ARTHUR AND HIS FRIENDS

 

Nothing was off-limits, especially not the dead. The body still warm and these kids pounced. Sometimes there were ground rules—no mothers, say—but not with these kids. Everything went with these kids.

They met up intuitively, without appointment, in various late-night stairwells, on various floors and buildings of the Chelsea Projects: 466 or 443, 288 or 446, 427 or 426 or 428.

Albert, Errol and Joey, Rennie, Michael, Arthur. The six of them high on reefer usually, but nobody was holding. They were talking about getting their hands on a bottle of Carbona, an automotive cleaning agent you poured into a handkerchief and huffed, but they never got around to it, so they sat there sounding on each other. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old, they spat between their legs, making art on the stairwell steps, one o'clock in the morning, talking about each other's families.

Somebody said something hysterical, which caught Rennie by surprise, and snot shot from his nose. A dark-skinned Puerto Rican, the kind they sometimes call chocolatte. His father collected welfare and talked on a CB station.

Albert, Puerto Rican, quite physical in his humor: he'd grab you and rub his head into the middle of your chest like a dog. Later, Albert would go to prison for selling drugs, and the experience wrung the laughter from him for good.

Errol and Joey, two brothers, their family something of a project anomaly in that they were Jews. (Or, at 2 percent of the population, are Jews an anomaly the world over?)

Michael, black and Puerto Rican, yet fair-skinned and nerdy. His father had a vaguely effeminate manner about him.

"Artie," Errol said one night, "I wanted to ask you a question about your dead grandfather."

Arthur grinned, let the saliva hang as close as he could get it to the stairwell step, before he sucked it back up.

Maureen's father had gotten an apartment of his own in 443. She would make a monthly pot of tripe, and Arthur, who hated the smell of it, delivered it at arm's length across the yard to his grandfather. He and Steven would watch TV and eat potato chips and drink Pepsi-Cola over there. Once they watched Hans Christian Andersen, starring Danny Kaye, and Arthur felt so safe on the couch next to his grandfather, who died two years ago at the age of fifty-three, a subway staircase heart attack.

"That white-haired motherfucker used to walk around like a ghost, remember?" The kids made sounds to inspire Errol to find a groove for his riff. "Who told that son of a bitch to go and die? I wasn't done with him yet."

Arthur let his spit collapse onto the step. "Oh yeah, and what about your bald-headed Jew father? That fuck's probably having anal sex with Michael's father right this minute."

"Say what?" Michael said.

"Like your father's not a faggot."

"Look who's talking," Rennie said.

"Oh, don't get me started on your fat fucking father," Arthur said to Rennie, "sitting up there in front of his base station, talking to some spic truck drivers, collecting welfare, smoking his L&Ms, that crippled stupid Puerto Rican fuck. Big nasty ashtray on the windowsill, you saw it, Albert—Errol, you seen it, all them empty Rheingolds—talking to who-the-fuck-knows on that stupid base station. It's like your father's our age. He's a fucking grown-up—what the fuck is he doing talking on a base station all day long, can you answer me that? Albert, let me get a cigarette."

"Least I got a father," Rennie said quietly.

Arthur, sensing a trap, responded cautiously. "I got a father."

"You call that drunken-ass bum a father?" Rennie said, and the kids made a sound, feeling Rennie's rhythm. "That white-milk son of a bitch, stumbling around, his stupid-ass doorman's uniform. I bet he sleeps in that shit too. That bastard's never been sober, not a day in his life, long as I been seeing his ass, since we're babies in baby carriages that son of a bitch been drunk. It's amazing when you think about it, a truck hasn't ran his ass over yet. That that motherfucker's still alive is a bigger-ass miracle than the Miracle on 34th Street."

"That right?" Arthur said.

"Out of all the drunk-ass alcoholic fathers in these projects," Rennie said, "and I'm sitting up in this hallway with the son of the one who takes the cake."

"Worse than Kenny's father?" Albert said.

Rennie reflected. "Okay, nah, nobody's as bad as Kenny's father, that's too hard to beat. But Mr. Sky in his stupid-ass doorman's uniform, sleeping on benches and shit? At least my father sleeps in a bed, Artie. I saw your father take a piss in a telephone booth on Ninth the other day, middle of the afternoon, fucking doorman uniform had all kinds of stains on it and shit, old ladies and little kids walking by, tell me I'm lying. Shame on your father, that intoxicated douchebag. Looked like a straight-up crazy-ass drunken bum on the street, which, when you think about it, basically that's what he is." Rennie had found a stride, and the stairwell buzzed. "If I didn't know he was your father, Artie, I would have pushed his ass in the river and watched him drown just to pass the time a good while ago."

"That right?" Arthur said. Rennie's deluge threw him. He tried to consider Rennie's mother but could not call up any details. You needed details, specifics—that's the funny part. "And what about your mother?" Arthur said, but his tone held a lost quality and gained no traction.

Joey said, "I saw Mr. Sky take a shit on his own couch one day—remember that, Artie? Pants down to his ankles, his own living room. Motherfucker thought he was in the Grant's Bar bathroom."

"Amazing when you think about," Rennie said, "he still got a job, 'cause that motherfucker, all he does is drink, did you notice that? That scumbag's always packing a taste. He don't blink without a drink your father, Artie. Son of a bitch'll be drunk at his own funeral, which by the way should be any minute."

Arthur kept his head down, and the kids watched him.

"Let's be real," Rennie said. "Tell me that motherfucker don't urinate in the bed three times a week and I'll eat my straw hat."

"Oh shit," Albert said.

"Ho snap," Michael said.

"Bitch is crying," Errol said.

It happened sometimes. The point, in fact, to find a soft spot, to hemorrhage somebody.

"See what you did, Rennie?" Albert said.

"Your mother," Arthur said through tears. "Mother's so fat." But his thoughts couldn't find their way. "She's like . . . a blob . . . like I don't know where your mother's titties end . . . and her pussy begins."

"That's dry," Rennie said.

"Like a desert breeze," Michael chimed in.

"Speaking of mothers," Joey said, "I'll tell you the truth, Artie, straight up: I'd like to fuck your mother. Is this possible?" They all laughed, Arthur included, wiping his face. "Square business," Joey said, "you think I could catch a rap with your mother?"

They were, each of them but one, virgins.

"Oh shit! Reminds me of a rumor I heard," Errol said, "that Jondie and Ray-Ray fucked Ritchie Velasco's mother at the same time, you heard that?"

"That's not true," Michael said.

"How you know it's not true? Your faggoty-ass father carries a pocketbook on a strap."

"It's a satchel, moron," Michael said.

"Two on one can be okay," Joey opined, "but I'm not in the mood to share Mrs. Sky: thanks but no thanks." They roared at Joey's delivery. "I want that pussy all to myself, and if that makes me selfish I sincerely apologize. Artie, I'll be a good stepfather to you and Stevie. Take you to Whelan's counter every Sunday, let you split an egg cream."

Arthur leaned back and howled at the flashing mental image of Joey as his stepfather.