“You feel a drop?” Hawk asks Mikey, who’s slumped against a mailbox, picked-out ’fro jutting from both sides of his cap.
“Probably some stink air conditioner.”
“Come July they turn off the air-conditioning in this part of the Bronx.”
“Man, let me shut my eyes a second, okay?” Mikey says.
Five A.M. and already the air’s so thick it seems to drip.
“Tell me you didn’t feel that, now.”
“Hawk, the morning line is it’ll rain or it won’t.”
“Remember last time I bet don’t come on the rain?” Hawk asks, but Mikey just shakes his head, still not having opened his eyes.
Of course Mikey would remember the Earth Day Massacre that third week in April with its all-day slanting drizzle. They splashed from Columbus Circle through Central Park with enormous bouquets of heart-shaped Earth Day balloons rippling up from their wrists to where the MC on a makeshift bandstand was trying to sell wet marchers that “Rain is always a blessing.” That day feels key to Hawk and long ago, though it’s only been a few months since he took the envelope with 10g’s from Armand.
“I have to advise against investing your savings in a one-day show,” old man Sammy had warned. Hawk had no savings, but should have listened.
He had been losing his ass in a freaky run at Club IHOB, short for International House of Backgammon. It was like he’d been singled out for punishment and the cosmic rigging was showing, with just enough minor victories thrown in to keep him playing. His roll got smaller and smaller until it wasn’t. Then he owed Phil the Pot 4g’s and the vig started chewing him up. When you’re broke you’re already ruined. What did he have to lose? The Earth Day balloons seemed worth it: if he had sold a third of them he’d have been out of debt in a day.
A lot of his itch to settle accounts was Carla, so much on his mind since they started seeing each other. Hawk’s long-shot love. He catches himself in dull street moments forming futures with her, her other boyfriends aside. He could stop hanging out with jerks like himself, gambling away nights at the IHOB, find different work, and go all out for her, whatever the odds. He thinks that half the time she asks him to sit her kid she’s sleeping with Kenny, this accountant. She’s straight up that she’ll sleep with anyone she wants.
About the fifth time Carla cycled up to his sausage cart she had her six-year-old, Zoey, behind her in a gray plastic safety seat with a pink handlebar, with butt-length red hair in colored ribbons and a star-studded bike helmet. When Carla introduced them between sales, Hawk wiped his hands on his cart towel and knelt next to Zoey. She put out her hand and he shook it. Later that week they went to The Land before Time, Hawk having brought the cart in early to Witold, the midtown janitor who owned it, and changed into a high-colored shirt he’d traded for a Charles Bronson T-shirt with an Indian vendor. In a Chinese restaurant after the film the waitress glared at them icily when she dealt out their menus.
“That woman needs to chill,” Carla said, and mimed a shiver.
“I bet I can make her laugh,” Hawk whispered to the ladies.
“I bet you can’t,” Zoey whispered right in his ear, and held out her pinky.
“I’ll have the Garlic Shrimp with extra MSG,” Hawk said to the waitress in an Indian accent when she took his order, but she only stared back at him blankly.
Zoey laughed and said, “I’m laughing at you because you’re not funny.”
When the check came, Hawk grabbed it and said, “I’m rich.”
Armand will be around Monday night to collect.
This time with the balloons it’s a smaller investment. Sammy had only frowned, advised Hawk to buy cheaper and fewer balloons, wished him luck. But if it doesn’t rain and Hawk and Seymour’s CLEAN SWEEP boys can deal through streets of lemonade and fried dough, some band playing “Funny Days in the Park, Every Day’s the Fourth of July,” Hawk can make his payments through the conventions, luckily just around the corner now, when he most needs a score.
A honk and Hawk jumps to his feet, gives Mikey a hand up.
“Morning boys,” Sammy calls from the van.
Mikey and Hawk load helium canisters and four boxes of balloons alongside Sammy’s convention buttons, July Fourth T-shirts, and materials for his canvas-shaded booth.
“Forecast said it might miss us,” Harold says after a few silent minutes.
“Yeah, it might,” Mikey says.
At five thirty the festival’s half constructed, food stands and rides having gone up around Battery Park the night before. The air’s busy with hammers. By the time a few of Seymour’s CLEAN SWEEP boys and the button gang arrives, Hawk, Harold, and Mikey have set up Sammy’s tent and inflated several hundred of Hawk’s helium balloons.
“Come on, make noise now,” Hawk yells when Seymour’s boys fan out in the street with his balloons. “JULY FOURTH BALLOONS HERE, GUARANTEED LOWEST PRICES.”
Blue E-Z UP tarps flap. A light traffic has begun, customers browsing on bikes for early deals, and Hawk sells a few red-white-and-blue balloons. The morning streets dress him with their smoke, voices, smells—sausage, curry, fried and sugared dough.
“HAVE A BALLOON FOR AMERICA ON THE FOURTH,” Mikey yells.
Nine thirty and the gray-swirling skies begin to blacken. Hawk looks up and starts his anti-rain dance with a hip and a hop—“Hey, Balloon God. Hey, baby. Just let it not rain a few hours so I can get my money out.” To which there’s a crack of thunder like a bomb and a flash and tormented groans from the skies and sheets of rain. Customers sprint for the cover of a Ferris wheel. There’s a lull and then wind rushes in and trashes the streets. A kiosk of sunglasses hurtles by, followed by part of a wood sign for Homemade Lemonade. Balloons rip off Hawk’s wrists, trailing strings. Rain bounces off the pavement between mashed cardboard and busted plaster Buddhas. Vans scream up and vendors load jewelry and tie-dyed dresses into Rubbermaid containers. Against the slate sky the buildings are washed out, grainy, coming at Hawk like newsprint. A subway vibrates the pavement. Junk swirls in garbage wind-eddies. Hawk slumps on the curb, ankles in the gutter, which streams with balls of dough and corn on the cob. He unties the balloons from his wrist and twines them around his neck, like he’s hung himself from red-white-and-blue balloons that bounce and bob in the wind. Mikey turns his Royal Shine cap backward.
Then Sammy and Harold stand over them in rain slickers, faces hollow under hoods.
“I’m sorry to see you get kicked in the kishkas, kid,” Sammy says, and offers his hand. “But I wish I had a camera.”
“What for?” Hawk says, taking the old man’s arm, bony but still strong.
“I take a picture of you two and any museum would buy it.”