One afternoon he asked me if I’d ever smoked angel dust. “Yes,” I said. “It’s crazy, right?” Buff asked. “Yes,” I answered.
I often wonder if Buff knew I was lying. But up on the roof, between the two of us, it didn’t seem to matter. Sometimes I even question whether I actually spent a summer on that gravel roof, but then I think about what happened, and I know that I did.
The idea came to us at night. Back then my rule for coming home was the streetlights. When the streetlights came on I was to start heading home, no matter where I was. I followed the same rule when I was up on the roof, but I dawdled. I was only a block away from home. When I arrived and my father asked where I had been, I told him that I had been at Harrison Park, or some other place that took equally long to return from.
It was during the time the streetlights came on that we devised our plan. This was always quiet time. The time when the traffic changed from hectic shoppers and those returning home from work, to those simply cruising or heading out to parties. From the pierogi factory roof we could see clear over to California Avenue, where the mirror-windowed court building was lit up with the orange of the setting sun, the same color orange as the streetlights, which within minutes would flood up at us, shining over the ledge.
We lay there silently, on our backs, absorbing the heat of the day as it rose off the roof.
“Hey, bro,” Buff suddenly said. “Wouldn’t it be cool to live up here?”
I took a deep breath. I had my eyes closed. I felt as if time were holding still. “Yes,” I answered.
“I was thinking maybe we could build a house up here,” Buff said. “Like no one else would know. It would just be our secret.”
I heard Buff move against the gravel, switching positions. I opened my eyes, looked up into the deepening purple sky.
“Maybe you and Letty could live up here,” I told him. “Maybe we could even put a crib up here for your baby.” I looked to Buff. He was leaning on one arm, looking down at me.
“Damn, that would be straight, right?” Buff said. “It would be like an apartment. We’d share it with you too. Like if you got a lady or something. I’d just tell Letty we had to go. You could have a dinner up here.”
“Like candles and everything, right?” I asked him.
“Yeah, bro, just like that.”
“But we’d need a table and chairs…”
“I know,” Buff said. “And a bed, maybe a small table for the living room, some carpet or linoleum.”
“Walls,” I said. “And what about a roof…?” I considered the impossibility of the idea. Buff turned and looked out over the ledge. The streetlights were full power now; his face was bright orange. I closed my eyes. I thought about the hobos who lived under the bridge on Western Avenue. I thought about their homes, built of old doors, scraps of wood, sheets of metal. I opened my eyes again, looked into the nearly starless sky, the type of lonely sky one sees only in the city.
“Maybe we could find some wood,” I said. I turned onto my side. “I know my father has a piece of metal, like a big tray. Maybe we could use that as a roof.”
“That would be perfect, bro,” Buff said. “I saw some wood the other day by the A&P.”
“I could bring nails and a hammer,” I said.
“I got some rope,” Buff said.
“Cool,” I replied, even though I wasn’t sure what we’d need the rope for.
“Tomorrow,” Buff said. “We’ll start tomorrow.”
I agreed.
That night I went home thinking of possibilities. When I walked through my door it was easily an hour and half after the streetlights had come on.
“Where the hell were you?” my father asked. His glare was familiar.
“At the park, playing basketball,” I told him.
I felt a shift in his breathing. He was trying to keep himself from exploding.
“Did you win at least?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, and I quickly went to my room. I felt as if that was one of the last lies I’d ever tell my father.
The next day Buff and I met in the alley behind the factory. It was so early the neighborhood was still asleep, so early that what little traffic there was had time to echo between apartment buildings. Buff was holding a coiled-up line of dirty yellow rope.
“You want to get the wood first?” he asked.
“We should get that tray,” I told him. “I don’t know when my father will wake up.”
“All right,” Buff said. He put the rope around his neck like a sling, like a mountaineer ready for a climb. We walked the block back to my house. I let Buff in through the back gate, down into my gangway. The screen door that had fallen off last winter was up against the building next door. The front gate that had rusted free two summers ago was leaning against our building’s back wall. Used tires that my father had plans to sell were stacked around the sewer cover. I unlocked the back door, then gave it a jolt with my shoulder — the only way the door would open. I led Buff down the stone steps into the basement. Led him past the furnace, past my bedroom, around the corner to where the tin sheet was.
“That’s it, bro?” Buff asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“That’s perfect,” he said.
He grabbed one side. I grabbed the other. We carried the piece of metal through the basement, our feet occasionally knocking against a corner, making a deep gong sound that I felt sure would wake my father upstairs.
When we got to the gangway I turned to shut my door.
“You got a nice house,” Buff said. “Two floors and everything.”
“It’s not that nice,” I said. “You should see the upstairs.”
We walked the piece of metal back to the pierogi factory, leaned it against the cinder-block wall of the gangway. “I’ll let the rope down,” Buff said. And in a few minutes, above me, I heard Buff’s voice.
“Ready?” he called down. He sucked spit like he always did. He tossed the yellow rope over the ledge. I took the end and wrapped the sheet metal as best I could.
“Okay,” I told him.
And slowly, very slowly, the sheet of metal began to rise. I ran around the back, climbed the roof, and helped Buff pull it the rest of the way. We got the sheet to the top. We reached out and yanked the piece over the ledge. We sat on the gravel roof and breathed. A breeze was blowing now. Real traffic had started up on Twenty-Second Street. I looked at the rusted piece of metal and then looked to Buff. He was smiling, smiling the way he had that first time I met him. I smiled back. We were building a house now. It was only a matter of time.
The rest came easy. The wood Buff had found was really stacks of discarded truck pallets. We pulled them apart, pried off the healthy planks, scraped off the pieces of wilted lettuce and rotting tomato. We carried the planks three or four at a time back to the pierogi factory. After we tired of carrying, we hoisted them up to the roof and began construction.
After a few days the work became habit. In a week or so we had a solid frame. In another week the metal roof was in place, built of the tin sheet we had found in my basement and a piece of corrugated metal we’d discovered in a warehouse dumpster on Rockwell Avenue. Next we built the walls.
The room was small, maybe five by five. It was short, but tall enough for either of us to stand up in. Over the weeks of construction, the idea of having a separate living room and dining room had given way to what we were actually capable of: one single room. But really, that one room was enough. It was all ours.
The crowning achievement had been the mattress. Buff had located it one morning while walking to the factory — to “work,” as we had started to call it. He didn’t even bother climbing the roof. Instead, from the alley, he called up to me.