said but I wasn’t wise enough to know where to go or who to approach, and besides who was going to sell to me, a stranger with horn rimmed glasses and an uptown haircut, dressed for picking out wedding china with Kitsey?
Unsettled heart. The fetishism of secrecy. These people understood—as I did—the back alleys of the soul, whispers and shadows, money slipping from hand to hand, the password, the code, the second self, all the hidden consolations that lifted life above the ordinary and made it worth living.
Jerome—I stopped on the sidewalk outside a cheap sushi bar to get my bearings—Jerome had told me about a bar, red awning, around St. Mark’s, Avenue A maybe? He was always coming from there, or stopping off on his way to me. The bartender dealt from behind the counter to patrons who didn’t mind paying double for not having to buy on the street. Jerome was always making deliveries to her. Her name—I remembered it, even—Katrina! But every other storefront in the neighborhood seemed to be a bar.
I walked up A and down First; ducked into the first bar I saw with an even vaguely red awning—liverish tan, but it might have been red once—and asked: “Does Katrina work here?”
“Nope,” said the scorched redhead at the bar, not even looking at me as she pulled her pint.
Shopping cart ladies asleep with their heads on bundles. Shop window of glitter Madonnas and Day of the Dead figures. Gray flocks of pigeons beating soundlessly.
“You know you thinking about it, you know you thinking about it,” said a low voice in my ear—
I turned to find a ripe, heavyset, broadly smiling black man with a gold tooth in front, who pressed a card into my hand: TATTOOS BODY ART PIERCING.
I laughed—him too, a rich full-body laugh, both of us sharing in the joke—and slipped the card in my pocket and walked on. But a moment later I was sorry I hadn’t asked him where to find what I wanted. Even if he wouldn’t tell me, he’d looked like he would know.
Body Piercing. Acupressure Footrub. We Buy Gold We Buy Silver. Many pallid kids, and then, further down—all on her own—a wan dreadlocked girl with a filthy puppy and a cardboard sign so worn I couldn’t read it. I was reaching guiltily into my pockets for some money—the money clip Kitsey had given me was too tight, I was having a hard time getting the bills out, as I fumbled I was aware of everyone looking at me and then—“hey!” I cried, stepping back, as the dog snarled and lunged, snapping and catching the hem of my pants leg in its needlelike teeth.
Everyone was laughing—the kids, a street vendor, a cook in a hair net sitting on a stoop talking on a cell phone. Wrenching my pants leg loose—more laughter—I turned away and, to recover from my consternation, ducked into the next bar I saw—black awning with some red on it—and said to the bartender: “Does Katrina work here?”
He stopped drying his glass. “Katrina?”
“I’m a friend of Jerome’s.”
“Katrina? Not Katya, you mean?” The guys at the bar—Eastern Europeans—had gone silent.
“Maybe, uh—?”
“What’s her last name?”
“Um—” One leather-jacket guy had lowered his chin and turned full on his stool to fix me with a Bela Lugosi stare.
The bartender was eyeballing me steadily. “This girl you want. What is it that you want with her?”
“Well, actually, I—”
“What color hair?”
“Uh—blonde? Or—actually—” clearly, from his expression, I was about to be thrown out, or worse; my eyes lit on the sawed-off Louisville Slugger behind the bar—“my mistake, forget it—”
I was out of the bar and well down the street when I heard a shout behind me: “Potter!”
I froze, as I heard him shout it again. Then, in disbelief, I turned. And while I still stood unable to believe it, people streaming round us on either side, he laughed and barged forward to throw his arms around me.
“Boris.” Pointed black eyebrows, merry black eyes. He was taller, face hollower, long black coat, same old scar over his eye plus a couple of new ones. “Wow.”
“And wow, yourself!” He held me out at arm’s length. “Hah! Look at you! Long time, no?”
“I—” I was too stunned to speak. “What are you doing here?”
“And, I should ask—” stepping back to give me the once-over, then gesturing down the street as if it belonged to him—“what are you doing? To what do I owe this surprise?”
“What?”
“I stopped by your shop the other day!” Throwing the hair