“Oh my goodness.” Milly kept glancing up at Ardit, who was shaking his head balefully. “Did Hector say anything?”
“I didn’t wait. Mateo was crying when he got to the apartment so I took him right to the hospital. But I already took pictures of the bite and called a lawyer. Milly, we have to do something about getting Hector out of the building.”
That felt like jumping a step ahead, she thought. The dog, maybe. But Hector himself? “You think so?” she asked weakly.
“He’s becoming a menace. The drugs, the sleazy guys in and out of the apartment at all hours, the negligence with that crazy dog. Some folks think he’s dealing drugs out of there. He’s going to burn down the building one night.”
“Maybe I could ask my mother to talk to him,” she said. “Reconnect and see what he needs.”
Jared harrumphed lightly over the phone, as though he thought it was far too late for that, and slightly as though he was annoyed by Milly’s softness. “Anyway, we’ll be home soon. Don’t worry about Mateo, he’s okay.”
“I have pizza here,” she remembered to add.
After she put away her phone and stood up, a bit dazed from the swift unfolding of events, Ardit said, “That Hector, he’s bad news.”
“Do you think he’s dealing drugs out of the apartment?” she asked.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Guys in and out of here all night.”
“He’s deteriorating,” Milly said. “He once was very prominent.”
Ardit shrugged, seemingly unimpressed by this news. “He’s got a problem now,” he said.
Milly made her mmm sound again before thanking Ardit and getting into the elevator. Then she did something strange. Instead of pressing “6,” she pressed “9,” Hector’s floor. Stepping out there, she walked down the hall. Even before coming to his door, she could hear the thump of the dance music emanating from his apartment. She stood before his door and pressed her ear to it, able to hear nothing but the music. Should she knock or ring the bell and try to say something to him? Then she thought about Jared calling the lawyer and how he might not like that because it might interfere in some legal proceeding.
Suddenly, she heard the sound of the dog barking its way toward the door, as if it sensed her presence. Panicked, she ran down the hallway with the pizza and slipped into the stairwell, fast enough that she never knew if Hector came to the door. She caught her breath and collected herself before taking the three flights down to their apartment, where she called her mother, who was still at Judith House, not very many blocks away.
“You’re not going to believe what happened,” she told her mother. “Hector’s dog bit Mateo and Jared had to take him to the hospital for stitches and a rabies shot. And Jared wants to sue Hector and get him out of the building.”
“Oh my God,” said Ava slowly. “Is Mateo okay?”
“Jared says he’s okay. But — should I say something to Hector? Should we? Would you? I feel terrible. Apparently he has a huge drug problem now. And he’s not taking care of that dog.”
Ava sighed. “Everyone he’s ever worked with has tried to do something for him. He doesn’t want anyone’s help. He stopped returning my calls three, four years ago.”
“Really?”
“I think he did actually go to rehab a few years ago, but it didn’t stick, apparently.”
“People are worried he’s going to start a fire or an explosion or something in the building one night.”
“You might have to look into some legal recourse,” Ava said. In the background, Milly could hear the laughter and conversation of the women who lived in the AIDS residence her mother ran. “That’s very sad to think.”
“That’s what Jared says, too.”
“You’re still coming for dinner tomorrow night?”
“Of course.”
The pizzas had gotten cold. Milly put them in the oven and leafed through the sections of the Sunday Times that had already come to the house, in advance of the parts that came Sunday morning. Thirty minutes later, Jared and Mateo were back.
“Look!” said Mateo. He showed off the three stitches in his left calf, where the dog had sunk her teeth in.
Milly held him close. “I’m just glad you’re okay. It must have been scary.”
“I was really scared.”
“We’re going to talk to Hector about his dog,” Milly said. “She won’t hurt you again.”
Later, after they’d finished the pizza and Mateo was absorbed in TV cartoons and his drawing, Jared told her, in a low voice, “Me and a few others are going to see a lawyer this week about Hector. I wanna try to get him out of here.”
Milly shook her head. “It’s so sad,” she said. “I told my mother what happened. She said people have tried to help him the past few years, but nothing changes.”
“I don’t really give a shit about him,” Jared said flatly. “I care about the building.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m just saying he wasn’t always like that. It’s sad how someone can just go downhill.”
Jared shrugged. “Nobody’s making him be a tragedy. It’s his choice.”
“Well, he did lose a lover.”
“A lot of people did.”
Milly said no more about Hector. There was clearly no point, she realized. “Funny, what a perfect day this was up until this,” she said.
Jared took her hand across the table, played with it finger by finger. “Did you get some good work done?”
“A bit.” She paused. “It’s strange. . I was in the studio looking out the window and I had a moment where a — like, a dark rush came over me, like something was wrong. It had to be Mateo and the dog.”
“You have a sense,” Jared said gravely.
“I wonder—” she began. Then she caught the glint in his eyes. “You’re mocking me!”
He laughed. “You’re always having those dark rushes,” he said tenderly.
She flushed. “I know. But this one was so. . vivid. Staring out at that clear blue sky.”
They curled up as a trio in front of the TV and watched their new DVD of Dinosaur. Mateo was enthralled. Dinosaurs had been a favorite drawing subject of his since he was four or five, when they’d first met him in the group home in Brooklyn, and the movie had barely begun before he’d run for his pad and crayons and was trying to capture the baby dinosaur, Aladar. Milly absently ran her fingers through his curls while he drew. Their living room was dark, save for the alternating shades of blue flickering on the walls from the TV. Through the open windows, the sounds of Saturday night East Village revels floated up to them from the street, the whoops and shouts and scraps of music from cars and bars. In turn, Milly and Jared napped on each other’s shoulders, under the afghan, while Mateo remained rapt before the screen. In the moments that Milly came half to, she had the drowsy, soothing sense of being nested between her husband and her son, grounded, in no fear of flying away.
Two. A Mad Sick Nigga (2009)
He’s the coolest; he’s got swagger, but he’s also sensitive and open. He’s a hip-hop hipster; he lives art-school thug life. He’s walking down the halls at Art and Design High School in midtown with Lupe Fiasco on his iPod, his massive hair pulled back in one of those comb-type headbands for boys, a long white T-shirt coming down over skintight Levi’s, which scrunch into high-top Airs. Sometimes he pulls up the T-shirt to show the tat on the left lower back that he designed, his tag — the grinning tiger with the mob cap slouched down over one eye, with M-DREEM 92 in stitching on the cap. That’s him, M-Dreem 92, the star of his high school, graduating three days from now and then going on to Pratt.