15. Vince
VINCE
I stood on the corner I hadn't stood on in years and watched people come and go from Mercer's.
The shop sat exactly where I'd left it, same brick, same hand-painted sign that needed redoing, same cracked steps.
A woman came out holding a paper bag, then a man went in, then two teenage girls stopped at the window. None of them looked at me.
I'd walked these streets when I had nothing. I'd left them the day I could afford not to come back.
Until now.
A kid walked past with a skateboard tucked under one arm. He called out, "Hey, Josie!" to someone across the street I couldn't see. The door to the bodega two shops down opened, and an older woman stepped out, groceries in both hands. She stopped near me to shift her grip.
"Afternoon," I said.
She looked up, squinted at me like she was trying to place my face, and gave up. "Afternoon."
She kept walking. I watched her go and felt something hard settle in my chest.
Everyone seemed to know Josie. I stood there for twenty minutes and counted five people who called out to her by name, waved at the shop window, or went in and stayed long enough that I knew they weren't just buying something. They knew her. She'd never left.
I noticed Rosa's restaurant next. The window was broken.
Not just cracked — actually broken, a hole the size of a fist with cracks spiderwebbing out from the center.
Someone had taped cardboard over it from the inside, but the cardboard was peeling at one corner.
The bodega had a broken window too. So did the dry cleaner's. So did the place that sold used books.
God, I'd been gone a long time.
A man came out of Rosa's carrying a takeout bag. I stepped toward him before I could think about it.
"Excuse me," I said. "What happened to the window?"
He glanced at me, then at the window. "Vandals," he said. "They come around every few weeks. Break whatever they feel like breaking."
"Does anyone call the police?"
He laughed, but it wasn't a kind sound. "Sure. Police come, take a report, leave. Vandals come back. Same thing over and over."
"What about cameras?"
"Can't afford cameras." He shifted the bag in his hands. "Look, man, I don't know what you're doing here, but if you're thinking about moving in, don't. This neighborhood's going downhill and it's not stopping."
He walked off before I could answer.
I pulled out my phone and opened a new note. Rosa's — window, reinforced glass. Cameras. Bodega — same. Dry cleaner — same. I started walking, keeping my head down, looking at everything I'd spent nine years not seeing.
The list grew fast. Graffiti on the laundromat. Broken streetlight in front of the bookshop. Loose railing on the steps up to the apartment over the barbershop. Trash piled up in the alley because the dumpster was rusted through. I wrote it all down, and my hand cramped around the phone.
I wanted to fix it. All of it.
But I didn't know how to do it without writing a check, and I knew — I knew — that wasn't what this needed.
I stopped in front of the bodega and stared at the broken window until the owner noticed me. He came to the door, wiping his hands on his apron.
"Help you?" he said.
"Your window," I said. My voice came out rougher than I meant it to. "How long's it been like that?"
"Two weeks. Why?"
"I want to help."
He looked at me like I'd just offered him something obscene. "Help how?"
"Get it fixed. I know people who do glass."
"Yeah?" He crossed his arms. "And what's it gonna cost me?"
I opened my mouth and then realized I didn't have an answer.
I didn't know what glass cost. I didn't know how you hired someone to install a window.
I'd spent nine years solving things by signing my name at the bottom of a contract, and I had no idea how to talk to a man about a broken window in his own shop.
"Nothing," I said finally. "It won't cost you anything."
He stared at me. "Who are you?"
"Just — someone who wants to help."
"Right." He stepped back inside. "Thanks, but no thanks."
The door closed. I stood there like an idiot, staring at my own reflection in the broken glass.
I kept walking.
An hour later I'd talked to seven businesses and gotten nowhere with six of them. The barbershop owner told me to get lost. The woman at the dry cleaner's said if I wanted to help I could start by minding my own business. The guy at the bookshop shut the door in my face.
I was bad at this. Worse than bad.
I turned the corner near Mercer's and saw her.
Josie stood outside the shop, talking to a woman I didn't recognize.
She was laughing at something the woman had said, her whole face lit up in a way I hadn't seen in years.
My chest went tight. I stopped walking and just watched her, standing there in jeans and a sweater with her hair pulled back, looking like she belonged exactly where she was.
I thought maybe she'd look up. Maybe she'd see me and I could — what? Wave? Walk over? Say something that would make her understand I was trying?
She didn't look up. The woman said something else and Josie laughed again, and then they both went inside.
I didn't follow her. I turned around and walked the other way, my throat aching like I'd swallowed glass.
By the time the sun started going down, I'd asked every business on the block what they needed.
Some talked to me. Most didn't. The ones who did gave me lists: new locks, better lighting, someone to haul away the trash, a door that actually closed, a step that didn't wobble.
Small things. Specific things. Things that added up to a neighborhood nobody was taking care of.
I sat on the curb outside Mercer's after everything closed and went through the list on my phone. Forty-three items. Forty-three things Josie had been looking at every single day while I sat in my office deciding what other people's buildings were worth.
My hands were shaking. I called Gideon.
"It's me," I said when he picked up.
"Vince." He sounded surprised. "Where are you?"
"Josie's neighborhood. I need you to do something."
There was a pause. "What kind of something?"
I read him the list. All of it. Windows and locks and lights and trash and graffiti and railings and every small broken thing I'd written down. He didn't interrupt. When I finished, the line was quiet.
"That's a lot of work," he said finally.
"I know."
"It's going to take time. Money. Contractors."
"I know."
Another pause. "Vince, the mayor's pulling our permits. Harlow made good on her threat. Every project we've got in the pipeline just got frozen. This is going to be hard. Harder than it should be."
I looked at the darkened window of Mercer's. Somewhere inside, Josie was probably locking up, counting the register, getting ready to walk back to Rosa's place where she was staying because she couldn't stand to be in the same apartment as me.
"I don't care," I said.
"You don't — Vince, we're talking about millions of dollars in delays. The mayor can drag this out for months if he wants to. You're going to burn every bridge you've got in this city if you don't back down."
"I don't care," I said again. My voice didn't even sound like mine. "Do it anyway."
Gideon was quiet. Then he said, "Okay."
"Okay?"
"I'll make it happen. It'll take a few days to line up the contractors, but I'll make it happen."
Something in my chest loosened, just a fraction. "Thank you."
"Vince," he said, and stopped.
"What?"
"Nothing. I'll call you tomorrow."
He hung up. I sat there on the curb with my phone in my hand and watched the street empty out around me.
The next morning I came back. I woke up at five, got dressed, and drove straight to the neighborhood. The sun was just starting to come up and the streets were quiet.
Omar Cruz was outside his laundromat with a bucket and a scrub brush, working on the graffiti that covered the side wall. He looked up when I walked over.
"Morning," he said.
"Morning. You need help with that?"
He looked at me, then at the wall, then back at me. "You know how to scrub graffiti off brick?"
"No," I said. "But I can figure it out."
He laughed and handed me the brush. "All right. Go for it."
I took the brush and got to work. The graffiti didn't come off easy. I had to scrub hard, leaning my whole weight into it, and even then it just smeared at first. Omar kept talking the whole time, telling me about the neighborhood, about the people who lived here, about Josie.
"She's a good kid," he said. "Always has been. Helps out around here more than she has to, you know? Fixes things. Brings people food when they're sick. Hell, last week she spent two hours helping my daughter with her math homework."
I scrubbed harder.
"We're glad she's around more now," Omar went on. "Used to be we'd only see her a couple times a week. Now she's here every day. I don't know what changed, but it's good. The neighborhood needs people like her."
My chest hurt. I kept scrubbing.
"You new around here?" Omar asked.
"No," I said. "I grew up here."
"Yeah? I don't recognize you."
"It's been a long time."
He didn't push it. We worked in silence for a while, and then he said, "You know, if you really want to help out, I've got a list."
"A list?"
"Things that need doing. Small stuff, mostly. I can't pay you or anything, but if you've got the time?—"
"I've got the time," I said.
He grinned and pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket. "All right then. Let's start with the gutters. They're clogged and every time it rains the water just pours down onto the sidewalk. After that we've got the back door — lock's broken and I've been propping it shut with a brick."
I looked at the list. Gutters, locks, a leaking pipe, shelves pulling away from the wall, a floor tile that had come loose.
"I'll do it," I said.
"What, all of it?"
"All of it."
Omar stared at me. "Man, I don't even know your name."
"Vince."
"Well, Vince, you're either crazy or you've got nothing better to do with your time." He clapped me on the shoulder. "Either way, I'll take the help."
I worked through the list, one thing at a time, and it was harder than I'd thought. I didn't know how to clean a gutter or fix a lock or patch a leaking pipe. I had to ask Omar how to do half of it, and even then I screwed up more than I got right.
But I kept going. I decided I'd do it myself, not because I was good at it, but because it's what Josie would've done. She wouldn't have hired someone. She would've gotten her hands dirty and figured it out.
By noon I was sweaty and sore and my shirt was ruined.
I took off my jacket and tie and left them in the car, then rolled up my sleeves and went back to the graffiti.
It still wasn't coming off. I scrubbed until my shoulders burned and my hands cramped, and the paint clung to the brick like it had been there forever.
Omar brought me a bottle of water. "You're really going at it, huh?"
"Yeah." I wiped the sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand. "It's stubborn."
"Everything around here is stubborn. That's why most people give up." He looked at me for a long moment. "You're not giving up, though."
"No."
"Why not?"
I didn't know how to answer that. I thought about Josie, about the way she'd laughed yesterday outside Mercer's. I thought about Gideon asking me what she'd fallen in love with, the man or the money, and the iron ring I'd made with my own hands when I had nothing.
I thought about being that man again. About whether I'd ever stopped being him, or whether I'd just buried him under nine years of contracts and deals and buildings I'd torn down without asking what they meant.
"I just need to," I said finally.
Omar nodded like that made sense. "Well, keep at it then. I'll be inside if you need me."
He went back into the laundromat. I picked up the brush and kept scrubbing, my whole body aching, the sun beating down on my back. The paint started to come off in patches, bit by bit, and I didn't stop until I couldn't lift my arms anymore.
When I finally stepped back to look at the wall, it wasn't perfect. You could still see the ghost of the graffiti underneath, a shadow of what had been there. But it was better. It was something.
I sat down on the curb and looked at my hands.
They were raw and red, blisters forming on my palms where I'd gripped the brush too hard.
I'd ruined a two-thousand-dollar shirt and I didn't care.
I'd spent the whole day doing work I didn't know how to do, in a neighborhood that didn't recognize me anymore, for a woman who wouldn't even look at me.
And I was going to come back tomorrow and do it again.
I thought about Gideon's question. What did she fall in love with? The man or the money?
I didn't have an answer yet. But I was going to find out. I was going to be the man she'd needed me to be, even if it took me the rest of my life to figure out what that meant.
Even if she never knew I was trying.