Chapter Nine
Chapter
Nine
“Make a wish, Danny,” Ma said, the flicker of birthday candles dancing in her eyes.
Wishes were scarcer now. And if he got only one of ’em, he sure as hell wasn’t gonna waste it on something that wouldn’t fit into his new life. Danny took in a breath and closed his eyes.
Christian’s instructions were clear, which meant they were written with multiple exclamation points. Danny could almost hear his voice in the margins as he read the folded note that had been slipped into his locker.
get ready for your birthday adventure! meet us at the ferry terminal at 10 on saturday morning!! bring comfy shoes!!! DON’T WEAR ONE OF YOUR POLOS!!!!
Danny stepped off the ferry in Lower Manhattan.
Even though he’d been doing it every day for a month, he still felt like a foreigner.
There was so much city. Too much city. Perhaps his Nonni and Pop-Pop had come to the same conclusion fifty years earlier, taken one look at the craggy downtown skyline, and said “nope” before hightailing it to Staten Island.
The ferry terminal was as empty as he’d ever seen, minus his friends, who looked around like they were standing in a museum exhibit.
“I say this with love,” Christian said as Danny jogged up to meet them. “Where in the fresh hell are we?”
“What, you’ve never been to Wall Street?” Danny teased. “I thought you said you’ve lived here your whole life.”
“My city stops at Chambers—here be dragons,” Christian said with a smirk. “But regardless, happy birthday, tough guy!”
His friends cheered. Orion silently threw a handful of napkin confetti into the air.
“For your birthday, Danny darling,” Christian said, smiling, “we’re giving you…a tour of the City! Nina told us that you were worried you didn’t belong.”
Danny’s face burned with a sudden embarrassment. “Oh, no, I didn’t—”
“So!” Christian clucked, not giving him a chance to argue. “We’ve each picked a neighborhood that we think you’ll love. And trust me, this isn’t some Circle Line bullshit. This is our Manhattan.”
Danny looked at the four faces smiling back at him. Four faces that, if only for a day, didn’t seem to be judging him, or thinking he was stupid for not knowing a song or that black-and-white cookies were different from Oreos. Maybe his birthday wish was already coming true.
“Chop-chop!” Christian said, clapping his hands. “We’ve got lots to see.”
“The first stop is Orion’s pick,” Nina announced as the doors to the N train closed with a bing-bong. “And trust me, it’s a scream. There’s a lot more to this town than Lincoln Center.”
They jumped off the train at Canal Street.
The smell of ocean air lured Danny up the subway steps, leaving him to imagine a place where sidewalks gave way to sandy beaches.
But what greeted him wasn’t the sea, or even a canal like the street’s name promised, but an ocean of fish stacked in buckets of ice, crowded into shops no bigger than a corner deli.
Snapper and clams and shrimp as big as his hand, bought and sold by men and women shouting frantically in at least three languages.
A block more and the storefronts somehow got even smaller, divided into stalls, selling fans and blowers and car stereos and lightbulbs and clocks.
As they walked deeper down Canal Street, the electronics gave way to knockoff handbags, then watches and sunglasses and T-shirts hanging from makeshift clotheslines strung up between lampposts.
Where on earth had Orion taken them? What kind of lawless flea market bazaar?
With games of three-card monte and metal gates that would roll down like projector screens when a cop car would drive by?
They passed a garment rack of coats and a spray-painted sign that read, “PLEASE HIDE YOUR DRUGS ELSEWHERE.” That was when Astoria looked over her shoulder and, with a black-lipstick grin, declared, “Welcome to SoHo, my friend.”
“SoHo stands for South of Houston Street,” Nina explained in her best schoolmarm voice as they jaywalked across the intersection of Canal Street and Broadway. “That’s House-ton, despite the spelling,” she said, emphasizing the first syllable. “Only hicks pronounce it like Hew-ston.”
The neighborhood, it turned out, wasn’t the surprise, just part of the journey.
Orion’s destination was a red-and-white-checkered building that reminded Danny of Santa’s workshop or a tablecloth at an Italian restaurant.
“Pearl Paint,” announced the buzzing neon sign.
“The World’s Largest Art & Graphic Discount Center.
” Orion held open the door, stiffly waving them in like a butler inviting them to a murder-mystery party.
The first thing that struck Danny was the smell.
It was a mixture of turpentine and acrylic that made him feel dizzy, like he was at the dentist about to get a filling.
Orion led them up a staircase, steep and splintering, past patrons in paint-splattered overalls, lugging portfolios and canvases tucked underneath their arms.
“Oh, I didn’t see you at Serrano’s History of Sex launch party,” one said.
“No, I was at the Dirty Little Drawings show at Leslie-Lohman,” responded another.
When, at last, they reached the summit after a six-floor mountain climb, Danny flopped against the banister.
“What are we doing here?” he panted. “You know I’m not even an artist.”
Orion whipped around, peering at Danny through a set of thick black plastic glasses.
Orion reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a torn napkin (perhaps the same one used for his makeshift confetti), then a Sharpie, and began scribbling.
He capped the pen with a percussive click and thrust the note toward Danny.
Art isn’t what you create. It’s what you uncover.
Danny barely had time to ponder the note before Orion swung open the steel door, revealing a Wonka-esque candyland of art supplies and paints.
The walls were lined with pegboards, scissors hung like Christmas tree ornaments, wooden cubbies were stuffed with pens and markers in more colors than a coral reef, tubes of oil paint sprouted from the shelves with names like song lyrics—Crimson and Clover and Blue Eyes Blue and Little Corvette Red—and young men in Carhartts and old women with gray-streaked hair stood on tiptoe, reaching for the perfect sketchbook.
Every floor of Pearl Paint was a new Aladdin cave of treasures. And yet, even in this wonderland of creativity, Danny still had no clue what he was supposed to “uncover.” His canvas was completely blank.
As they were browsing through craft supplies on the fourth floor, Astoria let out a sudden gasp, ducking behind a shelf of spray paint cans arranged in a rainbow flock.
“Code red!” she whispered furiously as the rest of them crouched down like soldiers in a bunker. “Over by the pipe cleaners. Look who it is!”
Danny peeked over the cans at a woman with Kraft-macaroni-and-cheese-colored hair and long zebra-print leggings wearing a faux-fur coat and intently examining a baggie of foil stars.
“Who’s that?” Danny whispered.
“It’s her,” breathed Astoria. “Valerie Toxin, my A-number-one talent crush.”
“Who?” Danny asked.
“Ugh!” Astoria groaned. “She’s the first lady of Lower East Side performance art. I’m certain you’ve heard of her.”
Danny was certain he’d never heard of her, or of any other performance artist.
“She did that piece last year with the saxophone and the gallon of Miracle Whip,” Astoria whispered. “You must have heard rumblings.”
Danny knit his eyebrows together apologetically.
“Well, that’s her!”
“You should say hi,” Christian said, shrugging.
“What are you, crazy?!” Astoria barked, but then she covered her mouth with both of her hands, sinking down even lower behind the display of pom-poms.
Danny peeked over the shelf at this supposed celebrity who was loading up her arms with bags of adhesive googly eyes. It was the first time he’d ever seen Astoria seem uncertain of herself.
“Lemme help you with those,” said a man with a high-top and a “PEARL PAINT” vest, approaching her and holding out a red basket.
“Oh, thanks,” the orange-haired woman replied in a cigarette-raspy alto. “Is there another section for glitter that I’m not seeing?”
“We have some more in the back,” the employee replied. “How much d’you need?”
Valerie stared down the bridge of her nose through her aviator shades. “How much do you have?”
“Come on.” Astoria waved her hand, army crawling on her hands and knees to the exit. “We have to get out now before I have a panic attack, I am not even kidding.”
Once safely outside, Astoria took a seat on the yellow painted curb and put her head between her knees, breathing deeply and loudly. Orion began stealthily posing the friends around her in a tableau before producing his Polaroid camera from the inside of his trench coat.
FLASH.
“Where to next?” Danny asked.
“This one’s mine,” Astoria said, holding out her hand for a moment.
“Well, don’t just stand there, Danny. Help me up.”
They crossed the busy intersection of Houston, which Danny made sure to not mentally pronounce like the city in Texas, then up Mercer and over to Sullivan, passing galleries with neon lightbulb art and hole-in-the-wall palm readers.
They passed a square where an elderly man sat feeding the pigeons underneath a sign that read “Do Not Feed Pigeons” and a chain-link court where men smacked a rubber ball against a weathered concrete wall.
“Welcome to Greenwich Village!” Astoria announced. “Home to Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac, and, according to a plaque I once saw, the guy who shot Alexander Hamilton.”