Friday, May 23, 2014
Fort Greene, Brooklyn
The phone was ringing in the dark.
Maine had killed the alarm twice without opening his eyes, but this sound kept cutting through the hum of the box fan: the bright, insistent FaceTime chime, going until it stopped, then starting again before he could settle back into sleep. He let both calls go with his face in the pillow. Beyond the blackout curtains, Fort Greene was already moving, a delivery truck grinding through its gears on the avenue and the G train rumbling somewhere underground. A thin blade of sunlight lay across the floor.
On the third call, he reached for the phone. Niq's name lit the screen. He thumbed it open and squinted into the glare. Two faces were crushed into one frame. Behind them Maine could make out the hand-lettered menu board over the grill at Leo's. Rome had half an egg-and-cheese in his mouth and wasn't about to let a phone call interrupt that. Monique was holding the phone, which meant Monique was doing the talking.
"Oh, so you are alive."
"Barely." His voice came out like gravel. "What time is it?"
"Time for you to be up," Niq said. "Maine. It's Senior Day."
He closed his eyes. Senior Day. The DJ in the courtyard, the yearbooks, the shirts everybody signed, the whole school pretending for one Friday that the four years had been fun the entire time. As Student Body President, Niq had probably been up for hours.
"And I need your cap," Niq went on. "Today. Not Tuesday, not 'I'll bring it after the weekend.' If you want it done for graduation, I need it in my hand today."
"I got you."
"You don't got me. You got a habit." She tilted the phone so he could see the full force of her face. "You can't procrastinate on everything, Maine."
Rome swallowed, finally. "She's right, bro."
"You're eating a sandwich."
"I'm eating a sandwich and she's right."
Maine swung his feet onto the floor, hung up on the two of them mid-laugh, and yanked the curtain back. The room flooded white. It was the kind of late-May morning that felt like a favor, the sky clean and blue all the way to the edges. He rushed through the shower, pulled on light-wash jeans and a crisp white tee over his Nike compression shirt, then twisted his locs up and tied them off on top of his head.
He checked his True Blues, then grabbed the backpack with his orange KD 6 NYC 66s and hoop shorts already inside.
He pulled the cap box down from the top shelf of his closet. At the bedroom door, he reached for the headphones that should have been around his neck. He doubled back, found them tangled in the sheets, and looped them on. Now he could leave.
The kitchen smelled like coffee. His father was at the counter in a navy suit with no tie yet, the jacket draped on the stool beside him, reading something on his phone with the stillness the Army had left in him. A box of CONNORS FOR COUNCIL palm cards sat at his elbow next to a mug that said WORLD'S OKAYEST DAD, a joke gift from Maine at fourteen that Nasir had used every morning since. Maine's keys lay beside the mug.
"Morning," Nasir said, without looking up.
"Morning." Maine reached for the keys. His father's hand got there first and rested on top of them.
"You sleep okay?"
"Too okay, apparently."
That got the corner of a smile. Nasir looked up then, and he took his time with it, the way he did when he was reading a room, except the room was just his son fresh out the shower with one shoe half on.
"Senior Day."
"Niq already yelled at me."
"Good. Somebody should." He slid the keys across. "You got a full day?"
"Leo's. School. Probably SSU after, if they got open gym. Probably Rome's."
Nasir nodded slowly, like he was filing it.
"Come straight home tonight."
Maine paused with the keys in his fist. "Straight home from where?"
"From wherever you end up." His father said it evenly, with the patience that usually meant the discussion was over. "Before midnight. I want to see you before I go to sleep."
"You don't go to sleep."
"Then I want to see you before I don't go to sleep."
Maine laughed. Nasir didn't, quite. He just held his son's eyes a second longer than the joke needed, and then he went back to his phone.
"Go. You're late."
The front door opened before Maine could reach it. Melo came in the way he always came into that brownstone, like he had a key, which he did, and like he had been doing it since before Maine was born, which he had. He had a Dunkin' coffee in one hand and his car keys in the other, and he stopped in the doorway and looked Maine up and down: the headphones, the cap box, the one untied shoe.
"Aren't you late?"
"Yeah. Bye, Melo."
Melo chuckled, low in his chest, and stepped aside to let him through. Maine glanced back while he thumbed through his music. Melo was looking past him toward the counter, where Nasir gave a small shake of his head. By the time Maine found the album, Melo was smiling again. Whatever it was, they could talk about it after he left.
On the stairs, Maine pulled up Nothing Was the Same, put the headphones on, and let Drake carry him out into the sun.
*
Leo's had been on that corner since 1974, long enough that it looked poured with the sidewalk. A CONNORS FOR COUNCIL sign was taped inside the front window between the lottery numbers and the Western Union sticker, Maine's father smiling out at the street in the same navy suit he had on this morning. The bell jingled him in, and the morning crew looked up all at once. Leo was behind the register in his reading glasses and a pressed guayabera. Dominic was on the grill, spatula going, already talking before Maine got the door shut. Jerry sat in his usual place on the milk crate beside the newspaper rack, a Daily News folded in quarters across his knee. He looked up over it when Maine came in.
"Look who woke up," Dominic announced to the whole store. "Sleeping Beauty."
"Man, chill."
"Monique left out of here twenty minutes ago talking 'bout filing a missing persons report on you."
"She was dead serious too," Rome said from the end of the counter, crumpling his sandwich foil into a ball.
Jerry turned a page. Rome peeled himself off the counter, and they drifted into the narrow aisles while Dominic laid bacon on the flat top and the radio behind the register played old merengue low and scratchy. Maine grabbed an Arizona from the cooler. The bell over the door rang. A girl stepped in out of the morning sun, hood down, phone pressed to her ear.
"I know, Ma. I'm getting it now."
She moved past them to the back like she'd been here a hundred times, close enough in that tight aisle that Maine had to turn his shoulder. Maine had never seen her before. When Maine glanced toward the newspapers, Jerry was watching him over the top of the Daily News. Maine turned back toward the tobacco counter.
"Let me get two Backwoods."
Leo slowly looked over his glasses.
"Now see, I'm not gonna say or ask why you boys need Backwoods."
Rome set his drink on the counter with ceremony. "Leo, we just partaking in a little relaxation."
Leo stared at him. "That what we calling it?"
"Absolutely."
Behind the grill, Dominic laughed so hard he had to put the spatula down. Maine broke too, laughing into his fist, and Leo shook his head and slid the package across the scratched glass.
"Just don't come back in here asking me why you coughing."
She came back up the aisle with milk, a box of Pampers, and a bag of plantain chips, balancing all of it against her hip.
Rome leaned in. "Let her go first, bro." Maine stepped aside. She glanced at the Backwoods in his hand. Then at him.
"Relaxation, huh?"
Rome choked on his drink. Leo didn't even try to hide his smile. She paid, said "Thanks, Leo," and was gone before Maine figured out what to say back, the bell swinging behind her, her silhouette folding into the glare off the avenue.
"Who was that?"
Leo shrugged. "Somebody who don't need your problems." Maine paid and grabbed the bag. When he reached the door, Leo lifted his chin at him.
"Tell your father I said hello."
"I will."
At the door, Maine glanced back. Jerry had lowered his paper. Maine lifted the bag in goodbye and followed Rome outside.
*
Du Bois Prep had turned itself inside out for Senior Day. The courtyard was strung with blue and gold streamers. A DJ had his tables set up along the fence by the court, running Migos into Beyoncé into old Biggie, because this was still Brooklyn. Seniors in white tees signed each other's backs in Sharpie, and the whole place smelled like sunscreen, hot pavement, and the hot dogs the gym teacher was burning on the grill. Niq found them before they found her. She had a clipboard in one hand and a walkie-talkie clipped to her jeans, and she held out the other hand without a word.
Maine put the cap box in it. She checked inside, like he might have handed her an empty box out of spite.
"Was that so hard?"
"Yes."
Rome kissed her on the cheek. She let him, then pushed his face away with two fingers. "You smell like Dominic's grill." Then the walkie crackled, and she was gone again.
Rome came back through the crowd with his eyes lit up. "They running it. Coach got the ball out." Every Du Bois Senior Day ended the same way: one last pickup run on the courtyard court, seniors against whoever was brave enough, before the seniors stopped being Du Bois. Maine was already moving. Two minutes later he came back out of the gym changed. The signed tee was folded into his backpack on top of the True Blues, toe boxes up. He had on the gray compression shirt, the NYC 66s laced tight, orange enough to see from space, and his Kenny Graham West 4th Street shorts in this summer's navy. He'd had them in a different color for every season since freshman year, when he first ran in the high school division at the Cage.
"You really carry hoop shoes to Senior Day," Rome said.
"Sixty-six at Rucker. Show some respect."
"You ain't KD."
The DJ saw them take the court and cut Biggie for something with more drums. Seniors packed the fence two deep. Underclassmen climbed onto the benches, and teachers drifted over with paper plates. Somebody's iPhone went up, and then a dozen. For the first few trips Maine just moved it, letting everybody touch the ball, the way you do when you want the game to belong to everybody. Then Mr. Okafor, the young assistant coach who had played Division III, picked him up at half court.
"All right, Connors. Let's see it."
Maine smiled and let the ball hang out at the end of his long arm, lazy, the way KD did, like he wasn't sure he even wanted it. Then everything slowed. The first cross went right to left, low enough to kiss the blacktop, and Okafor bit. His hips went with it, and his feet went with his hips. Maine was already bringing it back right, and somewhere between the two crosses Okafor's sneakers decided to go separate ways. He went down all at once, like a folding chair, flat on his back at half court.
The noise hit before Okafor could sit up. A freshman screamed from the bench, the DJ cut the track and dropped the air horn twice, and Rome bent over with both hands on his knees, laughing too hard to get the words out.
"KD! He got the KDs on! Sixty-six!"
Maine didn't go anywhere. He stood over the line with the ball on his hip, gave it one beat, and held out his free hand.
Okafor was laughing too hard to get up alone. He took the hand. "Go ahead. Finish it." Maine walked it in and laid it off the glass, soft, like an apology.
Next trip down, he came off Rome's screen going left. The help defender slid over a step too early. Behind him, Rome's man turned his head to find the ball, leaving Rome open under the basket. Maine kept his eyes on the rim and flicked a pass back across the lane. Rome caught it in stride.
Rome laid it in, and the courtyard went off.
"OHHHHHH—"
Rome came back down the court with both arms up, yelling "THAT'S MY BROTHER! THAT'S MY BROTHER!" at nobody and everybody, at the gym teacher by the grill with a hot dog dying on his spatula.
"Put it on Vine!" somebody screamed. "Put it on Vine!"
After that Okafor sagged off him, daring him to shoot. Game point, Maine took one dribble into a pull-up from a step behind the faded three-point line, and it slowed again: the release at the top, the ball spinning backward through the clean blue air, the whole courtyard leaning with it, a wall of phones held up like lighters. He was turning around before it got there. He heard the chain net rattle, and then he heard everybody. Okafor shook his head, laughing, and held out his hand. This time Maine was the one who took it. "Okay. Okay."
He was walking off the court, still breathing hard, when he saw her. Lia was across the crowd, near the steps, her back half to him, talking to Jada. Jada still had her phone out from the run. The sun was on her. She had her hair up, the way she wore it when it was warm, and she was laughing at something Jada said with her whole face, the way she used to laugh at him.
Then she turned and found him across the court. People crossed between them, white shirts filling his view and moving on. Each time the space cleared, she was still looking at him. Maine's smile faded. He could hear the music and somebody calling for a Sharpie, but he couldn't think of what his face was supposed to do.
And just like that, it was March again, junior year, and the Du Bois gym was shaking.
The final horn rang in the rafters as the bleachers emptied onto the floor. From the top of the ladder, with borrowed scissors in his hand, Maine could see his father and Lia's mother in the third row. Beside them was the empty seat where Mr. James used to stand for every free throw in his old Navy cap. Nobody sat there anymore. The net came apart strand by strand while the gym chanted Maine's number. He snipped one loop free, climbed down, and pushed through the crowd until he found her. He didn't say anything. He just pressed the piece of net into her palm and closed her fingers over it.
She looked at it like he'd handed her the trophy. He hadn't seen that look on her much since her father's funeral, back when the only thing he knew how to do was hold on to her until she could stand on her own.
Two months later, at Junior Prom, Miguel had been playing in a ballroom and she had been across the room again. Remembering her face that night still made his stomach tighten. He looked down at the blacktop until the courtyard came back around him.
Lia looked away first. Her fingers rose to her collarbone and closed around the small gold A on its thin chain. Maine had given her that pendant on her sixteenth birthday.
She still wore it.
Jada had drifted over to Niq at the edge of the crowd. Maine heard it without trying.
"She's leaving early. Her grandmother needs her in the Bronx."
"Everything okay?"
"Yeah. Just family stuff."
"Deion not taking her?"
"Deion's working. She's taking the train."
Lia said goodbye to people on her way out, a hug here, a wave there, then went through the gate without looking back. Maine watched until the corner took her. When he turned, Rome was beside him.
"You good?"
"I'm good."
Rome studied him for another second. Maine waited for the question, but Rome only bumped his shoulder and nodded at the DJ.
"They about to play the Cha-Cha Slide. You know I gotta." Maine laughed and followed him back into the crowd. When Rome started dancing, he joined in. He kept his eyes away from the gate.
*
By three o'clock Senior Day had burned itself out, and the two of them walked up the hill to SSU, Rome's shirt covered in signatures, and the sun warm on the backs of their necks. Sovereign State University rose over the surrounding blocks in pieces: old brick, newer stone, glass, black-and-gold banners hanging still in the windless air. Come fall, he wouldn't be visiting. The Hawkins Rec doors let out a breath of cold air conditioning, hardwood and sweat and floor polish, and the sound of a run already going: sneakers barking, the ball slapping the floor in a rhythm Maine felt in his chest.
Maine was still in the 66s. College guys didn't care what had happened in a high school courtyard. A sophomore in a Sovereign practice shirt picked him up full court the first trip, all hands and chest. Maine let him have that once. The next time down he went under the kid's arm and finished off the glass. Across the baseline, a tall dude was squinting at the orange shoes, then at the shorts. "Yo. You run at the Cage, right? Du Bois. Two state chips."
"That's him," Rome said, before Maine could.
The next time Maine crossed half court, a second defender stepped into his path. He sent the ball to Rome before the trap closed. "Okay, West 4th!" somebody called from the sideline. The next two hours disappeared into harder possessions, and by the time they pushed back outside, Rome's Sharpie signatures had bled into blue smears. The light had gone long and gold.
*
The Neal apartment was a few blocks over. Rome shouldered through the door already yelling.
"I'm home!"
"Keep your voice down!" his mother called from the back.
Maine pulled the door shut behind him. Frankie Beverly played on the kitchen radio, and Mrs. Neal sang along under her breath. Tyler had taken most of the couch, his phone an inch from his face; he gave them a "What's good?" without looking up. Veronica leaned out of the kitchen to say hey, and Aaron wanted to know if Rome had brought something to eat.
Mrs. Neal came out drying her hands on a dish towel, tired around the eyes the way she always was by Friday, smiling anyway. She took one look at Rome's shirt.
"Senior Day?"
"Senior Day," Maine said.
"Lord. Y'all really graduating." She shook her head like she couldn't believe it and didn't want to. "You boys eating?"
"We had hot dogs," Rome said.
"So that's a no." She flicked the towel at them. "Go do whatever nineteen-year-olds do."
"You sure?"
"Don't get smart."
"Yes, ma'am."
Rome shoved his bedroom window up, and Maine climbed out first. From up there Brooklyn opened out in layers: rooftops and water towers going purple, the first lit windows.
Rome pulled the Backwoods out of the bag. "You rolling?"
"I paid for 'em."
Rome sucked his teeth and got to work, and for a while there was nothing but the small sounds: the crack of the leaf, the lighter's scratch, the long first pull. Rome let his head fall back against the brick.
"Man."
"What?"
"Nothing. I'm relaxed." Then, an octave up: "Relaxation, huh?"
"Don't."
"She cooked you, bro. You ain't say one word."
They talked by the window until the streetlights came on. Rome passed the blunt back and went quiet.
"You realize this stuff about to change, right?"
Maine looked over. "What?"
"Everything."
Maine shrugged. "That's the point."
"Yeah." Rome looked back down at the street. "Just saying."
Maine let it sit. Below them, people came home carrying bags, doors opened and shut, and windows lit across the block. They stayed out as the evening thinned into night, talking until Maine finally checked his phone. Eleven twenty-one. Before midnight.
"I gotta go."
"Pops got you on a curfew now?"
"Something like that."
"Tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow."
They bumped fists through the open window.
*
The Connors brownstone was quieter than the Neals'. It always had been, ever since it was just the two of them. Nasir was at the kitchen counter under the pendant light, jacket gone, sleeves rolled, reading glasses low on his nose. A stack of campaign flyers sat squared off on one side of him. His phone lay face down on the other. He glanced at the clock on the stove when Maine came in, and something in his shoulders let go.
"Eleven forty."
"You said before midnight."
"I did." A small smile. "How was Senior Day?"
"Loud."
"That bad?"
"It wasn't bad." Maine opened the refrigerator and stood in its light. "I'm just ready to be done."
"Monique get your cap?"
As if she'd heard, his phone buzzed.
Niq: rough draft. don't play with me
The picture opened: a basketball across the board, a subtle 32 worked into the design, and a tiny Naruto headband tucked in one corner where only somebody who actually knew him would think to look.
Maine: you really did all that? today??
Niq: I told you I know you.
He turned the screen toward his father. Nasir leaned in, glasses catching the light.
"Thirty-two." The smile widened a little. "And the Naruto."
"You saw that?"
"I see everything." He handed the phone back. "Let her work."
Maine leaned against the counter.
"Feels weird, though."
"What does?"
"Graduating. Like something's ending."
"That's because you keep thinking about it as an ending."
"Isn't it?"
"No." Nasir took off his glasses and set them on top of the flyers, on top of his own face. "It's a door."
Maine smiled. "That sound like something you practiced."
"Maybe I have."
The phone buzzed against the granite. Nasir left it facedown. Maine had heard that sound through dinners, homework, whole movies his father only half watched; usually Nasir checked it before the vibration stopped. Tonight he kept his attention on Maine.
"Go get some sleep, Jermaine. Enjoy your weekend."
*
Upstairs, Maine showered off Senior Day and dropped onto his bed in the dark, the window cracked. The streetlight came through the blinds in pale bars across the ceiling. On the nightstand sat the book Melo had given him in the spring, The 48 Laws of Power, spine cracked, a Leo's receipt marking his place two-thirds of the way in. Any book Melo handed him, Maine read cover to cover. Melo had never explained why that mattered. Maine had never asked.
He opened his messages. Lia's name sat in the list where it always sat, not near the top anymore. He thought about the courtyard, the gold A at her collarbone, the corner that had taken her. He didn't open it.
Downstairs, his father's phone rang again. Maine stayed on Lia's name while Nasir answered. He was used to hearing calls through the floor, the low murmur going on after he had gone to bed, but tonight he found himself listening. The words wouldn't carry. The tone did: lower and flatter than the voice Nasir used at the kitchen counter, with none of the warmth Maine had heard a few minutes ago. Then, clear as anything:
"Not at my house."
The front door opened and closed. Maine set his phone on the bed and went to the window, pressing one slat of the blinds down with his thumb. A black car sat idling across the street with its headlights off, engine low, parked right under the CONNORS FOR COUNCIL sign zip-tied to the fence.
His father crossed to it in his house slippers, unhurried, like a man walking out to get the mail.
The back window lowered a few inches. Nasir bent toward the gap and spoke. Maine leaned closer to the glass, but he couldn't hear him, and whoever sat inside stayed out of view. Then the window rose and the car pulled away, its tires hissing on the asphalt. Maine watched until it disappeared down the block.
Nasir stood alone on the sidewalk and watched it go.
Then he turned and looked straight up at Maine's window, like he already knew his son would be standing there.
* * *