Everyday People Read online

  Yeah, Bean.

  Not forgotten. That’s right, Crest thinks, ever get a chance I’ma do one for you.

  Yeah, boy, right on the bridge. Right there, big as old BooBoo’s up on the water tower—stupid big, somewhere everyone gonna peep it.

  But just as he’s dreaming this the elevator comes and goddamn if it’s not one inch too high—fucking Mr. Linney, I’ll kick his dumb ugly ass he don’t fix this—and he has to try three times before he rolls over the bump, arms burning like when he’s lifting in rehab, veins sticking out like highways. Makes him sweat, and he wanted to look good tonight. Voyager, everybody be there, maybe even Vanessa come back to say she’s sorry, she’s wrong. He’d like to see Rashaan. Why lie—he’d like to see Vanessa give him another try, let him forget about the chair a little bit, just for one minute. Be a man. When she put that bra on, there was nowhere to look but the floor, and he felt beaten, couldn’t hardly breathe. He seriously thought right then about giving it up, going permanently on the injured reserve, just locking the bathroom door and scarfing down the whole bottle. He’s still not sure.

  But there’s nothing wrong, the doctor says. In your head, that’s where it’s at.

  Punches a button. Panel’s all scratched up, spots of gum on the floor. Bean liked grape, used to blow bubbles so the whole bus smelled.

  BEAN. Where would he throw it up? Kenny already did a piece on the bridge for both of them, like Crest is dead. Weak shit too, an easy hit, belt-high. He ought to get up there and cross that five-and-tencent clown out, slash that shit bigtime. I’m alive, that’s what it’d say.

  “Shit,” Crest says, alone and going down, the cables singing like knives. “Fucking fly first.”

  He looks up at the light, round as an angel’s halo, the halide sun above an operating table. Nothing wrong.

  Yeah, Bean, beam me out this motherfucker.

  Elevator hits bottom and the door rolls open, but there’s no one to hold it. Never long enough, and he’s got to fight it, rubber part banging against his wheel grip, door jumping back and then bumping him again, stupid fucking thing.

  “Hold up,” U says, “I got you,” and stops it with one hand holding his Bible, all dog-eared and full of Post-it notes. He’s got his hearing suit on cause he’s just coming back from his meeting. Shoes with tassels like little leather flowers, handkerchief in his pocket making three sails, clipper ship. Since he’s been out he wants everyone to call him Eugene, like he’s different now. And he is, Crest thinks. He once saw U thump on Nene with an aluminum bat. Put a dent in it so it hit funny, and Nene was one of his boys, his partner even. It made Crest proud, U being crazy like that; all the way growing up, it kept him protected. When it was just letters, Crest could make fun of the Jesus stuff. Now that U’s out, Crest doesn’t know how to talk to him. It’s like they say, God will mess a brother up.

  “U,” Crest says, and thanks him with a nod.

  “S’all right. Voyager tonight, right?” U says it like he’s proud he remembered.

  “You coming down?”

  “Gotta hit it.” He pats his Bible and gets in. “I’ll come down round ten and check you out.”

  “Yeah, all right,” Crest says, busting, cause he never does.

  And it’s like being transported, U pushes a button and he’s gone, the motor going in the basement, all that grease covered with dust fuzz. Mr. Linney probably got his door locked, playing his 78s, pretending Mrs. Linney isn’t dead. A couple years ago, he and Bean saw Mr. Linney dancing with himself, shuffling around, one hand in the air, singing Darling this, Baby that. Everyone’s so fucked up around here.

  “You oughta know,” Crest says.

  Outside a few earlybirds are parked on the stoop, couple of shorties riding their bikes under the streetlight. Across Spofford, two dudes are leaning against the fence, just hanging, splitting a Kool like a J the way he and Bean used to do. Used to, like U knocking Pops through the screen door that time, calling him a Tom. Crest shakes it off; all this memory shit isn’t good for him. It’s been six months, only two since he’s been home. U’s been out three, even got a job over Baierl Chevrolet, detailing. Puts on his jumpsuit every morning like he’s in the Marines, makes a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, stocks up on the free Wheat Thins Pops brings home Friday night. He’s clean, he goes to his meetings. Done is done, Moms always says. Pick it up, clean it up, don’t do it again.

  A lighter sparks across Spofford and he can see it’s just Little Nene and Cardell, probably waiting on him, blunting up before they blast off into space. Warp factor five, Mr. Sulu.

  Yeah, it’s a good crowd. He can see a clump of girls in front of Miss Fisk’s, huddled so no one can scope them. Not Vanessa, none of them that tall yet. He gets up some speed and hits the door. At least Mr. Linney got the ramp right. Ones down Liberty Center so steep they shoot you out in the middle of traffic, bus run your ass down.

  Everyone’s waiting for him; even the girls turn.

  “Showtime!” one of the shorties calls, doing a goofy Dick Vitale. They stick their bikes against the fence.

  “Crest,” they say, “c’mon, man, get that thing on!”

  Little Nene and Cardell come wandering across the street like they don’t care if they’re late. Little knuckleheads fronting hard, want to build up some respect. Two years behind him at Peabody. Got to be sixteen now, both of them shaving every day. Crest used to kick their nappy asses once a week, not bad, just slap-boxing, give them a taste of what’s waiting. Since the bridge, they still mess with him, but careful like. He used to groove on playing Little Nene, pop him hard and watch his eyes go psycho. Cardell’s always been stronger, but he ain’t half as crazy as Little Nene; Little Nene, he’ll take his licks and give some back, but he’ll never thump like his brother Nene. That’s all used to, like eveything else. Now they think they’re being respectful and take it easy on him. “Bring it on, suckas,” Crest says, but it’s just sissy taps, then they dance out of range and profile some styling footwork, show him their new moves. Not little dudes no more. Men.

  What is he now?

  Nothing.

  Fucked up, that’s what.

  Crowd’s waiting, and Crest backs into the corner so the door can’t hit him. Hooks up Brother Sony to the juice and reaches under the ivy, spiderwebs grabbing at his hand—and there’s the cable, spliced right off the box. He tips the set and plugs the jack in, clicks the knob where he wants it. Brother Sony has a plastic kickstand, and he flips it out and rests the set on top of the wall so everyone on the steps has a good seat. One last look at everyone looking up at him, and—ignition.

  It’s a golf course, late in the day, that Hennessy kind of light over a putting green. A bunch of old white people are shoving their clubs in the trunk of a huge Buick, all happy like they won something. “Aw, man,” Cardell says, disgusted, “I don’t want to have to see these old ghosts. I get enough of this shit in real life, you know what I’m saying?” Everyone agrees, an mmm-hmmm like church. There’s a clubhouse behind the old folks, ivy-covered, and Crest thinks of when he used to do dishes at the University Club, the thick plates that held the heat from the machine so you had to wear cotton gloves to put them away. Used to cash his check Fridays and take Vanessa out to Isaly’s, chip-chop ham and whitehouse ice cream. It looks like fall there, a few leaves on the green. It’s a bank commercial, how rich you’ll get if you give them your money. When Moms comes home from work she’s got a dozen gumbands around her wrist, the rubber dirty with black streaks.

  “Pump it up,” Little Nene calls from the back, but Crest waits. Someone has a box of Better Cheddars—another father working day shift at Nabisco—and they break it out, pass it around, people filling their laps. The commercials are louder, and when Voyager comes on he adjusts it. They go right into the show, no credits, no nothing, and there’s B’Elanna Torres with her old rhinoceros-looking head, and googly old white boy Tom Paris, phasers out, in some cave made of fake rocks; it’s your basic away-team thing. Bet
ter believe someone’s going to get fucked up.

  This spirit thing appears, green and see-through, kind of a ghost, but the music lets you know it isn’t. It circles around them like it’s interested. The two of them don’t move; it’s like a Star Trek rule: Just stand there.

  “Run!” Janelle French calls.

  “Where they gonna run?” Cardell says.

  “I don’t know,” Janelle says, “just run!”

  “I’m not picking up any readings,” B’Elanna says, and then—whoosh —the thing shoots into Tom Paris. His face changes like he ate something he’s not too sure of, like he’s going to throw up. The music gets loud, then goes soft, then ends. All of a sudden Tom’s better.

  “Tom!” B’Elanna calls, and runs over to him. She goes to touch him but doesn’t. Everyone knows they’re gonna make it one of these shows, girl just doesn’t know what she wants. Crest always thinks it’s like him and Vanessa, you know, just meant to be, no sense denying it. But V needs a man. She never says, but Crest understands. The doctor says it makes no sense, he should retain full feeling—that’s the way he says it too, all official, like Crest can’t do this. Fuck, he wanted to say, and make it plain: it doesn’t fucking work. He doesn’t fucking work. Vanessa tried twice. She cried the first time; the second time she just let go and looked at him all cold, like it was his fault.

  “Are you okay?” B’Elanna asks.

  “I think so,” Tom Paris says, rubbing his head and looking googly as ever, like he doesn’t even know the thing’s in him. B’Elanna calls Captain Janeway to beam them up, and as they’re being transported, you can see the green shape inside Tom’s body.

  “Aw, man!” Little Nene says. “Cuz is in for some serious shit.”

  “Thing went right down his mouth,” Cardell says, and the two of them act it out, clowning, the girls laughing at them.

  Crest has already seen this episode, it’s a repeat. The new season doesn’t start till next week, but no one complains, it’s still fun. This might be the last nice night, and school’s kicking in, homework, part-time jobs. Pretty soon he’ll be back in his room, just him and Brother Sony. But not yet, not yet.

  The green thing is the last of its species and won’t leave Tom. The Prime Directive kicks in and The Doctor has to figure something out. Crest sits there watching, laughing when everyone else does, going quiet when The Doctor opens Tom’s lips wide with this steel thing and shines a light. And then, of course, a commercial.

  All day he’s been waiting to be with someone, just lying in bed while the buses and rush hour went by, watching talk shows, then getting up and eating lunch with the noon news. Drive-by on The Hill, Pirates still three-and-a-half behind the Astros. All afternoon he let the set charge, listening as the school buses dropped the little kids off, and then the music of cartoons from the other apartments. Moms came home long enough to make supper, then left before Pops and U drove up, both of them too tired to give a shit. They ate at the table but it was just chowing down, pass this, pass that. No one asks, “What did you do today?”

  I laid up in my crib and boomed the new Wu Tang, same jam over and over.

  I drank all the red Kool-Aid and then emptied out my bag cause it was getting full.

  I watched TV.

  No one wants to hear that shit. Fuck, Crest thinks, I don’t want to hear that shit.

  “Going to your meeting?” Pops asked like every night, and like every night, U said, “If that’s all right.”

  “It’s fine with me.”

  “Me too,” Crest said.

  “You oughta come. You’d be surprised, some of the people you meet.”

  “z’at right?”

  “’member Pooh Bear? He comes.”

  “That roly-poly bitch? I thought he got shot.”

  “He did. Now he’s a deacon over St. James in Highland Park.”

  “Get on.”

  “Remember Guy Collins?”

  “Now I know you frontin’. Guy Collins’s name is Malik. I know cause his cousin Anthony told me.”

  “That’s when he was inside. When he came out he changed back. He’s married to that gal Florence now, they come twice a week. I’m telling you, you’d be surprised; it’s not like Sister Payne’s old-biddy prayer circle. It might be just what you need.” He was really selling it, his eyes shining, his ham just lying there in its juice. “We got a ramp and everything.”

  “That’s all right,” Crest said.

  “Door’s always open.” He said it like Reverend Skinner, like he owned the whole place, and all Crest could think of was the day U brought home Brother Sony, still in the box. He and Fats and Big Nene had busted into a truck over behind Sears. Used to be like that all the time—full of surprises.

  After U went to put on his suit, Pops leaned across and said not to take it personal. “He’s just a little excited right now. Remember, he was away a long time.”

  “I know,” Crest said, thinking: What about me, how long was I gone?

  Now The Doctor leans over Tom Paris’s mouth again, this time with a steel test-tube thing, and one of the girls squeals, “Don’t be doing that, fool!”

  There’s a blast of green light—“Here we go,” Cardell says—and when the picture comes back, The Doctor’s still looking, Tom’s still got his mouth open.

  The Doctor straightens up, stiff like always. “I think we’ve succeeded.” He holds up the test tube, all smug. Inside it, a green light shines.

  They’re going to try to clone it, see if they can get it to reproduce so it won’t go extinct.

  “Now that’s just a plain mistake,” Janelle French says, shaking her head.

  But then, in his quarters, Tom Paris gets this headache. It’s killing him. He goes to the mirror, holding his head with both hands, and his eyes are completely green.

  “Aw yeah,” Little Nene says. “That’s what happens you fuck with that green shit.”

  “Show you right,” Crest says, punching the mute button.

  A car cruises by, slides right through the stop sign, and they all watch it hard, thinking it might be B-Mo’s crew from Brushton looking for some payback on Nene and his fellas, but it’s just some old nutty-professor-looking white dude in a raggedy Oldsmobile, his windows rolled up. Must be lost—or on the pipe, looking to cop some rock. As he passes, Cardell walks out into Spofford to let him know he’s being scoped, then comes back.

  “Any those Cheddars left?”

  In the middle of the next scene, Little Nene’s beeper goes off, and he and Cardell gotta jet. “Later, C.” Crest watches them down the block, thinking how tight he and Bean were. Boy always had his back, didn’t matter if it was Morningside or North Braddock, Oakland or the North Side, and just like he didn’t want to happen, he sees Bean on the bridge, going over, and he reaches for him and catches his sleeve and then both of them go, the hard white bed of the busway flying up at them like a blank page, a wall of snow. It was only twenty feet, that’s the part he’ll never understand.

  No one knows Tom Paris is the alien. He spreads the DNA like a vampire, biting people in the corridors. When his eyes turn green, the test tube glows. Half the ship is walking around like zombies, and now Crest can’t remember how it ends—something with the Holodeck, or maybe a special drug The Doctor cooks up. It doesn’t matter; Bean is here again, and the minutes Crest spent waking up in the hospital, the light above the table, the operating room cold and smelling like ammonia. When the doctor bent down he could see a drop of blood caught in her blond eyebrow. Well hello Miss Ann. There was a saw making the same screaming it did in shop. Wait, he wanted to say, hold up, but her face came down, the drop of blood like a bug, a roach hidden in spaghetti. He tried to talk but the air was sweet, even sugary, a licorice musk of rubber, and then there was nothing but space, floating, no stars, just a dark, bottomless night. Welcome to the Delta Quadrant.

  “Mute it,” someone says, and Crest does. He’s already taken his pills; maybe that’s it. This doesn’t happen every night
, just some. He always looks for reasons but never finds any, like he’s being controlled by some alien force, like googly old Tom Paris. Fuck.

  It’s just Bean.

  The commercials go on too long, so they know it’s the end. When it comes back on, Crest remembers. It’s not The Doctor, it’s B’Elanna who saves everyone. She kisses Tom and his true personality comes back and kicks the alien’s ass right out of his mouth. The Doctor makes up some fancy explanation that the other ones need Tom to keep living, so they all get better, all at once. The green ghosts join up in a blob and go out into space. The special effects are weak, and everyone laughs. Crest is wondering about Vanessa, if a kiss from her would make everything all right. Before, he would have said more than a kiss, but now he thinks: yes. He should call her tomorrow.

  Some of the girls stick around for a preview of next week, the new season, then everyone leaves during the credits. It’s a school night, but still he’s disappointed. Janelle French waves. “Keep ya head up, baby.”

  The ten o’clock news comes on, the drive-by the top story. He knows the place, Aliquippa Terrace. There was a dance there years ago, in the spring. It’s another Bean and me story, a fight over a stolen coat, and Crest doesn’t even get into it, just squashes that mad stuff, shoves it back where it belongs. What the fuck. Even if he had someone to talk to he wouldn’t say anything. What’s there to say? In the paper they said he was the fourth teenager to die in East Liberty that week, like it was some drug shit. It made it sound like it was Bean’s fault. And then nothing, just a little thing in the obituaries. Crest didn’t even get to go to the funeral. Still hasn’t been to see the stone Miss Fisk bought him. Hasn’t even talked with Miss Fisk, said he’s sorry. Soon. Got to, you know?

  The door swings open, almost hitting him.

  “Ay,” U says, in some old street clothes, corduroy slippers.

  “S’up.”

  “Where’s all your little girlfriends?”