Property Of: a Novel by Alice Hoffman

Author:Alice Hoffman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media

SEVEN

DANCING IN THE DARK

1

At breakfast we had orange juice, Hostess cupcakes, and smiles.

“I do believe,” said Starry as she rolled marijuana into a thin wheat-colored joint, “every summer gets hotter.”

When Jose had brought me to Starry’s apartment no questions were asked. Without a word or a blink of an eye, Starry brought from her closet a shirt with sleeves too short, to replace my torn blouse, and a skirt too small at the waist, to replace my ripped, mud-stained jeans. Jose promised to leave a message at Monty’s, and lined yellow paper with my scrawl on it waited at the counter for McKay. Days passed with no word from him. In the Daily News and on six-o’clock TV broadcasts, there were descriptions of Kid Harris and hints of the gang warfare that began with the death of Danny the Sweet, with the body found in the back seat of a Pontiac.

I lit a cigarette and tossed the match into a plate already full of ashes and ancient butts. There had not yet been a chance to talk to Starry alone. Flash was close to her always, his hand on her shoulder, his eyes seeing only her. Now Flash and his dealer sat in the bedroom, arguing over the price of dope, sniffing and tasting white powder, and passing glassine envelopes of heroin back and forth. Now that we were alone and could talk, I did not know what to say. In the days after the creek I had become afraid of words. I mistrusted anything but silence and marijuana. “Starry,” I said finally, “this is no good.”

“It’s very good.” She smiled.

Starry was thinner than I had ever seen her. Her arms were covered by long sleeves, her blond hair was paler where it had been streaked with platinum tint. Her eyes were large and heavy-lidded; sometimes they appeared almost closed.

“You look like a junkie,” I said, and Starry smiled.

“Look in the mirror,” she told me. “You’re looking more strung out than me. Leastwise I know where my man is.”

I shrugged. McKay would appear at the door sooner or later. It was only a matter of time. Somewhere on the Avenue McKay was waiting for the newspapers to forget gang warfare, for the Police Department to erase Kid Harris’s fingerprints from its files. It was only a matter of time until McKay came for me.

Starry and I stared at each other. We both knew there were scars. The bruises on my face, the tracks on her arm were nothing. We did not have to see to know there were scars. And we did not, we could not, speak of violence.

Speaking would break the code, would violate the remedy for recovery. We stared at each other; we stared away. Many remedies are suggested for brutality; some recommend jasmine tea with honey, others suggest lobotomy. But I remembered that most recommend one thing as an antidote for violence: silence. The remedy, the magic, the potion, the key: silence.

I knew the prescription: take one act of violence (a rape, a knife at the throat, a fist in the small of the back, etc.

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