The Superman Project Page 3

  Soon, Mimi ran in—snub nose, wide mouth, freckled face, thick black eyelashes, belly, breasts, gap-toothed smile, makeup, eyeliner, lipstick, rouge, powder, perfume, a plump jungle of red hair and cleavage in a bright green blouse and blue jeans that looked as difficult to get into as giving insulin shots to an alley cat—and yelled, “Bueno! Like a little familia!” before racing back into the kitchen.

  Family. I had enough family trouble without Willow and Max. Back at the office was the Bronx River address that I had gotten for my own mother. I was finally going to see my mother again. I wouldn’t know what to say first, where to start. She would not cry. She would be calm. I would ask if I had any sisters or brothers. I would tell her about the years that passed, St. Mary’s, Nicky, John Jay, St. James and Company, my new business. I would listen and she would listen. We would understand. She would ask to see me again and we would meet regularly and continue our talks. I would sleep better. At least, that’s what Nicky Brown kept telling me and nagging about whenever he called from Atlanta: “When are you gonna go see your mama?”

  Mind your own business, Nicky.

  I scooped up a spoonful of flan and shoved it in my mouth, wondered how to get out of my current mess. I swallowed a spoonful greedily, then a second, then a third. After a dozen spoonfuls, I felt sleepy again and sank back on the sofa.

  “Watch this!” Max yelled. On Willow’s giant television was an episode of Smallville.

  Apparently, Max got the series on DVD from her dad last Christmas.

  Small world.

  “I love him!” Max said, watching the young, white, handsome, indestructible Clark Kent. First Pablo, now this. I couldn’t seem to escape Superman no matter where I turned today. But what did it mean? What does it mean, Chico? Any of it?

  “He’s so brave,” Max said. “It’s so cool. I wish I was a boy.”

  “Don’t say that,” Willow said, “Being a girl can be an adventure, too.”

  “Sure,” said Max, screwing up her face. “Like how?”

  Willow looked at me and smiled all sweet. She took my hand gently and gave me that look and I jumped off the sofa like it was on fire and said, “I really gotta go.”

  “Won’t you have some of Mimi’s pasteles before you go?”

  “No.”

  “Max, go get Uncle Chico some more flan.”

  Max beamed like the idea of getting me some more flan was equivalent to a trip to Six Flags, and ran out of the room again.

  Willow stood up and shook her head.

  “What’re you doing with your life, Chico?”

  “Let’s see. It’s August, hot, humid, and muggy—my favorite. The money from my last case is spent, and the economy is in the crapper and so I’m living in my office. I keep a sock with all the pennies I have left in the world under my desk and I think about selling my bowling shoes or my father’s baseball signed by Roberto Clemente. I live in my office. I shower at a friend’s. During the day I create sculpture out of hot dog buns. At night, I get wasted on coffee and chocolate bars and play the harmonica in a hip-hop-salsa band. Same ol’, same ol’.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “I am emotionally and financially unstable. Yeah, fun is the word I would use.”

  “Any lady in your life?”

  “If there is,” I said, “she’s not talkin’.”

  “Look,” Willow said, “I have to go to Spain.”

  “I’ve seen pictures. It looks like a nice town. I’m sure that Max will love Madrid.”

  “I can’t take Max. I’m going to be spending most of my time in offices, in the middle of chaos.”

  “You want the name of a good babysitter?”

  “No.”

  “Jesus Christ, I can’t stay here, Willow. I can’t do it. I don’t like kids.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t like people, and kids are nothing but people waiting to happen.”

  “Shut up. C’mon, Chico. This apartment has three large bedrooms and a big remodeled bathroom with a walk-in tub. You could take bubble baths.”

  “If there’s anything I dislike more than kids, it’s walk-in tubs and bubble baths. I wish I could help you.”

  “Chico. C’mon. You’re the only person I know in New York who can do this.”

  I hardly knew Willow. Yeah, she had risked her life on the Kirk Atlas case. Yeah, she had almost gotten killed while helping me but we’re talking about babysitting—a child!

  Willow stepped close.

  “What?”

  “Please.”

  “I can’t.”

  Willow frowned and placed her soft hand on my chest. “Pretty please.”

  “Pretty no,” I said.

  “C’mon, you’re not leaving town anytime soon. Mimi tells me you never leave New York. Stay here,” she whispered. “You need that girl as much as she needs you right now.”

  “Says who?”

  “Nicky.”

  “He’s managing my life from Atlanta now?”

  Willow pushed me away and made a fist. “I oughta bop you on the head!”

  I thought about a book in my office that sat among the shaving cream, the razors and aftershave, beside the ten cans of tuna, two loaves of bread, one jar of jelly, two jars of peanut butter, two music tapes—one CD of Tchaikovsky’s Four Seasons, another by jazz musician Ornette Coleman—and finally my Don Quixote (a gift from Ramona), turned to page 220.

  What can ever cure my sadness?

  Maybe I should get to Atlanta. Who knows what I could find? The ladies, the heat, lounging in a hammock in somebody’s backyard as the sun goes down over Georgia. And New Orleans is coming back! That’s what Nicky said. He’s got people there. Mardi Gras! The colorful, ceremonial stuff! The crowds, the music! Jazz! Nicky went to a fortune-teller in New Orleans who told him to tell me, “Expect glorious things.”

  I didn’t know what that meant. But I knew for sure, Max couldn’t be it.

  “Listen,” Willow said forcefully. “This is the deal. I go to Spain for work. You stay here with Max. I’m going to be making a lot of money on this job. You will be paid.”

  My eyes popped. The magic word. Finally. “Paid?”

  “Yes,” Willow said. “Of course. You don’t think I’d want you to do it for free. Lincoln died for a reason. I’ll pay you whatever you charge for taking a case. The Maxine Johnson case.”

  “But I’ve never done any babysitting,” I said. “What if I’m no good? No. I’m sorry. I can’t. A kid. It’s too much.”

  Willow looked at me, smiling and easy; she leaned in and kissed me. Willow Mankiller Johnson kissed me.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time,” she said.

  “Oooh!” I heard someone yell. I turned and saw Max, holding my replenished plate of flan.

  “You’re getting your groove on!” Max yelled.

  “Max!” Willow said, and laughed. “Nobody is getting any groove on. Where did you hear that?”

  “School.”

  “Well,” Willow said, “no more school for you.”

  “For real?” Max said, a bright light in her eyes.

  “No,” Willow said, “not for real. And nobody is getting their groove on. That’s not a polite thing to say.”

  “Sorry.” Max turned to me. “Sorry, Uncle Chico. Wanna see my room?”

  “Chico isn’t staying, Max.”

  “Why not?” Max said, looking at me all sad, like a Jewish kid on Christmas Day. “I got books and I’ll let you play with Gizmo. You can hold him all you want.”

  “Sounds tempting,” I said. “But I got work I gotta do, Max. I wish I could.”

  “Okay,” Max said, handing Willow the flowery plate and putting out her chubby little hand.

  I took it. It was small and brown and soft.

  “Well,” Max said, all eight years of her, “it’s always pleasant to meet Willow’s friends.”

  “Ditto.”

  I nodded at Willow and turned to go out the door agai
n. But a sweet smell floated into the room and ruined everything.

  Mimi holding a plate of pasteles!

  “Why are you doing this to me, Mimi?”

  “Nicky called me,” said Mimi. “I am bored. It’s hot. I got Yolanda watching the Cuchifrito and I can watch Max part-time babysitter whenever you can’t. I’ll spend more time with my Chico and talk and laugh and watch the movies and cook. It’s good for me, Chico.”

  “Yeah. She cooks good,” Max said, rubbing her belly.

  “I will do all the cooking for you and Max,” said Mimi, “while Willow is away. I can watch Max and Boo while you are out. So even with your case, you don’t have to worry. You just have to get back here before sunrise, and I will take a cab ride home.”

  Willow added, “I would pay for that, too.”

  Now, as a rule, I don’t like children. Even as a child, I didn’t take to them. I found most kids mean and selfish and cruel. One of the rules of being a member of my childhood gang The Dirty Dozen was that you didn’t act like a kid.

  But there I was, trapped, with Mimi holding out her delicious pasteles and Max smiling expectantly. Her ridiculous black-framed glasses made her look like a miniature TV reporter from the sixties. We would have to do something about the glasses.

  I looked into Max’s big, anxious eyes and I thought about her dead old man and my dead old man and I couldn’t help it—my heart broke. I took one more look around Willow’s large co-op apartment. It wouldn’t be so bad. I mean, I could have tried to run away, but Willow would have prevented me—by force. I was staying. But don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t doing it just for the kid. I wasn’t doing it for Willow either. Or even for the money. No. I was doing it for the pasteles.

  Mimi’s pasteles.

  Will work for food.

  “Okay,” I said, defeated, keeping one eye on Mimi’s pasteles. “Here’s the deal. I’m gonna stay here with Max. When Willow gets back, Max can stay with her. When Max’s mother gets stable, Max can go home to Detroit and by that time and Boo and I can go back to the luxurious comforts of my tiny office.”

  Max looked at me with worried eyes and said, “I don’t wanna go home.”

  “Aw. Why not, Max?” said Willow.

  “You like Chico that much already?” said Mimi.

  Max shook her head and said, “They kill people there.”

  THREE

  New York City was on fire, with temperatures in the nineties. I was sweating bullets like it was Christmas in the Congo. Thank God that global warming didn’t really exist, or I’d have been worried. Esther Sanchez kept talking and poking me in the back with her steel cane as we drove all the way from Parkchester in the Bronx (where they picked me up) to her bingo joint in Washington Heights in Pablo’s rusty white Ford Fiesta.

  Pablo’s driving and glancing at his mother in the backseat at the same time didn’t make me nervous; a lot of the folks I grew up with did the same thing and somehow they never crashed. Well, hardly never.

  On second thought.

  “Keep your eyes on the road,” I said. Pablo turned to look at me.

  “Seat belt,” I said.

  Pablo fastened his seat belt. Mrs. Esther Sanchez tapped me approvingly on the back with her cane.

  “When are you going to get married, Pablo?”

  “Ma!”

  “If you had a wife—”

  “Ma, please.”

  “Children. Responsibility.”

  “Please, Ma!”

  “Don’t make the same mistakes I made.”

  “Shhh . . .”

  I looked out the cracked car window, as the tiny white car bucked and bounced with every ding and dent in the street, and the probability of getting any real money out of Pablo Sanchez sped away faster than the George Washington Bridge.

  So why did I go along with Pablo Sanchez and his mother? Well, sitting in Parkchester with Max, her one-legged cat Gizmo, and my cranky Chihuahua Boo, broke with no future money and no other case in sight, after a humid night of trying to sleep alone in a strange bed, and nothing but Frankenstein on TV until 5:00 A.M., was beginning to feel suspiciously like tragedy. So I had nothing to lose with Pablo but a morning with an eight-year-old in a red-towel cape doing magic tricks with sock puppets.

  As we drove along Washington Heights, I remembered that I had left my Timex behind on Willow’s round brown coffee table. Last night, I had taken off my watch, kissed Willow, and put on the radio, turned to the station where they played mostly Motown and oldies.

  I know you wanna leave me, but I refuse to let you go . . .

  Then Max came in and insisted that we watch Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and nothing happened with Willow and me and Willow was off to Spain by morning and she dropped Max off with Mimi on Brook Avenue and I was driving with a potential client who didn’t get that I’m practically homeless and living in my dingy office and not at the location in Parkchester where he picked me up.

  Just before Esther Sanchez closed the car door and went down into the Washington Heights Arcade Bingo Hall (a former bowling alley) on 181st Street and St. Nicholas Avenue, she said, “You watch out for Pablo, Chico. Pablo is very young at heart. He loves dogs and children. He’s a hard worker. He deserves a real friend, hijo.”

  She called me son and she handed me two Tupperware bowls full of Dominican food (sancocho stew, mashed plantains, yucca, and abichuelas con dulce and rice) and I wish I could say that I didn’t feel anything because I’m nobody’s sucker. But I did.

  Will work for food.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I said, holding that stupid Tupperware.

  We dropped Mrs. Sanchez off, after sloppy kisses, a “Dios te bendiga,” and a “God bless you, hijo.” We drove downtown, parked on a side street near Baruch College, and walked to a comic-book shop on 23rd Street above a nail salon in a redbrick building where Pablo said he was going to show me just how well Joey was going to take care of me.

  Cosmo Comics.

  I followed Pablo down a short blue hall and up a long flight of stairs, to the second floor.

  “If everybody, including the police, says that Joey had something to do with his wife disappearing,” I said, “what makes you think you can prove them wrong?”

  “We,” Pablo said, looking back at me. “We.”

  “We’ll talk about that.”

  “No. You gotta help me, Chico. You seem like a good guy and an enthusiastic creative mind, and I think we could be comic-book partners, too, if you still like to draw. At the momento I realize this all has a very crazy feel to it—but I just want to say I do hope to become friends in addition to partners on this case.”

  “Partners? I got bills, Pablo. Can you pay?”

  “We’re gonna make a deal,” said Pablo.

  “Make a deal. Name that tune. Five hundred for things that don’t pay.”

  Pablo took out a ring full of keys and unlocked the glass door.

  “I thought you were a janitor?”

  “I was,” Pablo said. “TSP fired me. Don’t tell my mother. She doesn’t know. I worked here in high school. They gave me my old job back.”

  “Why did The Superman Project fire you?”

  “It was over Joey. They said I was too close to Joey and a loose thread.”

  I admit it: I have a soft spot in my dusty heart for loose threads. But soft spots don’t pay the bills. I needed to see some dead green presidents and soon, or it was back to the Bronx for Chico Santana, Joey Valentin or no Joey Valentin.

  “You like comic books, right?” he said. “You can draw, right?”

  “Long time ago,” I said. I massaged my aching head. “You got any aspirin?”

  Pablo opened up, hit the lights, which blazed white over a large green room. The walls popped with colorful posters of Batman and Spider-Man and T-shirts, shelves, racks, and glass counters filled with tons and tons of graphic novels and DVDs and action figures and mostly old or shiny brand-new comic books.

  We walked past the stacks and went i
nto a small back office, also green, with MANAGER on the door. The dusty room smelled of sweat and freshly printed paper. On a desk in the center of the room was an ancient IBM computer that only the Flintstones could think of as technology without laughing. The room was filled with even more comic books tied and stacked along the walls. A red bucket beside the desk was filled with coins—pennies, nickels, dimes.

  “My savings account.” Pablo chuckled as he went into the first aid box and handed me a couple of aspirin and a can of warm soda. Then he went into his Cosmo Comics bag and proudly handed me a thick stack of pages: THE ADVENTURES of CAPTAIN BRAVO and THE CUCHIFRITO KID.

  There were two cartoon characters on the cover page: one short and fat superhero and one tall and skinny superhero. The tall thin character wore a Dominican flag mask and matching flag cape and the short fat character wore a Puerto Rican flag mask and matching cape.

  “Captain Bravo,” said Pablo, pointing a fat Dominican finger. “The thin Dominican superhero has to be beaten nearly to death before his super-strength kicks in. The fat Puerto Rican sidekick, The Cuchifrito Kid, can use anything oil-based as a weapon, from hot cooking grease to hair gel. They’re Latino superheroes.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, glancing at Pablo.

  “I invented them with my ex-best friend Elvis in high school. That didn’t work out. But Joey was going to draw them. We were going to work together. I would write the stories and Joey would draw. I even got a nice letter back from DC.”

  “DC Comics?” I said. “That’s big.”

  “I have great characters,” Pablo said proudly, “and I’m determined my comic’s going to be published.”

  “It’s a little long, no?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It could maybe use some cutting.”

  “No. Never. No editing.” Pablo shook his head. “No selling out. No butcher called an editor taking the heart out of it. I’ve been working on that for ten years. It’s not even finished yet. I don’t sleep, I work. I’m here writing until six in the morning sometimes. Nobody bothers me here at night and when I work it has to be in a distraction-free environment and that’s not always possible with my mother around. I’m creating something really special, Chico. Something that’s basically not every other comic on the shelf. I wanna deliver something that’ll knock your socks off and teach you a little something about life. I don’t just need somebody to draw, there has to be character design. I have to go through sketches and sketches before I can really find what I’m looking for. I got everything in there—philosophy, psychology, sociology, Spanish history, African history, Dominican history, Haitian history, American history.”