How to Lead a Life of Crime

chapter TWO



TALES OF DEAD CHILDREN





Once upon a time it must have been worse, but Pitt Street will always live up to its name. The east side of the road marks the edge of the housing projects. Those who live on the west side are forced to contemplate the view. The fashionable types who have invaded the Lower East Side say they appreciate the neighborhood’s “grittiness.” But they don’t want to see real misery out their front windows. So Pitt Street has been left to the rest of us. It remains one of the last cute-free zones in downtown Manhattan.

Joi and her urchins live in the basement of a building three doors down from Our Lady of Sorrows. The entrance is barred by a gate that could withstand any enemy invasion. There’s no buzzer, but even this late, there’s usually a kid or two keeping watch from behind the iron bars. They act as the building’s unpaid doormen. Which may explain why they’re allowed to stay. Tonight I don’t even see who’s on duty. Whoever it is must have seen me, though, because I hear feet flying down the stairs.

Someone at the bottom shouts, “Joey!” Spelled J-o-i. That’s what she told me the first day we met. A few seconds later, the gate creaks open and she appears. Joi’s long, jet-black curls blend into the darkness. Two wide-set amber eyes take in the damage that’s been done to my face. She doesn’t gasp or wince like most girls would. Joi is completely unflappable. She steps aside to let me in, but for a moment I refuse to move any closer. Keeping my distance from Joi is the only true test of my willpower.

“Are you waiting for a formal invitation?”

Once I’m inside, I catch a whiff of cocoa butter and jasmine. Joi leaves a trail of this fragrance wherever she goes. It’s not perfume, she says, but a product she uses to tame her hair. As far as I can tell, it’s the only luxury Joi allows herself. The Jamaican hairdresser down the street sells it to her at a discount. She assumes the blood of her people flows through Joi’s veins. So does the guy at the Mexican diner who slips “bonita” a free café con leche each morning. And the Indian deli lady who treats Joi like the daughter she never realized she wanted. And the European tourists who always assume she can speak their languages. Everyone wants to believe that Joi belongs to them.

“How’s the other guy look?” she asks.

“Unconscious,” I say. Now that I’m near her, I keep moving closer.

She puts a hand on my chest to halt my advance. “You’re going to need at least eight stitches.”

“Will you let me kiss you when they’re done?”

“Yes,” Joi says. She never plays hard to get.

I follow her downstairs, peeling off my coat as we enter the sweltering heat. In the basement, a winding tunnel leads us past a warren of cramped rooms. The floor of each chamber is strewn with sleeping bags filled with thin bodies—some still little, others growing longer and leaner each day. There’s plenty of space for everyone, yet they always end up clustered together. Dirty arms circle filthy torsos. Breath exhaled by one set of lungs is immediately inhaled by another. My tenth-grade history book had pictures of similar scenes—photos that could have been taken in this very basement. For the past two hundred years, the Lower East Side has been home to the children that no one else wants.

A sinister mechanical hum grows louder as Joi and I near the end of the tunnel. So does the heat. We pass a locked door that guards the building’s ancient boiler. The heart of Joi’s colony is just a few feet away. It served as a laundry room until the machines died of old age. At some point in the future, the boiler in the room next door is bound to blow. When it does, the colony kids won’t stand a chance. I tried to warn Joi once, but all she did was laugh. Someday the sun’s going to explode too, she informed me. But until it kills us, we should just be grateful it keeps us alive.

A row of rusting machines lines one wall of the laundry room. A few of the older kids are perched on top. Someone must have struck it rich tonight because Joi’s urchins are all guzzling imported beer. None of them are old enough to watch R-rated movies, but most have seen things in their own lives that would never make it past any censor. As long as they don’t get drunk and rowdy, Joi lets them do as they like.

“Yo, Flick,” says a kid named Dartagnan. “Merry Christmas.” He’s thirteen. He’ll be thirty by the time his mother finishes her sentence for drug possession with intent to distribute. Some days he swears his dad is Lil Wayne. Other days he claims it’s one of the anchors on CNN. Either way, someone owes a shitload of child support. Joi found the fourth musketeer begging for change outside of Bloomingdale’s.

“Happy Winter Solstice,” I respond. “I’m a pagan.”

The kids are all gawking at me, and it isn’t because they’ve never met a pagan. They want to know what happened to my face—but they won’t break one of Joi’s cardinal rules. Always listen, never ask.

“Want a beer?” The blond girl is Tina or Trina. It doesn’t matter which. She’ll disappear before New Year’s. They say her father lost his job, the house, his marbles, then his life. The girl’s little brother and sister are staying with an aunt who had no room in her home for a troublesome teenager. A few months back, Joi saved Tina/Trina from a neighborhood pimp, but the girl has started slipping out after dark. I seem to be the only one who’s figured out where she’s going. My guess is she bought the booze.

“Flick needs something stronger than beer tonight,” says Joi. She unlocks an old trunk in which she stores a remarkable range of supplies and pulls out a bottle of tequila.

“I hate tequila,” I tell her.

“It’s all I have. I’ll just give you enough to make you nice and numb.”

“I’ll take the pain. You know I don’t drink.”

“You will tonight. Doctor’s orders.” She points to a chair and fills a paper coffee cup to the halfway mark. “Bottoms up.” Joi watches to make sure I obey. When the first gulp is down, she leaves to gather her supplies and start preparing the operating room.

The kids are still gawking at me. I keep my eyes on the liquid I’m swirling with my index finger. There’s not enough tequila to form a whirlpool. Only a third of what Joi poured me is still left in the cup. The rest is already burning its way through my brain. I don’t want to look up at them. I don’t want to know them. I don’t have any pity to spare. I’m nothing like Joi. And I don’t believe in her little pet project. She picks up these strays all over the city and brings them home, knowing they never stay for good. But the longer they’re with her, the weaker they’ll be when they’re back on their own. She makes sure they’re fed and sews up their wounds. She coddles them and cuddles them when she should be teaching them how to survive.

I haven’t been around long enough to know how a seventeen-year-old girl came to form her own colony of urchins. But I do know what happens to the kids who seek shelter here. Joi works her ass off to delay the inevitable, but they all disappear in the end. Some are “rescued” by the very people they were trying to escape. Some are picked up by the cops and delivered to jail—or worse, sentenced to foster care. To my knowledge, at least one of Joi’s kids has been murdered. Most simply leave and never come back.

I’m getting worked up just thinking about it. What really pisses me off is that they don’t even try. They’re all marching toward the cliff like a herd of lemmings. I know Joi thinks I can do something to stop them. She claims the kids all look up to me. And she’s right—they do. Because I use big words. Because my clothes may need washing, but they have all the right labels. Because even though I’ve gone feral, they can tell that my puppy years were spent in a wealthy home. The reasons they look up to me are stupid. And what Joi doesn’t know is that I can’t help her save them. Because soon, I’ll be leaving her too.

• • •

“So Wendy’s gonna stitch you up?” A kid who resembles a cocker spaniel and answers only to Curly breaks the silence. Anyone who hears Curly’s sob story is liable to jump off a bridge.

He’s got my attention. “Who the f— is Wendy?” I ask.

“Curly’s started calling us the Lost Boys,” Tina or Trina explains with a roll of her heavily lined eyes. “Even though half of us are girls. And if we’re the Lost Boys, I guess that means Joi gets to play Wendy.”

“You can be Tinkerbell if you want,” Curly offers thoughtfully as he casts his little movie. “And Flick can be Peter Pan.”

I cannot believe he just stepped on that land mine. The name explodes in my head. This is why I do not drink. This is why I do not drink. This is why I do not drink. I take a gulp of tequila and wipe my mouth on my sleeve.

“I’m not Peter Pan, you moron. But I used to know him. And you can take my word for it. Peter Pan is dead.”

They all go quiet. Even Curly’s face wears a hungry look that tells me he’s desperate for more. They’ve all been waiting for months to hear my hard-luck story. They’ve been gnawing on the bones of their own misery, and now they want to feed on a fresh piece of me. They have no idea how poisonous I am.

“Wait—Peter Pan dies at the end of the movie?” Dartagnan is the only one who didn’t catch on.

“Did everyone here drop out of school before the third grade? It’s a book, not just a movie. And the kids in Never Land are dead from the very beginning. That’s what the whole goddamn story’s about!” My voice has risen to a shout. “The Lost Boys are dead. Why do you think they’ll never grow up? Never Land is the afterworld. Peter Pan is the one who guides lost souls to the land of death. He’s the god Hermes. The author barely even bothered to disguise him!”

“Hermes?”

“Oh, come on! You know . . . The bringer of dreams. The watcher by night. The thief at the gates. The Greek god with the wings on his sandals?”

They don’t know.

“Are you saying Never Never Land is supposed to be heaven?” This from Dartagnan. I really didn’t want to analyze a classic work of children’s literature at one o’clock in the morning. But at least the conversation isn’t about me anymore.

“Heaven’s just another myth,” I say. Anything to keep them distracted.

“You’re wrong,” the boy insists. His innocence offends me.

“Oh yeah, Dartagnan? You think there’s some wonderful, magical place where you get to go if you’ve been a really, really good boy? Well, take it from me—there isn’t. There’s just hell. Have a look around. You’re already here.”

“Flick!” Joi’s come back to get me. I swallow the last of the tequila, crumple up the cup, and toss it into a corner. I don’t say goodbye. I just follow Joi back to her quarters.

It’s not much to look at, but I always feel better in Joi’s room. There’s a tiny window, for starters, which lets in a little cool air. And a proper bed, which may be lumpy but beats the hell out of a park bench. Tonight it’s serving as a makeshift table for Joi’s surgical instruments. I pull off my shirt and take a seat on a folding chair. Joi uses bottled water and sterile gauze to clean the blood from my face and neck.

She’s furious, but she’s holding back until my wound is stitched and the bleeding has stopped. Joi only has a handful of rules, and I have a feeling I’ve just broken the one she considers most sacred. Not long after we met, she shared her big theory with me. Joi believes that, even in the worst situations, all a person needs to survive is ONE GOOD THING. It sounded so stupid that I thought she was joking, but she wasn’t. It could be anything, she insisted. Maybe it’s something no one else understands. Or something that might not even exist. It could be a guardian angel. An invisible friend. Or benevolent extraterrestrials who’ll solve mankind’s problems and probably won’t eat us, I’d chimed in when the subject began to make me uncomfortable. Joi did not appreciate the joke.

The point is, it doesn’t matter how silly it seems. Here in Joi’s colony, you’re never, ever allowed to mess with someone else’s ONE GOOD THING. Apparently Dartagnan’s is heaven. I’m pretty sure I didn’t destroy some kid’s dream of harps, clouds, and halos with a few tipsy words. But Joi knows I could have.

“Sorry,” I say.

“Shut up and don’t move, or I’ll sew your lips together,” she replies as the curved needle pierces my flesh.

Despite the tequila, I’m not too numb to feel each and every one of the nine stitches she gives me. By the time she’s done, her anger seems to have cooled. The left side of my face is aching.

“I did my best, but you’ll have a scar,” she says.

“Good. I’ve been meaning to add a few more to my collection.”

“How could you be such a f—ing jerk, Flick? Dartagnan’s a little boy.”

“What? He’s thirteen. He’s old enough to know the truth.”

Joi snorts with disgust. “The truth? You think you’ve found it?”

“You don’t really believe in all that heaven mumbo jumbo, do you?” I ask.

I’ve only spoken a few simple sentences, and Joi already looks ready to strangle me. “After all this time, that’s what you want to know? Not . . . where did you grow up, Joi? How did you get here? What’s your last name? No, you want to know if I believe in heaven.”

“What is your last name?”

“You couldn’t pronounce it if I told you. But I’ll make you a deal, Flick. I’ll tell you every single thing I’ve ever thought about heaven if you tell me what the hell happened to Peter Pan.”

She must have been listening the whole time. Now she’s hit me with a sucker punch, and Peter’s real name almost flies out of my mouth. But I catch it in time. “Captain Hook chopped him up and fed the pieces to the crocodile.”

I always serve my lies with a grain of truth. But Joi tastes nothing but bullshit. When she doesn’t respond, I can feel a gulf growing between us. I should take the opportunity to let her go, but I’m not strong enough yet. Just before it’s too late, I reach out and grab hold of her. Once, when I was in the mood to argue, I asked her what she thought would happen if someone were to lose his ONE GOOD THING. There’s always another one out there if you’re willing to look, she told me. Whenever I kiss her, I find myself starting to believe all of Joi’s strange, silly theories.

• • •

The sliver of window at the top of Joi’s room is open when we fall asleep. No mere mortal could cram himself through the opening, but it’s wide enough for Peter Pan to slip inside. He’s leaning against a wall—one foot on the bricks and one on the floor.

He crosses his arms and shakes his head. “You’re a f—ing mess,” he says.

“I bet you’ve seen worse.” He knows what I mean.

“Touché,” he responds with a tip of his green felt hat.

“Why are you here, Jude?”

“You know as well as I do. This isn’t the way my gift was meant to be used. I grace you with stealth and cunning, and you choose to rob drunks and pick fights. But it was nice how you saved the girl from that thug tonight. Makes me think there might be hope for you yet.”

“I wasn’t trying to save her. I wanted to steal her wallet.”

Jude laughs. “If you say so.”

If he’s right—if the wallet was just an excuse to help her—then I’m nowhere near ready.

“You don’t have to do this.” He’s suddenly serious. “You can come with me. Never Land is everything you’d want it to be.”

“Never Land doesn’t exist, Jude.”

“Then where do I go when I’m not with you?”

I don’t have the heart to answer.

“That’s okay, I knew you wouldn’t come. You want to stay here with her, don’t you?” He nods to Joi’s side of the bed.

More than anything, I think. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I owe you, Jude. You’re still my one good thing.”

“I’m dead. It’s time to find another.”