C H A P T E R • 27
Al lived in the apartment on the ground floor of a brick and brownstone row house on 136th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Adrianne and I had to maneuver over the stones inlaid in front that were slick from the earlier rain. A fish tank was visible through one window. I hit the knocker and rang the bell and called out and heard something, but no answering welcome. Adrianne moved a paving stone and found the key. I stood in the recessed entryway under the parlor floor stairs and rang the bell again and then leaned against the filigreed wrought iron gate to hear what I could hear.
I had to move out of the way so she could unlock it and we peeked in together and stood near the door, waiting to give Heavy time to get his business straight. I expected him to come out of the bedroom half-dressed. Young men, it would seem to me, would have need of a little privacy.
The wall in front of us was full of color above a mess of spray cans. It took a minute to find Heavy’s name under the painted crowd.
“It looks like he tagged Al’s wall,” Adrianne said.
“It’s complicated. And it makes me sad,” I said. “But I like it.”
A drum set sat in the middle of the floor, probably ready to go back in front of Heavy’s wall art.
An industrial-strength metal rack held an audio system in six parts, several videotape recorders, two monitors and shelves of tapes. Al’s movie and music business must have been good for him to be able to afford the stuff. I knew what he made on his day job.
Two long Chinese swords stood in an umbrella stand next to the shelf which also held other Japanese weapons, including nun chucks and a throwing star.
On the other side of the room, a large canvas hung from one of its corners. A mess of coffee cans and brushes and hand tools filled one milk crate and two others were full of armatures to build sculptures on. A stone seemed to be standing upright on a rolling pedestal with some shaping that looked like movement; although it did not yet have a form.
“I told you Al was making art again since he came back from the drug rehab,” Adrianne said. “Look at this place.”
She walked over to the studio side of the room and bent down to gather some of the loose bills scattered on the floor. She turned to show me.
I called out, “Heavy?” And I crept down the hall past the little kitchen and the bathroom.
By the time I got to the bedroom, curiosity had beat out any bit of leftover embarrassment. I was hurrying, wondering what I would find next. Nosey and I busted through the door to find a man lying on the floor by the bed.
“Adrianne, come here quick!”
He was lying on his side in a blue velour Reebok tracksuit. I knelt to feel for the pulse in his neck. His body was warm and I could move his arm, but the blood wasn’t flowing. His heart had stopped pumping.
His bare feet were dirty but well kept. Fit and young, he should have put up a fight. But there he was, just lying there like he was sleeping with an open eye staring out at nothing now that whoever it was he looked at last was gone.
A baseball bat was lying next to him with something on it I didn’t want to look at too closely.
I knew the routine, and without moving him, I saw the open wound in his head and the bruises and the cuts and swelling around his mouth. His lips looked like they would have healed crooked.
I felt Adrianne kneeling beside me.
“It’s Heavy, isn’t it?” I pitched my voice low and respectful.
“Yes. Is he dead?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“How do you know?” She touched his hands, felt for his pulse, and touched his neck. “Oh shit.”
Then she said what it meant to her: “Not now. He . . .” Her voice cracked.
“These are old bruises. I saw them last night when he was arrested on the street in front of the Kit Kat. And what happened tonight maybe didn’t hurt him because he was very high.” I pointed to two tiny empty clear plastic vials and one colored top. “What a waste. What a stupid horrible waste.”
I got on my knees and found the phone under the quilt on the floor. From there I could also see under the king-sized bed. My view was not obstructed by anything except a precious few very small tufts of dust and Heavy’s sneakers where he must have kicked them off. And I saw Adrianne’s hands reaching down to pick up one of the empty vials. I looked up to watch her walk over to open the back door on the garden. She stood there looking out.
When I picked up the phone there was no connection. I put the phone back on the floor and went to stand beside her.
“Are you going to be all right?” I asked. She didn’t answer.
I turned around, and it occurred to me I had heard some noise when we rang the bell. “Do you think somebody could still be in the apartment?” I asked her.
I walked over to the closet and threw open the door. Nothing. We both reacted with nervous noise that was not laughter.
“Adrianne? Don’t touch anything else. Can you give me a minute? I want to share something with Heavy. It’s a chant to Quan Yin, who hears the cries of the world. It’s something to carry him with compassion.”
Adrianne said, “I want to sit with his art.” And she went back to the front.
I chanted. Then, I went to stand in the back door where the smell of dirt was a rich mix, not yet frozen and kind of wonderful in New York City. I could still smell the rain.
When I switched on the floodlight, it reached just beyond the pile of flagstone pavers near the door and illuminated part of the incongruous fairyland of Al’s tranquil garden space of empty branches and evergreens and a stone bench beside a silent fountain.
He hadn’t finished paving the dirt path and I saw sneaker prints made by a kid, or a little grown person, running and sliding to where it was dark but where there wasn’t any place to hide.
The large wooden box at the fence sent back the smell of compost in the humid air. The floodlight caught the night above the top of the fence.
Back in Al’s bedroom, I stepped over the doorsill and felt a chill at the back of my neck as I looked down at the floor at Heavy, still dead.
I called out, “Adrianne!” The silence got louder. “Adrianne!”
She didn’t answer.
“Adrianne, is that you?” She still didn’t answer, which meant it probably wasn’t her walking at the front of the house.
I tipped over to the door and got outside and flipped off the floodlight and took off my shoes and ran in the dark, avoiding as best I could the path with the sneaker prints.
At the back fence, I had to stash my beautiful black stilettos on top of the compost box to free my hands, and I had to hike the little skirt to my evening suit further up my thighs to free my legs for the climb on the step stool next to the compost box. Since I couldn’t see over the fence, I couldn’t tell if there was another backyard adjoining Al’s yard on the other side where I would be trapped once I went over. But climbing the wall was my only option.
I got as far as the top of the box and I was commending myself when the floodlight went up and I heard a voice call out, “Stop! I suggest you come back here.”