Manny sees the truth that he now lives.
And he knows as well: the person who is the Bronx made this. He knows because the instant he understands the image, he feels that strange gravitic pull again, coming from somewhere to the north this time. Not as strong a pull as that of Queens, who is closer, but unmistakable.
“Somebody creative with an attitude, you said,” Brooklyn murmurs, staring at the image, too. “That was just a guess on your part—but all my life, it’s how I’ve thought of the Bronx. That’s where hip-hop came from, and the best graffiti, and dances and fashion and…” She shakes her head. “I already had my people on the lookout for weirdness, but when you said that, I told them to look for a specific art piece. Couldn’t remember where or when I’d seen it, but I remembered enough of the details that they found it. And that’s her.”
Brooklyn swipes her screen. Behind the photo is a text from Mark Vishnerio, Aide to NY City Council Member Thomason, from five minutes ago. Currently on display at a gallery in the Bronx. Tag reads “Da Bronca”—the performance name of a Bronca Siwanoy, PhD, director of the Bronx Art Center. Painting title: “New York, the Really Real.”
Brooklyn glances up, gauging the sun. “It’s already rush hour—starts at two or three o’clock here, by the way, when the early school buses start screwing up traffic. Unless Queens joins us quick or the Bronx works late, we’re probably going to miss her if we go to the Bronx Art Center.”
“Then we find her at home,” Manny says. “She may not be safe alone.”
Brooklyn sighs and shakes her head. “Only so much ground we can cover. We could split up?”
It would be the logical thing to do. But Manny grimaces. “That might just make us easier to pick off. Look, Queens needs us, right here and right now. Let’s deal with one issue at a time.”
“More boroughs, more problems,” Brooklyn mutters, then nods in reluctant agreement.
Manny fiddles with the rideshare apps on his phone and picks a spot on the map that feels roughly close to where they can sense Queens. Then they’re on their way, better late than never.
CHAPTER SIX
The Interdimensional Art Critic Dr. White
The pieces are bad.
Bronca walks along the display wall, slowly so as to give herself time to think. She can see Jess from the corner of one eye, standing by the reception desk. Close to the phone. Behind her, seated at the desk, is the Center’s assistant, Veneza. Jess has got her poker face on, but Veneza is all big brown hostage eyes, which flick from Bronca to Jess to Yijing—yeah, Yijing, all hands on deck for this shit, and a united front, whatever else is going on between them—to their guests.
Their guests cluster at the center of the room, though their spokesman, a young white guy with a strawberry-blond manbun and lumberjack beard, has positioned himself diplomatically between his group and Bronca. Says he’s the manager for the group, which is some kind of artists’ collective. The other members of the group are male and mostly white, too, though there’s a little guy among them who looks white-with-a-generous-topping-of-Indigenous South American. He’s got a scraggly version of the same dumb-ass beard, though. Trying so hard to fit in, he doesn’t seem to notice it fits his face poorly. He’d have been handsome without it.
Gotta watch out for little dudes, Bronca remembers her ex saying once. By then they were still married, but had fully swapped teams; he was daddying half of Chelsea, and she’d cautiously joined Pink Crawfish, a lesbian dating service for women over fifty. Still friends, after weathering AIM lawsuits and AIDS die-ins and child-rearing together. Chris had always loved sharing all that earned wisdom with his friends. Such as: Little dudes are like those tiny dogs that everybody thinks are so cute. But they never stop barking and they’re crazy as fuck because their balls are too big for their brains.
A true elder and warrior, Chris Siwanoy. She missed him. He might’ve had some idea what to do about this fucking shit.
She turns to Strawberry Manbun, who’s watching her with an overly polite, fuck-you smile on his lips. He knows full well what she’s thinking. He’s waiting for her to say it out loud and violate the unspoken contract that covers white people who are doing everything short of tossing around the n-word in public. And hell, some even want that to