Bobby Lee's name sounded like an old movie sheriff’s, but he was nothing like a law-abiding cowboy. He was tall, S-shaped, and swayed like a reed with a sunken chest instead of John Wayne bulk. The 'Lee' in his name was Korean—he was half Korean to be exact—and the first name was Robert, so he was really just finicky urbanite Robert Lee from Upstate New York. Hearing his nickname out loud made him grin like a dog: “Ooole Bobby Lee,” he said while pointing imaginary six shooters at my chest.
“Kachew Kachew” he said, pulling back the invisible hammer of his revolver (a bony pale thumb) and pointing an index finger at me. I fell over his bed, clutching my chest like a dying Looney Tunes villain. Bobby Lee liked to break the law. He was guilty of three major crimes. The first crime was his medication; the Paxil behind his bathroom cabinet, the Ambien under his nightstand, and the Desyrel, Lunesta, Klonopin, and Xanax, all in white plastic pill boxes in his dresser. He got the pills from a Muslim quack in Midtown who would write any prescription as long as you had cash. He lived in Midtown in a building with a doorman—impressive to me—but he acted like it was no big deal. I used every trick from How to Win Friends and Influence People on him. I smiled, made him feel important, and talked about his interests. I made the extra effort because I needed him to like me enough to offer me a place to stay. I had plans for a new life in New York. He watched me unpack, but then dragged me out to the nightlife instead of letting me apply for work. I felt self-conscious about my limited wardrobe: black jeans and a black shirt, not the chic fashion of Manhattanite drinkers. Bobby Lee fit right in with his neat button up shirts. “This is Gucci,” he explained. “My ex Jason worked there. I’d get discounts but they let him go. I went back one day and just stuffed a shirt and pants into my bag and walked right outta the store. I got a closet full of stuff from Macy’s and Express.” Stealing was Bobby Lee’s second crime. I was in awe of his easy, triumphant confessions, mostly untethered from anything like guilt or human decency. He told me the medication he took made everything feel even-keeled, except for the shoplifting, which made him feel electric. We ended that first drunken night at a McDonalds next to his apartment. I waited outside for Bobby Lee and smoked a cigarette, taking in the cool air, and during a peaceful lull in the sound of traffic I heard a window shatter behind me. Bobby Lee’s body was pushed against a partially shattered glass window from inside the restaurant. His uniformed assailant had his hands around Bobby Lee’s Gucci collar. Bobby himself was all kicking long legs. I dropped my cig and rushed towards the fight, not knowing what to do. The youth let Bobby Lee fall to the floor next to bits of shattered glass as soon as I walked in. “Am I getting service or not!?” Bobby asked. One of the workers went around the counter, grabbed a wrapped burger, threw it at Bobby Lee, and yelled at him to get out. Safely outside, Bobby Lee explained he had walked in on the workers loitering behind the counter. “I say ‘I need service here—service!’ and that idiot comes up and asks what I want and they act like I’m speakin’ Chinese. They’re just mumbling and the portorican one just eyes me like I’m a goblin. You think I pay what I pay to put up with this shit? So I turned to the guy and said ‘get me some food you Chicken McNiglet and he comes rushing at me. You saw the rest.” “You called him a what?” I asked, suddenly sober and feeling as if I was trying to steer a runaway train. “Chicken McNiglet!” and Bobby Lee let out a laugh that scared the sleeping nighttime birds. So racism was Bobby Lee’s third crime—against propriety— and was less familiar to me than my uncle’s, which was territorial and paranoid. My uncle held a special disdain for people in adjacent black neighborhoods who somehow made us look bad. Bobby Lee was attracted to black men. Having spent so much time chasing black and brown asses, Bobby Lee believed he’d cracked a secret racial ability to discern the good brown people from the bad brown people. I was—I suppose—one of the good ones. My uncle didn’t like how I looked or how I behaved. I was not a man or a woman, and certainly not Latino, so we would go at it like wolves. When Bobby Lee offered his place, I jumped at the change. He was hoping for a hookup (probably), but instead found me too odd to fuck. I was thankful. I was over having lackadaisical sex in exchange for a bed. Bobby Lee and I didn’t waste time on deep meaningful talks or on the pain of the past. We didn’t have a thing in common, except for a general distaste in talking to and about our families. We were both abandoned in different ways, my uncle abandoned me literally, Bobby Lee’s mother and father just handed him some Xanax and didn’t ask questions. Every morning Bobby Lee moved like a forlorn daytime ghost around his apartment making coffee—I spent most of that summer at Bobby’s, and at night I applied for full-time positions that I never heard back from. Bobby’s only other friend was Jason, the last white man he had ever been with, and the reason Bobby moved to New York. Jason orbited me like a distant moon; carried himself like a guy with secrets. On very rare occasions he met us out drinking or stopped by the apartment. He was beautiful, but always held himself so sternly that it sent clear signals to me not start a conversation with him. “How long are you staying at Bobby’s?” Jason asked pointedly. “Who’s counting?” I said, trying to sound casual. “I meant to tell you…have you tried temping?” Bobby said, breaking in at just the right time. He explained to me that everything in New York was temporary, even the jobs, which paid more than hospitality gigs and were easy to get into if you knew how to use a computer. Bobby gave me a number for a temp agency, and I called every day, but assignments were dry. I couldn’t stay with Bobby Lee forever if I made no money. I didn’t sleep so easy on Bobby’s inflatable bed after realizing how much of a burden I was becoming. It occurred to me that Bobby could make me homeless with a word or two. My life could end with this spell, and the longer Bobby Lee refused to cast the spell, the more paranoid I grew. |
A week later I heard back from the agency. Bobby handed me an outfit he had stolen from Macy’s and off I went to a job interview with a data mining company. Though the suit was too big on me, I was overjoyed at the possibility of an income. I had a paltry one hundred dollars sitting in my checking account.
The secretary at this office greeted me with a broad smile and a nod. Her attitude was sheer competence and goodness— whiteness—and I returned the energy: no tragic backstory here ma’am. I sat with my knees locked and my bag on my lap. Inside that bag was my resume: no high school graduation year, one part-time job, lots of filler skills. I closed the bag and tried not to look anxious. She eventually led me into a small office with an ominous empty desk right in the middle. I placed my resume on the desk—changed my mind—and put it back into my bag. A scurrying dot next to my shoes caught my eye, and to my horror I watched a giant roach from Bobby Lee’s apartment emerge from my bag. The stowaway ran free under the desk. Before I could kill the insect, a handsome man with blonde, slicked-back hair walked in. “Welcome Jo,” he said, shaking my hand hard, turning me on. He sat behind the desk. He hadn’t seen the roach, which had scurried under the shadow of the table, toward his shoes. The man explained the job and asked me a few questions as I measured my breathing, trying hard not to stare at the roach. “…this assignment is potentially long-term. Maybe a year or longer.” The roach moved towards the man’s shoe, climbed aboard, and stuck to it as if to mock me. “Sounds good,” I said, finding my voice was tiny in front of this gigantic man. “Well then, you’ve got the job. You can start tomorrow if you’re up for it.” I thanked him, and then moved swiftly out of the room, only barely able to hear the sound of the man cursing while attempting to shake the pest out of his pant leg behind me. I told Bobby about my successful interview. “I shoulda told you about the roaches,” he said. “Can’t leave bags open on the ground.” * * * After a few working weeks and a few paychecks, I moved out of Bobby Lee’s and into a place in Harlem. I pushed and filed papers, entered notes on a spreadsheet; it was nothing and it paid nothing, but Bobby Lee insisted we celebrate my new job. I faked an illness and got myself out early. I was grateful for the work but not loyal. Never loyal. We dined like proper New Yorkers, and to my surprise even Jason showed up, though he fiddled with his phone the whole time. “You want some?” He asked, offering me a Xanax, eyes bright. I swallowed, washed it down with some wine, and about fifteen minutes later I didn’t feel great. “This shit’s gross,” I said to Bobby Lee, and all he did was cackle. Wooden shelves held bottles of wine behind Bobby Lee and throughout the restaurant. In a haze after our fourth glass of wine, Bobby Lee lowered his head. It was like the Void had swallowed us. In place of skyscrapers, I saw black monoliths against a black sky. Sound was the only evidence that New York hadn’t vanished: voices, cars braking, birds flapping wings to escape the ground in favor of the stars. “Dare me to take a bottle?”
Jason dared him to take three. When the waiter went to retrieve our check, Bobby Lee stood up, turned around, nabbed two bottles of wine—then a third, and attempted to sit back down. The third bottle escaped him, falling to the floor and rolling towards another table. He stood again, placed a hand on the shelf to steady himself, and the shelf cracked under the pressure. The entire structure collapsed. Jason jumped up and attempted to push the shelf back, but it was too late. Bottles of red wine rained down, some of them landing on people’s thighs, exploding on the floor, or clattering on top of tables. Everyone yelled, leapt to their feet, shielded their necks, and in a flash the chaos stopped and all was silent. We were covered in burgundy red, dripping from head to toe. Jason was the first to run, and we followed. We were out of the restaurant in no time, attempting to keep up with Jason, but he vanished into the horizon.The Xanax hit me there, and I laughed at how ridiculous Bobby looked covered in red. “Someone could have died!” Bobby Lee said, laughing, looking like a feral hyenas bloodied from a successful hunt. He reached into his bag and pulled out the one bottle of red, he’d managed to steal. In an instant, the lights around Bobby Lee and I vanished, leaving us in utter darkness. “What was that?” I whispered. It was like the Void had swallowed us. In place of skyscrapers, I saw black monoliths against a black sky. Sound was the only evidence that New York hadn’t vanished: voices, cars braking, birds flapping wings to escape the ground in favor of the stars. “A blackout,” Bobby Lee whispered back, touching my shoulder. My spirit returned to my body with those comforting words. People took out their flashlights, cell phone screens, and candles. They moved in large groups, helping each other, talking about the power failure, reassuring children. Subway stations were being evacuated, and groups of people started slowly marching down the street and over bridges to safety. We followed the headlights of slow-moving cars briefly illuminating the streets. We reached his home this way, lit some candles, and popped open his pilfered bottle of wine. Halfway through our festivities, Bobby Lee fell asleep in a haze of pills and alcohol, his head resting on my shoulder, and I relaxed and listened to Freedom by Jurassic 5 on my walkman. I was thankful to be back at Bobby’s, back to the only place that felt remotely like home in the pitch-black darkness of the Void. |
K. Joffré is a gay Guatemalan-American writer happily married in New York. He has non-fiction published in Slate and fiction published in Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Spectacle, Cosmonauts Avenue, PANK, and elsewhere. He hosts a podcast called "Writing Is Annoying." He is currently on the hunt for an agent. You can find him on twitter @kjoffre_ and at https://www.kjoffre.com
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