Bronx Noir

When he got to the building he went to the pay phone on the corner. From his wallet he pulled a business card and dialed. Then he stood at the phone booth and waited, knew he was being watched now through an apartment window. It was like this too in Hong Kong, when he went to one of those places, being watched at the front door by a camera or spy making sure he was not a policeman or vagrant or gangster who could not be trusted. He counted to fifty in his head, then he went to the front door and was buzzed in, took the stairs to the fourth floor. He knocked on the door and it opened just a crack. He saw her eyes, the dark painted lashes, then she unlatched the lock.

The place looked exactly as it had the last time he had come. Neat but spare: a flowered curtain, candles on the table, the smell of jasmine and incense. He looked at the woman, short and small, older than he, her breasts squeezed into her low-cut blouse. She had long flowing hair and light gold skin, and from a distance one might think she was ten years younger than she was. He had found her randomly one night. It had been late and he had been wandering, trying to learn this new place so that he did not get lost. She had walked up to him and started talking to him, and by the way she smiled and ran her hand up and down his arm he knew who and what she was.

He gave her sixty dollars as he had that first night. She took him by the hand into the bedroom which smelled thick with perfume. Inside there was only a bed and a chair against the wall and he wondered if she slept on the same bed where she worked. She slid her shirt over her head and he did the same. She smiled and said something to him, but he did not know or care what she was saying. He lay naked on the small soft bed and she on top of him, and for the next thirty minutes he closed his eyes and thought of the women from home he had known and thought he could love.

When they finished he dressed quickly as she smoked a cigarette. His stomach felt empty, his legs rubbery and weak. She laughed and said something but he already had his shoes on.

Walking home he wondered why he had taken a shower to visit a whore. It didn’t make sense, but so many things didn’t make sense to him these days. He could have stayed home and watched the game, or he could have taken the subway or bus to a restaurant out of the neighborhood where he could have eaten and drank something other than the slop Mr. Liu and his wife served. But he knew the best food was all the way down in Chinatown, and there he could not go.

He walked and smoked and thought again about the sickly girl who had not had enough money for her food. It was her wrists and her neck that had stayed in his mind, and how her hair was so thin like it might fall out of her head. And he remembered the ship, the woman who had been one of the few wives on board. Three hundred of them packed into the freight, and these two men (one taller, the other very short) started to squawk over a mess made in someone’s space. He watched as they argued, did not try to stop it. They had been on the ship for over two months, and below deck, amongst the hundreds of compartments and partitioned areas they had created with cardboard and hanging shirts and towels and clothes, how could anyone tell whose mess was whose? In one corner were big buckets filled with piss and shit that were emptied each day, puddles of waste on the floor where people had spilled. In another corner on a rusted table they tried to cook with two burners and two big propane tanks, the floor littered with empty cans, filthy rags, and ripped empty boxes.

The floor and air stank with their sweat and metal and waste, but still the two men argued and accused. Then they fought.

It was not the first fight that had broken out. People gathered in a circle, some yelling, shouting. Then the tall one had both hands around the short one’s throat, choking him down to his knees until his eyes fluttered and a bubbly foam dribbled from his lips. The short one’s wife came from behind, hitting the tall man on the back of the head with double-hammer fists until he had no choice but to turn and hit her in the face to make her stop.

The short man lay there gasping, twitching. The tall one turned and looked at the woman lying on the ground. She had bobbed stringy hair, her shirt filthy, too big for her, hanging down off her shoulder. Her neck so thin like a sick bird or child. The tall one reached down and began pulling at the legs of her pants and then she was bare.

He knew he should step in, but he did not. No one did.

When the tall man finished—it did not take long—he stood and pulled his pants up, turned and saw the other man still lying on the ground. He spit on the short man, and then moved through the crowd to the other end of the hold, where he disappeared inside a wall of faces. When the short one came to and saw his wife, he gathered her into a corner where he held her and wept.

A world unto itself: no ruler, no rules.