Summertime in Brooklyn means doing whatever you can to stay cool. Cool as in not becoming a melted version of yourself in the heat. Also, cool as in not sitting inside doing nothing, which means being outdoors, socializing in the midst of the buzz of the sun, that which serves as a heat lamp looming over the land of lizards—tough-skinned chameleon kids who blend into the browns and reds of the row homes and the jagged grit of the concrete. Kids who, in an effort to be cool and stay cool, can only hang out at one place—the swimming pool.
For Jamal, Big Boy, Flaco, and Randy, it’s Kosciuszko Pool, a name they butcher effortlessly because they’ve never met a Kosciuszko—or a Polish person at all—to tell them how to pronounce it correctly. Plus, to them, it’s just the pool. And on any given sweltering summer day, when Bed-Stuy becomes a microwave, the pool might as well be called heaven.
“It’s not really that funny,” Big Boy says, rubbing his forehead as if his skin is a smudge. “Y’all gassin’ it, making it something that it ain’t.”
“Ain’t nobody gassin’ nothing,” Jamal shoots back. Jamal, all head and feet, as opposed to Big Boy, who’s all everything, holds the door open for his friends, each of them filing out after skipping the locker rooms. They never shower. Never rinse or swap out wet clothes. Not because they have a problem with it—locker rooms are something they’re used to from years of gym class—but because they come to the pool with no baggage. No duffels or backpacks. They come already dressed in their trunks and tank tops. They don’t bring towels or any extra garments. The way they see it, one of the best parts about the pool is the wet walk home. The slight breeze dancing with the damp, sending a welcome chill up their legs and backs. And they know there’s no risk of yelling mothers, frustrated about the chlorinated water dripping all across the hardwood floors of their apartments, because the boys will be dry long before reaching home. Plus, they’re not going home, anyway. At least not to their individual apartments. They’re going to one apartment. They’re always going to one. A collective dwelling, a base for postpool boyhood shenanigans. It varies by the day, but today, it’s Flaco’s house.
“Y’all are gassin’ it,” Big Boy grumbles. “It was a Band-Aid and y’all making it seem like it was poop or something gross like that.”
“Bruh,” Randy chimes in. “You jumped in the pool, went under the water, and when you came up there was a dirty-ass Band-Aid stuck to your forehead.” Randy brushes his palm over his head. The water has turned what used to be his freshly brushed waves into tiny onyx beads strewn across his scalp. Randy is obsessed with his waves.
“Yeah, like a . . .” Flaco tries to find the word while trying to hold in his laughter. “Like a . . . slug or something.”
“Shut up, Flaco!” Big Boy snaps, swinging his arm loosely at Flaco’s brittle birdcage of a chest. “You probably don’t even know what a slug is.”
“Yeah, I do. It’s a snail without a shell, dummy.” Flaco tightens his face for a moment, cocks his head back, and purses his lips into a shut your mouth look.
“And it’s slimy like you was, coming up out that water,” Jamal follows up. “No, like that nasty thing stuck on your head.”
“It was just a Band-Aid!” Big Boy barks again as they all turn onto Tompkins Avenue.
“Yo, real talk—what if that Band-Aid had some nasty disease on it, and it seeped into your forehead and is now eating your brain or something? Tomorrow you gon’ wake up even dumber than you are today.” Randy’s face is dead serious.
“And that’s a shame.” Jamal’s is too.
“A damn shame.” So is Flaco’s.
“A low-down dirty shame.” A smirk now splinters Randy’s mug like a crack in glass.
Big Boy sucks his teeth, and even though he knows they’re just jokes, he still rubs his forehead, not as if he’s fearful of germs, but as if there was once a horn there, or perhaps as if there’s one about to grow. “Well, if it is, maybe it skipped my brain and is working its way down to my stomach, because while y’all so busy roasting me, I’m starving.”
Swimming always makes them hungry. They have no idea why, but it always does. Maybe it has something to do with them holding their breath. Or maybe it’s due to the energy it takes to tread water, to stay afloat. Either way, whenever they leave the pool, they’re always empty. Famished.
“Starving,” Jamal repeats. “I could go for a sandwich.”
“Ooooh, like peanut butter and jelly?” Flaco chimes in.
“I mean, that would be fine, but I’m thinking something even better,” Jamal says. “Like turkey, with lettuce, tomato . . .”
“Some pickles,” Randy interrupts, nodding his head as if tasting the dill.
“Of course, pickles. Some mustard. On a hero. Cut in fours.” Jamal rubs his belly as they cross the intersection at Greene Avenue. On Tompkins there’s a bodega on almost every corner. Each of them advertises deli meats with the same poster for the brand, Boar’s Head, which is the image of a perfect sandwich and above it, well, a boar’s head. And none of the boys ever notice the wolf-looking pig with the underbite. They only notice how green the lettuce is. How red the tomato. The perfect folds of meat they’ve seen cut from a football of ham or chicken or turkey over and over and over again.
“Just like that.” Jamal slaps his palm to the glass of the bodega. Presses his fingers against the sandwich ad. “Yum yum.”
“I mean, that looks good and all,” Big Boy says. “But I was thinking something like maybe . . . you know the beef you get with beef and broccoli from the Chinese spot?” Randy, Flaco, and Jamal look at Big Boy like he still has a used Band-Aid stuck to his head.
“Just, hear me out.” Big Boy continues. “You take some of that beef and put that on some bread. And you put the broccoli on it too, right. Then, you put the lettuce and tomato and all that on it, but what really makes it fire is when you put the hot mustard and the duck sauce, and just a little bit of soy sauce on that thing. No mayo or mustard. Man. Oh, and you crunch up some of them dry chow mein noodles on it too, like how we sometimes do with the chips. Now, that’s a sandwich.”
“Yo, it’s good to know that nasty Band-Aid ain’t affecting your brain yet, because that sandwich actually sounds mad tasty. Like with the tang of them sauces mixing with that beef . . . yeah.” Flaco nods.
“Exactly.” Big Boy responds with a deeper, slower nod.
“Or maybe even like a . . . like some pastrami or something like that.” Jamal, inspired by the beef and broccoli sandwich, revises his original idea. “And you just stack it up. Like a fistful of it, and instead of putting it on a hero or on slices, or even on a regular roll, you put it on a challah roll.”
“A what?” Big Boy asks.
“A challah roll. It’s like Jewish bread. Looks just like the back of your head, Big Boy,” Jamal jokes.
“Shut up.” Big Boy rolls his eyes until only the whites show.
“Anyway, they sell it over there on Bedford. Kid I go to school with let me taste it one time and I was hooked. Delicious. You put that pastrami on there, and then you add some Swiss cheese, and some coleslaw, a splash of hot sauce for a little heat, and a few corn chips for crunch, and boom. You got your own little piece of heaven.” Jamal slows his walk as they approach the next corner, when it hits him. “A challah heaven!”
“Sounds like it,” Randy agrees, not realizing that everyone else is easing to a stop. Randy steps out into the street. A car zooms by and almost clips him. He jumps back just in time.
“Yooo!” Flaco calls out.
“Whoa!” Jamal yelps.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Randy!” Big Boy says, now yanking Randy by the arm, a delayed reaction. “Snap out of it!”
“My bad. I’m just so hungry. Ain’t even see that car coming.”
“Do we need Flaco to hold your hand, bro?” Big Boy asks, his panic immediately slipping back into poking.
“Why I gotta hold his hand?” Flaco whines.
“Because you got hands like your mother,” Big Boy says, petty, trying to clap back for all the Band-Aid jokes. “Sandwich-making hands.”
“My mother got bust you in the mouth hands.” Flaco puffs up. “And you best believe she passed them down to me.”
“Fine,” Jamal cuts in, extending his arm to Randy. “I guess . . . I’ll hold Randy’s hand.” They all laugh, and while passing another store, Randy slaps the glass, his turn to give another picture of a perfect sandwich a five.
“I need one of them to hold my damn hand,” he says, palm-brushing his hair again. “Maybe not one of them. But like . . . a half smoke, or a Polish sausage. With some of that kraut stuff on top. I never had it, but it’s called sour kraut.”
“It’s sauerkraut. Not sour . . . kraut. Sauerkraut. And do you even know what it is?” Flaco asks.
“I don’t care what it is, Flaco. I want it on there. I want the kraut, and some ketchup, and some jalapeños, and some jerk sauce! That’s what I want, Flaco. Is that okay with you?!” Randy’s voice deepens to a bass.
“Hey, hey.” Flaco holds his hands up in surrender. “As long as you okay with pooping your whole heart though your butt. If you good with that, I am too.”
“Exactly,” Jamal adds. “You like it, I love it.”
“Hey, Randy, you won’t have a heart, and apparently because of that Band-Aid, I won’t have a brain, but Flaco don’t even have the courage to eat a real sandwich. He talking about peanut butter and jelly,” Big Boy says. “All the delis we passing on this yellow brick road, and this fool gon’ ask the wizard for peanut . . . butter . . . and jelly.”
“What’s wrong with peanut butter and jelly?” Flaco asks, head slightly cocked.
“Nothing,” Big Boy says.
“Yeah, nothing,” Randy follows.
“Nothing . . . at . . . all,” Jamal rounds it off.
“Okay, fine. Since peanut butter and jelly ain’t good enough for y’all”—Flaco adds a clap between each word—“you know what I’d like to try? One of them veggie sandwiches I always be seeing these white people get. It’s like a salad sandwich or something. Y’all know what I’m talking about? Spinach, and some other kinds of leaves, maybe some kale, and then they put the cucumbers on there, some tomatoes, some onions—raw and grilled. Throw some banana peppers on it, some olives, and . . . what am I missing . . .”
“Avocado,” Jamal tosses in.
“Avocado! Yeah, hit it with the avocado and some of that spicy mustard and put it on that crazy-sounding dark-brown bread. Y’all know what I’m talking about? The bread that sounds like a bad last name.”
“Yeah, I know what you talking about.” Big Boy taps his forehead trying to remember. “What’s it called?”
“Uh-oh, it’s already started,” Jamal jokes.
“Shut up!” Big Boy squawks, his shut ups always at the ready.
“It’s called pumpernickel.” Again, from Jamal.
“PUMPERNICKEL!” they all shout together, then laugh.
“So, yeah, put all them veggies on that bread. Pumpernickel!” Flaco just has to say it again. “And to top it all off . . . the Michael Jordan of all meats . . . bacon.”
“BACON!” This time only Big Boy yells, but the rest of the boys nod in agreement. They’re coming up on Hancock Street, which means they’re approaching Flaco’s house, which sits right on the corner. Well, not right on the corner, because a bodega sits right on the corner, but next to the bodega is Flaco’s house. Behind them, a disappearing trail of water, the drops becoming less frequent with each traveled block, each passed deli.
“Finally,” Randy says.
“Right,” Jamal cosigns as they climb the front steps. Flaco jams his key into the lock and opens the building door, and the boys, now almost completely dry, take the steps two at a time, before barreling into Flaco’s apartment.
“Ma!” Flaco yells, kicking his shoes off at the door. No answer. He checks the bedroom, and repeats, “Ma!” Nothing.
Jamal, Big Boy, and Randy remove their shoes as well, then flop down on the couch in the living room—right in front of the air conditioner—and when Flaco reappears, he’s holding a bottle of lotion. This is also tradition. The chlorine dries their skin out. Scales it, and covers it in a layer of uncomfortable white. The boys smear it over their arms and faces, in between their fingers, and in the corners of their mouths. They rub it on their kneecaps and up and down their ashen legs, the dryness fading like static coming into clear picture.
“So, we eating?” Big Boy asks, rubbing his hands together.
“Oh, we definitely eating,” Flaco says, heading into the kitchen.
“Pumpernickel,” Jamal murmurs under his breath, a grin on his face.
“What you say you wanted? Pastrami, right?” Randy asks Jamal, his voice punctured by a clanging in the kitchen.
“Hell yeah,” Jamal replies. “Even though I can’t front, that beef and broccoli sandwich sounded like a winner.” The sound of cabinets opening and closing.
“I was all for it, until Randy started running off about the Polish sausage with the sauerkraut and the jerk sauce,” Big Boy confesses. The sound of the refrigerator door, unsticking, resticking.
And then Flaco returns from the kitchen with four bowls, a box of cereal, and a half gallon of milk.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I got sugar.”