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Every morning, at six a.m., Monday through Friday, I would leave my apartment and walk to the garage to get my car. The streets were always deserted; bad guys slept in — except this one time. Thank God I had Maxwell with me. Maxwell was my buddy, my protector. Each morning when I left for work, he hung at my side, swinging from a hammer-hook on my belt. But Maxwell was not a hammer; he was a twenty ounce hatchet. Good looking, too. He had a shiny silver blade and a tan, leather bound handle. Maxwell was 100% cold, forged steel and one scary-looking dude. He was also in mint condition, because he never banged a nail nor did he ever chop a hole. He was strictly a deterrent. To any aggressor who dared get aggressive with me Maxwell gave the following warning:
Better move on, asshole, or I’ll crack your fucking head open!
My tenement building, at #515, sat on the corner of W. 183rd and Audubon Avenue. The garage where my car slept was on Amsterdam Avenue, a long block away. In the 1980s, Washington Heights was one of the most dangerous places in the City of New York. Every other year the Three-Four, the local precinct, led all other precincts in homicides.
Even in a neighborhood as bad as the Heights, there were certain blocks that should be cordoned off with yellow tape and marked: “To Be Avoided.” One such block lay just west of me, on 183rd between Audubon and St. Nicholas Avenues. Late at night, in the dark, I would never walk that block without Maxwell. I would shove his handle up my sleeve while I carried his head in my hand; out of sight only to be called upon when necessary. No sense looking for trouble. But the bad guys were armed and dangerous; so after midnight, I avoided that block whenever possible.
Gloom and despair, it was hard to imagine that the sun ever shined west of Audubon. Abandoned and semi-abandoned tenements were foreboding shells that loomed like evil towers on either side of the street. Buildings where crack was made, sold and smoked, and heroin dealt. These hulks were also homes to low income, immigrant families who, unfortunately, had nowhere else to live. Rotting, stinking garbage overflowed trash cans and crept up from sunken stairwells. Like a foul tide it crossed the sidewalk and seeped into the gutter. Stripped-down and burnt-out cars, up on blocks with their tires and anything else of value long gone, outnumbered the trees on this street. Brooding and dangerous, the block was home to too many bad tempers, bad deals, and stray bullets. Glad my tenement, as run-down as it was, sat on the east side of Audubon.
Wish I could put a positive shine on the dumpy apartment I lived in, 6C, on the top floor. No need to go into a detailed description at this point; the only thing that mattered was the squalor inside was only marginally less than the squalor outside. But at least I managed to keep it clean.
After a brief flirtation with librarianship at Cooper Union, I was back banging nails. Not where I expected to be at this stage of my life, three years past thirty. I owned an old, beat up ’74 Dodge Dart the color of a dull penny. I couldn’t even say, “Well at least it runs well,” because sometimes it did and sometimes it didn’t... run. Whenever I drove that piece of shit I was promised a new adventure: like would I make it to where I was going without it breaking down? Since the only parking in the Heights was double-parking, and cars were always being broken into, I kept my Dart in a garage that cost $215 a month; a bargain as far as I was concerned.
Like I said before, I always left for work about six a.m. I never saw anyone else on the streets. Until this particular spring morning in early May; dressed in my roof clothes and with Maxwell hanging on my belt, I was in a damn good mood. Today promised to be cool, mid-seventies. That was all it took to make this roofer happy.
About halfway up the block, suddenly three junkies turned the corner from Amsterdam Avenue onto 183rd; three scruffy looking white guys headed straight at me. From somewhere within their deep purple haze they must have been as surprised to see me as I was to see them. While my intent was to get to work without a hassle, theirs was easy pickings. Three pairs of runny, bloodshot eyes locked on target: A tradesman on his way to work must have cash on him.
I always liked to watch those National Geographic animal films on TV. Gazelles on the Serengeti plains do a lot of jumping and prancing around; especially when they smell predators nearby. It’s their way of saying,
Hey, Ms. Lioness, see how healthy I am. You’ll never catch me! Better eat that old guy way over there. I’m fast food, he’s takeout.
Like I said before, me and Maxwell had our own way of dealing with predators. As the distance between me and them closed, no way was I going to dance and prance my way out of this one; nor was I going to turn around, run back to my building and hide. The worst thing you could do here in the Heights was show fear; so I put on a mean face, slipped Maxwell out of his hoop, I lowered my grip on his handle, raised him to eye-level, and made chopping motions at them. They immediately crossed to the other side of the street. Did I really have the balls to plant an axe in a man’s skull?
If it meant self-preservation, Hell yeah!
Once they were far enough away from me and Maxwell, the junkies started jostling, goofing, and acting like tough guys. One of them went full Ratso Rizzo and shouted through scratchy, hoarse vocal chords:
“Hey, man, who the fuck walks around with an axe at six in the fucking morning!”
“A fucking axe murderer!” I hollered back.
***
ALTHOUGH I DID NOT have a girlfriend, I did have a friend who happened to be a girl, a very pretty one as a matter of fact. Her name was Sydney Rivas, age twenty-four. We had something in common — sort of. I was a struggling young guy who still didn’t know what he wanted to be when he grew up; she was a struggling young woman but with a goal: she wanted to be an actress. Guess the struggle thing was what we had in common.
Back in the 80s, my main attraction was artsy-fartsy types: dancers, actresses, writers and poets. Not being a member of the creative class, I used to volunteer as backstage help to playwrights staging their own way, way, off Broadway productions. It was on one of these shows that I met Sydney. She had a small role — not that her talent was small.
We had a big cast with lots of backstage help. We were all young and lived in Manhattan, but I was the only one who owned a car; that made me the popular kid when we went for weekend road trips. And every night, after every show, we all went out and partied. These were some of the happiest days of my life. Not just fun, but it was also a good influence on me to be surrounded by young people who dreamed the dream. The other backstage help were all aspiring actors and writers. I was the one and only blue-collar guy. Maybe that was why Sydney liked hanging out with me. She told me I was grounded while most of her actor friends were “flakey.”
Me? Grounded? If she only knew the truth: I was far less grounded and as flakey as any creative. She had shoulder-length, straight brown hair and chestnut brown eyes. Tall and slim, she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen this side of cinema. Being her friend was not good enough, though; I wanted love.
So did she; just not with me.
The following Saturday night, after my run-in with the junkies, Sydney and I were in a movie theater on Fordham Road in the Bronx watching Psycho II. When psycho-mom stabbed the detective in the mouth, the whole audience, me included, let out a collective gasp. Not Sydney.
She started laughing hysterically. “That was so intense,” she said, bouncing in her seat and covering her mouth with her hands.
On the walk back to my car I mentioned the junkies that me and Maxwell had scared shitless. “I told them I was an axe murderer,” I said, grinning.
A casual, “Yeah, I can see that in you.”
Me? A killer? What did she see that I didn’t? I began to wonder what light shined behind the curtains in Sydney’s melodramatic mind. Or was it me? Did I emit some kind of dark matter visible to others but hidden from me?
“There’s a band playing downtown that we really should see,” she said.
Not much of a clubber, I resisted. “Let’s get something to eat.”
“Ok. Eat, then club,” she replied, smiling.
The club was in the West Village; that was where Sydney lived, so we’d be heading back in that direction anyway when I took her home.
“You’ll love them. Their music is cutting edge.”
True. As I would soon find out their music was delicately balanced on a cutting edge between unprocessed shit and fertilizer.
When I think back on how I felt about being dragged to clubs by Sydney or other friends, a line from that 80s movie about the dancing welder came to mind: “Feel the music.” Yeah, for sure: I could hear the music; I could enjoy the music; I just couldn’t feel it. As for getting my groove on, syncopating body and soul with music was beyond my capability. Nevertheless, I reluctantly followed Sydney into the club. After we found a table, she asked me if I wanted something to drink. Then she disappeared for awhile — a long fucking while.
Canned 80s techno-rock blasted and frenzied dancers bobbed up and down; feeling the music no doubt. Around the edges of the dance floor cozy couples sat at cozy tables. Me, I sat at a table next to an empty chair.
Where the hell is she!
I scanned the mob. I finally spotted her. Sydney was downstage of the band, holding a beer in one hand and my coke in the other. She was chatting up the drummer, a skanky looking guy in his early twenties. He had long, stringy jet black hair and was dressed in black leather. The clown kind of reminded me of a gothic vampire. And given his beyond the pale skin he looked like he hadn’t had his daily dose of hemoglobin. His long arms were bare and had the consistency and strength of soggy noodles. This guy made Mick Jaeger look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
She chooses that skeeve when she could have you, John! Ego blasted his trumpet in my ear.
The way I figured it, either Sydney was totally fucked up or I was the world’s biggest loser. After a brief interlude into introspection, I figured she was the one with the problem. Clearly Sydney and the drummer were the stars in their own personal drama. Everyone else, stage props — me included. The drummer looked in my direction as if to say, Who’s that guy? Sydney’s gestures replied, Just a friend. Fuck that shit! I didn’t need to sit here and second guess my net worth. When she finally returned to our table, she smiled and handed me the coke.
“That baby vampire you were talking to,” I said, “is he why you brought us here?”
“He’s my friend, John. We’re here to show support. This is their first paying gig in America.” She told me he was from Transylvania; no surprise there. She added that she could not pronounce his name so she called him B.
“Cute, isn’t he?” she said, aiming a girly smile at the B-thing.
“Yeah, a real cutie pie; didn’t know you were into pimple-faced vampires, Syd.”
She shot me a snarky, “Looks aren’t everything, John. If it was, then I supposed I should be with you, right?”
No matter how she meant it, I took it as a compliment no matter how backhanded.
Suddenly, the canned music stopped. The big moment had arrived. The band was about to go live. Sydney glowed all over like a kid expecting Count Chocula to fly in the window.
An announcer took the stage. “And now the band you’ve all been waiting for! Let’s give it up for The Goth-Birds!”
“Did he say, Goth-Turds? Now I can feel the quality of their music, Syd.”
She was too busy clapping to catch my drifting snark. Came a blast of sound, and then, in less than ten seconds, silence. Sydney was stricken. The Goth-Turds big break just blew away like a fart. I almost felt sorry for them... Almost.
Then the lead singer/drummer said something to the announcer. The announcer nodded his head, “Uh huh, uh huh, OK,” and turned to the crowd. “Sorry about that. Technical difficulties. They’ll be back in a minute. These guys are really gonna pump up the volume!”
I leaned over to Sydney and noted, “Wonder if any of them can pump up their dicks.”
“That’s nasty, John! Go put an axe in a skank’s head!”
“A stake in their hearts would be more appropriate,” I grumbled.
The canned music did not come back on right away, so I figured now it was my time to share with Sydney. A plan to change my life had been rolling around in my mind like loose nails. “I’ve been thinking of going into business for myself.”
Sydney’s concern was still aimed at the stage. I snapped my fingers in her face to capture a piece of her short attention span. “Focus, Sydney, focus. Think you can spare me a moment?”
“I am focused, John! On my acting career! And B is focused on his music! What about you? You have a Masters degree but you’re still a roofer. So who lacks focus?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m about to change my life and all you can think about is Igor.”
“I really don’t need to be lectured about focus by an overeducated hammerhead that lives in Washington Heights,” she shot back. “I’ve spent my entire life trying to get out of the South Bronx, and you think living in a neighborhood infested with more drug dealers than cockroaches is cool.”
Not cool, interesting. But I decided to keep my mouth shut because she was right-on with the focus stuff. After a few beats of silence between us, I mentioned that I was thinking of becoming an information broker. “A colleague from work mentioned it to me. Computers are the future, Syd.”
“What—ever.”
Obviously, she didn’t give a rat’s ass, but that did not curb my enthusiasm. On an upswing: “An information broker is a freelance librarian who uses a computer to search online databases for clients; it’s the future of librarianship.”
Suddenly she looked passed me at someone coming up behind. She waved, and smiled. I turned around; the baby vampire was headed our way.
“Sydney. My band, we are going back to loft. Amp... How you say? Uh?”
The boy needed to be educated: “Fucked up.”
“Yah. Is fucked up. Would you please like to join with me, please?”
I assumed the invitation did not include me. I figured Sydney needed some education, too, in the evil ways of baby vampires. “Think he means he wants to have sex with you, Syd.”
“John!”
To B: “If you’re looking to suck the blood of a virgin, sorry pal, she doesn’t qualify.”
B looked confused. Figured there was no pop in this guy’s culture, and he never saw Andy Warhol’s Dracula.
With her fierce glare still locked on me, she said, “I apologize for my friend, B. He’s off his medication.” Then she looked up at him softly and said, “Maybe some other time.”
The dispirited drummer walked away.
I called out, “Yo, Igor! Don’t forget to be back in your coffin before sunrise.”
“You were very rude to him, John! And what makes you an expert on whether or not I’m virgo intacta!
“An educated guess.”
“And stop getting territorial with me! We’re friends, not a couple!”
Sometimes we sure fought like a couple.
I shrugged. “OK, so go visit Igor’s bat cave. But be warned, evil lurks there.”
“I barely know the guy. I’m not going anywhere without you.”
“Is that what I am to you, Syd, a chaperone?”
“You’re a lot of things, John. At the moment, pain-in-the-butt tops the list!”
We left together, not a spoken word passed between us as I walked her home.