One last stop, p.32
One Last Stop, page 32
peopleofcity
* * *
[Photo shows a young white man with red hair sitting on a subway train holding a bag of groceries. In the background, just out of focus, a dark-haired woman reads a book with headphones on, a leather jacket bundled under one arm.]
* * *
peopleofcity My parents split up when I was a kid, and I lost touch with my dad, but I knew he was in New York. I moved up here a year ago after my mother died. I couldn’t stand the thought of having a parent who was still alive and not even trying to have a relationship with him, you know? I’ve been looking for him since I got here. Dad, if you see this, I forgive you. Let’s have a burger.
May 14, 2015
“I swear to God, if I have to inflate one more balloon…” Wes says as he ties off a red balloon with his teeth.
“Get used to it,” Myla says. She’s tying a bundle of them together with a rainbow of ribbons. “We need about two hundred more of these to pull this off.”
Wes halfheartedly gives her the finger. Myla blows him a kiss.
August checks her phone. Three hours until doors open on the most ambitious—and only—party she’s ever attempted to throw in her life. Six hours until they put their plan into motion. Seven hours until Myla overloads the circuit and blacks out the line.
Seven hours until Jane might be gone for good.
And here August is, blowing up a ten-foot inflatable cat with sunglasses and an electric guitar.
The party store by Myla’s work donated their least popular decorations, and they had to take what giant inflatables they could get—anything tall enough to block a security camera. The balloons will take care of the rest.
“Do you need anything?” Gabe asks, hovering around Myla like an enormous gnat with a Shawn Hunter haircut. Part of the agreement with the city was that Gabe’s uncle would supervise the event, and Gabe’s uncle apparently does not give a shit, because he sent Gabe instead. They keep having to switch topics when he drifts too close, so he doesn’t figure out the whole thing is partially a cover for a time crime.
“Actually,” Myla says, “I would love a Filet-O-Fish. Ooh, and a bubble tea.”
“Oh, uh—sure, okay.” And Gabe wanders off, glowering at Niko when he thinks nobody’s looking.
“That should buy us an hour,” Myla says when he’s gone. “Do you think I should feel bad about this?”
“I overheard him explaining wage disparity to Lucie earlier,” Wes says. “He said he believes he’s ‘undermining capitalism’ by ‘choosing’ not to pay his own rent.”
“Ew,” Myla groans. “Nope, okay, sticking to the plan.”
The Plan, as outlined on the whiteboard, and then thoroughly erased to destroy all evidence: One. Wait for the party to hit maximum capacity. Two. Myla seduces Gabe’s security clearance badge away from him. Three. August sneaks out to meet Jane on the Q. Four. Wes stages a diversion to pull security guards away from the control room door. Five. Myla overloads the line while Jane stands on the third rail.
August ties off her last balloon and texts Jane a selfie—tongue out, peace sign, hair static from all the helium-filled latex.
sup, ugly, Jane texts back, and August almost spits out her gum. She should never have given Jane and Myla each other’s numbers. Jane’s going to be bringing millennial humor back to the ’70s.
God, she’ll miss her.
While Lucie and Jerry set up the pancake station, Myla’s network of Brooklyn artists start wheeling in sculptures and paintings and wood reliefs of ugly dogs for the silent auction. There are wristbands to wrangle, drink tickets to count, lights and a stage and a sound system to set up, gendered bathroom signs to cover with pictures of breakfast foods.
“Put it on, Wes.” August sighs, throwing the last remaining Pancake Billy’s House of Pancakes T-shirt at him.
“This is a small,” he argues. “You know I wear XL.”
“Please, that is a youth medium-ass man,” says a loud voice, and it’s Isaiah, brows already glued down, swanning in with a clothing rack full of drag and a trail of half-done drag daughters. Winfield’s bringing up the rear, and once they disappear into the back to paint, Wes pouts and puts his size small T-shirt on and trudges to the corner where his friends from the tattoo shop have set up their booth.
Six kegs and ten crates full of liquor get unloaded from someone’s borrowed minivan, courtesy of Slinky’s and a few other neighborhood bars, and Lucie directs a couple of Billy’s busboys hanging lights from the rafters over the makeshift dance floor and the stage they’ve set up for the show. When Myla kills the overheads, August has to admit the place looks incredible, all brutalist lines and giant antique levers and dingy tubes of wires transformed in the glow.
Eight o’clock draws closer and closer, and August can’t believe it, but they actually made this happen.
“You ready for this, old man?” August asks, tying her hair up as she takes her spot at Jerry’s side, next to the griddle. He and a small army of line cooks will be slinging pancakes all night, and August and Lucie will be passing them out to the drunk and hungry.
“Born ready, buttercup,” Jerry says with a wink.
She knew, mathematically, that they sold more than two thousand tickets for tonight. But it’s one thing to see the number, and another entirely to see this many people in the flesh, dancing and bellying up to the makeshift bar. Jerry and the line cooks start pouring batter on the griddle, and August realizes they might save Billy’s and Jane in one night after all.
The first hour passes in a riot of color and noise and maple syrup. Art school kids in Filas pick their way down the silent auction line, oohing and ahhing at Myla’s enormous, glittering, twitching sculpture, which she’s entitled IT DO TAKE NERVE. People line up to have Wes or someone else from his shop ink something impulsive onto their arms. The first queens take the stage, spinning under the lights and crowing crass jokes into the microphone.
It gets louder, and louder, and louder.
Lucie leans over, scrambling to fill a plate with pancakes before a shitfaced NYU student with corduroy overalls and half-pink hair can chug any more of the complimentary syrup. “Did we give out too many drink tickets?”
August watches two girls nearby go from making out to viciously arguing and back to making out in the span of four seconds. “We were trying to get them to donate more.”
“Have you seen Myla?” says a voice to her right. It’s Gabe, out of breath and sweaty, a rapidly separating milk tea in one hand and a crumpled McDonald’s bag in the other.
August looks him over. “Man, I don’t think she wants that Filet-O-Fish anymore. It’s been, like, four hours.”
“Shit,” he says. He looks around at the pandemonium in time to see Vera Harry throw herself off the stage and start crowdsurfing. “Things got, uh, kinda crazy while I was gone.”
“Yeah,” August says. The tires on Gabe’s Tesla may or may not have been slashed by a fish-shaped knife before his errand to keep him busy for a few hours. August isn’t taking questions. “You want a drink?”
The night blares on—the guys from the post office next to Billy’s having a disjointed dance-off, a person with a lip ring shotgunning two White Claws at once, bodies jumping and swaying as the queen who is sometimes Winfield takes the stage in a magenta beard and performs an elaborate socialism-themed number set to a mix of “She Works Hard for the Money” and clips from AOC speeches.
Isaiah’s Easter brunch was madness. Christmas in July was chaos. But this is a full-tilt, balls-to-the-wall, someone-getting-a-tattoo-of-Chuckie-Finster, drag-king-named-Knob-Dylan-doing-a-full-gymnastics-routine shitshow. The tip jar by the pancake griddle is overflowing with cash. August feels like the entire belly of New York’s weirdest and queerest has emptied out on the dance floor, smelling like syrup and weed and hairspray. If she weren’t double occupied by her pancake job and the Jane plan, Myla and Niko would have her out there in a cloud of glitter.
The feeling she had at Delilah’s comes back, tugging at her hair, pushing her heart against her ribs. Jane should be here. Not on a train waiting for this party to smuggle her out of purgatory. Here, in it, defiant by existing, in a room full of people who would love her.
“And what are we here for tonight?” Bomb Bumboclaat shouts into the mic.
“Billy’s!” the crowd shouts.
“Who has held down the corner of Church and Bedford for forty-five years?”
“Billy’s!”
“Who’s gon’ do it for forty-five more?”
“Billy’s!”
“And what do we say to landlords?”
The crowd inhales as one, through smoke and dry ice and paint fumes, and they bellow out in one resounding voice, middle fingers raised up to the lights, “Fuck you!”
Bomb Bumboclaat leaves the stage, and the alarm goes off on August’s phone.
It’s time.
* * *
August’s fingers are sweaty on her phone.
She can do this. She can.
She registered with one of those conference call services last week so they could keep a group call going while they try to pull this off—the bootleg version of Mission Impossible comms. She ducks behind a bundle of balloons and starts the call.
Myla dials in first, then Wes, Niko, and finally Jane. She knows exactly where each of them is, because they agreed on it beforehand: Wes is taking a break from the tattoo booth to smoke a cigarette dangerously close to a trash can full of alcohol-soaked paper cups. Myla is milling around the edge of the dance floor, keeping an eye on Gabe as he refills his drink. Niko is one floor up, looking over the railing of the catwalk to keep tabs on everyone.
“And I’m on the subway,” Jane says. “You know, in case anyone was wondering.”
August switches her phone to speaker and slides it upside down into the front pocket of her T-shirt, like she did the night of Isaiah’s party. Only it’s not just Jane in her pocket this time. It’s a whole family.
“Y’all ready?”
“Yep,” Myla says.
“As I’ll ever be,” Wes says.
“I like when you’re in crime boss mode,” Jane adds.
“These pancakes are fantastic,” Niko says, muffled through a mouthful. “Tell Jerry I said he’s doing great.”
“Do the spirit guides have anything to say about whether or not this is gonna work?” Jane asks.
August looks up to see Niko lick a finger and stick it in the air. “Hmm. I’m feeling pretty good about it.”
“Dope,” Myla says. “Let’s go.”
August can’t see her through the enormous crowd, but she can hear the noise shifting through the speaker as she moves.
“Hey, Gabe?” she says. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
Gabe’s voice comes faintly across the line. “Sure, what’s up?”
“No, I meant … alone.” Myla leans heavily on the last word. She’s heard Myla use that voice on Niko more than she’d care to think about around the apartment, usually followed by a lot of loud music from their room and August taking a trip downstairs for an extra-long Popeyes dinner.
“Oh. Okay, yeah.”
She drags him off toward a storage closet they scouted earlier, and August finally catches a glimpse of them, Myla’s hand wrapped around his elbow. The badge is where it’s been all day—on the lanyard hanging around his neck. August watches Myla lean away from him and into the phone tucked under her bra strap, ducking her head down so he can’t see her mouth move.
“Niko, everything I’m about to say to this guy is a complete and total lie, and I love you and will marry you and adopt a hundred three-eyed ravens or whatever it is your weird ass wants instead of kids,” she mutters.
“I know,” Niko says back. “Did you just propose to me?”
“Oh shit, I guess I did?” Myla opens the door and shoves Gabe through it.
“I’m so mad at you,” Niko says. “I already have a ring at home.”
“Oh my God, seriously?” says Jane.
“Mazel,” Wes chimes in.
“Y’all,” August says.
“Right,” Myla says. “Here I go. Muting you guys now.”
August sees her slide a hand under her shirt to turn the volume on her phone down, but she leaves the mic on. “Hey, Gabe. Sorry to bug you. But I … I just really wanted to thank you for helping us.”
August can practically hear him blushing. “Oh, it’s no big deal. Anything for you, Myles.”
“Myles?” Wes and August mutter in disgusted unison.
“I wanted to let you know … I’m so sorry about what happened between us. I was a dick. I don’t know what I was thinking. You deserved better.”
“I appreciate you saying that.”
“And, I … I know you have every right to hate me. But fuck if I don’t still think about you all the time.”
“You do?”
“Yeah … when Niko’s asleep, sometimes, I think about you. That one time, in the elevator of my dorm, you remember? I couldn’t walk straight for two days.”
“Yikes,” Wes says.
“Amateur,” Niko notes.
“And especially when I hear that song you used to like—you remember? Sometimes it comes on, and I’ll think, wow, I wonder what Gabe’s doing. I really let a good one get away.” She sighs for dramatic effect. “I missed you. I didn’t even know what you’d been doing for the past two years. You’ve been keeping yourself from me, huh?”
“I mean, honestly, it’s mostly this job. Um, yeah, and I got really into intermittent fasting. And vaping. Those are, like, my two main hobbies.”
“Those are hobbies?” Wes deadpans.
“Do I even want to know what that means?” Jane asks.
“Shh,” Niko hisses, “it’s getting good.”
“Wow,” Myla continues. “I’d love to hear all about that sometime—”
“It’s actually really interesting. I read about how Silicon Valley programmers can go for twenty, twenty-two hours straight without eating or only supplementing with a meal replacement shake. Apparently skipping meals and restricting nutrients makes time go by more slowly, so you can get more done in your day. That’s how I have time to do this job and start making a business plan for my line of JUULpods.”
“Oh my God,” August says.
“Yeah, um,” Myla stammers. “Wow. You always were so … creative. I—”
“Yeah!” Gabe says, suddenly excited. This was not the plan. “I’m close to having my first product line developed, then I’ll go into market testing. My concept is, like, savory pods. You know how you only ever see sweet ones? But what about, like, a buffalo chicken vape? Or—”
“This is transcendent,” Niko says. It sounds like he’s got a mouthful of pancake.
“She has to kill him,” Wes says. “It’s the only way.”
“—pepperoni pizza vape, bacon cheeseburger vape, you know? And for the vegetarians, there’s a whole line with bean burrito and nacho cheese and paneer tikka masala flavors—”
“I’m gonna barf,” August says.
“Anyway, I’m still looking for investors. I’m so glad you’re into the idea. It’s been hard to pitch.”
“Yeah, I guess some people have preconceived notions about, uh, what vapes should taste like? But anyway—”
“You know what? I have some samples in my car—did I tell you I got a Tesla last year? I mean technically, my dad got it, but anyway, let me go grab some and you can taste for yourself.”
“Oh, you really don’t have to do that—”
“No problem at all, Myles.”
“No, Gabe—fuck.” There’s a rustling over the line as Myla pulls her phone out and unmutes the group call. “I didn’t get the badge.”
August spins on the spot. On the other side of the crowd is Gabe, headed for the door.
“Fuck it, I’ll get it,” August says into her phone, and she snatches up the nearest bowl of batter and plows straight toward him.
In the crush of bodies, it’s easy to play the last few steps into a stumble—right into Gabe’s chest, pancake batter splattering everywhere, up his neck and into his hair, soaking his Members Only jacket.
“Oh, fuck, I’m so sorry!” August shouts over the crowd. Gabe holds his hands out in shock, and she pulls a towel from her apron and start sopping up the batter. “I’m a disaster, oh my God.”
“This jacket is vintage,” he hisses.
And that’s all it takes—concern over his stupid jacket—for him not to notice when she slides her hand under the towel and unclips the badge from his lanyard.
“I’m so sorry,” August repeats. She slides the card into her back pocket. “I—I can give you my Venmo and you can charge me for the dry cleaning.”
He sighs heavily. “Don’t worry about it.”
He storms away and August waves apologetically after him, then leans back into the phone in her front pocket. “Got it.”
“That’s my girl,” Jane replies.
“Oh, thank God,” comes Myla’s voice. “I thought I was gonna have to vape some lamb vindaloo.”
“No crimes against nature tonight,” August says. “Except for the big one, I guess. Meet me in the bathroom, Niko?”
“Be there with bells on.”
“Okay, Jane,” August says. “I’m gonna end the call, but I should be there in ten. Just—just stay where you are.”
“I think I can manage,” Jane says, and August disconnects.
She passes the ID to Niko, and he gives her a vague salute and heads off. He’ll meet Myla near the control room once everyone is in place. Just one more step—setting up the diversion.
“You ready?” August asks Wes, sidling up beside him at the trash can.
He smirks and raises an eyebrow. “Ready to commit arson at a loud party? This is what I was born to do.”
“Okay,” August says, untying her apron. “I’ll give you the signal when we get over the bridge. I’m gonna—”
“Where have you been?” says Lucie’s voice from behind her. Fuck. She sounds like she’s about to start spitting curses in Czech. August spins around to find her glaring, a bottle of maple syrup clutched in her hand like a grenade. “These people. Nightmare. I need help.”
