Gotham Read Online Free Page B

thread of moustache and he licks his lip. ‘He could get his ass kicked back to Mexico with shit like that.’
    Smokey lifts a finger from his glass to catch Nati’s attention. ‘I’ll show you something later, LyDell. Some of Martin Sheen’s work.’
    â€˜I’ll take a look at his shit now if they got it in Bloomingdale’s,’ Nati says with an expansive gesture that forgets the credit card, says all this is his.
    At the other counter, Andie coughs, but it starts as a laugh that escapes before she can catch it. Nati glares at her. She reaches into one of his Big Brown Bags, intently rearranging the folded garments. She presses her mouth to her sleeve and gives another small cough, no hint of anything else to it this time.
    â€˜Prolly shit anyway,’ Nati says. ‘Martin Sheen. There’s a lot of shit in here. Too many old Italian faggots gettin’ it all wrong thisseason. Not just them. Anita Clark. I was very disappointed there. I didn’t say that at the time.’
    It’s a monologue. We’re not expected to buy in. Somewhere among the discard piles on the furniture around us is the work of Anita Clark, rejected before I arrived.
    â€˜Sold too much shit to the Obamas,’ he says. ‘That’s what it is. I know where she was from, but she done lost it now, what she had. She all dried up inside. She all Hamptons now. Next year she’ll do goddamn boat shoes. She whiter than Ralph Lauren now.’
    â€˜This drink is good, LyDell,’ Smokey says, tapping a fingernail against his glass. ‘We could sit and enjoy our drinks while we wait for Aaron.’
    Nati brings the glare up again, but stays silent as he works it through.
    â€˜I’m gonna sit when I want to sit,’ is what he decides to say. He drinks another mouthful. ‘Butthis is good, yeah. You did good with this…’ He takes a look—it’s not as sly as it’s supposed to be—at her name tag. ‘Eloise. Some people go to town with the kale.’
    She almost says something, but sticks with smiling and nodding. It’s the first part of a silence that builds to awkwardness. Nati sips his drink again.
    Smokey touches my sleeve with his phone hand. ‘You got kids, right?’
    I have a wedding ring, I’m forty and look it. I don’t know if he’s guessing or if I’ve told him. He doesn’t wait for an answer. He has an ultrasound image on his phone and he’s angling it my way. It’s a foetus, the bright outlines of one in its dark uterine world, a finely etched nose and mouth and perfect tiny fingers stretching to the limits of their span.
    â€˜My lady’s in labour,’ he says. ‘Just the early part, but I want to get over there.’
    The best minders are conjurers, guiding the eye to the other hand, away from tantrums, embarrassment, slander, hubris.
    â€˜I think we might pick this up later.’ I turn off my recorder and put it in my pocket. ‘When it’s just the three of us.’
    â€˜Yeah. Perfect.’ He flicks to another image, spreads his fingertips and enlarges his tiny child.
    â€˜I have a four-year-old daughter,’ I tell him. ‘She’s asleep at the Beacon Hotel right now, on Broadway and 75th. At least, I hope she’s asleep.’
    â€˜My son is four. How about that?’ He seems genuinely pleased to say it, to make this connection, but it might just be shrewd preparation for a protracted pout from Nati Boi.
    The transaction isn’t over and Nati is looking glumly down into his drink, coaching himself through this diversion from his Bloomingdale’s dream. Andie is standing mannequin-style at the counter, perhaps wondering how to turn grey.Somewhere in the distance, there’s a one-sided conversation I can just work out is in Spanish, a cleaner talking on his phone.
    â€˜There’s some good shit in this city for kids,’ Smokey says, warming