Chapter Three
Chapter
Three
It had become a kind of ritual of Danny’s to eat himself silly after a stressful day.
Like the time he pissed his pants in the third grade and rewarded himself with an entire box of untoasted Pop-Tarts, or when he accidentally called one of the nuns “Ma” in front of the whole class freshman year and took it out on a gallon of mint chocolate chip, or after his uncle’s funeral, when he devoured, shit you not, an entire tray of his Nonni’s lasagna.
(His mother still noted resentfully that it was the first funeral reception in history where the mourners had to order Little Caesars.)
And as stressful days went, this was one for the books.
It was slim pickings when it came to food on this particular stretch of Upper Manhattan—a fancy sushi restaurant, a corner bodega where every bag of chips was covered in cat hair, and, between a busy fire station and a shuttered magazine store, a hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant called The Princess & The Prawn.
Danny, who’d never had the nerve to try raw fish and was allergic to cats, pushed through the jingle-bell doors of the Chinese place.
It smelled like garlic and Pine-Sol, but the floor seemed clean enough, and the menu featured the same grid of the same blown-out photos of the same plates of sesame beef and lo mein as every other Chinese restaurant Danny had ever been to.
A white-haired woman watched fuzzy daytime soaps on an old television set propped up on the wall.
Behind the counter, a tired-looking man read a copy of the Village Voice, the Bronx Zoo lion roaring on the front page, a photo of a young man wearing a white cap and a pair of feathery homemade wings on his back printed just below.
“$4,000 Reward Posted for the Whereabouts of Angel.”
Danny’s eyes lingered on the photo of the winged young man.
He felt a strange pull, as if he were being drawn into the image, into the life of this stranger.
This connection was unfamiliar and Danny struggled to understand it.
Did he look like someone Danny knew? Was it a sense of responsibility to help find him?
He couldn’t quite say. Either way, he made a mental note to keep an eye out for any lost angels wandering the Upper West Side.
Assuming he ever came back.
A chair leg screeched on the floor behind him, snapping Danny back to reality.
Splayed across the chair, table, and linoleum in equal measure was a boy around his age, his legs stretched out across a nearby chair like he owned the damn place.
Danny avoided eye contact, shuffling to the counter to order the least-intimidating thing he could find on the menu.
“Hey, Private School!”
The voice called from the table by the window.
Just keep reading the menu.
“Hellooo…Private Schooooool,” the voice called again, a laugh barely hiding in his throat.
Danny tightened his jaw. If ten years of Catholic school had taught him anything, it was that his best offense was a good defense. High school guys were like rhinos—if you didn’t move, they’d forget you were even there.
“Yoo-hooo,” the boy called out in a high, mocking falsetto. “I know you can hear me, Private School.”
In scenarios like this, common as they were, Danny never engaged.
Ever. Even when it meant getting laughed at in front of a whole cafeteria of guys.
Even when he was called a dipshit or a dumbfuck or a fag.
Even when he’d come home from school flushed with anger and embarrassment and his own father took the side of his tormentors.
“You let them mess with you today,” he’d tell Danny, drilling his chest with a finger to emphasize his point, “you deserve whatever you get tomorrow.”
Maybe it was the residual adrenaline still pumping through his veins after the audition, or the stress-driven hunger for wontons and a Coke, or the weather, or a gas leak, or a volcano erupting on the other side of the world.
Or maybe that gene from his father—the one that made you act like a tough guy, like someone who hit first and asked questions later—finally woke from dormancy, coursing through his veins and down to his crotch so that Danny could, as his dad put it, “finally grow a pair.”
“WHADDYA WANT?!” Danny roared, whipping around to face his taunter, fists clenched like some idiot action figure.
“Oh shit,” was all his catcaller could manage.
The kid looked nothing like the polo-collared St. Pete’s thugs.
He was skinny—scrawny, even—shorter than a bully ought to be.
His clothing was both too small and too large and maybe from the women’s section—a sleeveless turtleneck and a pair of faded XXL overalls.
He was Asian, Danny estimated, but more tan than the guy behind the counter.
His hair was messy, not like someone who couldn’t afford a haircut, but someone who’d spent hours tousling it into perfect, stupid triangles. Danny wanted to mess it up for real.
“A face made for punching,” he could hear his father’s voice in his head.
“Take a chill pill,” the kid said, eyes wide with surprise at Danny’s roar, holding up his hands like he was trying to calm down a wild animal, but with a trace of a smirk still on his lips.
“I was just gonna give you some advice, but I refuse to get murdered in a restaurant with a linoleum floor, so never mind.”
The deep fryer stopped frying, the wall clock stopped ticking, and the soap opera faded to a commercial break.
Everyone in the restaurant, the old woman, the lucky cat statue, and the spider dangling from a cobweb by the door, turned to Danny.
What was he gonna do? What was he gonna say?
Danny, who’d never started a fight before, just stood there, fists still raised.
Whenever an ass whupping had come his way, he’d always turned and run.
Danny eyed the door and was about to make a break for it when the skinny boy leaned forward in his seat and dropped his voice low.
“I was just gonna tell you to skip the jellyfish salad. The only place in Manhattan that pulls that off is about a hundred blocks downtown,” he said. “You’re better off with the french fries. This far uptown, all they’ve got is a deep fryer and a dream.”
Danny’s fists dropped to his side, his shoulders slumping in equal parts exhaustion and embarrassment.
He couldn’t help it—a smile teased at the corners of his mouth.
The skinny boy took it as a sign and leapt to his feet and swanned over to the counter, flapping his hand on the silver bell like he was checking in at the Plaza.
“Excuse me! Helloooo! Mr. Wong, we’ve got an order for you!”
“You don’t need to—” Danny stuttered, but the train had clearly left the station.
“This intimidating gentleman would like one extra-large order of french fries with ketchup and two Dr. Brown’s black cherry sodas.”
“Wait,” Danny protested. “I don’t need two sodas.”
“I know.” The boy smiled winningly, revealing a blindingly white chipped front incisor. “But I do, and it’s your treat for acting like the world’s least-intimidating mugger. You got a tenner, tough guy?”
Danny looked over to the clerk, then back to the skinny kid, with his sly, chip-toothed smile, holding out an open palm and waiting eagerly.
Danny reached, fingers trembling, to the front zipper of his JanSport and grabbed his wallet.
He pulled out a single crisp ten-dollar bill, the one he’d kept in case of emergencies, like if he got stranded in Arlington, or suckered into a soda at a Chinese takeout by Roger Rabbit in human form.
“Thanks, Stone Cold Steve Austin,” the boy said, snatching the bill and handing it to the man behind the counter, who pressed it lazily into the change drawer and scooped up a handful of pennies and dimes.
“This is for you,” the boy said, snatching the change and dropping it into the clear plastic tip bucket, once home to a family of pretzel rods. “Thank you, Mr. Wong!
“Sitsitsit,” the boy said airily, heading back to the corner table.
“No, I—”
“Sit!” he commanded, pointing to the chair on which he’d been propping his legs. “You bought me a drink, and now you’re going to keep me company because this week’s Young and the Restless is reruns and even I’m not ridiculous enough to keep up with Guiding Light.”
Danny felt like he was looking at an equation in Sister Ignatius’s math class, a cluster of letters and numbers, none of them making a damn lick of sense.
Less than a minute ago, he had been about to go full St. Pete’s on this guy, and now he was sitting down with him for lunch?
Seeing no other option short of sprinting out with no fries to show for his trouble, Danny grabbed the cold cans of soda and shuffled over to the table.
“I’m Christian Geronimo,” the boy said, his fingers twisting in the air like he was picking an invisible peach off of a branch. “And trust me, I’ve heard all the jokes. And you are?”
“I’m, um, Danny,” he said, slouching into his chair.
Christian raised a smooth black eyebrow. “You say it like you aren’t sure.”
“No, I am,” Danny said, shaking his head. “I, um…”
His voice trailed off.
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Danny No-Last-Name-Given.
I’m glad I didn’t have to cut you—I much prefer lunch dates,” he said, cracking open his can with an index fingernail that Danny could swear was polished.
“While I’d hate to jack up a mug as pretty as yours, Flushing boys know how to rumble just fine. ”
Danny swallowed hard, not quite sure if this kid was joking. His eyes were an inky black, like that Rottweiler next door who always seemed to waver between wanting to lick Danny’s hand and tear it off.
“So, Danny No-Last-Name-Given,” Christian said, tucking his chin in his palm. “Where do you go? Not FIT, judging by the fit of that polo.”
“Oh.” Danny looked down at his apparently deficient outfit. “You probably don’t know it.”