WILD LIFE
Billy Porter’s memories of Brighton, England were at best, oneiric. For over two decades he’d lived in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Brighton Beach, an outer-limits neighborhood jerry-rigged with color, roughly sketched in broad Slavic strokes imprinted by ethnically diverse newcomers. Where satellite dishes, scouting for extraterrestrial life, stood fixed onto acres of rooftops.
He rented a couple of decent rooms on the top floor of a tidy two-story stucco cottage on Oceanview Avenue. The neighborhood described most accurately by Viktor Semenov, Billy’s Russian-born landlord. “This place iss nut the United States, moy frehn.”
The Queens Wildlife Conservancy, where Billy Porter was employed as a security guard, was a considerable distance from Brighton Beach. On a good day the commute was a nearly two-hour trek necessitating two changes onto three subway lines. Calming mechanical motion—the ohm of transit—distracted him from pointless backtracking.
Winter had dragged on until April unleashed stiff-legged shut-ins keen to shed cabin fever—tourists and natives, orthodox and profane—sending them outdoors in a rush. He preferred the nearly deserted winter months. Fewer school trips. Visitor numbers down. Alligators, housed off display, leaving the fence-clatter call of Sandhill cranes echoing across the park.
Billy Porter—or Porter, as he preferred—regarded the middle-aged woman herding third-graders toward the main gate. His phone dinged, sending him into a comic dance, arms and legs akimbo. The chaperone eyed Porter’s exaggerated appearance. Her charges twittered like nervy ducklings. The newly hired female attendant laughed out loud.
Porter checked his messages. Ray Ray, texting again: “sorry 4 not kissing ass i am who i am that it.”
Ray Ray, officially known as Ramón Figueroa, was Porter’s co-worker—and friend—he had to admit. A fifteen-year-old wannabe gangsta in the body of a forty-seven-year-old man. They’d met in the winter of ’94 at the New York Aquarium in Coney Island, where Ray Ray had been a guard for a couple of years.
Both were security guards now on reclaimed landfill. Once the site of the 1939 World’s Fair, a few original structures of the ’64 World’s Fair remained at the Queens Zoo, or Wildlife Conservancy as it was eventually re-christened. Porter doubted the punters who hollered back at a scolding macaw or ducked under a parrot’s insolent swoop were aware of insider squabbles over the Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome.
Porter and Ray Ray were the odd couple, alike only in their capacity as wage earners. Fifty-three-year-old Billy Porter—keen-witted, reach-the-top-shelf tall, cropped ginger hair graying at his temples—embodied the desiccated British humor coworkers did not get until the storyteller with the irresistible accent had already left the room. Older women were charmed by his courtly manner. Younger ones were drawn to his deeper well. Though they were always alert for signs of his past, his personal life was off limits. Prying was discouraged. Angela was the unknown.
Billy Porter, a contrarily passive Brit, was married to Angela Bauer, an aggressively positive American. Thirty years had passed since Billy had left England. Unofficially, he and Angela had been separated for nearly twenty-three of those years.
Still, the first time he saw her was etched into his brain like he’d been bitten. Angela had arrived at the Zap Club in Brighton just as his band, Mental Feast, had kicked off. Bleached-blonde hair gathered off her neck, revealing peace sign earrings. On her feet, the new Doc Martens she’d bought in London that were killing her. He could not recall what she was wearing.
In the vaporous club interior, platinum-haired fans had surrounded him like sunlit petals sprung from a pitchy center. Black trousers ballooned on his long-legged frame; a twine-thin black leather tie drooped from his neck. His hennaed ponytail curled from under a rakish black fedora. She’d cut a deliberate path through a crush of modish smokers draped in wannabe Gaultier, Katherine Hammett, Comme des Garçons. He’d watched her watching him. New Romantic and Peacock Punk lingered like helplessness in the Thatcher years. It was the first of April 1986.
Porter’s cell phone dinged again: Smiley face.
“Better not have dumped me in it,” Porter texted. “Out of here end of shift.” Re-thinking, he added a signature response, “No worries.”
Ray Ray replied, “nah we good rizzo got it.”
Later they legged it past an Atlas and a Titan 2, rockets once rusting from neglect, now tarted-up reminders that man would walk on the moon.
Ray Ray’s muscle mass, like the winter-hard ground, had softened on his squat, mud-soft body. Under his Yankees cap his shaved skull bore an elaborate tattoo warning he was a Hell-raising Puerto Rican. Upbeat until some injustice, some misstep on the part of another—usually a supervisor—jacked up his otherwise low-pressure demeanor. Ray Ray didn’t mind being asked to do a late shift. Employee sick leave, jury duty, vacation meant more hours of overtime, the extra money essential. Ray Ray very much minded being told. Porter guessed he’d refused to step up for the late shift. It was on Ray Ray’s terms, or nada.
“April Fool a fucking joke.” Ray Ray clocked Porter’s quizzical look. “Man, every day’s April Fool with King Fool in the White House—My base definitely wants the border wall—fuck him.”
“Bothered enough to do what about it, exactly?” Porter said.
“I’m not going to say I want harm to come to another human being,” Ray Ray replied, “But if Cheeto-In-Chief accidentally got donkey-punched in his stupid face I wouldn’t be sad about it. So, watcha doin’ tonight then, Pawtah? Everything a’ight? Gonna play some balee loika with Ivan?”
Porter, eyebrows raised, recalled Angela’s retort to his whingeing over the Noo Yawk accent, which he had grown to love.
“A’ight? It’s not even English, Ange. What’s that all about?”
“Massif, innit?”Angela had replied. “It’s all just music, babe.”
They rode the No. 7 into Manhattan in silence, before Ray Ray spoke up. “Pawtah? You there?”
Billy Porter stared ahead. “Might do, Ramon. His name is Viktor, by the way.”
“Wha-a-a? Sorry man, I—.”
“No worries,” Porter said. “I’ll have a quiet night. Walk on the beach, I think. Maybe go to the local cafe.”
Ray Ray knew better than to invite Porter along with his homies for endless tequila shots banging to chorus lines of white powder, kicking it back in the South Bronx. Or worse—karaoke—spooked by a four-a.m. start to a crushing workday. Ray Ray, throttled by a brutal hangover.
Porter knew the answer, yet asked, “What are you up to tonight, mate?”
Ray Ray patted his Yankees jersey. “Livin’ large I hope, bro. Be happy we work outdoors. Lotta eye candy at the zoo soon.”
Heading to his uptown connection, Ray Ray hollered, “I’m good. You good? La buena vida!” He flashed a thumbs-up, jostling an irritated commuter.
“Speak English or go back where you came from,” she snarled.
“Bitch, I was born here,” he shot back.
Porter returned a theatrical salute. He started for the downtown express to his Brooklyn connection at Union Square. He caught the conductor’s droll appeal over the PA, “Just to dispel any rumors you’ve heard, there is no bogeyman in the middle of the car. You can safely move to the middle of the car, away from the doors.”
Pressed against the car door by a human logjam, Porter mused, not bloody likely.
The Queens end of the commute offered the distant passing Manhattan skyline. He was rarely induced to leave Brooklyn for the city, but was somehow reassured by the architecture of memory across the river. Crossing into Brooklyn he often gazed from the Q train, fascinated by graffiti artists overlaying each other’s work, boasting.
Porter wanted to disappear, remove his name from everything.
At Sheepshead Bay he inhaled the first hint of the ocean’s spring marinade. Porter continued to Coney Island, skipping his Brighton Beach stop. He crossed the broad boulevard, passing Nathan’s Famous fronting Surf Avenue. Angela, the vegetarian, had devoured crinkled French fries like a carnivore. She’d tried—and failed—to get a side order of sauerkraut. “Just put it on a roll where the hot dog would go!”
Porter recalled the time she’d ignored her argument with meat. Disregarding the doubtful eye of the fledgling server behind the counter, Angela had ordered expansively from the menu board for the begging man who was a day away from being paid.
Still not clear of the memory trap of deep-fried seaside fare, Porter slumped into the railing, searching for distraction in dark water below, inhaling only what the ocean had to offer at the far end of the pier at Coney. A freighter skimmed the horizon like a slow-moving target in a carnival shooting range.
From the start, the pier had been their destination in all-weather moods. Angela, armed with a bright yellow paper bag of salted fries bloodied with catsup. Porter, gripping a plastic ballpark-sized cup of uninspired PBA. She’d sallied from one side of the pier to the other, like a listing seabird, counting the four hundred and thirty-two steps it took to reach the end. She’d done it for laughs, until she needed a reason to ignore his moods. April Fool. He was that. Nothing to be done about it now.
Fully restored since Hurricane Sandy, the pier would soon be occupied with fishing poles angled like tethered horses, while solitary men, ice fishing for beer sunk into coolers, kept one eye on the tremble and pull of a line. Bathers would incline onto wavy wooden platforms bleached by the sun. Mangos, in the dexterous fingers of enterprising Mexican women, transformed by a sharp blade into bright orange blossoms.
Heading from the pier, Porter dodged a single unattended fishing rod. Ahead, intrepid tourists hunkered over green metal tray-sized tables, picking at cartons of Clam ’N Chips, under bright yellow-and-red umbrellas. It was too early for the mania of lights, movement, and sound in Luna Park. He noticed a turbaned man stroking a long ashen beard, contemplating the lowering sky.
A self-described “big girl’s blouse,” Porter had left the heart-thumping rides to Angela. He’d bested fear just once on the Cyclone, upping his game with a death-grip hold on the lap bar in a swinging car on the Wonder Wheel.
Low-pitched Saturdays in off-season ended when day-trippers thronged daily in high fever throughout the summer. Irascible bartenders at Cha-Cha’s and Ruby’s, disarming the crowds with laughable American beer, serving sugar-charged, neon-bright cocktails to gullible tourists. Loathsome canned laughter had been silenced, no longer exhorting crowds to Shoot the Freak.
A serrated chunk of driftwood caught Porter’s eye. He winced at the sight of it, as if he’d stepped on it barefoot. Angela had conjured fantastic scenarios. It’s the spine of some mystical creature. Nope, he’d say, it’s a piece of wood. The pain was palpable, even now.
Before he knew the neighborhood all too well, he and Angela had often journeyed to Coney Island. She loved the ocean in any season. He was unmoved by a placid sea. Thunderous waves pummeling a deserted winter beach echoed his internal trembler. Gulls crying or laughing, he could never tell. Like hot flashbacks beating against cool present, it all ended in igneous heartache if he went there. It was the ocean that brought them together, especially if they’d had a falling out. It was his ocean of apathy that had swept them apart.
He recalled the morning after they’d met at the Zap Club when he’d taken her to Brighton Pier.
“We share the same ocean,” he’d said.
“We have sand,” she’d said, eying the knobby terrain. She’d shucked her new Doc Martins, exposing angry blisters.
“You have to break them in,” he’d admonished. Barefoot, she’d clutched onto his shoulders. He’d carried her across the pebbled beach, lowering her carefully, just out of the ocean’s grasp.
“Do you want kids?” he’d hollered.
“No!” she’d called back, her chin nuzzling his chest. “You?”
“No,” he’d said.
“Where did that come from?” she’d said, hopping from one foot to the other in freezing water.
“Madness,” he’d said.
Heedlessly leaving disgruntled bandmates’ questions unanswered, Porter had, on impulse, flown to New York a week later. They’d been inseparable for months, camped out in Angela’s apartment, displaced in place until the band threatened to fire him. Panicked, he’d fled back to Brighton in early September.
A month later Angela traveled to Paris for a book fair. She illustrated children’s books, her unconventional style in some demand. She’d been staying at the Hotel Esmeralda. Porter was surprised to hear from her.
“I’m in Paris,” she shouted. “Aux Trois Mailletz. A very, very loud piano bar. I know it’s crazy, but maybe you want to come over?”
Silence prompted her to ask, “Are you there, Billy?”
“Persuade me,” he said, unable to think of a response.
They’d spent three days and nights in Paris, savoring each other anew. Back home, winter apart was one long perfect storm of toll calls. Whatever he’d wanted to do was with her. She’d fallen in love with his urgency.
He arrived in New York on a Wednesday in late March of ’87. One week later, on the first of April, he was married.
Porter fit himself and his guitars into Angela’s spacious book-and-art-filled apartment on West End Avenue. The vibe of her Upper West Side neighborhood took the edge off. Fortress-like, the building was a musician’s haven. He’d told her it was where he belonged.
He’d sold his car and four classic American guitars, arriving in New York with nearly seven thousand pounds stashed in his Doc Martens. He still missed the Gibson J45 acoustic. His favorite ’62 Gibson ES175 had made it to New York. His blonde. The only blonde on his arm until Angela.
His band broke up. He’d sworn he was cool with that. He’d applied for a green card. “I’m here now,” he said.
At times Porter’s quirky reliance on trenchant put-downs, his oft-repeated longing for a well-poured lager, had irked Angela. Her friends warmed to him, at first—to his dry humor, his accent—laughingly beguiled, charmed by the wind-up. To his old bandmates who’d visited, he’d played down Angela’s success. He’d encouraged their matter-of-course sarcasm. He knew, now, how hurtful it was for her to have heard him refer to City Hall as the scene of the crime. His friends had mocked her accent until she’d fought back, playfully at first. “One more Yo, Adrian…,” she’d say, shaking her fist.
They’d explored her city afresh. Intimate dinner parties with Angela’s friends, discovering new restaurants, retracing steps to her old favorites. She’d taken the wheel of the rental when they drove to Montauk. Porter had often been hung over, without a valid driver’s license. He’d never quite gotten a handle on the left-hand side drive. Or his head ’round her politics.
He was pragmatically apolitical. There were no heroes. Angela’s protest was admirable. She’d argued passionately, with conviction. Porter loved her spirit. He loved her insight and her wit. Nothing was too sacred that didn’t deserve a poke in the eye.
He’d been overwhelmed, at first, by the manic initiative of New Yorkers, the city’s short-cut energy. Though they’d been looking to crack London clubs, Mental Feast had only played support for bands at smaller regional festivals or local clubs in Brighton.
Among her friends and fellow activists at what turned out to be history’s largest AIDS protest, Porter had felt woefully out of his depth.
The sheer provocation of radical art shown in storefront gallery exhibitions had overwhelmed him. Uninhibited sex and unflinching protest had left him feeling ill-equipped. He’d been discomfited in the face of Angela’s confidence, as if he’d stepped on a cultural landmine. Billy Porter was most at ease around art he understood, ignored by dispassionate guards in museums where he was left to the familiar angst of a Van Gogh.
She’d had deadlines, but worked from home. Marathon late nights had meant late morning lie-ins. Book fairs, clients, friends, and wanderlust took her abroad. The question of them traveling together was avoided. Getting no response from Porter, his friends dropped off.
Angela had introduced him to CBGBs, the Pyramid Club, and the Knitting Factory, urging him to feel live music again. She’d encouraged him to open mics, to jam with other musicians. Calls for auditions in the Village Voice were conspicuously highlighted. Porter had nodded eagerly, cracking his first beer. He’d flip through her albums and cassette tapes. Lou Reed and Patti Smith. Rolling Stones and the Beatles. Talking Heads and Blondie. The Ramones. He’d added The Primitives, Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine. They’d killed hours together in Tower Records, weeding rows of music CDs.
Later, when they’d been listening to Nirvana or Nine Inch Nails, she’d ask, “Anything going on with the music? I heard a bit of something the other night. New song?”
No matter that he’d disagreed, she’d understood that he’d felt displaced.
“Talk to me,” she’d say.
He’d mouth the words in his head. What he’d given her was puzzling, then infuriating, silence. Gripping a beer-bottle torch, he’d disappear into the spare room, his guitar borne like a shield. “I’ll just be a while….”
A purposeful self-starter, Angela had vacillated between diligence and annoyance with his intransigence.
Sex was their common ground. “You’re the loneliest man I have ever known,” she’d say, lying next to him in the dark.
The set of her mouth changed. Once full, soft, and given to laughter, it had tightened, an anxious spasm.
He’d done that to her. He couldn’t bear it.
Not long after she’d called it quits, he’d been midst packing when a post card arrived from Angela. “I was in Arles today. Paid homage. Thought of you.”
Agitated pacing to his left reminded Porter where he was. He turned from the sea view to catch a twitchy, thin-faced teenager on the boardwalk. Tightly matted dreds shot from a yellow and red bandana tied behind the boy’s head. His red-satin jacket intruded on the blackened sky. Chin wisps brushed an iPhone the size of a Cracker Jack box held to his lips like he was kissing it.
“I’m not axing you, man. I am commanding you.” The boy seethed. “If you cut my do-rag on the cover, I will cut you.” Eyeing Porter, he snarled. “Wha’choo lookin’ at?”
Picking up his pace, Porter continued east toward Brighton Beach. An incoming train muffled the sea lions’ lament echoed above the walls of the New York Aquarium.
When his marriage collapsed, he found himself living in Brighton Beach. Return visits to the aquarium made Porter a kind of fixture until he was hired in the Spring of ‘95. He discovered the Bathysphere, the odd steel eyeball that had obsessed him as a boy. Taken aback by how small it was. It sat outside the main entrance now, tourist bait.
Ray Ray had introduced Porter to the woman in public relations. Likewise charmed by Porter, she’d arranged a successful interview for a security job. When the Queens Wildlife Conservancy in Flushing Meadows posted job openings, she’d gone to bat for Ray Ray because, frankly, he’d driven her nuts. She’d balked at Porter’s request to transfer, at first. “Okay it’s nice, but the commute is a horror. You must be crazy!”
He’d tapped his head as if to say, “Just a tad.”
Train tracks laddered the overhead station on Brighton Beach Avenue. Porter glanced into the Oceanview Café. He recognized the solitary men gazing upward at a flat screen. They nursed small carafes of vodka or elbowed glasses of Lipton tea nestled in cheaply ornate silver-plate holders. A dish of cherry preserves sat half-mooned by a lemon wedge. Elbows on the table, fingers splayed for the ghost cigarette, the men directed their noncommittal gaze to a Madonna look-alike gyrating to Slavic-infused hip-hop.
Porter’s usual seat was no substitute for his landlady’s kitchen. Her fussy ministrations sometimes exasperated him, but the food was reliably satisfying, always followed by strong black coffee while her husband unpacked the balalaika.
He glanced back at the men in the café. Not tonight, he thought.
Rounding the corner onto his block, Porter was met by his neighbor’s aging chestnut Pit Bull Terrier snuffling behind the ubiquitous chain link fence. Cropped ears pressed back like a buzz cut. Pea-sized, red-rimmed eyes fronting an unshakably reactionary face. Porter pressed the back of his hand to the dog’s sponge-pink nose. “Hello mate,” he said.
Two doors down, Porter started up a narrow concrete path lined with sunny plastic tulips. Salmon-pink flamingoes, stationed at the cherry-red front door at the top of steep cement steps, eyeing him like sentinels.
Porter’s rooms above were spare and clean, disturbed only with his impressive collection of guitars, recording gear, a prized Neuman U47 microphone. His first guitar, a lipstick red Framus, untouched since he’d left England. He’d kept a few vinyl recordings of his dad’s band, though he lacked a turntable. His CD collection was eclectic. Internet access—sites like Radio Garden and YouTube—afforded him worldwide choice, neatly avoiding the ‘best pop tunes of all time.’ He’d developed a taste for more experimental music from rock, classical, and indigenous artists.
Privacy was a given. His landlady never entered his rooms uninvited. He barely noticed metal bars on the back windows anymore.
He’d attended his first and last AA meeting the day after he’d moved to Brighton Beach. In a job lot of disparate makes and models of human beings, he’d struck up a conversation with a man he’d sensed possessed a healthy skepticism. They’d agreed that higher power was really the business of other people’s mistakes.
Billy Porter and Viktor Reznik left together. “No joke though. This meetings saved my life. You? You don’t need this meetings. Come to dinner,” he’d urged Porter. “My wife will be crushed if you did not come.”
Porter had tucked into a ruby borscht, a sharp, slightly smoky eggplant caviar, and boiled dumplings while he’d politely deflected Valentina Reznik’s gentle interrogation. He’d noted mushroom, cabbage, potato. Fruit. Cheese. A delicate white pitcher of cream.
Clinging to small talk, he said, “Sorry. Silly question. But what are the people like in Brighton?”
“It seems to me that we can be divided into two groups,” Viktor had responded. “The miserable ones that will hate you, and the cheerful ones that love you. We are the cheerful ones.”
When pressed, Porter told Valentina only that he was separated from his American wife, that he had just moved to Brighton Beach. “Where are you staying, Beeley?” she’d asked. Horrified, she’d urged him to move into the empty flat above. “We are vegetarians,” Valentina added. He’d agreed over coffee and a last bite of apple cake.
Viktor had been managing a cleaning crew on Wall Street when he’d met Porter. “Banks,” he’d snort, “Thieving bastards.” He retired in 2001, soon after September 11th. He’d revealed only that vodka had figured largely and destructively in his past, never alluding to what he and Valentina had left behind in Ukraine. They were not practicing Jews. “Who needs to practice?” he said.
Valentina rarely ventured into Manhattan. Something she and Porter had in common. It had been thirty-five years since the first hand-crafted mermaids floated bare-breasted along the boardwalk. A decade since Valentina, a self-described homebody, had stopped going to the Mermaid Parade. “The crowds. Too much police,” she told Porter.
Viktor knew who the cheerful ones were. He looked forward to the first ever Russian LGBTQ Parade in Brighton Beach, a month away. Viktor was a joiner. He was one of the cheerful ones.
A recognizable aroma of dill and onion greeted Porter. Valentina called from the kitchen, her voice a consort to traces sharp, sweet and earthy. Over time, he recognized changes that aging brought, but Valentina’s voice was still as youthful as a girl’s. “Just in time, Beeley,” she sang.
Viktor Reznik dropped the balalaika onto a wearied patchwork leather ottoman in the comforting familiarity of their living room. “For after,” he said. “Now, we eat.”
Porter woke in a still dark room lit only by the celestial screensaver of a 27-inch iMac. He gathered navy chinos, a white cotton polo shirt, work boots, and a fleece hoodie.
Pulsed by Viktor’s snoring in the room below, Porter stepped quietly down the hall stairs. The Semenov’s kitchen light was on. He pictured Valentina nursing black tea with cherry jam, anticipating the yeasty rise of bread dough, while dragging on the cigarette her husband frowned upon. He bent to retrieve an insulated bag at the bottom of the stairs. Stepping from the front door, he was cuffed by muscular ocean air.
Incoming text. Ray Ray, “buggin man bs wit me doin shots do 2 shifts later we on 2nite peace.” Porter shook his head. It was how Ray Ray kept his job, getting a supervisor like Big Saul to partner-in-crime.
Porter headed for the station, passing bleak storefront security gates. A saxophone sounded overhead, Siren to drowsy commuters hurrying through a dank, pre-dawn darkness. A young Russian on the platform, aged by circumstance, stood kneading his sax, blowing the kiss of life. Porter recognized the song, once the signature tune of his dad’s band.
At Porter’s advance, the man lowered his instrument.
“Didn’t do so good this month, didn’t match my money out,” he mumbled. “Name’s Rad, by the way.”
“Keep playing, Rad.” Porter dropped a tenner into the gig bag at the man’s feet. “You’re doing fine.”
Stepping into an empty subway car, Porter hummed silently, “It had to be you, it had to be—.” Memories, like raw wind blowing into an empty room. His father’s band playing up in London. From the mid 60s to the late 70s they were billed as The Porter Boys. Stephen, his dad, played piano. On sax, his Uncle Patrick. Supporting them: drummer, bass player and vocalist. Older celebrities were oftentimes spotted in the audience, drawn to the newly reassuring familiar the music evoked. The club was probably a Shake Shack now.
The brothers were tight as musicians, secure in the harmonious refrain. Not so close as siblings. Porter, an only child, found his Uncle Patrick—a non-hibernating bear of a man—too loud, too physical, especially when he’d been drinking.
Encouraged by his father, Porter had been naturally inclined to jazz. While neighbor kids rumbled a football, he’d listen to his dad’s recordings of Django Reinhart, Wes Montgomery, Tal Farlow. In time, he also knew every popular show tune by heart. “It brings in the punters,” his dad had said. As a teenager he’d accompanied his father up to London on Sunday afternoons to jazz clubs like Ronnie Scott’s. Whenever the great American jazz guitarist, Joe Pass, was in London, Porter had been invited for a private lesson with his father’s friend.
As if raising the palm of his hand to his nose, Porter drew in the preserved memory of those late afternoon sessions. Lingering cigar smoke trapped in curtained hotel rooms. Muted London traffic. It wasn’t until much later that he understood his tightly-wired instructor’s dark countenance, tension that had nothing to do with his committed pupil. The lad was a natural. Everyone said. He’d be another Porter Boy before long.
Until 16-year-old Porter agreed to meet his cousin Tonia at the Druids Head in Brighton. At twenty, Tonia was the eldest of four sisters. She’d remained at home since leaving Brighton University. Two of the sisters—the twins—were midway through secondary school. The youngest was a scrabbling ten-year-old tomboy in junior school.
Tonia, a lissome, soft-spoken, studiously self-effacing redhead, had masked nervousness with white wine until she’d reddened with anger. Porter, taken aback, had steered her to a corner table away from the crowd.
Bolstered, perhaps, by legendary pub ghosts thought to be visible only to children, she’d quietly revealed ongoing episodes of years-long abuse. How the three eldest, like tight-knit meerkats, maneuvered to protect the youngest, vigilantly deflecting their father’s venomous attention.
Porter, whiplashed on impact, immediately recalled watching his cousins flinch at their father’s touch; how he’d fidgeted nervously at his uncle’s crass inuendoes.
“What…what are you saying?” Porter had asked.
“What do you think I’m saying,” she’d replied.
“That you were…oh god,” he’d whispered.
That we were all…near enough,” she’d hissed.
“Even Carole Ann?” he’d cried.
“No. I said we protected her.”
Despite his aunt’s protest, sadly and quietly backed by his parents, Porter persuaded Tonia to bring assault charges against her father. After soul-crushing months of rehashing interviews, waiting, the girls wobbling at times, Porter’s sustained support took its toll. He stopped playing. Stopped laughing. Left his guitar in its case. The Porter Boys disbanded. The drummer, bass player, and singer re-formed with a keyboard player. His father turned to private tuition.
A conviction and ultimate incarceration freed up the unsaid. His uncle’s pub mates did not call Porter a grass. To his face. Timid stabs at qualified sympathy among long-time neighbors gave way to overt avoidance.
He’d slipped away from the family home in Portslade to a shared flat in Brighton. The twins were taken in by Porter’s mum. Tonia moved to Wales for a new job. They’d regarded Porter as their hero. The youngest, confused and angry, remained at home with her mother.
Inhabited by something too monstrous to be ignored, Porter had traced its crawl into his attic brain. It ate through his body’s wiring, a ravenous shape shifter, radically transforming him. He started writing songs, dark lyrics over sunrise melodies. Lullabies for grown up children. He’d discovered his singing voice. He was a rocker. Flat mates became band mates. They were his Mental Feast.
Angela had navigated, at first, his moody currents. Although he’d spoken to his parents, whenever Angela brought up a Brighton visit, he’d dodge every heartfelt intention she’d thrown at him, like the long-gone freak at Coney.
“Your mother said you needed looking after,” Angela teased.
“You know mums,” Porter had replied.
Although he probably couldn’t pinpoint when she’d had enough of the dark moods—whether bored or angered by his reticence—Porter felt she’d shifted her enquiry on their third anniversary.
“I don’t care that you’ve forgotten the date,” she said. “Well I do, but not as much as I am concerned about you. What’s weighing on you? Please tell me. We can fix this.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But sometimes it’s too much even to get out of bed.”
Startling him, she shot back,“No! Not this time. I can’t watch this. You, turning inside yourself. Answer me, because I don’t know what the hell to do!”
Angela’s pained confusion elicited a tense revelation from Porter. “My uncle was released from Lewes Prison the day before I met you in Brighton,” he said
“Your uncle? So…prison. Do I need to ask?” she said. “Wait! No. Tell me.”
He did. He told her everything, aware of his breathing, like a deep-sea diver about to drown.
“I got a call from my cousin Tonia….”
Angela listened raptly as his story unfolded like an origami colossus looming largely between them.
“Where are the girls now?” she asked.
“Tonia is in Wales where her husband is from,” he said. “The Twins are still living with mum and dad.”
“And Carole Ann?” she asked.
“She hates me.”
“She doesn’t. Give her time,” Angela replied.
“No. She hates me,” he said.
“That night—,” he started.
“When we met?” she said.
“Yes. It was almost game over. I don’t know—.
“Is that why you followed me here?” She spoke softly, hesitantly. “You didn’t know? Is that why you married me?”
Angela’s own family history fit in a pamphlet: Unromantic upbringing in Queens, no siblings, parents dead. Angela had resolved to connect with his cousins. She’d urged until it became begging. “Deal with the past. Don’t drown. Keep waving.” He’d thought her hippy jibe a throwaway. It may have been been a lifeline.
His father fell ill. At their aunt’s urging, the girls moved out, sharing a flat close by. When Porter’s father died, his mum remained on her own in the family home.
Within a year of his father’s death, Porter’s mum followed.
Again, he’d rejected Angela’s urging. “You have family,” Angela had said. “You don’t know how lucky you are.” She’d pay for his flight, offering to go with him, though Porter doubted her heart was fully in it. It was the last time he’d spoken with his cousins.
The death of Angela’s old cat in ’92 razed the precarious sanctuary they’d called marriage. Porter had claimed he didn’t like animals, house pets especially. Angela was fine with him ignoring her cat. She’d often caught Fishbein side-eyeing Porter, shadowing him around the apartment.
“I’m no doctor, but I think it’s a cold,” she’d said. “Pollen count is high. Fishbein’s sneezing, not dying.” She’d been stunned at Porter’s reaction. “There’s only the three of us,” he’d said, cradling the wheezing cat.
Angela had been in San Francisco attending a book fair when Fishbein died. Porter had shut down, overshadowing her grief. He’d work off the hangover on a run in Riverside Park. Working at home had kept Angela focused on a then amorphous goal. She began traveling at every opportunity.
Two years later the sale of his parents’ terraced house in Portslade brought Porter a gainful inheritance. He’d insisted on repaying Angela. She’d refused. Instead, she’d booked a flight to Paris. “I’ll be in France for a month. Scouting the terrain,” she’d told him. “You’ll be okay now. But we are not okay.”
Kurt Cobain died that year along with Porter’s marriage. After the split, he’d stored his music gear and moved his few belongings to a rooming house in Brighton Beach. A few days later he was living above the Rezniks.
Porter made his way from Grand Central to the No. 7 line to Flushing. Missing on the platform that morning was Ray Ray. Porter pictured him there. Head thrown back. Ear buds in place. Eyelids at half-mast.
“Good morning passengers. This is your conductor.” Porter stared ahead, avoiding eye contact with other passengers who were also weighing their travel options. He silently ticked off reasons for a delay: train traffic ahead, sick passenger, signal problems or—alarmingly—a jumper. Suspicious package. Turns out to be trash. Sign of the times, Porter thought.
At 111thStreet, Porter ducked into the Arab-owned newsagent. It reminded him of the corner shops back home, open all hours in case you needed cigarettes, batteries or party balloons at four in the morning. The three Fayed brothers were Yemini immigrants. He’d known them since they were kids. The eldest, Abdul, had kids of his own. Most mornings his wife, Samira, was in the shop. A hijab left her face uncovered. If the coffee pots were empty, Ray Ray offered to make a fresh pot. “Yes, yes,” she’d say laughing, “Go on then.”
Porter checked the time before considering the Mexican bakery for a couple of pan dulces,the conch-shaped pastries that recalled the sea. Lunch was in the bag. Since he’d started the job in Queens, Valentina often packed a meal for him. He’d balked, at first. It was one of the only times that he’d been short with her. Fearful he’d been rude, he’d apologized. “I was bang out of order,” he’d said. She’d shrugged it off, “No worries, like you say Beeley.” But she’d been hurt. “We have no kids,” Viktor later confided. “I’ll talk to Valentina. Don’t you worry.”
“Crack on, Porter. You’re late!”
Lemuel Schoichet had a face like a cigarette stub and the heart of a bastard. Animal keeper and womanizer, he hated everything but the women in his site. He threw his shit-stained gloves into the employees’ communal washing machine. Coworkers screamed at him. It slid over him like yellow mustard on a kasha knish. He was, as he took pains to remind everyone, the only Jew without money. “I can’t even buy time, I’m so broke.” He’d nicknamed the owl, “Fucking Asshole.”
For some years he’d been zealously wooing Melissa Fussell, staff veterinarian. At his side, her blonde, athletic, crystal-wearing presence did wonders for his darkly undermined self-esteem. He’d blown his credit on big-ticket items like arena rock gigs. Springsteen wasn’t cheap. Drinks at forgettable hip venues. More drinks, more motel rooms on the increasing weekend getaways. They weren’t dating. They were friends with benefits. He’d pressured her to think about their future. Finally, she’d agreed. She talked marriage. Lem backed off.
“She wants us to see friends and do meditation,” he told Porter. “The horses, she bonds with horses. She rescues anything that moves…or bleats. It’s all that vortex shit she goes on about.” And he was, as everyone knew, still married.
By nine o’clock, trash talk between the women in the admin office had hit its stride.
“Security! She harassin’ me!”
“You deaf cow!”
“It’s daft,” Porter returned. “You daft cow.”
“She called me a slut!”
“You a slag. Right Porter? That’s the word?”
When the break room smelled like thyme and allspice, Porter knew who’d brought pigs’ feet and beans for lunch.
Until Donald Trump there was no political chatter among staff to speak of beyond the heady months that followed the election of Barack Obama, the first Black president. It changed in 2016.
Porter had paid attention, more or less, when he and Angela were together. She was politically, bracingly aware.
In a rare phone call from her just after 9/11, he’d heard her fury, her insistence that they were being lied to. Her flight had been grounded in Newfoundland, in Gander, he thought. She’d been on her way back from France where she was living.
“Are you all right?” she’d asked. “I’m off to DC in a few weeks to protest. What do you think? We’ve just been had, right? Seriously, what do you think?”
“What do I think?” he’d responded. “I think Americans…it’s like collective short-term memory with you lot.”
“Right,” she’d shot back, “Look who I’m talking to. I need another American perspective.”
“I mean,” he said, “Your president’s assassination was replayed on the telly worldwide. Everyone saw Ruby shoot Oswald. They’ve just seen the towers come down in real time.
He reminded her she’d been to Philadelphia to see Live Aid, Bob Geldof’s tour de force.
“Remember famine in Africa? You were at the gig, Ange.”
Trump? They’d get over it.
He left at the end of his shift. No one was ever to know that Porter returned to hang out on nights when Ray Ray was the sole guard on duty.
Back in Brighton Beach, Porter begged off dinner with the Semenovs. Upstairs, he warmed the teapot. He unwrapped a spinach crepe he’d picked up at Gourmanoff’s. The expansive market, fronted by the original marquee of the Oceana movie theater, was what the long-term residents calledan upscale kind of thing. “It should be in Times Square,” Viktor said. Valentina scoffed at the cost. “Gold chandeliers and caviar? I go to the Bazaar.”
Porter remained in his rooms, noodling around on a guitar until nearly nine o’clock, before heading back to Queens. He passed Valentina on the front steps; the lit end of her cigarette exposed like a confession.
“Are you gigging somewhere Beeley?” she said, eyeing the guitar case.
“Off to play what you lot call soccer,” he deadpanned.
At Grand Central, Porter squeezed from a crowded subway car to leg a knee-crunching descent to the No.7 line. The conductor’s announcements were especially inspired. “Ladies and Gents, it breaks my heart that we can’t call you lovely people ladies and gents, but you are sacred beings. If you want to be a lady, be a lady. If you want to be a gent, be a gent. You don’t have to change because they tell you to.”
From atop the elevated station at 111thStreet fluorescent evidence of twenty-four-hour livelihoods vibrated below. Familiar jots of light held fast to the blue-blackened sky in the distance. Porter sought out the rockets silhouetted like Bic pens in the purple glow of the Hall of Science. The Unisphere, so tiny from his vantage, looked alien in the landscape.
A recent e-mail from Angela had disturbed what’d he’d rewired in that attic room in his head. He’d never felt the need to confide. He came neatly pre-packaged. “Do not open,” was as much as anyone was allowed. Not even Valentina could drag any semblance of a past life from him. Something in his attic had unhinged and Porter had mulled letting Ray Ray in.
“It’s all about celebrity authorship,” Angela wrote. “Because they find it fun and empowering to produce children’s books. And Madonna needs more of that, apparently. Anyway, I’m not on their list. I’m not on anyone’s list.”
Porter wondered how she’d see her city so evidently changed. He recalled her irritation with any transformation that added nothing to the fabric of life, especially if it meant a soulless replacement. As far back as the early 90s, she’d railed about newcomers who no longer came to the city to be challenged. They’d brought a small-town arena with them, starred in their homespun circus. Newcomers who needed big-box stores and Krispy Kreme. Newcomers who embraced nostalgia, yet had no problem pioneering gentrified neighborhoods, arriving with their chic nod to the past. Don’t get her started on tourists. “Billboard the city line!” she’d declare, appropriating his slang. “In big letters: Don’t come to the city with your smalls.”
“Hey Boss.” Porter nodded to the Chinese owner of Tim’s Deli. He ordered two large black coffees, adding a sausage and pepper hero. On impulse, “Make that two. One no sausage.” From his command post behind the counter, Tim replied, “Okay Boss.”
Porter found Ray Ray alone in the empty security office. From the dance moves his friend was making—no doubt enabled by multiple white lines—Porter guessed Ray Ray was listening to Bon Jovi or the Bee Gees. Gangsta, with the musical taste of a middle-aged suburban mom.
“Thanks, man,” Ray Ray said, removing the ear buds. Nodding to the guitar, “This is so whack, bro.”
Porter unzipped the guitar case. Ray Ray had rumbled this one before. “It’s a job,” Porter said, knowing that would be the end of it.
Ray Ray persisted. “But, this ain’t just a job, man. Looka what you doin’ heah!”
Shouldering his guitar, Porter started from the office. “What I’m doin’ heah bro,” Porter replied, “is between you and me. Right, mate?”
Nearing sunrise, Ray Ray shivered as if someone had walked over his grave. What Ray Ray needed was another line, another stab at life. He peered across the road from the main gate, through the now hesitant dark to the animal farm. The dawn chorus, finding its way into the music. How does he do it? he wondered. How does Porter make that guitar bleat like a nervous lamb, or moan low and wet like a calf? An aviary of captive birds beating their wings. Bear cubs whining like impatient toddlers.
Ray Ray hustled to the office, poured a strong black coffee. He strode back to the main gate, crossing the road to the farm. Porter—head tilted, ear to the guitar—sat against the enclosure for the newborn lambs. The air was primped with the unfolding rounds of birdcall. Llamas gazed pop-eyed from their paddock at the man with the guitar accompanying first light.
“You’re like that guy Edgar,” Ray Ray said, extending the coffee mug.
“Elgar,” Porter replied evenly. “They only used his music in the experiment. It wasn’t written for the elephants.”
Ignoring Porter, Ray Ray said, “You gonna hafta let people know someday, am I right?” His swollen hands gripped pillowed hips. “Or like, what’s the point?”
“You do bang on.” Porter snapped, irritated at Ray Ray’s persistence, “You’re smarter than you make out.”
“The more you know, the more people ask you shit,” Ray Ray replied.
They stood in silence, enveloped by muffled grunts from slumberous boars, until Porter handed Ray Ray his empty coffee mug. “You don’t mind, do you?” he said curtly.
Porter slipped out unnoticed. It troubled him when he’d been short-tempered. There was plenty of time for a huevos burrito at the Mexican deli before returning for his shift. He strode through the park around the Queens Museum, passing the space ships on 111th.
Abdul waved from the back of the store.
“I can leave this here, okay?” Porter said, lowering his guitar.
“Yes, of course. Where is your friend this morning?” Samira asked, pointedly.
“Already there,” Porter replied, “pulling a double.”
Samira continued arranging newspapers, keeping a close eye on their five-year-old son who was the image of his deceased uncle.
Seventeen years gone, the youngest of the Fayed brothers still had a presence despite the absence of photos, which Porter later learned caused melancholy and yearning. He’d heard their news a few days after 9/11. Abdul’s brother, killed in another family store in Virginia. Porter had offered his shocked condolences, asking Abdul what he could say that would be appropriate. Abdul had replied, “We belong to Allah. To Him we return.”
Porter had no photos of Angela.
He waved on his way out, “Look after the guitar, Missus.”
“Look after your friend,” she said, shaking her head. “He needs looking after.”
Heading back, Porter recalled his first “animal” song. Ray Ray knew only that Porter had been married to an American. “Did you ever write songs for her?” he’d asked.
He’d written a song about an elephant. Angela had told him about Topsy after their first visit to Coney Island. Porter had understood her sadness at the death of a circus animal, but not quite the anger. He’d mulled it over for months. On their first wedding anniversary, he’d presented her with a love song to the ill-starred Topsy. Reluctantly, he’d asked, “You don’t think it’s weird? Or morbid, or—?”
She’d thrown her arms around his neck. “I love it. It’s beautiful. I don’t think it’s weird at all.”
Returning along the path to the zoo, Porter hummed the lyrics in his head. “I know no light can dim this memory of you….”
Sometimes it’s easier to just light a match and walk away, he thought. He should have trusted her.
“Peace offering,” he said handing Ray Ray his usual breakfast of bacon-egg-and-cheese on a roll, a two-liter bottle of Coca-Cola, the menthol cigarettes along with a party-size bag of barbecue-flavored potato chips.
“Breakfast of champions,” Ray Ray said, grinning.
Starting for his post, Porter dodged the red-faced education volunteer fleeing the security office. Ray Ray, right behind Porter, peered into the doorway. “Wassup Big Guy. What’s her problem?”
Saul Dornicik looked up through roadmap eyes, his clay-like body molded into a too-small office chair. The flame-red “trouble bell” loomed on the cinder block wall behind, a jarring note to the shelf below populated with cartoon animal figures.
Big Saul had been a first responder on 9/11, a beat cop then. Unlike the overlooked removal of steel columns at Ground Zero, Saul’s nightmares still occupied an immovable place in his brain. These days, Saul shuffled between his Howard Beach neighborhood, the waiting rooms of The Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, his security job in Queens, and raucous nights in a South Bronx karaoke bar with Ray Ray, where he shored up fractured anxiety with tequila shots and coke.
“See that badge she was wearing? Not-My-President! Wha-a-ada snowflake. I told her, leave that shit at the door.” He shifted uncomfortably. “Feminists,” Big Saul snorted. “The movement has destroyed marriages. Killed families. No respect. And today, we see women cynical to men and men cynical to women. Women disrespecting men and men disrespecting women. Women acting like men and men acting like women. It’s about time—.”
“About time for what?” Porter asked.
“Sorry, it’s just one of those things people know.”
“But how do they know?” Porter pressed. “Based on what?”
“Some things in life there’s no statistics for,” Big Saul returned. “You just use common sense and obvious reasoning. I ain’t writing a thesis here, English.”
Ray Ray grinned slyly. “Feelin’ rough, bro? You flaggin’ from a lost weekend?”
“Me?” Saul groaned. “Little bit more worn and I’d be perfect.” He nodded to Porter. “You okay, English? You both look like you needa pick-me-up.”
Away from the office, Detex in hand, Ray Ray asked, “You leave the axe with Abdul?”
Porter nodded.
“This shit is wild,” Ray Ray croaked. “You gotta do something with it!”
Porter, startled upright by Ray Ray’s demand. Like being struck by lightning while treading water. He slouched an invisible guitar from his shoulder. Fair enough. It was a legitimate question. Before he could answer, Ray Ray was on him again.
“Man. What I wouldn’t give—.”
Irritated, Porter snapped. “What shite are you talking about now? What’s all this in aide of? What’s wild?”
“You! You’re wild,” Ray Ray cried.“This music nobody hears. That’s wild. Why you wanna be like me? Really, Dude? What kinda wild fucking life is that?”
Porter lost in thought. She’s sold the house in France. Her tenant in Manhattan has vacated the apartment. Angela was coming home.
“Dude, I’m serious,” Ray persisted. “What kinda life is that?
Facing his benign interrogator, Porter replied, “My life, Mate. This is my kinda life.”
© AllCity Books 2019
