Kim stood at the bottom of the stairwell of Richard’s tenement building and stared up at the five flights of steps. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten—but the smell of piss and beer in the lobby made whatever was in her gut heave. She was trembling all over but she wasn’t going to let herself break down. Like her mother. Mother? She couldn’t even conjure her face. Having a mother felt like another lifetime. Another girl’s life.
Kim sank down on the bottom step, crossed her arms over her knees, and let her head drop—but the second she closed her eyes she saw it. She couldn’t blot it out. She couldn’t stop replaying it. Where Lee’s brownstone stood there was a smoking pile of twisted beams and rubble cordoned off by police tape and fire engines. Flames shot up through the smoke and sputtered in the blasts of the fire hoses. A crowd was pressed up against the tape four deep, but she shoved her way through. She had to be sure. She checked the street sign on the corner—Eleventh Street—no mistake. This was Lee’s street—Lee’s brownstone—but there was no brownstone. Just the gap in the building façades like an extracted tooth. A voice behind her: “Smell that? Burning flesh.” Another: “Like a fucking war zone.” Another: “Cops say it could be a gas main—but these days who the hell knows.” Gas main—or pig attack, Kim was thinking. Or maybe the bomb went off by accident? The last time Kim had seen Lee—around eleven that morning—she was in the sub-basement tinkering with a blasting cap. Was Lee’s charred body underneath that rubble? A pair of black cars pulled up. The guys who slammed the doors weren’t wearing uniforms, but they got waved through by the men in blue. FBI. That’s when Kim split.
This was supposed to be the day—the night—when it all went down. Operation Off, Lee called it. No more firebombs. No more Molotov cocktails. These were the real thing: dynamite pipe bombs designed to decimate, not maim. They were going to be detonated at an army officers’ dance in Jersey—“bring the war home.” That was Lee’s show. Kim was assigned the sideshow—a single bomb tagged for the draft induction center on Whitehall Street in Lower Manhattan. All the bombs were timed to explode simultaneously at midnight. March 6, 1970: the start of the Second American Revolution. That was the plan. Lee had laid it out for her that morning at the brownstone. They had a plant inside the induction center—the pigs were not the only ones who had infiltrated the enemy—and Lee ordered Kim to hand off the bomb to him with instructions on where to place it and how to set the timer. After that, she had to stay off the street for a while to make sure she wasn’t being followed; then return to the brownstone to help them load the van for the Jersey attack. Lee had told her to bring back some cotton balls—the watches they were using as timers ticked too loudly and they needed the cotton to muffle the sound. Kim still had the bag stuffed in her coat pocket. Jesus.
It was around five in the afternoon when she walked away from the smoldering remains of the brownstone—now it was nine at night—but Kim could barely account for the time between. She sat on the tenement step trying to reassemble it in her mind. Get a grip. At first she’d been so stunned she didn’t know where she was going. She stumbled down Fifth Avenue, and there was Dustin Hoffman striding at her, toward the bomb site. Weird. “Hey, Mr. Hoffman!” she heard a voice shouting. “Do you know who lived in this building?” She didn’t wait around to hear the answer. She didn’t stop or turn until she got to the subway entrance at Astor Place. There was a safe house in Chinatown where they had all agreed to meet up in case something went wrong. That’s where she decided to go—it was all she could think of. But was there anybody left? When she got to the address of the safe house, she stood outside leaning on the buzzer and praying under her breath—Please, please, please . . . But the pad was empty—at least no one answered—and her last hope flickered out. Kim didn’t have a key—she hadn’t been with them long enough. She found a phone booth and called everyone she could think of. Finally, Jeff picked up. They met at a hole-in-the-wall lo mein joint on Canal Street.
“You know about the brownstone, right?” she whispered to him. “Any word from Lee?”
Jeff shook his head.
Kim looked away, biting her lip. “Now it’s all on the Panthers,” she said grimly. “We need to do the drop. Immediately. Tomorrow.”
“We’re ready,” said Jeff. “Panthers got the bread—you deliver the goods—and we’re cool.”
“Right.”
“But it’s gotta be a brother that does the hand-off. No brother, no deal. You know how they are.”
She knew. “There’ll be a brother,” she promised him.
They agreed to talk the next morning to finalize the details; then they separated. Jeff said he was going up to Harlem to lay the deal out for the BPP command. Kim sleepwalked through the slummy downtown blocks to Richard’s place. And here she was, squatting at the bottom of the stairs, clutching her knees with her arms and shaking uncontrollably. Her guru was under a pile of rubble—where else could she be?—her cell was obliterated; her own bomb was set to go off at midnight—but what if it misfired like the ones that took out the brownstone? Kim ground her fists into her eyes. Fucking Eli’s crate of Uzis. It was all she had left. It was everything. She forced herself to get up and start climbing the stairs. It’s gotta be a brother rang in her ears as she dragged herself up the steps. Funny. For all her madness about black power, the only black people Kim knew were her maid Delores and Jeff, and he was so light he could pass if it wasn’t for the fro. That was going to change once the Panthers had those guns.
She opened the apartment door to find Richard sprawled on the couch with a joint between his fingers, listening to Jefferson Airplane. He was slapping his bare feet on the floor in time to the music. Tufts of black hair sprouted from the joints of his big toes. Kim had a sudden urge to walk over and stomp him with her boot heel. “Sam’ll be back in a sec,” Richard drawled, blowing smoke. “He’s out getting falafel with Eli. Something the matter?”
“Yes, something’s the matter.” She laid it out for him as brutally as possible, relishing how it soured his high. She watched the bloodshot eyes dilate with horror. Bad trip. Hah. “So that little deal we talked about?” she wound up. “Eli’s Uzis?” Richard was nodding like a surfer-dude bobblehead. “Well, it’s going down tomorrow. And we need a brother to make the drop.”
“A brother?”
“You know—black person—Negro—colored guy? One of those. Otherwise the Panthers won’t play ball.”
“Got it. Chocolate mule.” Whereupon the door opened, and Eli and Sam walked in.
Kim looked from one to other, held up a hand, and darted into the bathroom. She rummaged for pills. Aspirin—Valium—anything to calm her down.
When she returned to the living room, the three guys were slumped side by side on the sofa. The three fucking stooges. At least Richard had killed the music and snuffed out the joint.
Sam stood but when he saw her expression sat down again. “Jesus, Kim. Richard told us about the—about what happened. Are you sure it was Lee in there? I mean—”
“What do you care?” she spat in his face. “You weren’t part of it.”
“I’m sorry, Kim. Sorry for you. This is—”
“Sorry!” She was screaming. “Sorry everything’s fucked to shit? Sorry my people got blown up? You’re sorry? Sorry! Why didn’t you say something before, Sam? You knew what I was up to. It was no secret. But you did nothing. You said nothing. You never lifted a finger, never tried to stop me—not once. You made believe it wasn’t real. Lee told me I had to get rid of you unless you joined up with us. No shit. But I was too nice to listen. Too stupid. Now Lee’s gone and my entire fucking life is ruined—and now you care?”
“You’re blaming me? I was supposed to—what?—talk you out of it?”
The little catch in his voice was gasoline. “ME ME ME. All you ever think about. Pity me. Love me. Take care of me. Be my girlfriend. You’re so full of shit, Sam. You just want to get into a good college so you can sell out and make a bundle of money. You won’t sacrifice anything for anyone. Ever! Not one fucking thing.” Richard and Eli slid off the couch and tried to slink into the bedroom, but she rounded on them. “Cowards! Motherfuckers! I can’t believe I cooked for you two assholes.” She stomped over to the plastic table and upended it. Dishes, roaches, weed bag, ashes, album covers, plastic forks, and beer bottles cascaded to the floor. “Clean it up, bitch!” she screamed. No one made a move. “Oh no, let the girl do it—that’s what they’re for.” Richard kicked through the debris and Eli followed him into the bedroom. The door clicked shut. Now it was just Sam. He sat there paralyzed on the sofa, his eyes begging for mercy. But Kim was just getting started. She stood over him. Was he going to cry? Sweet innocent little Sammy Stein—the last romantic. Bullshit. As it turned out, Sam was everything she hated. He was a chauvinist pig, just like all the others. He wanted to bind and gag her. His little woman. He didn’t care about her—he just wanted to brag to the boys. Look at my girlfriend. Isn’t she cute? She fucks me then she brings me breakfast in bed. She thinks I’m a real man. One day she’s gonna have my babies. Eyes blazing, they stared at each other. “I know you want to hit me. Isn’t that how you boys fight it out?” She took a step closer. With the nail of her forefinger she scratched a white ragged path across his chin. “If you were worth anything, you’d let me have it.” Sam put the tips of his fingers on her stomach and pushed her away—but she was back, swinging a slap against the side of his face. He made no move to defend himself. She hit him again. “I hate you, Samuel Stein! I never want to see you as long as I live!” She turned her back, stomped over to the bedroom door, and flung it open. Richard was on the bed with his arms crossed behind his head. Eli, curled up on the floor mattress, was reading a magazine. They stared up at her without moving, their eyes round. She could smell their sweat. “You think this is a game but it’s not,” she said, watching them shrink. Her voice rose, quavering, but she kept herself from shrieking. “This is war—them or us—there’s no middle.” She drilled her eyes into Richard’s. “Don’t forget tomorrow. Tell him.” She shifted her gaze to Eli. Then she slammed the bedroom door behind her and was gone.
eli was already snoring, but Richard couldn’t sleep. There was a light burning in the other room—the yellow strip glowed on the floor—so he slipped off the bed, stepped over Eli, opened the bedroom door, and shut it again behind him. Sam was huddled on his mattress in fetal position, arms clamped around his head, shoulders trembling.
“You still alive?” he asked softly. No answer. “What you need now,” he went on, moving to the kitchen, “is a visit from our friend Jack.”
“No,” Sam mumbled into his arm. “No company.” But Richard was already sitting beside him on the mattress with two jelly glasses half full of Jack Daniel’s. He grabbed Sam’s shoulder and shook it until he wriggled away and sat up. “Drink. Don’t sip—just pound it back, man.” Sam did as he was told, then he quivered all over as if he was going to sneeze—or puke. Richard was already pouring another shot. “Salud—down the hatch!”
“God, what is that stuff—turpentine?” Sam sputtered.
“Jack Daniel’s, buddy—a friend indeed for a friend in need.” They settled back side by side, letting the flames subside. Richard stretched and cracked his ankles. “So.” He prodded Sam with a knee. “Wanna talk about it?”
Sam stared into his empty glass. “No.” He sighed. Long pause. “I can’t believe she blamed me.”
“Forget it. That was crazy talk, man. She was out of her head—I mean, who wouldn’t be, under the circumstances?” Sam shrugged. Another silence. Another sigh.
“She’s right,” Sam finally said almost inaudibly. “I’m never gonna amount to shit. I’m nothing—always have been—always will be.”
“If you’re nothing . . .”
“You don’t understand, Richard. You’ve got all these cool friends. You know about music. Your father’s famous. I mean, look at how you wowed Leon. You stand for something. You . . . Kim . . . even Eli. But I don’t have a cause—I don’t have a girlfriend—all I’ve got are my fucking report cards and SAT scores.”
“I’m going to prove how wrong you are. Okay? Quick—answer without thinking—just say whatever pops into your head. What would you do if you got drafted?”
“Go to Canada.”
“What would you lay down your life for—country, idea, movement?”
“Israel.”
“Seriously? You’d throw Uncle Sam under the bus for a bunch of crazed Hebrews?”
“I dunno. It’s what popped into my head. I mean, without a homeland, the Jews don’t stand a chance. Look at history—the Holocaust—”
“Eli will die of joy. And, buddy, I gotta say, you’re gonna look so sexy in your IDF uniform.” Sam jabbed him with an elbow. “Hey, I made you smile. One for the team. What about a person? If you had to die for someone, who would it be? Don’t think.”
“Tutu.”
Richard shook his head. “You’d choose the maid over your mother?”
“She saved my life once. When I was little. I totally owe her.”
Richard shoved his face into Sam’s. “My baby!” he wailed. Sam covered his face with his hands, but Richard kept talking. “Your brother Ron told me the whole story in like junior high. He was laughing his ass off. We both were.”
“It’s not funny. Tutu’s the only one who’s ever looked out for me. Still is.” He turned away. “Okay, now your turn. What would you die for? Quick.”
“Drugs,” Richard shot back. “Oh wait, drugs and sex. No—drugs, sex, and rock ’n’ roll.”
“God, Richard, you’re even shallower than I thought.”
“You only go around once, man.” Richard let his bare leg brush against Sam’s—they were both in their underwear. “You might as well have a sweet ride. I’m going out high”—he stretched his arms over his head—“and mighty.”
They lay on their backs and stared at the ceiling. Then Sam, without prodding, started up again. “What I said about Israel, you know, dying for a cause? Never gonna happen. That’s not who I am. Not how my brain works. I don’t know how to explain it—I’m not abstract. What matters to me is not ideology but people—life—the holiness of life. There’s this line from a Wordsworth poem that I love: ‘With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.’ That’s my—I don’t know—mission. To see into the life of things. I feel like the only time I come close is when I’m out in nature. Does that make me evil? To love nature? To want to save the world from being paved and drilled into oblivion? The power of harmony: that’s my revolution. So yeah, I guess Kim nailed me. I do want a girlfriend. I wanna live someplace beautiful. I want kids—kids are cool! I want to travel. I want to meet amazing people and hear their stories and maybe write about them. I know it sounds lame—but I’ve got principles too. I hate the war in Vietnam as much as Kim does. I hate Nixon and the bombing. What cops are doing to black people in every city of this country is criminal—and yes, the Panthers are the only ones trying to stop it. I’m not saying we should turn our backs on all of that and hide out in the woods. We have to keep marching. Resisting. Organizing. Whatever. But blow shit up? Shoot cops? Decide who lives and who dies? That’s just wrong. That’s what they do. We’re better than that.”
Sam was gasping. His face was red and tears were leaking from the corners of his eyes. Richard lay beside him, listening to him breathe, watching his stomach rise and fall under the T-shirt. “You know.” He rolled toward Sam. Heat was radiating from him. “You should write all that down.”
“Yeah, right.”
“No, seriously, man. It’s important.” Richard felt himself get hard. Never try to fuck your buddy, a little voice whispered in his head. But this was different. Sam was hurting. This would be good for him. “You know,” he whispered into Sam’s neck. “One day, when you’re in your big house in the country—with the garden and the little woman and the kids jumping up and down on your lap”—he hooked Sam’s T-shirt and drew it up—“you’ll look back on this night—and you’re gonna be grateful. . . .”
“You’re creeping me out.” Sam squirmed away. “It’s not nice to make fun of someone when they’re down. . . .”
“Oh, you want nice?” Richard skimmed his forefinger across Sam’s undies and outlined the shape imprisoned inside. He felt Sam shudder. “I can be nice.” He went very, very slowly. “So nice.” His fingertips plowed the runnel of muscle feathered with down. When he got to the bulge at the edge of the elastic, he went crazy. “Never forget this,” he breathed. “Beautiful”—he wiggled the tip of a pinkie into Sam’s spigot—“something beautiful we can do for each other”—circled the head with the pad of his thumb—“and no one ever has to know. . . . We’re free, Sam—anything’s allowed. . . . But”—rising, he rolled Sam over on his back and sat on him—“I gotta come first. . . . Otherwise . . .” (Otherwise you’re never going to let me near you again.) “Please—trust me. . . .”
Sam tried to topple him.
Richard reached for the gap in his undies. “You know you want to see it.”
“I already have,” Sam managed to gasp. “Don’t you remember?”
“Yeah, well, it’s grown some since then.” Richard wriggled free of his undies and there it was in all its glory. He pinned Sam’s shoulders with his knees. Sam had that same dazed expression Richard remembered from when they were kids and he had lured little Sammy to his bedroom one sweaty summer afternoon and locked him in to play strip poker. By the time they were down to their tighty whities, Richard was hard as a rock. Sam bugged his eyes when Richard took it out and bounced it at him. “Go on—grab on—it’s not going to bite,” he taunted. But Sam—he couldn’t have been more than ten—just gaped like an idiot. That dumb stricken look. Who knows what would have happened if the Rineses’ damn maid hadn’t started pounding on the door?
Richard moved it against Sam’s lips. “Take it.”
“No.”
“You’re killing me, man.” He clamped a hand around Sam’s jaw and started to twist his head side to side. Gently, slowly. “Let’s finish what we started.”
“No.” Through clenched teeth.
Richard’s blood was singing in his ears. “Yes.” Anything to get inside. “You wanted it then—you want it now. Be a good boy, Sammy.” He flattened his palm over Sam’s face and pushed. He felt Sam’s lips part and then the teeth sinking into the fleshy mound below his thumb. “You little . . .” Richard, recoiling, balled his hand into a fist—but before he slammed it into Sam’s jaw, the kid was up and off the bed and barricaded in the bathroom. “Mother fucker,” Richard heard him shouting over and over behind the locked door.
The pain drove Richard wilder. He brought himself off, moaning and writhing, all over Sam’s mattress. He had it coming. Then he rolled over on his back, and in that spent instant everything clicked into place. We need a brother to make the drop. Richard suddenly knew who. Pure genius. Never fails—I always get my best ideas with a cock in my fist.
jesus christ!
Sam sat on the toilet lid with his face in his hands and those two words pounding over and over in his skull.
Jesus Christ!
Little cartoons bubbled up and spliced together behind his shut eyes. Richard’s stiff cock waving under his nose. Fourteen-year-old Richard tracing a line with his finger between his little-boy nipples. Leon’s voice in church vibrating inside his chest. Tutu crying her eyes out the day JFK was assassinated. Kim taking his dick in her hand and planting it between her legs. His mother flapping her hands between him and his furious father at the dinner table, trying to put out the fire burning between them.
Was he queer?
Jesus Christ!
He would have done it. He was hard the whole time. The first time he told Richard no he didn’t mean it. It would have served Kim right. Free love, you know? Don’t be so fucking conventional. She’d probably fucked Richard herself, for all he knew. Revenge sex. But then, right before he surrendered, something killed the current. He was ten years old again and locked in Richard’s bedroom while the maid pounded on the door: “What you boys doing in there?” In a heartbeat he went from wanting Richard to wanting to kill him. The heat coming off his body was suffocating. The smell of his sweat made him sick. He gagged at the idea of that meat in his mouth. Cocksucker. Maybe he was just scared. He didn’t care. He didn’t think. He just had to get away.
Were there any bridges left to burn?
Sam raked his fingers through his hair, got up from the shitter, and met his face in the mirror. He stared at the bloodshot eyes, the red stubble dust on his chin, the blotchy freckles. He could practically hear Tutu’s voice: “I told you to stay away from that boy.”
Now what?
He could slink home with his tail between his legs, ask forgiveness, move back to his room, and finish the school year. He could track down Kim and beg her to take him with her down revolutionary road. He could sneak up on Richard while he slept and smother him with a pillow. He could jump out the window and be done with it all.
Kill yourself because your girlfriend slapped you and your roommate wanted a blow job? What a pussy.
When he figured the coast was clear, he crept out of the bathroom. He kicked the foul sheets off the mattress and collapsed. He had to make a plan. Tomorrow was Saturday. He’d call Leon first thing—tell him he was in trouble, needed a place to crash. But what about Tutu? She’d be back in Harlem that night. What if she threw him out—or told his parents? No way was he going back home. He’d have to blow town. He could hitchhike to Vermont—to the place where they skied. There had to be a commune somewhere around there—there were tons of communes in Vermont. He knew how to grow stuff! He’d be a natural on a commune. Sam shut his eyes and conjured up a big rambling white clapboard farmhouse, hippie girls with braids baking bread in the kitchen and little blond kids chasing each other around the porch. Morning glory vines twining up the columns. Apple trees blooming in the orchard. Plowed fields stretching out to hazy blue hills. Welcome to Eden, Sam. Yeah, except that up in Vermont it was still the dead of winter.
Sam found a pen and opened his notebook. GAME PLAN, he wrote at the top of a blank page. Move out tomorrow—no matter what, he scribbled. He left the tip of the pen on the page until the ink blotted. Nothing. He was alone. He’d failed at everything. The world hated him. Even his parents were happy he was gone. Tutu and Leon would tell him to pray—but he didn’t believe in their God. He didn’t believe in anything. Except pain. That was the one true thing. Sam dropped the notebook, went into the kitchen, yanked open a drawer, and pulled out a long skinny knife that had been sharpened to the vanishing point. He took it back to his bed, sat down, grabbed the worn bone handle in his right fist, and set the blade down on the string of vein that threaded his left wrist. He pressed until a tiny red bubble surfaced on the skin. Deeper?
He sat there, transfixed, until the bubble broke and pooled around the tip of the blade. Before he could decide what to do next, he heard the bedroom door open and Eli tiptoed out and into the bathroom. Sam dropped the knife, blotted his wrist on his bare thigh, turned off the lamp, and pulled a blanket over his head.