Aqua Velva Smitty

Even with my back turned, I can feel Aqua Velva's eyeball staring me down.

Okay, so maybe I'm not such a nice guy. But it wasn't supposed to be like this, I swear. But that don't change what is: Ushie dead on the kitchen floor with her mouth open, like she's trying to finish the argument that ended when her head hit the corner of the table.

When things go bad, they go bad fast.

I got to get her out of here before she starts to stink. It's 90 fucking degrees outside, and the air conditioner's busted. There's Delores to think of too. She's not due back till midnight, but the way my luck's running she'll come home early.

Aqua Velva's staring through the hole he punched in the wall separating our apartments. The old fuck wants something. Turning away from Ushie, I step into the kitchen doorway and flip him the bird. "Get lost, Aqua Velva!"

"Don't call me that, Joe Carmine. How many times I gotta tell you?"

"Fuck off, Aqua Velva!"

Aqua Velva's been living next door since before the flood. Longer than me and Delores, and we've been here 20 years. In a building like this, it pays to mind your business--that's something he'll never learn. I don't say shit to the dopers who set up shop by the mailboxes, and I don't call the cops when the welfare cases upstairs celebrate their monthly checks by punching out their kids. Someone could get cut to pieces right outside my door and I wouldn't say shit. But not old Aqua Velva. No, sir. He shuffles around the building like the goddamn welcome wagon. Delores says he's lonely. Buy a dog, I say.

Christ, even from the kitchen I can smell him--a funky reek of dirty skin and stale Kools marinated in Aqua Velva aftershave. How did you think he got the nickname? I gave it to him and he hates it. His real name is Smithsonian James, and everyone calls him Smitty. Everyone but me.

Fucking dumbass Ushie! Why'd she have to come over? I just wanted to sit in front of the tube and watch the Yankees kick the shit out of Boston. I told her a million times she wasn't allowed here. Our dates are strictly at my shop, though sometimes I drive her out to the Sound as a special treat. I can't believe she's dead.

Half an hour ago she was jabbering at me like a yappy pooch in a fat lady's handbag. Then I hit her and she fell down and--thump-thump-thump. I thought it was my heart busting out of my chest, but then plaster fell onto the living room floor and I saw Aqua Velva's big brown eye through a fistsize hole he'd hammered through the wall, right above the sofa. Through it he can see Ushie on the kitchen floor with blood in her hair and me standing over her.

"Oh, Joe," he said. "Whydja hafta go and do that?" Like I'd disappointed him somehow. Like he was my pop.

Fuck him! I should take one of those fondue sticks we got for our wedding and jab it right through his eye. What does he want? He's canny--knows how to play the angles so he gets what he wants. Until today I would've thought his wants were few: some company, a six-pack of Schlitz in the fridge and bebop blasting from that nice Bose radio his nephew sent him a few Christmases back.

But now I think he wants me crazy.

I might not be the brightest guy in town, but I got survival instincts. I'll figure a way outta this. No way I'm spending 20 years at Rikers holding my breath every time I drop the soap. I don't want to be nobody's bitch, just like I don't want to be Aqua Velva's friend. Maybe that was a mistake. If I'd stayed on the old man's good side, this wouldn't have happened. But I don't got time for regrets. I got shit to do.

Even dead, Ushie's still beautiful. I crouch down and kiss the side of her neck, right beside the little mole shaped like Texas, half expecting her eyes to open like in a fairy tale. Nothing happens except that my stomach rolls over. Ushie don't taste quite right. She always tastes soapy and sweet, like Kool-Aid in a badly rinsed glass, but now she's just dead and getting cold.

(continued on page 140) Aqua Velva (continued from page 96)

Maybe she had it coming, but that don't make me feel better. I really liked Ushie. We had a good thing going. Why'd she have to fuck it up?

"You promised me, Joey," Ushie had said in the kitchen. "You're supposed to marry me. That's what people in love do."

Ushie knew I was already married, but she didn't care. To her, Delores didn't exist.

Why the hell am I thinking about this shit? My life used to be pretty good. Money in my pocket, a cute wife who liked to shake her ass on Saturday night. Gone now. The money and the Delores I married. She got mean, and she got fat. She's a pig. I wouldn't fuck her now if you paid me.

Not like my Ushie.

•

When we were first married, me and Delores used to laugh at Aqua Velva, who was ancient even then. We'd run into him in the hall, and he'd stare at us from behind big scratched sunglasses like the cop in Cool Hand Luke wore. It was hard to look at him with a straight face. About five feet tall with mud-colored skin and a cockscomb of Brillo-pad hair like Don King's on top of his little peanut head. It's streaked with gray now, but back then it was so black that Delores used to joke that he used shoe polish instead of pomade.

We joked a lot back then, me and my Delores.

In a voice that creaked like a rusty screen door, Aqua Velva would say, "Gonna be a hard day out today, folks. Feel it in m'bones. Somethin's gonna happen that ain't gonna be good. Somethin' bad. You watch yourselves out there."

He made these predictions all the time, but nothing ever happened, not to us anyway. It's a safe bet that something happened to someone--every day's a bad day for some poor slob. We'd smile, all friendly-like, and he'd shuffle past, thighs squeaking on account of his leather pants. A biker. Probably the only black geriatric biker in Pelham, probably in all of Westchester County. Still rides a stripped-down piece-of-shit Harley that he fixed up himself with seashells and toy cars glued all over it. Whenever he rides down Christie Street, the bike spits a plume of black smoke you can see all the way from Manhattan.

It was hard not to laugh at Aqua Velva, but we tried our best. Back then I liked him, so me and Delores would wait till he was out of earshot before we'd set our giggles free. We'd laugh, she'd touch me, and if we weren't late for work or due at her loudmouthed mother's for dinner we'd go back to our apartment, throw the dead bolt and laugh a little more, this time on the floor with our clothes off.

Me and Delores had our moments. We weren't always brawling. But we haven't slept in the same bed in two, three years now, not since she found out she would never have kids. Not since she started spending time with Aqua Velva for sympathy.

I didn't used to hate Aqua Velva, either, didn't used to be scared of him, either. I guess it began four or five months ago when I started fucking around with Ursula Rosenthal.

•

My shop--Carmine Brothers Auto Glass--is right across the street from my apartment building; it's pretty convenient. Me and my little brother Jerry ran it together till he took off last year. His wife wanted a divorce, and Jerry got scared. He's got five kids and didn't like the idea of paying child support for 10 or 20 years. So he loaded up his truck and drove away. Didn't even leave a note. The last I heard, Teresa and the kids were living with her parents in Jersey. No one's heard from Jerry.

At first I was pissed, but when I met Ushie I was glad Jerry was gone; he would've been on her like Delores on pie. When we were teenagers, he'd steal my girlfriends all the time. Would've stolen Delores, too, except I met her the summer he was planting trees in Oregon, pretending to be a hippie on account of all the free dope and pussy.

"Hey, Joe," Aqua Velva says from his side of the wall. "Yo, Joe! I got somethin' to say to you."

Fucking Aqua Velva!

"Be right back, Ushie," I say to my gal on the floor. I hover in the living room doorway and peer at the hole through half-closed eyes. "What you want, Aqua Velva?"

"C'mon, Joe," he says. "Don't be a pussy. Come wheres I can see you."

"Fuck you. If you can see the kitchen, you can see me right here." The hole is three or four feet off the floor, next to a big photograph of Delores wearing too much makeup and showing all her teeth.

"Whatchew gonna do, Joe Carmine?" Aqua Velva asks. His soft, creaky voice reminds me of why I used to think he wasn't such a bad guy. He is, after all, the only one in this fucking dump who gives two shits. He gets groceries for the crippled broad up on seven. He keeps an eye on the little kids when they fool around in the hall, and he plays cards with the lonely old Spanish guys who don't speak English. At Christmas Aqua Velva decorates the lobby and goes caroling on every floor.

"You got yourself in some mess, boy."

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

"What's Ursula doin' on your floor, then?" He chuckles. "The day's flowin' away, Joe. 'Fore you know it, Delores gonna be walkin' up dem stairs."

"What the fuck do you want?"

Aqua Velva laughs. Whatever his angle, it's gonna be bad. His eyeball glares at me, the iris as tired and brown as the corduroy pants I had as a kid. They'd been my cousin Sal's, and by the time I got them the crotch had worn thin and the color had faded to baby shit. I hated those fucking pants.

"Get away from that hole," I say. "Come on over here and we'll talk it out like men."

"You ain't no man, Joe. Ain't even a boy. Whatchew think Ursula's daddy gonna do when he finds out she dead? He won't bother widda cops, thas for sure."

Fuck this shit! Enough!

"Where you going, Joe?" Aqua Velva asks as I stumble down the hall. "You'd best not try to run away--"

Even with the bathroom door closed and the tap on full blast I can hear him. "Can't 'spect to get away wid dis--"

I'm fucked.

•

Aqua Velva's right. Ushie's daddy wouldn't bother with the cops. Reuben Rosenthal, in his 60s, is not a man to fuck with. He's one of those religious Jews but no pussy. He's more like those crazy Israelis you see kicking the shit out of the Arabs on TV. He has six other kids, but Ushie's the youngest and the only one who lives at home. He loves her like crazy. Everything would've turned out different if he'd left her at home where she belonged instead of bringing her to my shop.

It was on a Tuesday morning, and I was playing solitaire when this big, old, battered-to-hell Jew-canoe Lincoln rolled into my bay. An ugly spiderweb crack covered the driver's side of the windshield, and the rusty bumper was plastered with blue-and-white stickers with squiggly foreign letters. A bunch of laminated pictures hung from the rearview mirror; I found out later they were all of Ushie.

I was happy to get a little trade. Business had been shit lately, and the bills were piling up. The shop used to do pretty good, but that was a long time ago--back when I still had all my hair and Delores's ass could still fit through the door frontward.

A wrinkly, wiry, mean-looking old man wearing a wide-brimmed black hat and a black suit got out of the Lincoln. He limped like he'd been walking on a broken ankle for 40 years and was just starting to get used to it.

"Windshield's busted," he said, slapping his hand on my desk.

"Didn't think you came in here for no ice cream sandwich," I said.

"How long to fix it?"

I was about to tell him three, four hours tops--I had time on my hands since Discount Glass up the thruway started undercutting me--and then I saw Ushie. She stood beside the car wearing a baggy blue dress that couldn't hide her curvy body. Little, like her old man, but with blonde hair, wide-spaced brown eyes and a pouty mouth. She reminded me of a Barbie doll. Even in that old-lady dress, she was the sexiest thing I'd seen in years.

"How long?" the old man asked again, staring at the price list over my desk. He hadn't noticed me eyeballing the girl, and that's the way I wanted to keep it. Limp or not, he looked tough.

"Four hours maybe. You want to wait around, have a seat?" I jerked my thumb at the crappy plastic chairs against the wall, but he shook his head. Worried that he might get back in the car and drive away, I said, "Three then, and it'll be cheap. Cheap and fast, sir."

From the start, Ushie had me doing stupid things.

The old man nodded and limped out to the street with his daughter. "I got errands to run," he said. "Take good care of my car, boy."

Boy, for God's sake, like I was some punk kid who would steal his tires as soon as he turned around.

Twenty minutes later the girl came back alone. She strutted into the bay and stood so close I could smell her cherry bubble gum. Curling her hair around her finger like a pinup from the 1940s, she said, in a whispery kitten voice that made me want to bend her over the hood of her father's Lincoln, "Daddy's busy with his friends, and I'm bored."

She looked over her shoulder to the street like a little kid watching out for teacher and lifted her skirt above her waist.

It wasn't till later, much later, that we actually had a conversation. She told me about going to school in a little yellow bus and how she helped her mother make dinner every night and about her dolls and her friends and her dog, Jacob.

If I'd known before I fucked her, I never....

Shit, who knows? All I'm sure of is that my gut started to burn as soon as Ushie opened her mouth. She looked 25 but had all the smarts of a six-year-old.

•

Not knowing what Aqua Velva is up to makes me nervous, so I edge out of the bathroom and down the hall. The apartment smells meaty. Probably from the asshole hippies upstairs; they're always cooking something stinky. It can't be Ushie, not yet. When she fell, her skirt had rucked up over her ass, showing off pink panties and the backs of her pale thighs. My first instinct--before checking her pulse or asking, "Ushie, you okay?"--was to kneel on the floor, spread her legs and take her from behind.

But I didn't--that's something, right? So I'm a bastard and a pervert and a killer, but I didn't fuck her after she was dead.

"I wouldn'ta started up with her if I'd known," I say out loud.

"Sure you woulda," Aqua Velva's voice says, louder. The eye is gone, leaving only the dark hole and the old man's creaky voice. "If you really gave a shit about her, you woulda stopped after that first time, Joe. Ain't no nice guy takes advantage of a retarded girl."

Well, sure, Ushie was a dummy, but smart in her own way. She managed to sneak away from her retard school once or twice a week to visit me, didn't she?

"I know why you killed her, Joe Carmine."

"The fuck you do!" And I could hear my voice tremble.

In a singsong squeak unlike his usual old man's baritone, Aqua Velva says, "I heard you! Kissy-kissy-love-ya-honey. Then she talked-talked-talked and out came the fists. Boom-boom-boom and baby fall down. Didn't like the good news, didja, Joe?"

"It was an accident!"

"You didn't plan it," he said, "but that don't change what you done."

Through the wall I hear a snuffling, coughing sound: The old man is crying. Not boo-hoo wails like Ushie when she thinks I'm mad or the way Delores leaks when she's pissed--like each tear is a dollar she don't want to spend--but a low weeping that reminds me of my father.

Jesus Christ, I don't need this shit. I haven't thought of Pop in years, and I don't want to start now. My old man was never good for anything but horses and women, and even then he was a loser. But Aqua Velva is crying like Pop did when he found my sister Judy dead in her crib. She hadn't been sick; she just died. It happens sometimes. The house was so quiet. Ma was still in bed and Jerry wouldn't be born for another three years. I didn't say a word, just stood in the doorway and watched Pop cradle her against his chest. If he'd seen me standing there, he would've knocked me into next week. Pop was a private man. He didn't like other people--even family--knowing his business.

On the other side of the wall, Aqua Velva weeps like my father. "Ushie, poor Ushie--"

It pisses me off. He's not allowed to call her that.

Real sly, like a jungle cat, I creep up to the hole from the other side of the room with my back pressed against the wall--it's his blind spot.

"You didn't deserve this, girl--"

I slam my fist into the wall and the picture of Delores falls behind the sofa and smashes. Leaning in close, I say, "You don't talk about her, understand. She's not your business, and neither am I."

Like Pop, I don't like no one prying.

"She was a nice girl, Joe," Aqua Velva says. "She didn't hurt no one. She was like a little kid. Whydja hafta kill her?"

That word--kill--sucks the strength from my legs. I sink down to the floor and wrap my arms around my knees. I wonder if Aqua Velva is sitting the same way, with just the wall between us. Like this is a confessional and he's the priest. Up till now I've been thinking of it as the Accident, or maybe the Big Fuckup. But this is the Murder...I am the Killer.

"Useta see you two acrosst the street," Aqua Velva says, his voice smooth and controlled. If I hadn't just heard him crying, I would've never believed it. "I'd wonder how you could go around with a girl like that, knowing what you did. Might as well've gone over to Lincoln Elementary and found yourself a kindergarten kid to fuck.

"Useta hope Delores'd find out or that Ushie's daddy would drive up the street in his big ol' Lincoln and shoot your ass dead. Almost called him myself--I know Reuben since he was a kid stealin' newspapers offa delivery trucks."

"So why didn't you?" I'm trying to sound pissed off, but my voice sounds scared and sad, like a little kid who wished someone would've taken away his baseball before he busted the window. "You coulda stopped me, Smitty." His right name slips out, but he doesn't notice.

"What are you, some fuckin' kid?" Smitty asks. "Wasn't my job to stop you." His voice gets soft. "Besides, Ushie looked happy. Nice girl like her deserves a little happiness. If I'd known what you were gonna do, if I coulda saved her, I woulda. But by the time I made m'hole, she was on the floor and you was starin' at her like she was a whore spread acrosst a bed."

Not much I could say to that.

"You're a grown man, Joe. Bad deeds'll catch up with you fast enough without my help."

"Can the fortune-cookie bullshit," I say, getting up from the floor. It occurs to me that I'm a moron. Not for killing Ushie, which was an accident, or for being a bad husband, which is hard to avoid, but for sticking around this hot apartment. In the kitchen a fly crawls across Ushie's neck, right near her mole. It seems like a sign. Like God wants me to leave before it's too late.

I know I'll burn for it in hell and maybe fry for it up here if they catch me, but I'm kind of glad she's dead. Someone that stupid shouldn't be allowed to play at being a grown-up. It's like false advertising, that great body hiding such a tiny little brain. She wanted me to marry her, for Christ's sake!

Better she's dead.

The baby, too.

I don't like to think about that. Ushie was a retard, but she did something in two months that Delores couldn't do in our whole marriage. Poor retard baby. Poor retard Ushie.

I've got to pack a bag and get out. Like Jerry. Like Pop, too. He's been dead for years, but he didn't do his dying around here. Pop took off to California when Jerry was still a baby. Sometimes he'd send postcards of women in bikinis on sandy beaches. California seems as good a place to go as any.

"You still there, Joe Carmine?"

"I'm gone," I say to the old black biker who doesn't know that the whole neighborhood busts a gut every time he walks down the street. "Nice shootin' the shit with you, but I'm outta here. Don't try to stop me."

"Wouldn't dream of it, boy. Nothin' I can do if you've set your mind to leave."

"Damn straight, Smitty."

"'Bout time you called me by my rightful name," he says, finally noticing. "Think of the trouble you would have saved yourself if you'd never gone with that nickname."

The old fuck was probably right. But he had it coming. I'd been down in the basement doing my own laundry because Delores had been spending so much time away, mainly with him. It made me mad, and when he came up to me near the dryers and put a hand on my shoulder I shouted, "Get away from me, you old fuck. You stink."

I pushed him down and laughed when he started to shake. "Gonna cry, Aqua Velva? That's your name from now on. Aqua Velva!"

Making an old man cry isn't the worst shit I ever done, not by far, but everything that came after seems to hinge on it. Maybe Smitty would've been a friend to me. A pal, the kind who tells you it's not smart to step out with a stacked retard who gets knocked up 'cause she don't understand birth control. Or maybe is dumb enough to believe a baby would make me leave Delores. Maybe if I'd let Smitty talk to me.

Don't matter. It's done, can't be undone.

Out in the street, a car door slams and garbled voices float up through the open window.

"See ya round, Smitty," I say.

The old man laughs. Through the hole I see his shiny, white teeth and dark, flexing lips.

Shit! I run across the room and peer down at the street. A familiar black car is parked up on the sidewalk, hubcaps twinkling in the sunshine. Three men--two big and young, one little and old--in black hats and black suits disappear beneath my building's awning.

I got to get out of here--

"Thas right, you run," Smitty shouts, still laughing. "Run, Joe Carmine!"

I hear footsteps in the hall, too light to belong to a man. These are feminine footsteps I've been hearing for years. A key turns in the lock as I remember the old-fashioned rotarydial telephone on Smitty's counter. Jesus Christ, I spent too long in the bathroom.

"Joe, you home?" Delores calls from the front hall. "What's going on? Smitty--"

The men crowd in after her. "Who the fuck are you?" she cries. "Joe? What's going--"

Delores rushes into the living room, takes one look at my face, stares into the kitchen. Her scream is loud enough to draw Reuben Rosenthal and his sons in after her but not so loud that I can't hear Smitty's cawing, croaking old-man laughter.

She reminded me of a Barbie doll. Even in that oldlady dress, she was the sexiest thing I'd seen in years.

The second prize in this year's competition goes to Huan Hsu of George Mason University in Virginia for Tennis Mom. The third place winners are David Philip Mullins of the Iowa Writers' Workshop for Vintage Vegas, Ameni Rozsa of the University of Texas for Past Vegas and Gina Welch of the University of Virginia for Lunch in Oxnard.