Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson [49]
Keffy-Horn, you son of a bitch.”
Jude looked up from the screen, where he was pedaling diligently away from a swarm of bees. Johnny was standing at the edge of the sidewalk. A woman in a headscarf steered a shopping cart between them. When she passed, Jude’s mouth was hanging open, as though he should be the one surprised to find Johnny here, living and breathing on a street corner in New York. His cigarette fell to the street. He was high as the moon.
“Hey, Johnny, hey.”
Jude stepped off his skateboard and shielded his body with it. Johnny could see him taking in the tattoos through his thin white T-shirt. “What the fuck you doing here?” He put his hand on Jude’s shoulder and gave him an ambiguous little shake.
“I’m here. I’m here, I’m living with my dad now, yeah.”
“Here?”
“Across the street, yeah.” He pointed.
“I been there.” Johnny crossed his arms. “He was real good to me, your pop. He helped out.” Johnny was about to say Teddy’s name, but he stopped. Instead he said, “Did I say you could wear that jacket?”
Jude looked down at his body. The parka was reversible, army green on the outside, bright orange on the inside, fat and shiny as a sleeping bag. “It’s not . . . it’s mine. It’s not yours.”
Johnny had once bought an identical one at the Salvation Army in Lintonburg. The thought of that store, with the ceramic bowl of freebies at the counter—broaches and buttons and little bottles of half-used nail polish and eight tracks no one wanted—and the terrified look on the poor kid’s face, this kid from Teddy’s life who now wore Johnny’s uniform—made Johnny want to give him a bear hug. He did, slapping him several times on the back.
“I’m just fucking with you, man! Shit, you live in the Village. We’re practically neighbors.”
When Johnny released Jude, Jude was smiling a large, uneasy smile. “I tried to find you yesterday, but I didn’t know where you lived.”
“I live, like, four blocks that way.”
“Yeah?”
“You doing anything right now?”
“Just, no, just nothing.”
“Can you drop your board at home? I’m meeting some guys at the subway, going to play some tag.”
Jude said he had not yet been on the subway.
“What color shirt you got on?”
Obediently, Jude unzipped his jacket. Under it was a Black Flag shirt, white.
At the cube sculpture on Astor Place, a dozen guys were selecting laser guns from a duffel bag, strapping targets to their chests. Half were in black T-shirts, half in white. Some wore sweatshirts underneath. Some had Xs drawn on their hands. Two had Xs shaved in the back of their heads.
“Mr. Clean!” one of them said.
“You got an extra?” Johnny asked. “I found this guy on St. Mark’s. Name of Jude.”
“Hey,” Jude said, tying his jacket around his waist. They chorused back.
“Gentlemen,” Johnny began. “Astor Place to Union Square. Use only number six trains. Anyone who gets arrested is on their own this time.” Over the St. Marks Hotel, the early moon was pale as a cloud in the ice blue sky. Jude took a gun and a target. “Stay off the third rail. And no pulling the emergency stop. Elliot.” They all glared at a kid in black, his laser gun resting sheepishly on his shoulder. “Black shirts first.” The black team filed down the uptown subway stairs, and a few minutes later, when the sound of a departing train rumbled beneath them, the white team, Jude and Johnny among them, descended behind them.
In the cold, dank dungeon of the station, the smell of urine took Jude’s breath away. Graffiti, as thick and indecipherable as the tattoos on Johnny’s arms, covered the walls. Garbage, decomposed beyond recognition, littered the floor, and it took Jude a moment to distinguish a body among the wreckage, bundled under a dust-coated blanket, alive, he hoped. Without a glance at the sleeping man or the attendant in the glass booth, each of Johnny’s crew jumped over the turnstiles. Jude did the same. When the next train arrived, a sluggish, green-eyed 6, they all stepped into different cars, except Johnny and Jude, who got in together. Then, when the train got going, Johnny led Jude to the back of the car. He yanked open