No Witness But the Moon(39)
That, and Freddy Torres.
They crossed the street now, away from the mob.
“Listen, Freddy.” Vega rubbed his sore back. He felt grimy and sweat-soaked. “I don’t want to be the reason your school burns down or you get beat up.”
Torres laughed. “I’ve survived a dozen mayors, urban renewal, and both the crack and the AIDs epidemics in this neighborhood. I think I can survive your little visit today.”
Vega hadn’t seen Torres since his mother’s funeral nearly two years ago. His friend seemed to have grown old in the interim. His black hair had receded on the sides, leaving a little island of dark bird’s nest fuzz in the middle of his head. His droopy black mustache did nothing to hide the sag of his chin. His shoulders sloped. He wasn’t fat but beneath his hooded sweatshirt his belly had grown a little soft and pendulous. Vega had to remind himself that Torres had suffered even more losses than he had these past couple of years. His father died of cancer. Then his mother was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Then his younger sister, Donna, the one with Down syndrome, slipped and fell to her death from the family’s fifth-floor apartment window. Torres had an older sister, Jackie, but she lived out west somewhere, so Torres—never married and childless—had had to handle everything by himself. It couldn’t have been easy. And now here was Vega, as usual, bringing more trouble.
“I hate to ask, but can I beg one more favor?” Vega told him about Joy, still waiting at St. Raymond’s Church. “You wouldn’t happen to have a car nearby, would you?”
“My SUV is behind the school. Happy to be your chauffeur.”
“I owe you.” An understatement.
Vega dialed Joy and told her he’d run into “an old friend” who was going to drive Vega to the church to pick her up. She chewed him out for taking so long to call but she bought the lie. That’s all he was interested in.
“Good,” said Torres. “Now let’s get you cleaned up.”
Torres’s charter school, the Bronx Academy of Achievement was a block away. It was housed in a former tool-and-dye factory, four stories tall, with a fenced-in basketball court beside it. Everything about the building was square: square windows. Square flat roof. Square panes of glass in the front doors. What it lacked in architectural embellishments, however, it made up for in wow-factor. The entire stucco exterior was painted in tropical hues of lavender, orange, turquoise, and pink.
A knot of teenagers gathered by the chain-link fence of the basketball court next to the school, eyeing Vega and pretending not to at the same time. Reggaeton and rap music blared over a stereo speaker. Vega missed those sounds. In the suburbs, loud music was considered an assault, not an expression of joy.
Torres walked over to the fence and knuckle-rapped a few of the teenagers. “Game’s over today, hombres.” There was a collective groan. “Come back for the tournament tomorrow.” Torres turned to Vega. “We’re doing a basketball tournament in the indoor gym tomorrow at two. I’d invite you inside to wash up and take a tour of the school, but I’ve got painters redoing the stairwells at the moment and they don’t even let me walk around.” Torres nodded to the laundromat on the other side of the basketball court. “You can wash up at EZ Clean.”
“They’ll let me?”
“Carmela better.” Torres smiled. “I own the place.”
The Bronx had once been bargain-basement real estate. But no more. The guys who hung around and put a few dollars into the borough were reaping big profits now.
“So you’re into real estate these days?” asked Vega.
“I own a couple of small businesses, that’s all,” said Torres. “Somebody’s got to keep the neighborhood institutions going.”
Carmela, the EZ Clean’s manager, was an older Puerto Rican woman with a body like a water balloon and hair dyed the color of a new penny. She lifted her gaze from her magazine, greeted Torres as “El doctor,” and directed Vega to a bathroom at the back of the store. Silver Speed Queen washers and dryers rumbled along the floors and walls as Vega made his way down the aisles, dodging small children who were playing hide-and-seek and mothers chatting in Spanish on cell phones. The air was humid and detergent scented. The light had a truck-stop café brightness to it.
It had been decades since Vega had been inside a laundromat. He considered it one of the hallmarks of becoming middle class that he owned his own Sears washer and dryer and no longer had to waste time in a place like this. And yet being here filled him with such an unexpected sense of nostalgia. He could still see himself as that small boy enveloped in a warm, sweet-smelling cocoon of maternal embraces and children’s chatter. If he closed his eyes, he could hear the chirp of the two parakeets that used to sit in a cage behind the front desk. He could still feel the static from the fresh-washed blankets as his mother removed them from the dryer.
Vega washed his hands and face in the bathroom and took a wet paper towel to the surface of his insulated jacket.
“Heads up,” said Torres when Vega stepped out. Torres tossed a can of Coke from the vending machine in his direction. Vega caught it.
“Still got the old baseball reflexes, I see,” said Torres. “I’d buy you a beer, but I figure you don’t need to add a DUI to your troubles.”
“You got that right. Salud.” Vega popped the tab and took a long pull. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.