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Lush Life: A Novel
Lush Life: A Novel
Lush Life: A Novel
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Lush Life: A Novel

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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So, what do you do?" Whenever people asked him, Eric Cash used to have a dozen answers. Artist, actor, screenwriter . . . But now he's thirty-five years old and he's still living on the Lower East Side, still in the restaurant business, still serving the people he wanted to be. What does Eric do? He manages. Not like Ike Marcus. Ike was young, good-looking, people liked him. Ask him what he did, he wouldn't say tending bar. He was going places—until two street kids stepped up to him and Eric one night and pulled a gun. At least, that's Eric's version.

In Lush Life, Richard Price tears the shiny veneer off the "new" New York to show us the hidden cracks, the underground networks of control and violence beneath the glamour. Lush Life is an Xray of the street in the age of no broken windows and "quality of life" squads, from a writer whose "tough, gritty brand of social realism . . . reads like a movie in prose" (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times).

Editor's Note

A visceral read…

Richard Price tears the bright veneer off New York to show us the hidden underground networks of organized crime that control everything. “Lush Life” is a visceral book, reading like a movie in prose.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateMar 4, 2008
ISBN9781429944205
Author

Richard Price

RICHARD PRICE has written extensively on the history and culture of African Americans throughout the hemisphere. His prize-winning books include First-Time, Alabi’s World, The Convict and the Colonel, Travels with Tooy, and Rainforest Warriors. He is the coauthor, with Sally Price, of Saamaka Dreaming. He lives on Coquina Key, Florida.

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Rating: 3.7631579663837016 out of 5 stars
4/5

589 ratings55 reviews

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  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Booklist top adult fiction book of 2008. I started this book, got about 15 pages in before giving up. I think this is just not my type of book. Gritty, tough, gangs, what I sometimes call a "man's book," for lack of a better description.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I don't want to wave hyperbole around, but this might be one of my favorite novels of the past decade.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Cops, restaurants, actors, waiters, restaurant entrepreneurs, after-hour clubs, illegal Fukienese migrants, legal Yemeni convenience store operators, Lower East Side tenement history, coke dealing, pot dealing, teenage criminals, good kids going bad, the whole messy melting pot, *how everybody talks* ... does anybody do a large swathe of New York any better? (Definitely not Tom Wolfe)The murder plot .. yeah, well, this ain't Clockers, but who cares? It's how Price gets there.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Price absorbs you right into his "Lush Life" universe, no shock of entry, no sense of disorientation. You ride alongside each of his flawed characters, the setting confined and instantly familiar, like the inside of a snow globe.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A little conventional in that whole Raymond Chandleresque mold, but pleasant reading. Plus that’s my old stomping grounds, and the familiar is always fun. Passing it on straight to the offspring, who I bet will love it.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I won't deny it had a certain gritty charm, but I found the ending anticlimactic to the extreme, and the wrap-up passages annoyingly pointless.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    In Lush Life, Richard Price creates a microcosm of New York City surrounding a murder and its investigation in the lower east side. The victim, unfortunately immortalized by his final ill-chosen words, "Not tonight, my man," is the linchpin of the novel. The actions and reactions of his family, friends and acquaintances, police, and the shooter, are the story. Price's realism and attention to detail, not to mention his command of the language of the street, the police, and the city itself bring the story to life. His ability to reveal his characters through both dialogue and exposition is unsurpassed. Price reveals much with few words. In one exchange with a pot-smoking upstate policeman and the NYC cop that pulls him over, the smoker refers to it as "A little somethin', somethin' for the drive." "Somethin' somethin', huh?" Lugo hadn't heard that phrase in two years.Moments like this are the gems spread throughout the story and are what make it sing.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Lush life is a very gritty police procedural. It follows the murder of Ike Marcus from several tangential points of view. Confronted by two neigborhood kids on an almost deserted street in the early morning after a night out boozing Eric Cash, Marcus and Marcus's completely blottoed pal Stephen Boulware--Boulware collapses, Cash hands his money over but Marcus steps towards his assailants saying 'Not tonight, my man'. Marcus is gunned down and his assailants flee, meanwhile Cash runs into an apartment building leaving two witnesses having accidentally walked onto the scene and attracted by the noise--who not having noticed the assailants to finger Cash as the killer. Initially homicide detectives Matty Clark and Yolanda Bello focus their interrogation on Cash as the primary suspect as the severely inebriated Boulware is rushed to the hospital. The interrogation has a nasty edge but Clark's and Bello's suspicions quickly fall apart as it becomes clear that the two eyewitnesses are not reliable leaving the detectives to comfort and support the victims family as best they can while the now free but aggrieved Eric Cash deals with the depression relating to the event and subsequent interrogation and who is now hostile towards helping the police. This is a very easy but suspenseful read. Price looks at things from all angles. His depictions of street scenes and street life--which veer off at times into a history of New York City's lower east side and its people and buildings is full of insight. One can picture one immigrant community turning into the next until finally reaching into its present day global reality. Price's dialogue is always excellent here. There is an intimacy present between family or friends or co-workers that seems real. Presenting the event from the point of view of the devastation of the family, or from the perpetrators view living in their dismal highrises, or from the police perspective of plain bare interogation rooms or cluttered offices--Price constructs this novel like a piece of architecture--carefully one piece at a time. The politics of the situation having gone bad--the police heirarchy do what they can to kill the investigation while at the same time the Marcus family--especially his grieving father Billy continue to push Clark and Bello to find the killers. Matty and Yolanda have to invent new strategies to keep the investigation alive.This is my first time reading Price and I really liked it and think that I will now pick up other works of his. I especially liked his portrait of lower Manhattan. There is a vibe to this book that seems to feel right in the setting of America's greatest city. If there was one flow I did not think that the memorial service that Marcus's friend Boulware organizes for him about two thirds of the way through comes off very well. Other than that I found it a great read and would recommend it to everyone.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I picked up this novel once I'd finished watching my way through "The Wire." I was missing the grit and complexity of the show, and so I thought I'd investigate a novel by one of the show's screenwriters. I wasn't disappointed: although it's set in New York and not Baltimore, this book has all the rich dialogue and complicated interplay between individuals and institutions that I'd gotten accustomed to. Price's prose is dense and often lovely.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I randomly selected this book from Powell's in Portland, Oregon. It had all the appearances of being a popular, interesting, relatively fast-past diversion... unfortunately, it turned out to be a frivolous, boring, ultimately pointless waste of time. In other words, it is a typical police procedural. The story takes place in the the lower east side of Manhattan (which is apparently the center of the universe), and revolves around the meaningless murder of a meaningless character. Chapter after chapter unfolds in tandem with the dawning recognition that there is nothing - absolutely nothing - worth caring about in this stupid, idiotic story. You're welcome.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    All I know about gritty real world "police procedurals" I learned from Joseph Wambaugh, whose "The Choirboys" does for urban police work what “Catch-22” does for World War II. Yes it's that good. So I came to read Lush Life by Richard Price a novel from 2008 about urban crime, I had my fingers crossed to maybe discover a writer who could do for New York City - my home town - what Wambaugh did for East Los Angeles. Perhaps that's asking too much. Three yuppies are bopping down the street at 4AM on the Lower East Side, the last great melting pot of the city, when they are set upon by two young black kids, one with a gun. Most people get this – you give the guy with the gun your wallet, and maybe live to fight another day.But curiously, one of the kids waves off the muggers with an almost mystical “Not tonight my man” and the kid panics and pulls the trigger. Pop Pop! The police come and make some mistakes and ball things up seriously. But you know - they're trying. It ain't as easy as it looks on TV.Everyone in this book has a dream I think but good luck on getting anywhere realizing them. We get a good look at what urban police work and police office politics looks like in New York City post Giuliani.We get a good look at the yuppies and the white kids who have invaded the Lower East Side, and their rather pathetic posturing and their rather childish dreams.We get an inside baseball look into the lives of people working the yuppie restaurant racket on the "gentrified" part of the Lower East Side.We get a good look at our shooter, not to excuse him or to explain him, but merely as reportage, to complete the story.It’s a grim dark story, without the mordant wit of Wambaugh (although there are some bitterly funny things in it) and overall I think it's a swing and a miss. It’s hard to care about and get involved with a gang of mopes like this. Some dazzling dialogue ( the author wrote for the HBO series ‘The Wire” and it shows) doesn’t quite make it all worth the journey.If Weegee the famous crime photographer wrote a book instead of taking photographs it might come out something like this. But the writer captures well the many layers of culture and society that churn around the LES, and if you're not from around here, that's going to be an eye opener.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I’ll live a lush life in some small dive… And there I’ll be, while I rot With the rest of those whose lives are lonely, too.. ~ Billy Strayhorn's Lush LifeLush Life is one of the really beautiful standard jazz tunes written by Billy Strayhorn. And, of course, the title of the newest novel by Richard Price. This is not my usual reading genre, but being a huge fan of HBO’s The Wire, for whom Price did some writing, and with the closing up shop of this particular HBO franchise, I thought I’d give this one a …listen. I say listen, because when I went to put it on my hold list at the library, I was way, way down there. Oddly enough though, I logged in a #1 for the unabridged cd copy. The reader was Bobby Cannavale who did a great job.Pegged as a police procedural, which always sounds like it could be an acquired taste, Price’s tale is riveting, Between some great characters and the detailed look at Manhattan’s Lower East Side, this is a novel that is one of those that’s hard to put down - or in this case, hard to stop feeding the cd’s into the player (just one more, just one more…)Price gives us one of the great cop teams of Matty Clark and Yolando Bello, and throws the brass in their path in all their pathetic glory. Watching these two work is just a fascinating study. And to watch them work in the gentrified hodge-podge that is the Lower East Side is icing on the cake. You just will not find a better mix of character and place than Price gives the reader here.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A young artist living and working as a waiter in the lower East side of New York City is shot dead in a botched mugging after a night of drinking with two others from the restaurant where he works. Police mistakenly first suspect one of the drinking buddies; the murder--and the police's errant attention on the colleague--set in motion a series of turmoils around the victim's relatives and colleagues in one of the fastest-changing neighborhoods in Manhattan. The Lower East Side has always been a locus to new immigrants. At the turn of the century, Italians, Jews, and Chinese built and lived in the area's first tenements; in the 1960s public housing for African Americans, Dominicans, and Puerto Ricans was built along the East River. In the late 1990s artists and digital entrepreneurs began moving in, along with Chinese from Fijian province, creating yet more distinct subcultures that seldom interacted one another, unless forced to. Price exquisitely paints a riveting police procedural, against the backdrop of a neighborhood under going seismic change.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    An urban talke full of rhythm and life.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I found this to be a very effective novel about life and crime in the lower East-Side of NYC. The writing was interesting in that the multi-sided events of the story of a mugging gone badly, are interwoven in sequential order, telling the tale from several story lines:Matty, the detective on the case, fights through the bureaucracy to solve a murder that many of his superiors want to forget. He is driven more to this case than most because he tries to help the father of the victim and because he may have blown the initial interrogation of Eric Cash, who was a witness/ almost victim.Eric Cash is a aspiring actor, screenwriter who runs a popular café downtown. He, like many of the people in the city, is always looking for the golden ring. When he is initially accused of the crime, he shuts down and falls into a downhill slide that is partially to do with his own guilt of cowardly behavior. Tristan – the 17year old neighborhood mugger wants to be a rap star and a well known street legend, partially because of his bad home life and partially because it gives him power, a power that the 22 caliber pistol in his pants invigorates. Billy is the victim’s father, who can’t let his son’s death go; he gets too involved and sometimes makes Matty’s job harder, but his tenaciousness keeps the case alive. There are more characters and storylines than this – Matty’s errant sons, his feelings for Billy’s wife, Eric’s relationship with his girlfriend and with the restaurant; it is a complex picture of the area, the case and the relationship that forms when an event like this happens. There is also a lot to learn in the novel – interesting details about detective work, managing a restaurant, and surviving on the street; all of which are conveyed in excellent detail by Price. I loved Clockers and also enjoyed The Samaritan, but this way my favorite from this author.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    My first Richard Price but won't be my last. I was mesmerized by the dialog and the relentless pacing. Truly exceptional. I couldn't put it down.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    What a great book! Confusing start (at least for me) it just leaps into the tale, with what seems to be hundreds of characters each given their 15 minutes in the sun of author's attention. But gradually things start to make sense and we follow detective Matty Clark through a case, neither extraordinary nor enigmatic, just what happens to all when a senseless tragedy happens to one... I particularily liked the character of Eric, and was on the edge of my seat for him. I had hopes for Matty too, but I don't know if he will live up to them. I just hope things go well for him and the Other One - see, just because I closed the book doesn't mean I think for a moment the characters lives have stopped. That's how good it is, you think they are real, and will continue with their reality even after you've stopped observing them.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A police procedural more than a murder mystery, Lush Life paints a portrait of everyone involved in a murder on the Lower East Side. Richard Price worked on HBO's The Wire and as a fan of the show, I could see its influence over this book. From the banter between the detectives to life in the projects, and everywhere in between, Lush Life examined the effect that a murder had on the community and peoples' reactions to it. The reader knows who the killer is before the police do, but it's reading about how the police figure it out is the most interesting aspect of this book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    this a literary take on the police procedural that acurately captures the current scene on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. As has been sited in several reviews it is richly layered with the various ethnic and economic classes that live there side by side. The young strivers, actors who are waiters and young professionals hanging out in chic bar-restaurants, the black and latino kids living in poverty in the city projects, the chinatown denizens and the jewish enclaves all populate the action.the story's main protagonist is a hapless detective struggling against the politicos who run the department while his own broken marriage throws up a curveball. he sympathetically tries to hold down the grieving and broken father of the murder victim.a good read that does not dissappoint.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Richard Price is a master of the American pathos. Although his perfect pitch for language and speech are his trademark, it's the underlying dreams, and aspirations, and folly, that he renders with great humor and utter precision. This book is a shining example of that rare talent.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I enjoyed this book, and thought it was generally quite good. The dialogue was excellent, and the atmosphere of police work and race relations seem to ring true. I didn't particularly feel the story of Billy (Ike's father) was interesting or authentic...it felt forced to me. Also, the pacing of the book, which seemed to reflect the slow, frustrating pace of a police investigation, made the book seem padded.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Perfect well crafted contemporary crime. Do you like "The Wire"? Read this.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A solid novel, recommended. Cops, robbers and hipsters in the LES, NYC -- things get messy and, well, lushy. Price's prose can be a bit chewy sometimes, but the action moves along and the characters come off the page and cuff you now and then. I think Price should include a slang glossary so I know what the hell some of his characters are talking about.

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Great mystery
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I heard a great interview with Richard Price on the radio when this book first come out. I was prepared to love it. Perhaps because I had to read it in little bits, I just couldn't ever enjoy it. I read the whole book, but I never cared a bit about any of the characters. I kept noticing the writing (which is beautiful and technically superior), but I don't read books just to notice how great a craftsman the author is. The premise was quite interesting and it does capture the Lower East Side, but this just wasn't too interesting, ultimately.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    When I first starting reading this book, I thought - oh, no . . . too many characters and scenarios in the first 40 pages. But between pages 50 and 75 things started to smooth out and I wound up liking this book a lot. I'm glad I stuck with it. I really got into the characters a lot more than I thought I would. Based on this book, I would pick up another title by this author.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Brilliant but very harsh dialogue. Very fun to read.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is the first novel I read by Price. I would put this one on the level of No Country for Old Men. On its surface it's a standard police procedural, but we get a very real view into the lives of the cops in New York City. Everyone feels a little evil and a little good.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    If I could give this book a 0 rating I would. I tried very hard to finish it and I couldn't. It's touted as a mystery but after reacing page 338/740 and still not seeing any mystery, I had to quit. I felt as if I was reading a really bad Law and Order episode that just went on and on and on. I'm not sure how this won all the awards?! I of course wouldn't recommend to anyone.About a man killed during a botched hold-up by two young punks and the time the NYPD out of lower Manhattan spends trying to track down the perpetrators.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    There is nothing fancy or fussy about the prose in Lush Life. But Price paints an incomparable picture of a part of New York City where the wealthy, the wanna-be's, and the city's poor co-mingle. The conversations are extremely well written and Price's flawed characters feel like real people, not characters in a book.

Book preview

Lush Life - Richard Price

ONE

WHISTLE

At ten in the morning, Eric Cash, thirty-five, stepped out of his Stanton Street walk-up, lit a cigarette, and headed off to work.

When he had first moved down here eight years ago, he was seized with the notion of the Lower East Side as haunted, and on rare days like today, a simple walk like this could still bring back his fascination, traces of the nineteenth-century Yiddish boomtown everywhere: in the claustrophobic gauge of the canyonlike streets with their hanging garden of ancient fire escapes, in the eroded stone satyr heads leering down between pitted window frames above the Erotic Boutique, in the faded Hebrew lettering above the old socialist cafeteria turned Asian massage parlor turned kiddie-club hot spot; all of it and more lying along Eric’s daily four-block commute. But after nearly a decade in the neighborhood, even on a sun-splashed October morning like this, all of this ethnohistorical mix ’n’ match was, much like himself, getting old.

He was an upstate Jew five generations removed from here, but he knew where he was, he got the joke; the laboratorio del gelati, the Tibetan hat boutiques, 88 Forsyth House with its historically restored cold-water flats not all that much different from the unrestored tenements that surrounded it, and in his capacity as manager of Café Berkmann, the flagship of come-on-down, on the rare days when the Beast would take one of its catnaps, he enjoyed being part of the punch line.

But what really drew him to the area wasn’t its full-circle irony but its nowness, its right here and nowness, which spoke to the true engine of his being, a craving for making it made many times worse by a complete ignorance as to how this it would manifest itself.

He had no particular talent or skill, or what was worse, he had a little talent, some skill: playing the lead in a basement-theater production of The Dybbuk sponsored by 88 Forsyth House two years ago, his third small role since college, having a short story published in a now-defunct Alphabet City literary rag last year, his fourth in a decade, neither accomplishment leading to anything; and this unsatisfied yearning for validation was starting to make it near impossible for him to sit through a movie or read a book or even case out a new restaurant, all pulled off increasingly by those his age or younger, without wanting to run face-first into a wall.

Still two blocks from work, he stopped short as he came up on the rear of a barely creeping procession that extended west on Rivington to a point farther than he could see.

Whatever this was, it had nothing to do with him; the people were overwhelmingly Latino, most likely from the unrehabbed walk-ups below Delancey and the half-dozen immortal housing projects that cradled this, the creamy golden center of the Lower East Side, like a jai alai paddle. Everyone seemed to be dressed up as if for church or some kind of religious holiday, including a large number of kids.

He couldn’t imagine this having anything to do with Berkmann’s either, and in fact the line not only went directly past the café, but solidly and obliviously blocked the entrance; Eric watching as two separate parties gingerly tried to break through then quickly gave up, stopping off to eat somewhere else.

Peering through one of the large side windows, he saw that the room was uncharacteristically near empty, the midmorning skeleton staff outnumbering the customers. But what really got his gut jumping was the sight of the owner, his boss, Harry Steele, sitting alone in the back at a deuce, his perennial sad man’s face shrunken by agitation to the size of an apple.

At least from where Eric stood now he could finally see where the line was headed: the Sana’a 24/7, a mini-mart run by two Yemeni brothers, three blocks west of Berkmann’s at the corner of Rivington and Eldridge.

His first thought was that they must have had a huge Powerball winner the day before, or maybe the state lottery had climbed into the hundreds of millions again, but, no, this was something else.

He followed the line west past the fresh ruins of the most recently collapsed synagogue, past the adjoining People’s Park, until he got to the corner directly across the street from the Sana’a, the shadows cast by its tattered two-year-old GRAND OPENING pennants playing across his face.

Hey, Eric … A young Chinese uniform, Fenton Ma, working the intersection, nodded his way. Nuts, right?

What is it?

Mary’s in there, Ma said, getting bumped by the ripple effect of the crowd he was holding back.

Mary who.

Mary the Virgin. She showed up in the condensation on one of the freezer doors last night. Word travels fast around here, no? Taking another bump from behind.

Then Eric saw a second crowd shaping up across the street from the one at the side windows: a crowd watching the crowd, this crew mostly young, white, and bemused.

She’s he-ere, one of them called out.

Eric was always good at weaseling his way through a mob, had plenty of practice just trying to get to the reservations pulpit at Berkmann’s dozens of times a day, so he was able to pop into the narrow deli without anyone behind him calling him out. Directly inside, one of the Yemeni brothers, Nazir, tall and bony with an Adam’s apple like a tomahawk, was playing cashier-doorman, standing with a fat stack of singles in one hand, the other palm-up, fingertips flexing towards the incoming pilgrims.

Say hello to Mary, his voice singsong and brisk, she loves you very much.

The Virgin was a sixteen-inch-high gourd-shaped outline molded in frost on the glass doors fronting the beer and soda shelves, its smoothly tapered top slightly inclined to one side above its broader lower mass, reminding him vaguely of all the art-history Marys tilting their covered heads to regard the baby in their arms, but really, it was kind of a stretch.

The people kneeling around Eric held up photo phones and camcorders, left offerings of grocery-store bouquets, candles, balloons—one saying YOU’RE SO SPECIAL—handwritten notes, and other tokens, but mainly they just stared expressionless, some with clasped hands, until the second Yemeni brother, Tariq, stepped up, said, Mary says bye now, and ushered everyone out through the rear delivery door to clear space for the next group.

By the time Eric made it around to the front of the store again, Fenton Ma had been spelled by an older cop, his shield reading LO PRESTO.

Can I ask you something? Eric said lightly, not knowing this guy. Have you seen her in there?

Who, the Virgin? Lo Presto looked at him neutrally. Depends what you mean by ‘seen.’

You know. Seen.

Well, I’ll tell you. He looked off, palming his chest pocket for a cigarette. About eight this morning? A couple of guys from the Ninth Squad went in there, you know, curious? And kneeling right in front of that thing is Servisio Tucker, had killed his wife up on Avenue D maybe six months ago. Now, these guys had been turning that neighborhood upside down looking for him ever since, right? And this morning alls they did was waltz on in and there he was, on his knees. He looks right up at them, tears in his eyes, puts out his hands for cuffs, and says, ‘OK. Good. I’m ready.’

Huh. Eric entranced, experiencing a fleeting rush of optimism.

So … Lo Presto finally fired up, exhaled luxuriously. "Did I see her? Who’s to say. But if what I just told you isn’t a fucking miracle, I don’t know what is."

On bright quiet mornings like this, when Berkmann’s was empty, delivered from the previous night’s overpacked boozy freneticness, the place was an air palace, and there was nowhere better to be in this neighborhood than sitting in a lacquered wicker chair immersed in the serene luxury of a café au lait and The New York Times, sunlight splashing off the glazed ecru tiles, the racks of cryptically stencil-numbered wine bottles, the industrial-grade chicken-wired glass and partially desilvered mirrors, all found in various warehouses in New Jersey by the owner, Harry Steele: restaurant dressed as theater dressed as nostalgia. For Eric personally, the first few moments of coming in here every day were like the first few moments inside a major-league ballpark: getting that whooshy rush of space and geometric perfection, commuting as he did from a three-room dumbbell flat with one of its two windows overlooking the building’s interior airshaft, which was supposed to provide cross ventilation but in fact had served, since the year of the McKinley assassination, as a glorified garbage chute.

But with nothing to do this morning but rerack the newspapers on their faux-aged wooden dowels or lean against his pulpit, shaking like a flake from drinking coffee after coffee served up by the two probationary bartenders, even that momentary pleasure was denied him. In his jumpy boredom he took a moment to study the new hires behind the stick: a green-eyed black kid with dreadlocks named Cleveland and a white kid—Spike? Mike?—who was leaning on the zinc bartop and talking to a chubby friend who had successfully breached the procession. This friend, Eric could tell, was even more hungover than he was.

People said that after fourteen years of on-and-off working for Harry Steele, Eric had come to look like him; both had those dour baggy eyes like Serge Gainsbourg or Lou Reed, the same indifferent physique; the difference being that with Harry Steele, this lack of physical allure just added to the mystique of his golden touch.

A waitress from Grouchie’s who had all seven dwarfs tattooed in miniature tramping up the inside of her thigh had once told Eric that people were either cats or dogs, and that he was most definitely a dog, compulsively trying to anticipate everyone’s needs, a shitty thing to say to someone you just slept with, but fair enough he guessed, because right now, despite his constant I am more than this mantra, his boss’s helpless exasperation had him humming with the desire to act.

At least Steele was no longer alone, sharing his small table now with his dealer, Paulie Shaw, a sharp-faced ratter whose alert eyes, spit-fire delivery, and generally tense aura reminded Eric of too many shadow players from back in the shame days. Passing on a fifth cup of coffee, he watched as Paulie opened an aluminum attaché case and from its velvet, molded interior removed a number of rectangular glass photo negatives, each in its own protective sheath.

‘Ludlow Street Sweatshop,’ holding it up by its edges. ‘Blind Beggar, 1888.’ ‘Passing the Growler.’ ‘Bandits Roost’—that one right there, as I told you on the phone, worth all the rest combined. And last but not least, ‘Mott Street Barracks.’

Fantastic, Steele murmured, eyes once again straying to the milagro line, to his empty café.

Each one personally hand-tinted by Riis himself for his lectures, Paulie said. The man was light-years ahead of his time, total multimedia, had sixty to a hundred of these fading in and out of each other on a huge screen accompanied by music? Those uptown dowagers had to be crying their balls off.

OK, Steele said, half listening.

OK? Paulie ducked down to find his eyes. For the, for what we, for the number we discussed?

Yeah, yeah. Steele’s knees pumping under the table.

The hungover kid sitting at the bar abruptly laughed at something his friend said, the rude sound of it bouncing off the tiled walls.

Mike, right? Eric tilted his chin at the probationary bartender.

Ike, he said easily, still leaning forward on the zinc like he owned the place.

He had a shaved head and a menagerie of retro tattoos inside both forearms—hula girls, mermaids, devil heads, panthers—but his smile was as clean as a cornfield; the kid, Eric thought, like a poster boy for the neighborhood.

Ike, go see if they want anything.

You got it, boss.

Chop-chop, said his friend.

As Ike came from behind the bar and headed for the back deuce, Paulie pulled up the velvet interior of his booty case to reveal a second layer of goods, from which he took out a large burnt-orange paperback.

You’re an Orwell man, right? he said to Steele. "Road to Wigan Pier, Victor Gollancz Left Wing Book Club galleys, 1937. What you’re looking at right now doesn’t even exist."

Just the Riis plates. Steele’s eyes yet again straying to that barely moving line. "I cannot fucking believe this," he blurted to the room at large.

How about Henry Miller, Paulie said quickly, burrowing into his case. You into Henry Miller?

Ike’s shadow fell across the table, Paulie half twisting around and rearing back to eyeball him. Can I help you with something?

You guys want anything? Ike asked.

We’re done, Steele said.

Henry Miller. Paulie pulled out a hardback. "First-edition Air-Conditioned Nightmare, pristine wrappers, and get this, inscribed to Nelson, A, Rockefeller."

Out on Rivington, an argument broke out in Spanish, someone being bumped into the window of the café with a muffled thud.

This neighborhood, Steele said brightly, looking directly at Eric for the first time this deader-than-dead morning. A little too much mix, not quite enough match, yeah? Then he turned to his dealer: How are you fixed for splinters of the True Cross?

For what?

And with that, Eric, the boy-faced dog, was out the door.

A block from the restaurant, his heart thundering as he wondered exactly how he’d go about doing what had to be done, someone called, Yo, hold up, and he turned to see Ike walking towards him, lighting a cigarette.

You going to see the Virgin?

Sort of, Eric said.

I’m on break, can I come with you?

Eric hesitated, wondering if a witness would make it harder or easier, but then Ike just fell in step.

Eric, right?

Right.

Ike Marcus, offering his hand. So, Eric, what do you do?

What do you mean, what do I do? Eric knowing exactly what he meant.

I mean other than … The kid at least quick-witted enough to cut himself off.

I write, Eric said, hating to tell people, but just wanting to get them both off the hook.

Oh yeah? Ike said gratefully. Me too.

Good, Eric said briskly, thinking, Who asked.

His only viable project right now was a screenplay, five thousand down, twenty more on completion, anything about the Lower East Side in its heyday, Aka Jewday, commissioned by a customer from Berkmann’s, a former Alphabet City squatter turned real estate gorilla, who now wanted to be an auteur; everybody wanting to be an auteur …

Are you from here originally? Ike asked.

Everybody’s from here originally, Eric said, then, coming off it: Upstate.

No kidding. Me too.

Whereabouts?

Riverdale? Then, grabbing Eric’s arm as he put on the brakes: Oh, check this out.

The roof of the massive synagogue had caved in just two nights before, leaving only the three-story back wall with its lightly damaged twin Stars of David, shafts of sunlight streaming through the chinks. In the lee of that wall, the cantor’s table, Torah ark, a menorah with the spread of a bull elk, and four silver candleholders still stood like props on a stage, an intact row of six pews further enhancing the suggestion of an open-air theater. All else was reduced to an undulating field of rubble, Eric and Ike pausing on their way to the mini-mart to stand on the roped-off sidewalk with a gaggle of kufied deli men, off-duty sweatshop workers, and kids of various nations all cutting school.

Check this out, Ike said again, nodding to a large Orthodox in a sweaty suit and fedora, his ear glued to his cell phone as he picked his way through the hilly debris to rescue the tattered remains of prayer books, piling loose and torn pages beneath bricks and chunks of plaster to keep them from blowing away. Two teenagers, one light-skinned, the other Latino, were following him and stuffing the salvaged sheets into pillowcases.

Looks like one of those modern stage sets for Shakespeare, you know? Ike said. Brutus and Pompey running around in full camo with Tec-9s.

More like Godot.

How much you think he’s paying those two kids?

As little as he can get away with.

A tall young guy wearing a kelly green yarmulke emblazoned with the New York Jets logo stood next to them writing furiously in a steno pad. Eric had the uncomfortable impression that he was taking down their conversation.

Who are you writing for? Ike asked without edge.

"The Post," he said.

For real?

Yup.

Excellent. Ike grinned and actually shook his hand.

This kid, Eric thought, was a trip.

So what happened here, man? Ike said.

Fell the fuck down. The reporter shrugged, closing his pad. When he walked away, they noticed that he had a clubfoot.

That’s got to suck, Ike said under his breath.

Excuse me, sir! a bespectacled black man, his clothes nearly in rags but carrying an attaché case, called out to the Orthodox, still on his cell. Are you rebuilding?

Of course.

Very good, the raggedy man said, and left.

We should go too, Ike said, slapping Eric on the arm and heading out for the Virgin.

As they came up on the Sana’a, Eric turned to Ike, ready to school him on slipping the line, but the kid had already done so, giving Nazir his dollar admission fee and disappearing inside.

Hemmed in by supplicants, they knelt side by side like batters in an on-deck circle before the Virgin, the shrine-pile of offerings having tripled since Eric’s previous visit.

His first thought was to approach one of the brothers, appeal to them to at least reroute the line outside so it wouldn’t screw up all the other businesses in the neighborhood, but he realized that the line was just that: outside, as in, out of their control. Which left asking them to lose the Virgin altogether, not likely given the cash coming in. Which left …

Fuck me, Eric whispered, then to Ike: Can I ask you something personal? his voice feathery with tension.

Absolutely.

All those tattoos, what are you going to tell your kids someday?

"My kids? I’m my own kid."

My own kid, Eric said, massaging his chest as if to get more air in there. I like that.

Yeah? Good, it’s true.

Shit, Eric hissed. How do you do this …

Do what? Ike whispered, then casually reached for the glass door, opening it for a few seconds, then closing it back. That?

Within a minute the inrush of humid air had changed the condensation pattern and sent the Virgin packing. Fifteen minutes later, as the news shot back across Rivington, the milagro line was no more. And by noon, over at Café Berkmann, there was a twenty-minute wait for tables.

See you din’t live round here back in the heyday, so no way you’d know, but about ten, twelve years ago? Little Dap Williams yakking away as he stopped to scoop up the next bunch of Bible pages from under a brick. Man, it was, there was some bad dudes up in here. The Purples on Avenue C, Hernandez brothers on A and B, Delta Force in the Cahans, nigger name Maquetumba right in the Lemlichs. Half a them got snatched up by RICO for long bids, the other half is dead, all the hardcores, so now it’s like just the Old Heads out there sippin’ forties and telling stories about yesteryear, them and a bunch of Similac niggers, stoop boys, everybody out for themselves with their itty-bitty eight balls, nobody runnin’ the show.

Maquetumba? Tristan’s pillowcase was nearly full.

Dominican dude. Dead now. My brother told me him and his crew had the Lemlichs sewed tight.

What kind of name is that.

I just said. Dominican.

What’s it mean, though.

Maquetumba? Man, you should know, you Dominican.

Puerto Rican.

Same shit, ain’t it?

Tristan shrugged.

Sss, Little Dap sucked his teeth. Like, ‘he who drops the most,’ some shit like that.

Drops what?

Little Dap just stared at him.

Right. Pretending like he got it. Tristan was just glad to be hanging with Little Dap, glad to be hanging with anybody, with him having to live 24/7 with his ex-stepfather, the guy’s new wife, kids, rules, and fists. Even how he got here, picking up Bible paper on this shitpile, seemed a little bit of a miracle; after having dropped off the hamsters—his not-really brothers and sisters—at their schools this morning, he hadn’t felt like going to school himself.

So he’d been sitting outside Seward Park High School at ten, not knowing what to do or having anyone around to do it with, when Little Dap cut out of the building, passed him by with a nod, then shrugging, walked back and asked him if he wanted to make some change at the Jew cave-in.

It always seemed like whenever he chose to cut school, everybody else picked that day to go in and vice versa; if he didn’t have to be dropping off the hamsters first thing every morning, he could just hang out in the candy store by Seward having a Coca-Cola and Ring Ding breakfast with everybody from the Lemlichs when they decided what to do that day, but he could never make it there in time; same for the afternoon, everybody coming together after last class and deciding whose place to go to; Tristan once again stuck doing the reverse hamster run and not having a clue where they went. And his ex-stepfather wouldn’t allow him a cell phone.

Yeah, the PJ’s wide-open now, Little Dap said again.

What about your brother?

Tristan knew all about Big Dap, everybody did, the only nigger in history to ever get into a fight with a police in an elevator, wind up shooting the guy in the leg with his own gun, and beat the case.

"Dap? Pfff … Nigger’s too lazy. I mean, he could run the Lemlichs, at least if he wanted to, got everybody up in there so scared a him, you know, if he put in the effort? But shit, all he wants is get the cheese easiest way he could. Go up on a corner, ‘Yo Shorty you slingin’? It’s a hundred a week.’ Collect, go back to Shyanne’s crib, smoke his brains out and watch the TV. That ain’t no life."

Times ten corners?

Tristan only made $25, $30 on a delivery for Smoov, and Smoov only came to him if nobody else was around.

Wide-open … Little Dap shaking his head like it was a tragedy.

So, what. You gonna go all kingpin out there?

Hell no. And wind up in some underground supermax? This Old Head round the way said them joints age you ten years for each real one, guys be laying there twenty-four/seven daydreaming ’bout how to kill themselves.

For real?

I’ll take another bid in gladiator school over that anytime.

For real.

Tristan had never been to either juvie or, since he turned seventeen last year, the Tombs, just ROR’ed a few times like everybody else for the usual shit: possession, trespassing—aka hanging in the park after curfew—for fighting that one time, pissing out the bedroom window.

"I tell you what I am gonna do, though, Little Dap said. Get up on a package tonight? Work it, sleep in tomorrow and party."

Pay your own brother corner rent?

He ain’t charge me.

You got the money for a package? Tristan asked.

Dap did what Tristan did, deliver, maybe more often because he was more popular, but he also got money from his grandmother and occasionally made collections for his

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