Tony had to go on workfare: it’s a new program of Mayor Giuliani’s that forces people on welfare to do at least seventy hours of community service monthly. I once went to take a look when Tony was supposed to be sweeping the Bronx streets at 6:30 in the morning. Tony arrived whistling, and two hours too late. He stopped working after half a day. “Waste of time. Let them keep my welfare. I make more money with cans.” Since then he’s started to work as a two-for-oner at Sloan’s supermarket on 96th Street. He is also finally taking care of the thousands of empty glass bottles that had slowly accumulated in the tunnel. He hired Burk, who spent one full day bringing all the bottles in shopping carts to WeCan. Burk got paid just seven dollars, Bernard tells me shaking his head. Tony put the remaining eighty dollars in his pocket.
Bernard still has his bad moods, and is now focusing all of his ire on Bob and Margaret. Bob has proven worthy of his old nickname “Captain Chaos” in all its honor and glory. Bernard is slowly realizing that he has invited in a Trojan Horse. After not touching the stem for a few months, Bob is back at his old habits and performing any trick as long as it will pay for a hit. One time I visit and see Bob pacing restlessly from his bunker to the row of waiting room chairs and the tracks where he sits down for a while and deeply inhales a cigarette. When I show up, he gives me a hug to thank me for the pack of coffee I left for him at his bunker. “Man, you don’t even know how much I appreciated that,” he says with his loud, raspy voice. Being a heavy smoker and coffee drinker myself creates a bond with Bob. “If I could choose between a hit and a coffee in the morning, really, I would take the coffee.”
Bernard says mockingly. “Oh yeah, Bob, shall we try that one of these days? I will bring you for breakfast a tray with a thermos of coffee and a couple of dime bags. Then we will see what you choose.”
“Come on Bernard, don’t be an asshole,” Bob says, annoyed. “You know damn well about that time I still had some dime bags, but first I had my coffee.”
Bernard laughs and sits on the waiting chairs. “I swear to God,” Bob says solemnly to me. “It really happened. I had smoked so much that night,” he explains the rare event, “I just couldn’t get higher…” I nod as if to say I take him at his word. Immediately Bob jumps on the opportunity, and asks if I can lend him a ten, or even better, a twenty. “In a few days I will get my SSI again,” he tries to convince me. His clear blue eyes get a matte gloss to them when I have to disappoint him.
“Listen, Tut, there are two things in life that will never change,” whispers Bernard after Bob has retreated to his bunker. “And that is your mother, and that is Bob.” He sighs. “It is hopeless. The whole day he is crawling around and brooding on schemes to get money. I can’t show up with him anywhere anymore. He owes WeCan three hundred dollars, yesterday he managed to get thirty bucks out of Pier John, and he also owes Tony. I am sure he scammed the YMCA as well. He had a TV there, a pool, a billiard table, AC, you don’t leave that for nothing.”
Bernard sighs again and starts to scold Margaret now. In the last week she has left ten messages on his voicemail. Four times she has called through the intercom, exactly at the rare, quiet moments when Bernard wanted to relax and smoke a pipe. Poor Margaret really blew it. On top of that, she has offended him to the very depths of his soul. There was an article about the upcoming tunnel eviction in The Spirit, a free weekly magazine on the West Side. The writers of the article had met Margaret, Marc and me and mentioned in their piece a photographer, a filmmaker and an anthropologist, “who, apparently fascinated by the dwellers, circled the dim caverns.” Bernard had had a friendly chat with the writers, and had told them that he couldn’t turn his ass anymore “without bumping into some bozo with a camera and a note pad.” Margaret had taken it personally, but was even angrier about Bernard talking to competing journalists. “You are just addicted to media attention,” she had accused him. He answered that no one had an exclusive copyright to him, and that he was free to talk to anyone he liked.
19. LITTLE HAVANA REVISITED
Sometime in mid-July, it is the hottest day of the year. The temperature has risen into the hundreds and the radio implores everybody to stay inside near the AC and only go outside for emergencies. After a boiling-hot bike ride from Brooklyn, a fresh wave of cool airs welcomes me when I enter the tunnel’s South End. Every Saturday and Sunday, I wake Julio up at 11:30 and we go out together.
On Saturdays, he sells the books he’s found on the streets to the vendors at Broadway. Sundays are his can days. In the summer, there are free rock concerts in Central Park as well, so Julio can combine work with pleasure.
Slowly, I get to know the other inhabitants of Little Havana. Poncho is a big and jolly black Cuban, who just like Estoban came with the Mariel Boatlift to the Promised Land. Hugo is a shy Peruvian who has slick black hair and wears glasses with thick frames. He immigrated to the U.S. with his family as a kid.
Little Havana is still sleeping when I get to Julio’s house and knock on his door. After a few knocks, he crawls out of the door with a creased face. “Excuse my appearance,” he mumbles. He washes his face with some water and joins me on a chair. “It got late last night.”
A few pigeons sit on the wall and the ground amidst the garbage. Julio gets some bread to feed them. Almost immediately rats come out, and chase the pigeons away. “Dirty rats,” mutters Julio. “You can’t even feed the pigeons anymore. What a life. The tunnel also is falling apart.” He points at some cracks along the tunnel walls. Last night some pieces fell onto his roof.
Julio is in a sad mood. Yesterday they had a fight about the fridge. In the end, Getulio smashed it. “We call ourselves a family and then it’s even more sad that we fight about these things. People here can’t talk things out. They have to grab a bat.” Lately, they’ve had a lot of fights. Most of the time it is about electricity. The one tiny cable that provides the electricity for Little Havana has limited capacity. The TV they got only recently eats up energy. There are always problems when Getulio is making an espresso on his electric heater, while Poncho is just watching a baseball game.
“I don’t understand,” mourns Julio. “I’m glad I no longer have electricity. Only a small radio, but the batteries are dead. The whole day you have all this noise around you, and even then people go to sleep with the radio on. Can you imagine? What kinda dreams you gonna have?”
We walk past Lee, concentrated on building something that looks like a model of Stonehenge with old batteries. He does not answer our greeting. “Last night he was talking about milky ways, galaxies, and black holes,” Julio says. “Didn’t make any sense. But he went on and on.”
Outside, the heat knocks us out. The asphalt is sticky when we make our way to the supermarket to redeem some cans. The streets are deserted. It is obviously not a day to work. One by one, Julio slowly puts the cans in the machine. We decide to get a bag of ice and a case of beer and have an easy day.
Back in the tunnel, Poncho, Estoban, and Hugo have woken up and are sitting around the TV. “Boys, let’s call it a day,” Julio says. Little Havana screams with joy as Julio unpacks the beer and puts it with some ice in the cooler. We get a few extra chairs and soon everybody is watching the ball game and sipping a cold beer.
Julio muses about tunnel life. “I get sick of the way people look down on us. I walk on the streets, I see guys with pretty girls eating in restaurants; they wear nice clothes and drive in fast cars. Damn, I think, I want that too. But it is difficult to find a job. Try to explain to a boss that you have been homeless for four years. Nobody will take you. And how can I keep myself clean down here? I can’t even appear decently at a job interview.”