Ghosts of New York: A Novel by Lewis Jim

Author:Lewis, Jim [Lewis, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: West Virginia University Press

The grating over the window before the fire escape pushed to one side, and both windows open, ice cream truck music, a dirty day down on Tompkins Square Park, coming home on a subway that stopped in the tunnel and didn’t start up again for half an hour, Five Percenters hawking pamphlets on a folding table in front of an OTB on Broadway, and beside them a man selling housewares and years-old pornographic magazines from a worn blanket. Bridget used to buy old volumes of poetry in languages neither of us could read, cocktail glasses that we never used, and old soul albums for seventy-five cents.

She was always looking for something; she might find it inside the tattered sleeve of a record; she might find it in my arms, she might find it at school. The summer made her anxious, and she thought about taking some classes, but she couldn’t find anything she liked, and besides, her scholarship wouldn’t cover the tuition.

She had grown up around bland California churches and hated religious people. Hypocrites, all, she thought; vain, ignorant, cruel, coarse. She could go on. My own experience had been more muted; Regis was a Catholic school, of course, but only mildly so: Christian thinkers were required readings, but belief was not a required trait. My parents took me to church on important occasions, but only then, and I had come away from it with neither animosity nor affection. This fascinated her. I remember one night, toward the very end of summer, when we were sitting in the front room of our apartment. The window was open, the fan was blowing in the smell of the city and the sound of two Puerto Rican girls laughing on a stoop across the street, and a police radio that was broadcasting loud but incomprehensible instructions, though when I went to the window to look, there were no squad cars or officers visible. The fan was spinning invisibly at my waist, its solid blades converted into mist and a dangerous low thrumming noise. Down below and across the street, the girls were leaning back lazily on the stairs, grasping brown velvet paper bags in their long-nailed hands. Both were dressed in the green plaid skirts and white blouses of the Catholic school up the block. What are you doing? Bridget said.

Just looking, I said, but she could hear the girls herself and her voice grew tense.

Who are they?

A couple of girls who live in the building across the street. I heard a noise behind me and I turned to find her standing up; I said nothing as she came and joined me, and without touching me glanced outside. When she saw the girls she calmed down: I don’t know why. Do you think they’re cute? One of the girls looked up and saw us there, standing in the window, me in boxer shorts and Bridget dressed in one of my T-shirts and no bottom, as if we were so poor that we had to split a full set of underwear between us—an image not so far from the truth.

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