The Brooklyn Rail

Chapter 1
Fortune

My name’s June. I’m a New City substitute teacher when they need me. What else is there? My lease is up tomorrow and quietly I still owe October rent. My two roommates, my god-brother, and I are shooting dice in the dining room. What else? Winter’s approaching. It’s almost bubble-jacket-and-long-johns season. The idea of roaming New City homeless is not something I’m looking forward to. I pick up the dice and roll. A win would be nice.

Cast of characters so far is my godbrother, Hollywood; the “blood brothers,” Big and Blue; and me, June Papers, gambling off an upturned dining room table that’s never seen a meal. What else? I’m about to see how much sacrifice I’ll commit to to keep these dreams afloat. What else? First things first, I need spending money for food and transportation, and for that I need some love on the dice. I watch them spin and put a lowkey prayer up for the win. The landlord gave me all of September to try to find a way to pay what I owe in back rent. I tried my best. New City is ruthless. The ten-dollar bill under Hollywood’s lilac loafer’s my last. It’s a $120 jackpot or nothing. Oh, lilac is like if purple and off-white had a baby. Two dice bound from the tabletop, colliding with the third.

Heeeell no. Hollywood flicks his toothpick. I realize that, to my younger readers, gambling for food and transportation is degenerate activity. I don’t condone it. These are what we call extenuating circumstances. I know most of you’ve yet to pay a bill let alone rent and life is a race to grow older or a struggle for individuality, both ridiculous. I want you to know what I mean. Being wrong is inevitable. You’ll be wrong a lot. What I’m asking you to do is make sure you give yourself the chance to see the thing through before you judge yourself permanently. Far too many people harm themselves because they don’t have the time or space to see clearly. Perspective.

In my room there’s a Malm bed, a big black desk, four white boxes of manila folders, and various notebooks I can’t take with me. Sit on bed and trash a kaleidoscope of works that at some point seemed sacred. See what I mean? Perspective. I’m an artist. I’m a creative. I try to be honest with myself. Honestly, I feel like you need to be able to pay bills with a trade or, at the very least, get elevated by the people before you can claim it so for honesty’s sake I’m a substitute teacher. Carry bedroom trash out front with the rest of our soaked belongings and watch a litter of street kittens wrestling in the vacant lot.

Yo! Big steps outside with a miracle in his eyes. Uncle Grant said he buying one of your paintings. I ask which one and try not to faint. Big sits on the top step and says he doesn’t know but Uncle Grant’s stopping by in the morning. I cover the trash bin, and Blue steps out with us. We watch the early night action from the stoop. Too soon to bank on the miracle at present, I entertain the possibility and carry on business as usual. If it’s a larger painting, we can definitely afford to stay. Everything working out for that to happen is a long shot.

Sell him on a big joint. Blue. Maybe we can keep the lease.

The bigger the better. Big is cautiously optimistic.

But then there’s next month, I reason. Murkt Street is our third New City apartment together, and as is often the case, the city takes far more than she gives. We’ll see. The boys and I head back inside and argue Blackness, authenticity, and gentrification while finishing off some of Mom Dukes’s homemade potato salad.

Last supper. Blue seems content.

Hope not. Big shrugs.

Lord knows I don’t know. Thinking got me into this mess in the first place. A master’s in fine arts. I’ve lost my sense of things. Say a prayer Uncle Grant buys a big painting and get a surprising surge of confidence. Walk to my bedroom for one last glorious nap.

Yeeer! Hollywood yells as he bursts through the front door. I rise to an orchestra of footsteps. We got company, he says. People often confuse Big and Blue because they’re both tall and husky with on-and-off beards. And they’re brothers. I’ve never heard anyone confuse Hollywood for anyone other than Hollywood. In classic form he choreographs a last magical night at 1497 Murkt Street.

Where do I know you from? I ask a bartender type whose head is buried in our fridge.

“Where’s your food?” is a better question. She slides the empty bowl that held the potato salad. There’s a black heart tattoo behind her ear.

We’re moving out, I say. I don’t know her name, but I recognize her. We’re FaceCrook friends. After everyone’s gone I scrape a couple years’ worth of waxy gunk from the roof of the microwave.

It’s therapeutic, 4:52 a.m., and keeps the mind afloat. I’ve moved enough to know not to grow too attached to any one place, but I feel sad about this one. I’m going to miss Murkt Street. I’m going to miss skateboarding around the house. I’m going to miss lying on the floor. Whoever laid the parquet in the front hammering nails top and bottom rotating and repeating eight planks per square was a genius. There are some water-damage warps and she gives here and there, but she will certainly be missed. I scrub the inside of the microwave one last time and have a bright idea. Run to the living room, grab my smaller paintings, and hide them behind our upturned dining room table. Hopefully that forces Uncle Grant to buy a big one. Lie down finally and stare at the white ceiling.

Uncle Grant never shows. Something about work. We finish packing and cleaning, and move on. The sun does what suns do. The boys rent a truck and store the beds, one I just traded to Blue, in a small storage unit a few blocks away. I have $120 in cash, a messenger bag, and a smartphone in my pocket. I have an idea of the life I’m supposed to live and the blankest of canvases ahead. Heart heavy and in my feelings a bit, we luck up on an art show our buddy Marty’s putting on.

Chapter 2
Danger

There’s red velvet cake, champagne, and a DJ with good music. Doesn’t feel much like a ledge at all. After the music stops and the cake’s gone, the boys and I part ways. Figuring I might as well get a jump on surviving New City homeless, I leave first and avoid an otherwise long and sad goodbye. Fate and the weather align perfectly. The winds’re ferocious. There’s no storms worse than the ones you bring upon yourself. New City is no shelter. I stand under scaffolding and talk to a stranger because it’s a bit less windy and lonely. Stranger leaves and I pretend I have some place to go too. Hang a right onto Broadway. Place my bag atop cast-iron steps and rest. Life is like this as well, I’m learning. Winds pick up speed and I carry on. Strange momentum takes me right back around to the gallery, but it’s now closed. Lights out and locked up. Party done. Nobody but me.

I walk the block again to kill some time I assume. I sit on new cast-iron steps. Pick my bag up and return to gallery. In my heart there’s a mix of rage and self-pity. In my head there’s an odd game of thinking and trying not to think as I lap the strange block again. What appears to be a pile of dirty clothes morphs into a scribe nestling into darkness and leaves in the gallery step-down. Snooze you lose. Scribe sneezes into his sleeve. Gotta keep it moving, kid. I circle the block again wondering if God is talking to me through a stranger.

Maybe I should take a left, I say to myself as I watch buddy curl up into a cozy little ball. Reality hits me like the A train. My first real thought since leaving the party and it’s crystal clear. I realize watching this sad drama play out that I half hoped to sleep where the scribe was now resting. My goodness. I take a left.

Carry on across the Broadway gusts and venture finally into the unknowable. Once my muse, my lover, my home, and my dream, New City’s now my mysteriously unyielding mentor. What else is there? I keep walking. Luck up on a twenty-four-hour café for coffee and respite, find a seat by the window, take out my notebook, and make my offering.

I decide to journal daily now so that at the very least I’ll be able to see whether my issue is as simple as me. As for the fiction this is it. Doesn’t really matter what you call it once you live it. Against all good advice, my life and my literature are inseparable. I may be ashamed of my current predicament and embarrassed by the truth, but I’m 100 percent me, no matter what industry calls it. After a word or two it’s all fiction anyway. At least fiction is honest about that. All that really lasts is the living and whether you opened yourself up to the heartfelt possibility of your unique experience.

That’s my half-a-million-dollar education in fifty words or less that nobody asked for. Take care of yourself, don’t spend too much time talking about other people, and live your own life, not someone else’s. Teach yourself how to persevere, and pick up the rest on the way. So says the guy with no real next move except walking and wishing.

Finish café, pack up, and walk north with the strongest winds. I don’t hear or see any news of hurricanes. What else? The writer voice in my head comes outside to play. Normally, I’d have to sit down and find a comfortable space to write, but floating as I am now, I hear sentences come forth and link up into paragraphs every few blocks. I can see them illuminated like sky-blue neons in front of me. Find another café and get the sentiments down to the best of my God-given ability. Ever since I was seven, my life goal has been to buy Nana and Ma a house. Two houses. I don’t think this is unique to my situation, but it is true. As I pass New City night lights and the millions sleeping here and there, I wonder how it is I’m not a millionaire yet. Me being homeless is merely comedy until it dawns on me, listening to my own footsteps, that I’ve fallen for the pretty girl who can have whoever she wants. It’s a strange thing not to realize until now. Drink another coffee. Out in the wind is just another cost of living, it seems, when you decide to do it your way and see the thing through. Whatever truths I can land and whatever fears I haven’t faced under the late night of New City’s twenty-four-hour cycle get the treatment. A couple hours with a composite journal plus nowhere else to go equals a lot of words. Jittery from the caffeine and a little paranoid, I pack my things again and head underground.

Express bulls into the station, displacing enough stale air for one to call it refreshing. It is not. Tall youth with white hair jogs off train and lobs a pink handball to the subway ceiling. It touches top and grosses her friend out. Pretty late for young ladies to be drifting. Germ ball bounces my way, and I kick it back. Blondie fields it and thanks me. Her eyes are dry-eraser green. A pair of rats race down into the tracks after train, and the girls squeal. The cheese the rats seemed to be fighting over is abandoned now on the platform. Rather than cheese, it turns out to be a frosted donut with holiday sprinkles. Every year five million children under the age of five die from malnutrition and starvation worldwide. In New City rats eat donuts. Blondie fans herself and faints into her friend’s arms. I figure it’s the rats until she wakes up. No one comes to like that. Nothing like a true friend, she says. It’s a routine I gather. One friend runs, plants, and backflips out of another’s lap. Great height. Between the eyes, the athleticism, and the choreography, they must earn. I don’t give them anything because funds are low and I’m nobody’s intended audience, but I’m sure they make bank. Local train slows to a stop and I hop on. A lone nut removes a block of literature from his backpack and rolls it around in front of his closed eyes as if reading by osmosis in a trance. I do my best not to stare as he keeps the literary block afloat with volleys of illuminating expressions imploding behind his elephant-print eyelids. Take out my notebook and mind my business. It’s all so poetic.