“We can play video games,” Jamal said. “I don't care what we do, I needed to get out of there.”
“Oh,” Ben said.
They walked north on Avenue B, toward the park. It was a cold sunny day, the radios were out. The woman with the box on her head walked by, screaming about the plots of the Dutch and the Jews. She wore a blanket covered with rodeo riders, pale cowboys roping pale blue bulls.
“I guess she's crazy,” Ben said.
“I guess so.”
“Do you still hang around with that other crazy guy?”
“What guy?”
“The one who wears the dresses.”
“Oh, Cassandra. She's not crazy.”
Ben said, “He used to give me the creeps.”
“You should call Cassandra 'she.' “
“Why?”
“It's polite,” Jamal said.
Ben nodded. He believed in rules of every kind.
They walked through the park, past the homeless tents. An old man sat on a bench with his collection of dirty foam rubber, licking a sheet of tinfoil that sparked and dazzled in the sun like something precious. Strands of spaghetti quivered in the man's beard.
“Gross,” Ben said.
“Shh,” Jamal answered. “He can hear you.”
They walked for a while without speaking. Jamal felt like he was leading a horse through the streets of his neighborhood. A white horse, beautiful but easily frightened and desperate to please.
“Let's not play video games,” Jamal said.
“Okay.”
“Let's just hide out for a while.”
“What?”
“Come on.”
Jamal led him to the abandoned building on Eleventh Street. The building was as crazy as the woman with the box on her head, as crumbled and empty. Its roof had fallen and a small tree had sprouted on its top floor, so that the building was crowned with twigs. The boards had all fallen from the windows and the windows still held, here and there, a triangle of glass.
“You want to go in there?” Ben said.
“Yes.”
Ben balked at the front stoop. Snorted and pawed the concrete, whinnying nervously, getting ready to bolt. But Jamal liked the idea of leading his big frightened cousin into this risky-looking silence. It seemed like the right thing to do, taking him somewhere that wasn't part of the world. It seemed like what he wanted: to hide.
“I've got something to show you inside,” Jamal said.
“I don't think I want to,” Ben said.
“Come on.”
Jamal ran up the cracked front steps, pulled aside the loose board that covered the doorway. He waited. And, after a moment, in an agony of anxious compliance, Ben followed.
“You think this is safe?” he asked.
“It's safe. I come here all the time.”
He led Ben into the front hallway, with its smells of plaster and piss and rot. One last scrap of wallpaper, fat rust-colored flowers, curled on the wall. There was a wet quiet, crack vials on the floor. There was a smoky light.
“This way,” Jamal said, and he started up the stairs. The banister had long been broken off for firewood, and half the treads were gone, but you could still climb up easily enough. Somewhere, in a back room on the second floor, a dove called.
“You sure this is safe?” Ben asked.
“Yes.” It was probably safe. There might be a crackhead or two, but they were harmless. Mostly harmless. His mother and Cassandra would kill him if they knew he came here, but he needed it, a place that was private and not part of things.
He led Ben through the second-floor hallway, with its empty doorways opening into rooms that were empty except for the bottles and syringes people left behind, the soggy mattresses. In one room a pair of woman's platform shoes, bright pink, stood defiant and forlorn, as if they were clues to a mystery everyone had given up trying to solve.
“This is weird,” Ben said.
“Just follow me.”
Jamal led him past the third floor and up to the top, where the roof was missing and where the little ash-gray tree had managed to take root in whatever plaster dust and windblown earth lay under the broken floorboards. The walls, bare powdery brick, still stood, with empty windows looking down onto Eleventh Street. Jamal led Ben into the room where the tree grew.
“Look here,” he said. He went to the window. The window faced across the street to the front of a church, level with the gold statue of a robed man with a beard. The man wore a solemn, slightly startled expression. He held a cross in one hand and pointed to it with the index finger of the other, though he appeared to be pointing to his own head. When Jamal was younger, he'd believed the man was miming a vital question about the connection between the cross and his head.
“I used to think this was God,” Jamal said. “But it isn't. It's just St. Francis Xavier.”
“St. Francis Xavier,” Ben said.
They stood for a while at the window, looking out at the church and the street. A sparrow lighted on a branch of the spindly tree, shook itself, flew away.
“I hang out here sometimes,” Jamal said. “Not as much as I used to. When I was a little kid, I called this my house. I used to think this room was my room. I used to think if I ran away I could come here and live.”
“Rain would get in.”
“I know.”
Ben aimed his serious face into St. Francis Xavier's. A squadron of bikers roared up the street.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” he asked.
“No. Do you?”
“There's a girl I like,” Ben said. “Her name is Anne. Anne Dempsey.”
“Uh-huh.”
“She's really cute.”
“Uh-huh.”
Ben picked up a nugget of old cement from the windowsill, weighed it in his hand. Jamal took a penny from his pocket. He threw it at the statue of St. Francis Xavier. The penny fell short, landed in the street.
“Why'd you do that?” Ben asked.
“For luck.”
“I don't have any pennies.”
“Here.”
Jamal gave him a penny, and Ben threw it. The penny struck the statue on the chest, on the stiff golden folds of its robe.
“Yeah,” Ben said. He raised his fist in a victory salute. He was simply and completely happy because he'd been able to hit a statue with a penny. Jamal pitied him and, for reasons he couldn't name, loved him a little. His life was so certain, so unharmed.
“So you've got good luck,” Jamal said.
“You try again.”
“No. I don't believe in luck.”
“Then why'd you throw a penny the first time?”
“Do you still have that fort?” Jamal said.
“What?”
“That fort, at your house. Up in the tree.”
“Oh, the tree house. Yeah, it's still there.”
“When I was a little kid, I used to think I'd sneak up there and live in that fort.”
“Why would you want to do that?” Ben said.
“I used to like that fort. I thought I'd go live in it, and steal food from your momma's kitchen at night.”
“I still sit in it sometimes. The tree house.”
“You used to not let me go up there,” Jamal said.
“No, I didn't.”
“Yeah, you did. When we were kids, you told me it was a private club. You said it was members only.”
“I don't remember.”
“I remember.”
“We were little kids.”
“I was crazy for that fort. I don't know what I thought was up there. Treasure, maybe. Something.”
“There's nothing up there,” Ben said.
“I know that. I know that now.”
“Listen. If you ever, if you want to come up to Connecticut sometime, you could.”
“Okay.”
“I mean, we're cousins.”
“Yeah.”
St. Francis Xavier's face stared blind and golden through the empty window. Jamal and Be
n stood together for a while in an aspect of hush, a creaturely stillness quieter than any ordinary quiet. Ben reached up to tuck a dark curl behind his ear, and Jamal saw what it was about him. How had he missed it all these years?
It was right there in everything he said and did but Jamal hadn't recognized it until now, until he saw Ben arrange a curl of his own hair as carefully and tenderly as he'd put a letter into an envelope. Afterward, Jamal would tell himself that the secret had been somehow revealed to him by St. Francis Xavier, of the cross and the questioning head.
Ben was like Cassandra.
Jamal had an urge to stroke his large head, to calm him and then climb on his back and ride him through the streets of the city. He would reassure Ben with his own competence. He would tell him, by the pressure of his thighs, that there was nothing to fear.
“We'd better get back,” Ben said.
“Uh-huh.”
They didn't move. They continued standing in the wide-open room where no one could find them. The golden man stood across Eleventh Street in his quizzical silence.
After a while, Ben said, “I like it up here.”
“Yeah.”
They didn't move. Something was happening, something without a name. Jamal didn't try to understand. He let it happen. It had to do with being blood kin, with being a horse and rider. It had to do with the statue's question and with the tree growing out of the floorboards. Jamal and Ben were standing in the secret room together, and Jamal wanted to give comfort. He wanted to disappear in the giving of comfort to a boy luckier than he. When Ben reached for him, fearfully, Jamal didn't back away. He offered comfort. He and Ben stayed in the room for a long time, and when they got back home again everyone was mad at them.
1992/ The money had never been easy, and now, with Reagan gone and Bush on the way out, it had just about dried up completely. The construction business was a graveyard. First the fly-by-nights folded, and then the solider guys started to collapse. The young guys who'd bought Nick and Constantine's houses seemed to disappear, all those machinists and salesmen and lab technicians who worked like demons and who, with a little upfront money from their parents and a little from the wife's, could just manage the monthlies on a tarted-up three-bedroom sitting on a quarter acre of New Jersey or Long Island earth. They were gone now, those guys and their big-haired, slutty-looking wives. Now they rented apartments, or lived with their parents. Nobody felt secure anymore, not even the people with jobs. Nobody was taking any risks.
Constantine told Nick that if they wanted to stay in business it was time to dump the frills. No more picket fences, no more dormers, no little panes of stained glass set into front doors. The new tract was going to be about value, and he wanted to advertise it that way. No more copy promising affordable luxury, or charm on a budget. But Nick was in love with his flourishes, his breakfast bars and bay windows. Constantine was surprised by Nick's stubbornness, and eventually grew insulted by it. Clearly, even after more than twenty years of partnership, Nick considered himself the brains and Constantine the muscle.
“Con,” he'd said at first, “people won't buy 'em all stripped down like that. I know things are tight, but if we keep building houses people want, people will buy. Trust me.”
He'd spoken patiently, the way he'd explain a simple concept to a child.
“If anybody out there's still got money for a house,” Constantine had answered, “he's not gonna spend any extra. Those days are over, we need to go dirt cheap. Our only chance is to offer the lowest goddamn prices in the region.”
A few days later, when Nick's patience broke against Constantine's stony insistence, Nick had said, “These are just shit boxes, what you're talking about here.”
“They've always been shit boxes,” Constantine had said. “These are shit boxes that might not drive us out of business.”
Nick had actually been hurt by that. For half a second, his eyes had gone glassy. Poor, dumb fuck. What had he thought they were building all those years, monuments that would live for centuries? Did he really believe brass-finish colonial hardware made some kind of difference?
“It's product, Nick. And product has to change with the marketplace.”
Finally, in a voice unsteady with rage, Nick had said, “I been doing this fifty years. You think maybe I know what I'm talking about?”
“No,” Constantine had answered. “Not anymore, I don't.”
They'd decided finally on what they called a “trial separation.” They hadn't dissolved the partnership, but agreed that the new project would be Constantine's alone, bankrolled by him, with sole responsibility for losses. Nick had refused to give up his dogma. He'd maintained, with the droning certainty of a priest, that the fancy touches were what made the houses sell. He'd considered it a proven formula, the secret of his success: for every dollar you spend putting in a whirlpool or a fireplace, you can tack another twenty onto the price. Poor, dumb fuck. It was the biggest purchase people made in their lives, he'd said, and it was the one least governed by reason. A prospective buyer looks at a lot of houses, he's knocked out by little comforts. He's looking to fall in love. He wants to picture himself and his family gathered around a fire at Christmastime. He wants to screw in a Jacuzzi. He wants marble-look vanities, he wants to impress his parents. Give these guys a little something to love, do it at a reasonable price, and they'll buy.
Constantine had known differently. Under Bush, the economy was turning to shit. Nothing was happening out there. Nick had been too old to understand—he'd thought the easy money of the Reagan years was the direct result of his own hard work. Constantine had known how far away that money had gone, but he suspected there might be a new kind of buyer loose in the new, pared-down version of the U. S. He wasn't thinking about real Americans, the hardworking, optimistic white people, third or fourth generation, for whom he and Nick had tacked on plaster moldings and aluminum eight-over-eights. He was thinking about immigrants. Not the trash but the voracious workers, hell-bent on self-improvement; the husband and wife who both worked twelve-hour days doing jobs real Americans refused to do, while the kids stayed with some old aunt who didn't speak a lick of English. He used to work with people like that, back when he was just a day laborer. Hell, he practically used to be one of them. These people, Constantine believed, were crazy to own, to invest, to have a little piece of the United States that was theirs. They wanted one thing—value. Their only romance was possession. They'd buy the cheapest house they could find.
So he took a chance and used his share of the bankroll to bang out seventy three-bedroom units in Rosedale. He offered competitive square footage—part of the reason these people came here was to stop feeling crowded—and cut everything else. The houses were trim and clean, sheathed in white stucco, so bereft of detail they looked like the ideas of houses, lined up, waiting to be called into their final form. Which, in a way, was the point. These houses were intended specifically for Juan and Vladimir and Shaheed, who'd grown up dreaming of a house in America. Buy it, and do what you want with it. Paint it pink or turquoise. Construct a shrine to an elephant god in the dirt out front. Or do it up like colonial fucking Williamsburg. Knock yourself out.
The Starter Special. We Pass the Savings On to You. You Change It to Fit Your Dream.
That had been three years and four tracts ago. It had gone even better than Constantine had hoped. Pull your prices down to a certain level, advertise in the ethnic papers, and a whole invisible population came to light. They drove out in used cars, not the sensible little Celicas and Chevy Novas of Constantine's former customers but hogs, Buick Rivieras and Chrysler Imperials, fifteen or twenty years old, well past the hundred-thousand-mile mark but better cared for than some of the kids crowded into the back seat along with an aunt or a grandparent or two or three. Black faces, brown faces. White faces, too, but those usually spoke halting English, looked like they'd be more comfortable driving an ox cart than an Olds 88. And a lot of these people actually preferred the cheesy stuff. They liked
linoleum and fluorescent lights. They were the opposite of born Americans, who wanted you to spend a small fortune making the places look old-fashioned. These people could give a damn about oak veneer and simulated brick and plantation-style ceiling fans. They wanted their vinyl to look like vinyl. When they turned on the lights, they wanted to blind the neighbors three houses away.
Why Wait? Make Your Dream Come True Now.
While everyone else was going bust, Constantine became a millionaire. He had a million in the bank, plenty more sunk here and there. Nick was history, who needed him? Constantine had developed his own formula, and it was just two words: Cut costs. He knew that formula would never pass out of date, and with everybody hurting, it was easy to make special deals. He found a cement works in Scranton that was willing to push its water content past the legal limit, just to get his business. He found a guy in Teaneck—a frightening character, and Constantine didn't scare easily—who had a warehouse full of old insulation threaded with asbestos, just slightly less illegal than plutonium. The guy practically paid Constantine to take it off his hands.
He didn't let his habit of thrift infect his personal life, though. If anything, it worked in reverse. The more he saved on houses for other people, the more willing he felt to improve his own. It was a system of balances. He added a greenhouse and a sauna, had the foyer done in white marble. His place was turning into a palace, and sometimes when he walked through the rooms he felt a thump of satisfaction deep in his chest. He'd created this out of nothing. He'd had no help. It was all profoundly his, the four-poster bed and the deep velvet sofas and the hand-painted mural in the dining room, a Hungarian village scene Magda had worried and argued over for half a year or longer. He got Magda anything she wanted: fag decorators and mural painters, endless dresses, an emerald ring that cost more than a new car. It was all good, and satisfying.
Mostly satisfying. There were little things. His health, his goddamned tricky heart. One attack already, that awful seizing-up, a fist driven into his chest. He'd shrugged it off. He wasn't the kind of guy who coddled himself. He refused to consider an old age made of caution and special diets. But it did make him nervous sometimes. One minute you could be walking along thinking about dinner or a good hard fuck, you could be thinking about the water content in your concrete, and the next minute your heart could explode.