Chapter Nine #2
The racks of clothing that had choked the sidewalks of SoHo had been replaced with trees just beginning to crackle with the early bursts of autumn color.
Buildings went from cast-iron industrial to stately brick.
Women with white fluffy dogs peered at berry-topped cakes through shop windows, and men with pointy mustaches set up card tables blanketed with black-and-white postcards of bridges.
It wasn’t the dirty New York that Danny had come to know from the ferry terminal and the 1 train, the New York that Danny’s father had warned him about—it was, he almost couldn’t say it, beautiful.
At the corner of West Fourth Street and MacDougal, they approached a lively patch of green, which was when Astoria turned to face her friends.
“Washington Square Park. It’s my gift to you, Danny,” she said, like a smart, skirt-wearing lady at a museum. “Even though it’s not actually the coolest park in the City—that’s Tompkins Square, but I knew you’d get freaked if you saw people shooting up.”
Guitar picks and harmonica hums welcomed Danny and his friends into the park as a small crowd gathered around two men squaring off in a midmorning jam session.
To Danny’s left, old black gentlemen stared intently across a row of chess tables at their opponents, white kids in baseball caps no older than thirteen.
Danny’s jacket flapped in the wind as a gang of skateboards whizzed past him, the riders’ faces pierced and pinched with more metal than a bottle cap factory.
An Asian woman held a bandsaw lovingly in her hand, playing the metal plate with a violin’s bow.
Thumbs dinged handlebar bells from the ubiquitous passing bike, and a girl in a Barbie-pink Power Wheels Jeep raced by without a license.
In the center of the park, a giant fountain had been repurposed as a makeshift neighborhood pool where children splashed around in underwear emblazoned with comic book heroes, even with the chill in the air.
A German shepherd chased a Frisbee, tie-dyed students juggled hacky sacks, and furtive lips mumbled, “Purple Haze, Black Rock, Gorilla Biscuits, C-Dust.” Bottles were hidden in crumpled brown paper bags and tambourines were slammed against corduroy hips and a giant white marble arch watched over them all, perfectly framing the towers of the World Trade Center, waving from downtown.
“I love it.”
Danny beamed, closing his eyes, inhaling the sweet, crisp air he had learned probably wasn’t just autumn, but a nearby lit joint.
“Thank you, Astoria,” he said, but when he opened his eyes, she was already off, hopping up on a nearby bench and clearing her throat.
“An improvised poem for Danny on his birthday,” Astoria trumpeted, turning the heads of a few passing park-goers out for a Saturday stroll.
Astoria squinted her eyes and squeezed her fingers together in the shape of a crocus, then opened her mouth and began reciting a poem in the rhythm of a toddler playing the drums.
Verrazano
Verrazano
O, your floating boats
The Prince of Staten Island
Doesn’t wear a crown
New York Strip
New York Strip
Do I strip him of his throne?
He doesn’t know who Barbara Kruger is
But his eyes are elevator buttons
And his heart
A Big Apple.
“And, scene,” Astoria said, closing her fist in front of her face.
Danny joined the crowd in a smattering of applause, mostly embarrassed, but trying to live in the moment, the way real artists do. Behind him, a group of college-aged kids with mohawks and berets began to snap their fingers.
“Rad, man.”
“Thank you,” Astoria said. “Be sure to check out my show Hysterical Blondeness, date and location TBA.”
“Well, that was nice of you to warm us up, Astoria,” Christian said as the group clopped up the stairs at the Fourteenth Street subway station. “But it’s time to show Danny the actual best place in the City.”
Chelsea, it turned out, wasn’t a girl, but a neighborhood with a girl’s name—a neighborhood lined with diners and places selling greeting cards and dirty videotapes, a neighborhood filled with dudes wearing acid-wash shorts and gel-swooped hair, with cantaloupes in the place where their biceps were supposed to be, all of them tan and all of them cruising up Eighth Avenue like it was their personal runway.
“Chelsea is where I’m going to live,” Christian said, chassé-ing across the sidewalk. “Once I’m either a principal at American Ballet Theater or a famous drag queen.”
“Well, which is it gonna be?” Nina said, snapping her gum.
“Wherever the applause is louder, dahling!”
There were piano bars and cabaret signs with names Danny recognized from his stolen Next Magazine.
There were mannequin torsos with abs as rippled as a cheese grater and shops called Tops ’N Bottoms, and Roger and Dave, and Bang Bang.
There were Open signs hanging from shop windows.
There were fingers hanging from belt loops.
There were hands tucked in the back pockets of jeans, and the smell of CK One seemed to waft through every open door.
“Aaaand here we are,” Christian said, swinging open the red door of a sweet-looking café called the Big Cup.
Inside, the walls were painted Bazooka Joe pink and stenciled with polka dots.
There were bright plastic chairs and coma-comfy couches, tight shirts, tight jeans, cereal-bowl-sized cappuccinos, and inexplicably framed portraits of clowns.
All of the patrons were chatting and laughing like they knew each other, like maybe Danny and his friends had just crashed someone else’s birthday.
But Christian seemed right at home, strutting up to the counter, to the skinny man in a pink apron with bleached curly hair.
“Hi, hello, sir,” Christian said. “We’ll have five half-caf, triple shot, no-foam lattes, please.”
“Five half-caf, triple shot, no-foam lattes?” the pink apron man repeated double time, clearly caffeinated on his own supply. “That’ll be fourteen fifty. Cash, check, or charge?”
“Fourteen dollars for coffees?!” Christian squealed. “Okay, can we just have five plain teas?”
“It’s fine,” Nina groaned, reaching into her purse and pulling out three crisp five-dollar bills.
“We’ll call you when your order is ready, mmmkay?” the man in the apron sang. “Make yourself at home.”
Danny and his cohorts shuffled over to a formation of leather couches, squeezing in between an elderly man sneaking bites of egg sandwich to a toy Chihuahua hidden in his cardigan and a guy in white pants reading the Village Voice.
“Christian,” Nina said in an exhausted tone, looking around at the high-maintenance haircuts and the fanned-out magazines and the dress shoes worn without socks. “Did you bring us to a gay bar?”
Danny’s stomach did a double pirouette.
“How very dare!” Christian said, throwing his hand to his chest in mock offense. “Does it look like there’s alcohol here? No! I just thought Danny could use a little culture and caffeine.”
“They still haven’t found that thing?” Astoria said, pointing to the front page of white pants guy’s folded newspaper.
“CASH THAT CAT: Reward Increased for Bronx Zoo Lion’s Capture!”
“He’s probably dead,” White Pants said dryly, flipping the page. “It says here that lions need fifteen pounds of fresh meat a day to survive. Where’s a cat that big supposed to find that much fresh meat in New York City?”
“Did somebody say fresh meat?” a nearby voice chirped.
Danny turned to find the sight of a college-aged guy with shaved-off eyebrows approaching their table, clutching a handful of cardboard flyers.
“Sorry to bother you,” the guy said in a musical lilt. “Just wanted to invite you to my show tonight. Eight p.m. at the Duplex.”
The man with no eyebrows began handing out postcards featuring a photograph of a person (possibly himself?) wearing a blue gingham dress and messy brown braided wig, and clutching a bottle of Belvedere vodka with red lipstick smeared on the lip.
“Ten bucks at the door,” he said, handing Christian a postcard. “But no cover if you bring your friend here.”
The man arched what should have been an eyebrow, and Danny’s stomach did approximately ten backflips.
“Love and lollipops!” the man said, kissing his hand and tossing it into his wake as he sailed off to another table.
“Um, Danny,” Astoria said, beaming. “I think you just got cruised.”
The entire table of friends erupted in giggles.
“No way,” Danny mumbled, not entirely sure what cruised meant, except for the fact that getting cruised somehow made his tongue weigh about twenty-five pounds.
“You totally did,” Nina snorted. “Wanna go break it to him that you’re straight, or should I?”
Danny laughed nervously, mercifully interrupted by the peppy barista calling out their order.
“High-maintenance lattés, party of five!”
“Thank you, Christian. That was certainly…educational,” Nina said, exiting the café onto the tree-lined Chelsea street. “But I have a feeling my surprise will be Danny’s favorite.”
Nina had barely even raised her Tiffany tennis bracelet in the air when a yellow cab screeched up to the curb. Danny had a feeling that cabs always stopped for Nina—something about her just screamed “girl in a hurry with a fistful of tens.”
“Forty-Fifth between Seventh and Eighth,” Nina said as they piled into the cab like Pound Puppies. “Also, can you turn on the air, my good man?”
After twenty-five blocks, the cab deposited them in front of a building where a sea of fancy-looking patrons gathered beneath an awning, its name spelled out in tiny lightbulbs and molded letters: “Imperial Theater.” Danny looked up at the marquee, at a giant poster two stories high of a girl in a tattered dress with a French flag flapping behind her.
“Are you for real?” Danny gasped, turning to Nina. “You got us tickets to Les Misérables?”
“Not exactly,” Nina said, stepping out of the cab.
“I’m not that rich,” she said. “And it started an hour and a half ago, but something tells me you’ve never heard of ‘second-acting,’ Danny.”