongues. He liked the steady comfort of the Missing Foundation—anarchists, guerrilla musicians, graffiti artists—and the territorial badges they sprayed across the Lower East Side, warning off the encroaching slumlords of the East Village. $1500 Rent, your home is mine, 1988=1933. It was said that the toppled martini glass meant The party’s over, but Johnny liked to think of it as a symbol of sobriety, like the brave anomaly of the Temperance Fountain in the middle of Tent City. Faith, Hope, Charity, Temperance—like the lyrics to some straight edge song. He liked to think of his own role in the neighborhood as a force of benevolence. Not a missionary but a monk. He led by example.
So Jude Keffy-Horn? Johnny didn’t know if he could forgive him, but he could tolerate him.
Jude was on his mind a lot as he walked these streets. His brother’s best friend, the person who’d been with Teddy when he died. One February afternoon, Johnny hallucinated him. He was on his way to Astor Place to play laser tag on the subway when he spotted him, entranced by an arcade game in front of Gem Spa. Johnny stopped. Was it him? His head was shaved. He was taller. A frosty breeze shuttled down the block. A carousel of Oakley knockoffs spun. Across the street, a cigarette hanging from his mouth, yes, Jude was on a skateboard, but he was standing still.
Seven
They’d arrived just after dark, the Manhattan skyline a shadow through the van’s windshield. They might have made better time had Les not insisted on pulling over to the side of I-87, upon learning that Jude had never driven a car, to give him a lesson. For nearly an hour Jude had maneuvered the Purple People Eater ineptly down the emergency lane, the vehicle flying out in front of him, then jerking to a stop, a sequence for which Les had an odd patience, as though they had all the time in the world here in this dimly lit pod, until finally Jude got the van into gear and stayed in the driver’s seat until they had to stop for gas. It was a long drive, and both of them, exhausted, had gone to bed as soon as they were home.
Now, waking up from a deep sleep, Jude blinked his eyes at the ceiling, uncertain for several seconds where he was. He sat up and hung his legs over the ledge of the loft. From his point of view he could see the closet-size kitchen, the open door to the bathroom, and the living room, which consisted of a television on top of a barrel, a chest serving as a coffee table, and a futon, on which his father sat, packing the bowl of a glass bong. The place wasn’t big enough to turn a skateboard around in. Through the tall window was a row of storefronts across the street—one sign said simply EAT—against a bright winter sky.
“This place is a shoe box,” said Jude.
Les looked up. “It is indeed, but it’s a rent-controlled shoe box. Got it years ago from a lady friend who went back to her husband. Left me the apartment and a cat. It died.”
“Was it the lady friend you got pregnant and left your family for?”
Les took a deep hit—he used a barbecue lighter to light the bowl—and savored the smoke for a moment. He was wearing a long, twill nightshirt, steel blue with white piping at the collar and sleeves, and a pair of ancient leather slippers. Also his Yankees cap. So long ago had his father confided in him, so silent was his family on the subject of Les’s betrayal, that Jude was no longer sure he hadn’t made it up. At some point he had learned, perhaps through osmosis, that Ingrid Donahoe, who had salvaged her own