Page 8 of Rooke
The crush of her breasts against my chest was enough to drive me mad with desire. My erection was rock solid and painful. I was in severe need of release, but my physical desires were nothing compared to the painful need I felt deep in my chest. Was this what it felt like to love someone? In all my years, I’d never experienced a sensation like it before. Warm, enveloping and comforting, yet terrifying at the same time. The feeling was a drug, an addiction, a craving that only seemed to intensify every time I drew breath around her.
This woman had the power to own me. She had the power to destroy me if she wanted to. Fighting it seemed futile.
******
My parents bought the two-bed walk-up in Brooklyn Heights where I live back in the mid-nineties, back when the 11201 zip code wasn’t quite so coveted. In fact, back then, the area was rough and more than a little run-down, and it wasn’t smart to walk the streets alone after dark. For years they rented it out to tenants until I turned twenty-one and “came into my inheritance” as they put it. I frequently get the impression that giving me real estate in what they considered a rough, violent area was a passive aggressive way of telling me what they thought of me: that I wasn’t worth much to them; that they thought I was cut from a certain type of cloth; that I wasn’t going to amount to anything.
It’s ironic that Brooklyn Heights is now fast becoming one of the most sought after areas to live in New York. Where dilapidated seven elevens with grated windows caked in dirt used to stand, now Kombucha shops staffed by pretty little hipster girls with thick-rimmed black-framed glasses are doing a booming trade. Where once stood empty thrift stores and soup kitchens, fixed gear bicycles are now sold, along with beard maintenance kits and quirky unisex clothing lines that look like they’re made for androgynous space aliens.
As I make my own way to work, heading north into Williamsburg, I think about the shitty fucking email I received from my mother this morning:
Rooke,
Dad says you came by like you said you would. Thank you. It’s about time you went out of your way to see more of your family. When you come by at Christmas, I’ll write you a check for your efforts. In the meantime, don’t steal anything if you go over to his place.
Mom.
Don’t steal anything? Don’t fuckingstealanything? From my own grandfather? And she’s planning on cutting me a check? Bitch can shove her Bank of America special where the sun don’t shine. When I read the brief message this morning, I nearly smashed my fucking hand through the screen of my laptop. The only thing that stopped me was the knowledge that laptops are not cheap and certainly don’t just unexpectedly fall from the fucking sky, so I bit the inside of my cheek instead, snarling at the stark black and white of the words in front of me.
In fairness, I suppose some people could say she’s well within her rights to give a warning like that. Ihavebeen known to steal things in the past. Cars, mostly. I spent two years in juvi for borrowing a vehicle that didn’t belong to me and ever since then I’ve been Rooke the thief. Rooke the bad influence. Rooke the black sheep. My father won’t even look me in the eye. Five years, and I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be properly addressed by the man. Not that that’s any great shame. He’s always been an asshole. Being ignored by him is a blessing as far as I’m concerned.
I roll up to the shop at eight thirty with a piping hot coffee in my hand. I’m half an hour early, but I like opening and setting myself up for the day before anyone else arrives. I like the quiet. I like sitting in the back and arranging the tools I’ll need for the day, making sure I have everything I require. If there’s a particularly difficult mechanism I need to repair, I might get a head start on that and see if I can’t have the watch ticking by the time Duke, the shop’s owner, arrives, whistling loudly while complaining halfheartedly about the temperature in between refrains.
“You’re a problem solver, boy,”Duke always tells me. “Your brain doesn’t work like anyone else’s. You can tell what’s wrong with a watch or a clock just from holding it in those hands of yours. I’ve been running this shop for close to eighteen years now. I never met anyone like it.”
It’s not just watches. I can fix nearly anything mechanical or electrical, given a few hours and a vat of coffee to keep me chugging along. Before the whole juvi thing, Dad was grooming me for a spot at MIT. He was convinced I was going to graduate early and that I’d be designing spacecraft for Nasa by the time I was in my early twenties. Then, when I was arrested, all hopes of attending such a prestigious school went flying out the window and so did any interest he had in me.
I plant myself at my desk, quickly going through the paper packets that are overflowing from my in-tray, each packet stapled closed and marked up with Duke’s messy, barely legible cursive handwriting:Cracked face; remove four links; water damage; change battery; pressurize.All easy fixes for the most part, newer watches that simply need a little maintenance. Boring jobs that can be completed without my full attention. I look for something a little more interesting to work on this morning, though. Something that will challenge me, allow me to stretch my mental legs, so to speak. Stiff workings. A slow mechanism. Something that will take longer than five minutes to finish.
There’s nothing too mind blowing for me to tackle, so I settle on a beautiful antique silver pocket watch that an old woman brought in earlier in the week. It just needs a service, a cleaning of the inner workings and a treatment for the metal work—tiresome, boring stuff that I’d normally find dull, but the sheer beauty of the piece makes the task rewarding. By the time Duke shows up, I have the pocket watch in pieces, laid out before me on a velvet cloth, and my fingers are nimbly cleaning.
“Freezing out there,” Duke states as he appears through the door from the main shop. “Free-zing. I don’t think I can recall a November this cold in, well now, let’s see, must be twenty-five years at least.” He’s always trying to remember the last time it was this cold, the last time it was this windy, sunny or rainy. As far as I can tell, it’s been twenty-five years since Duke can recall most, if not all meteorological events taking place. Personally, I seem to remember that it was cold as fuckyesterday. Duke unwinds a thick grey scarf from around his neck, revealing yet another scarf underneath, red this time, with a fine white stripe. This red scarf he leaves in place, bolstering it up around his ears, tucking his chin into the material as if trying to warm himself.
His family came to the States from Antigua when he was just a baby. The only language he’s ever spoken is English and yet his speech is heavily accented, as though it isn’t his mother tongue at all. “Well, look at you, already hard at work and all. I wondered if you’d even come in today,” he tells me.
“Why wouldn’t I come to work?”
Duke slaps his hands down on my shoulders, laughing. “Because it’s your birthday, young man. People shouldn’t have to work on their birthdays.”
For a moment I act stunned, a look of shock spreading across my features. And then… “It’s not my birthday. It’s not my birthday until March.”
“Oh. Oh my.” Duke rubs the back of his neck with both hands, pacing up and down. I stop what I’m doing, covering the pocket watch’s internal workings with a piece of velvet, and then I turn on my swivel chair to face him.
“The fuck is up, man? You’re freaking out.”
“My memory’s going,” he moans. “It’s definitely someone’s birthday today. If it’s not yours, then I don’t know whose it is!” He’s practically wailing. In his green corduroy blazer and his dusky grey slacks, he cuts a rather theatrical figure as he wears a hole in the carpet, frantically pacing from one side of the room to the other.
“Fuck, dude. Stop. Stop.Here.” My leather jacket’s hanging over the back of my chair. I reach into the pocket and pull out the small white envelope I stashed there before I left the house. “Happy Birthday, you miserable cunt. I hope you got breakfast in bed this morning.”
Duke damn near snatches the envelope from my hands, eyes filled with excitement. Christmas, New Year, his birthday: Duke’s like a kid when it comes to celebrating holidays of any kind. He tears open the envelope, making short work of the paper. Inside his birthday card, he pulls out the two tickets to The Book of Mormon I bought for him, holding them aloft like they’re two golden tickets to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. “Yes!” he shouts. “Fuckingyes! Now he can’t say no. Now my miserable Grinch of a boyfriendhasto go with me to see a show. Thank you, sweet boy. Thank you, thank you, thank you.” He rains a shower of kisses down on my head, and I hunch my shoulders, screwing my eyes shut, growling out loud. Duke gets the picture and stops. He’s the only man in the world who’d get away with doing something like that. Anyone else would lose a motherfucking testicle.
“Do you know what he bought me?” he wails. “The man I have lived with for nearly fifteen years? The man who I cook and clean for on a daily basis? The man who makes me clip his toenails because his back is too bad for him to reach his own damned feet?” Duke pauses. He clearly expects me to take a guess.
“I have no idea.”
“He…boughtme…a toaster oven.Agoddamnmotherfuckingtoasteroven! He knew I wanted a pair of brand new red patent leather Spats. Instead he gave me something that I will never use. I mean, who uses a goddamn toaster oven these days? Go to Subway, you cheap ass, miserable, ungrateful, half deaf…”
Duke continues to rant about his boyfriend’s general ineptitude in very colorful language for at least another five minutes. I sit and pretend I’m listening, while I’m really watching him flail his arms around wildly like a maniac. How the fuck did I come to know such a bizarre, outlandish, wonderfully over-the-top human being?
