Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson [76]
“He’s fine,” Les said. “More than fine. He’s clean, he’s cured. His rehabilitation is complete.”
What was he saying, Harriet wanted to know.
A dark shape spun in the corner of Les’s eye, and he slammed the flyswatter on the counter. When he lifted it, the fly was stamped to the back, its papery wing still fluttering. He had done it without a thought, and now it seemed a horrible accident. It broke his heart.
“Remember,” he said, “when you asked me for a favor?”
Three and a half blocks east, in the building Jude was passing on his skateboard, Johnny was eating a green apple in Rooster’s apartment. The previous phase of the eight-headed dragon had not had time to heal; Johnny had not brought his equipment with him. From the pillow where his head lay, he could see the edge of the dark, drawn curtains, into the bright morning. This sheltered calm reminded him of the motels he’d frequented during his nomadic childhood, moving from city to city with his brother and his mother, all their possessions in the hatch of their sun-roasted car. He remembered playing Marco Polo in a motel pool, a scrape on his cheek from grazing the fiberglass floor. He remembered jumping on the motel beds with Teddy. He remembered Teddy, when he was still a baby, sleeping in an open suitcase Queen Bea had lined with a towel on the floor, and now Johnny imagined carrying Teddy around in that suitcase, safe inside in the dark. He felt its handle in his palm. Now Teddy really could fit in that suitcase again. He was a few pounds of ashes in a kitchen canister he kept on his closet floor.
He did not share these things with Rooster. Rooster, unlike the rest of New York, knew Teddy had existed, and knew he was the one who had knocked up the girl Johnny would marry on Sunday. But today Johnny didn’t feel like talking about the past. “You ever been to California?” He took a crisp bite of his apple.
“I wish,” Rooster said.
“You think it’s a good place to raise a kid?”
“You ain’t movin’ to California. Not without me.”
Johnny didn’t say anything.
“I see. That’s why you gotta leave. Because I tempt you to the dark side.”
“I told you. I can’t do it anymore.”
Rooster raised his head from his pillow. His jaw, still bruised a mealy blue from a rough day in the pit, tightened. “This ain’t Vermont, baby. This is New York. Fags don’t jump off tall buildings here. They don’t have to meet in dark rooms. Here we have parades.”
Johnny chewed the tart meat of his apple. Of course they still met in dark rooms. Down in the park, a few hundred feet away, they were meeting right now. Rafael, the kid who’d been gangbanged in the comfort station, was not appearing in any parades.
A truck hit a pothole in the street outside. Johnny’s clothes were folded on the stool beside the bed, the Chuck Taylors posed on top emanating the subtlest locker-room stench. “When I finish this apple, I’m going to take a shower, and then I’m going to get dressed, and then I’m going home.”
“And what about the band? You’re sure you’re not quittin’ ’cause a me?”
“Don’t get a big head, Rooster. I’m getting married.”
“You’re sure you’re not gettin’ married ’cause a me?”
“You can pick up your drums whenever. You don’t need me.”
Rooster, lying on his stomach, tapped a single, solemn drumstick against the floor. “So you’re gonna shack up together, you and Yoko Ono and this baby.”
“Look, lots of cultures do it, okay? The Jews, the Mongols. I’ve been reading about it. When a man dies, his brother steps in to marry his wife. It’s in the Bible. It