Bronx Noir

Gary’s coming. I’m in my father’s deathbed waiting for my blood to join his. I took off all my clothes. You ever notice that most suicides took off their clothes before? Call me suicide by murder. The room’s all dark now. I’m a big boy. I don’t think I’ll cry. But then I do, thinking about my pops and my bro and my sis and wanting to make a bath red from my wrists so that I can be with her. She was always my girl and I still think that by giving in to my pops she was taking the hit for me. Jesus, Jesus, I miss her so much. I just want to tell her I’m sorry and I understand if she doesn’t want me in heaven with her.

I wish this darkness would just take me, then out of the dark he appears, and by the time his eyes and teeth match a description I recognize, I’m already screaming. He slaps me.

“What the fuck wrong with you?”

“Nothing. Why the fuck you hitting me?”

“You in the dark talking to yourself like you brain gone pan screw.”

“I wasn’t talking to myself.”

“Then you thinking out loud?”

“Just forget it.”

“Forgot it already. Move over.”

He throws his shoes off and then 200 pounds of sweat and cigarette smoke land beside me. His hand is all bandaged up and his gun is missing. He does not look at me. Just climbs in the bed. Even when he is not snoring he breathes heavily, it sounds like sinus but to me it’s like he’s cursed to a lifetime of adrenalin overdose. I don’t know how I feel. Kinda I want to, I think, but that’s just a stupid song from Nine Inch Nails and proof to him that a faggot with white skin is the worst kind of faggot. I feel like Jane Fonda in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Clever, I know.

PART IV

THE WANDERER

HOME SWEET HOME

BY SANDRA KITT

City Island

It had been years since I was last on City Island. That’s the official name of the community that’s a little spit of land connected to the Bronx by a bridge, one lane in each direction, not far from Pelham Bay Park. The bridge is the only way on or off the island.

I came back for only one reason, and it wasn’t to order a plate of fried clams or shrimp bisque. I wanted to find out what really happened to Brody Miller. The two people in the entire world who would know still lived there on City Island.

I remember it was an adventure to go to City Island with my family and have dinner. Seafood and pizza predominated the businesses that ran the full length of the main street, City Island Avenue, from the bridge at one end down to Belden Street and the pier with its unobstructed view of Long Island Sound at the other. There were two other smaller islands as well, accessible by ferry. As far as I knew no one lived on either. (I now know, however, that short-term jail inmates from Rikers Island are transported there almost daily, for the grisly job of digging holes.) My family had its favorite places to eat, but since then most of those restaurants have been taken over by new owners and new names. Same food.

I never used to believe that anyone actually lived on City Island, as if the stores and restaurants along the main street were a back-lot façade. The restaurants located on the water were the real reason to go. Because of the view of the marina, and the bay beyond the small harbor, and to watch the occasional slow-moving pleasure boats on a nice day. There was something maybe a little exotic about this other world, because it was just barely connected to the rest of the city.

It was only after I met and started hanging out with Jenna Harding in high school, and she met and fell in love with Brody Miller, that I found some of the real charm of the place. Brody had fallen hard, granting City Island the status of Eden. Yeah, Jenna was our official safe passage into the tightknit community of people who’d lived there for generations. But it was Brody who embraced the island with fervor and devotion as if it was also his own. I could never see City Island through either of their eyes, but I went along because Jenna and Brody somehow brought both worlds together, his and hers. But in the end the island showed them both that, either oil and water don’t mix, or never the twain shall meet.

When I heard that Jenna still lived on City Island I knew I had to return. But it wasn’t about her. She was always going to be welcome there; she was one of the island’s own. I always felt more protective of Brody because, as everyone else and everything proved, he had no one but himself. I thought he was still there somewhere. I imagined I even knew where.