Hot-Wired in Brooklyn Read Online Free Page B

strong enough to break a heavyweight like a twig and smart enough to teach
     the classics at Columbia, if they’d let him. He’s also the perfect gentleman, as long as he’s on your side.
    “Good evening, Eddie,” he said, his diction immaculate as always.
    I reached out to take his extended hand. “Hi, Tooss.”
    “Desiree was concerned that you weren’t coming.”
    “I had some business.” I started to explain about Arnold and the wrecking yard when a stocky, middle-aged colored woman dressed
     as an usher shooed us toward the door. She winked at Watusi as we went in, and I smiled back for him.
    “That’s Desiree’s teacher,” he said.
    “Looks like she’s got eyes for you.”
    “Don’t encourage her.”
    “It’s okay, Tooss. Women like to look, too. Just don’t reciprocate.”
    That stopped him. “Are you studying vocabulary again?”
    “Intermittently.”
    We took seats at the back of the auditorium. It wasn’t a full house, but the back row suited Watusi’s height. Desiree wasn’t
     performing in the first dance number, so I railed about Arnold again, starting with the nightmare and ending with Joe Shork
     and the D.A.’s stolen car.
    “Would you like a new word for your vocabulary list, Eddie?” he asked at the end of my tirade.
    “What?”
    “Obsession.”
    “Obsession?”
    “About this teenager, Arnold.”
    Watusi studied my face. “I see you don’t agree,” he said. “Let me advance my argument further.”
    “Go ahead.”
    But he didn’t continue. The audience applauded the end of the first number, and Desiree and five other chocolate-colored nine-year-olds
     burst onto the stage. Skittish as spooked cats, caroming off each other like billiard balls, they were more vaudeville slapstick
     than ballet; but the audience was as attentive as an opening-night crowd at Carnegie Hall. Watusi and I were, too. To dance
     in the ballet had been her mother’s dream, and now Desiree was just maybe on the way to fulfilling it. She’d bolted on stage
     with the fixed smile her teacher had prompted; but the more she flew across the boards, the more genuine and easy the smile
     became. When she finished her solo at the end of the program, the audience was on its feet.
    We met her out front. “Eddie!” she called, ran to me with arms open and crushed me in an embrace. Watusi, standing behind
     me, beamed down a reserved, paternal smile.
    “Shall we go for ice cream?” he asked.
    It was past nine when we returned to Watusi’s apartment. Less in the Spartan style than his old place, it was decorated mostly
     with Desiree’s artwork and “A” papers from school. She got dressed for bed, I tucked her in and kissed her, and Watusi read
     her the myth of Persephone until she fell asleep. Java, the orange cat I’d given her, curled up purring under her chin.
    Watusi and I adjourned to the living room. I helped myself to a beer from the refrigerator, and he picked up where he’d left
     off about obsession. “Have you ever seen a dog chase its own tail?” he asked.
    “Can’t say I have.”
    “The dog doesn’t know it’s his until he bites it.”
    “And?”
    “And he learns absolutely nothing from the experience.”
    I took a slow swig and gave Watusi a sour look, as if the beer’d gone flat.
    “Are you drawing anything from the analogy, Eddie?” he said in a serious, professor’s voice.
    I cracked an insolent smile. “I was waiting for you to tell me.”
    “Then you don’t object if I do?”
    “I’m all ears, Tooss.”
    “Unlike the dog, you ought to know that the tail you’ve been chasing is your own.”
    “You just lost me.”
    He leaned forward. “Has it occurred to you that the closer you look at this young man Arnold, the more you see yourself as
     you once were?”
    “And?”
    “And you don’t like what you see.”
    He waited for a response, but I just sipped the beer in chilly silence. Finally, he sat back and I stood up.
    “Gotta go,” I said abruptly, leaving