Remote Control
Steel knocks.
Somebody outside the gate shouts my name. It echoes under the floodlights, and the crowd catches it—rowdy, broken, something close to worship.
I roll my neck once and pull my glove tight. The rhinestones on the cuff throw cheap light against the rail.
An old man in an embroidered shirt straddles the top bar. Leather skin. Black hat low. A crooked cross tattooed under his left eye. He looks down and smiles, showing gold teeth.
On the other side, the bull spits. Its breath comes through the slats, hot and sour. The rusted metal shakes.
The old man nods and adjusts his wrist. An oversized watch, covered in thick rocks.
I climb the gate.
The crowd gets louder. Someone throws something. Then the noise drops out.
Hollow.
I clench my teeth. Lean back. Chain cool against my chest.
Steady.
The old man heels the rear of the bull beneath me. His laugh comes through clean. I flex my core, my back, lower. Everything goes underwater.
The gate rips.
The world goes white.
Three rottweilers bark behind a chain-link fence at the back of the lot.
I don’t remember standing. I’m just walking. Boots sinking into scuffed dirt. One shoulder hot. One ear ringing. My mouth tastes like pennies.
A clown leads me through the rows with a red glove tucked under his arm. The paint is chipped along his jawline. Tattoos crawl up his neck. He walks like everybody owes him room.
It smells like manure and diesel.
We pass faded trailers with lit windows. A girl with long legs sits smoking a menthol on the tailgate of a lifted dually. Her ribbed tank is cut above the stomach, one strap hanging off her shoulder. A bleached husky sits beside her with cold blue eyes.
Smoke hangs low, mixing with dust and yellow-orange light.
Men in rhinestone jackets chew fat cigars and load tack. One nods to the clown. The clown doesn’t slow down. A trailer gate slams somewhere. Kids chase each other through the dirt in boots two sizes too big.
We turn twice.
The arena fades behind us, the announcer still booming something I can’t understand. Dogs bark in the distance. The rows get narrow. The trailers beside us go black.
At the end, two large clowns stand an equal distance apart, arms crossed.
The one leading me says nothing.
No one does.
Twenty yards out, the two clowns move in a careful routine and swing open the livestock trailer doors.
Red light spills into the dirt.
Inside, an old woman sits behind a fold-out table wearing pearls and thick gold chains stacked around her neck. Tall candles drip wax down red glass holders. Bundles of white flowers are tied with red bows. Oil-painted angels, Jesuses, and doves lean against the aluminum wall in decorative frames. A red carpet runs across the floor.
I follow the clown inside.
The old woman doesn’t look up. She punches numbers into an old calculator. Cash sits stacked beside a matte-black Glock and a paper plate piled with fatty slices of brisket glazed in thick barbecue sauce.
We walk right up to her.
“Rail crowd liked ‘em,” the clown says.
His voice is deeper than I imagined. His shoulders are straighter now.
Ma doesn’t laugh. Not really. Just one breath through the nose.
She looks up at me, then at the clown.
“Fetch Tommy T, darling.”
The clown leaves.
Ma slides back in her chair and looks at me. Maroon rosaries drape down the wall behind her. Her gaze is warm and still. A chill moves through me.
She clears her throat, sits up, then looks back to the calculator.
She wraps a loose stack of bills in a fresh ten-thousand-dollar band. Opens the cigar box beside the brisket. It’s packed full of bundled cash. She squeezes the new bundle in and jams the lid shut.
“Have you eaten?”
She gestures to the plate.
“No ma’am.”
“No. Ma.”
“No, Ma.”
“Take one piece. Not two.”
I pull off my glove, shove it into my jeans, and take a slice from the top.
Ma watches.
A small white bird moves inside an intricate cage in the corner. Candles crack and flicker against the walls. Red light moves across Ma’s jewelry.
All gold.
“Eat,” she says, bowing her head.
I do. It’s still warm. The crust is peppered and sharp.
“Good?”
I nod, chewing.
Ma pulls a stack from the loose bills scattered across the table and lights a long, skinny cigarette. She puffs it alive. Carefully, she counts out six bills and lays them down.
“Now if you’re going to come back, come back better.”
She sits back.
I finish chewing, wipe my hand on my jeans, and swallow.
“Yes, Ma.”
“Where you stayin’, baby?”
“Little motel off Six.”
“How long you fixin’?”
I pause.
She doesn’t move. Smoke leaves her nose and curls against the roof of the trailer.
“Don’t know.”
Ma smiles.
She places the cigarette in a crystal ashtray, leans forward, and pulls an engraved gold box from the pocket of her denim jacket.
Inside is a pair of golden dentures.
She takes her time putting them in.
Then she counts out four more bills and adds them to the pile.
I don’t breathe.
Ma rolls the stack with a rubber band and leans forward.
“Wash up.”
She smiles. Full gold. A diamond set into one of the front teeth.
I take the roll.
The cash is warm in my hand.
Ma says nothing else. When I look up, she’s still smiling at me.
I don’t say anything either.
After a moment, she pulls the brisket plate closer, unwraps a fine pair of silverware from a red napkin, and begins to eat.
The two clowns by the exit stand aside as I step out of the trailer.
Coming down the dark row is another rider in jeweled chaps and a dirty pink shirt. Hat low. He doesn’t look over as he passes.
The clown leading him stops beside me.
“Got bags?”
“Yeah. By the chute.”
He nods. His face is flat under the paint, a long scar running across his cheek.
Then he starts down the row.
I follow.
I look back once.
Over the shoulders of the two clowns and Tommy T, Ma is still there, stuffing her face with brisket.
Tommy T steps inside.
The clowns shut the doors behind him.
The red light cuts off.
Beyond the trailers, the dirt lot opens up, but everyone is already gone. Dust hangs in the air, hot white under the floodlights. Two black Escalades sit across the lot, dark and idling.
We kick gravel toward the pavement. The arena behind us is black now, and the road is empty.
I light a Marlboro.
The clown doesn’t say anything. We stand there listening to my cigarette burn down.
Headlights turn the corner and come toward us.
At the same time, I hear someone running across the gravel. Another clown. Smaller, sweatier, stumbling over his big shoes with my bags in both hands. He reaches us out of breath, hands them off, then turns and runs back across the lot, out of the floodlights and into the trailer shadows.
His footsteps fade.
Muted rap takes their place.
A lowrider with spiked rims and sparkly red-and-white paint rolls up across the street under a pole light. The hydraulics lift, then drop. Bass punches against the windows.
The door opens, and Tupac spills into the empty lot.
A man in his late forties steps out in a jet-black tux and red tie. His hair is gray and thinning at the front. He walks around the hood, opens the trunk, then comes back and opens the rear door for me.
An emblem lights up on the ground beneath it. I don’t know what it is. I don’t look long.
The clown carries my duffel to the trunk.
Before I get in, I feel my glove in my back pocket.
“Wait. Let me throw this in.”
I step behind the car as he tosses my bag into the trunk.
It lands beside a Draco with a banana clip and what looks like a box of unopened Tamagotchis.
“Nope.”
The clown slams the trunk shut. He smiles and gestures toward the backseat like he’s welcoming me onto an amusement park ride.
I slide in anyway.
As the driver starts to shut the door, I hear three pops.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
The door slams.
Then three more.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Fuzzy dice hang from the mirror. The dash glows bright green, fighting the red LEDs under the velvet seats and along the doors. Something shifts in the passenger seat.
I lean around the headrest.
A white swan sits there with a red bow tied around its neck. Its long neck cranes back toward me. It sits on a pile of loose gold chains, bracelets, and watches.
I lean back.
The swan looks away.
The driver gets in, adjusts his seat, then opens the center console. He takes out a cocktail shaker, a folded white napkin, and a few airplane shooters. He lays the napkin across the console and arranges the bottles like instruments.
Then he reaches past the swan without touching it and opens the glove box.
It’s full of ice.
“Hey,” I say, leaning forward. “I’m good, actually.”
His face doesn’t change.
He keeps moving.
Ice into the shaker. Shooter. Shooter. Something dark from a tiny bottle with no label. He shakes it once, twice, then pours it into a martini glass and stabs a red plastic sword through three olives.
He turns and offers it to me.
“Sir,” he says.
He smiles. One gold canine.
“Water and wipes are in the door.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Thanks.”
I take the glass and kill it in one lift.
The driver shifts into drive.
We pull off.
It’s twenty minutes of nothing before we reach the city. A cloud of light sits above the buildings, bright enough to make it look like the moon is out, even though the sky is heavily overcast.
The driver doesn’t look back the entire ride.
We hit a pothole, and the swan lets out a sharp, offended honk.
“Settle down, Miss September,” the driver says.
With one white-gloved hand, he taps the swan lightly on the head.
The swan straightens, looks back at me, then faces forward again.
The car keeps moving, crawling under tall buildings, past a bodega covered in graffiti. A group of old men stand out front in long fur coats, drinking from glass forties. At a red light, a few women coming around the corner bend down to look through the windows, then walk off immediately after seeing inside.
The driver keeps his head forward.
The light turns green.
We take a left.
A kid on a BMX rides down the street doing wheelies past stacks of black trash bags piled along the curb. Clothes hang from alley windows above him. The artificial moon lights the clouds.
The driver turns off the radio.
The car goes silent.
All I can hear is the tires rolling over pavement.
“You know,” he says, “there’s only so much you can tie a bow on.”
“What?”
“You’ll feel tomorrow in places you can’t rent.”
“Uh?”
I sit up.
The swan’s head slowly turns. I hear a low hiss, or think I do.
“My dearest apologies, sir,” the driver says softly. “We’ve arrived.”
I look from the bird’s black eyes to the back of the driver’s head, then out the window.
A flickering pink-and-blue VACANCY sign. A two-story motel walkway. Rusted railings. Blue TV light leaking through thin curtains.
“Right.”
The driver’s door shuts.
He walks around the back. I reach for my door just before he gets there, and he pushes it closed again.
“Fuck.”
Then he opens it himself.
My duffel is already in his hand. The trunk is shut.
“It has been the finest pleasure.”
He bows his thinning gray head and extends the bag with one white glove, his other palm held open beneath it like a waiter presenting a bottle.
We stay there a moment.
I think about whether I’m supposed to tip him.
Someone is arguing in a room on the second floor.
I take the bag and start toward the stairs.
When I reach the first landing, I look back.
The driver stands beside the sparkly lowrider, smiling at me.
Through the windshield, the swan looks at me, too.
A deep laugh echoes down the street. A group of men stand outside a corner store a few blocks away.
When I look back again, the lowrider is already gone, creeping down the empty street, hydraulics rising and falling like it’s breathing.
My face looks bruised.
A Polaroid is taped to the water-spotted mirror, the face scratched out. I wash off the dried blood and watch the brown-tinted water spiral down the drain. The TV crackles in the background around a news story, the signal cutting in and out.
I dry my face and change into an oversized AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted tee.
Pain shoots through my shoulder, white-hot and disabling. I lean against the counter and collect myself. Someone is shouting on the other side of the paper-thin walls lined with dark green and purple wallpaper. My breathing gets heavy, and I listen to the sink run.
The floor is covered in stiff jeans and dirt-stained shirts. A white feather is stuck to the carpet by the bed. I don’t know if it came from the car or if it was already there.
I step over Chinese takeout boxes and half-crushed cans, then stop beneath the painting above the bed—a half-naked woman, bare from the waist down, playing a string instrument while doves gather around her and a man in a cloak watches from behind.
It reminds me of the paintings at Ma’s.
Same Renaissance, Roman Catholic kind of feeling.
I limp to the mini-fridge.
My buckle sits on top of it, dusted in white powder, next to loose twelve-gauge slugs. I use the colorful turquoise buckle to crush what’s left of the rocks, then use the edge to cut a line.
Reckless.
I bend down, sniff hard, tilt my head back, and rub at my nose.
My mouth goes dry.
Desert dry.
I look at the cash roll on the bedside table next to a bouquet of dried purple flowers, a snow globe with Santa holding an AK in the air, and a Gideon motel Bible open to Revelation with cigarette ash in the crease.
One thousand dollars.
I rub my nose again and sniff the air.
All the lights in the convenience store are too bright, which makes my shoulder pain worse.
The clerk behind the convex panel is wearing a ski mask and a two-tone collared shirt. He’s slumped comfortably on a stool, laughing at his phone. Above the register, the live CCTV feed plays across grainy black-and-white TVs, and I watch myself walk past on all four screens.
Taquitos and hot dogs rotate slowly, endlessly, under rusty orange lamps, grease collecting in the metal tray like candle wax. Moving slowly, I search the aisles for Advil and red-eye drops, passing the fogged-over freezers and someone’s finger-drawn cross on one of the doors.
Gray and brown stains streak the floor tiles.
At the back, past the fingerprint-smudged coolers, there’s a man wearing a red-and-blue luchador mask in a dim office. His legs are kicked up on the desk, and he’s shouting into the landline. A young white lab with a black spiked collar sleeps beneath him.
The bathroom is out of order, a handwritten sign sloppily taped to the door. An old lady in a nightgown stares flatly into the Golden Buffalo slot machine.
A blue sports drink sweating in my hand, I stop in front of two posters sloppily pinned to the wall: a suicide hotline poster with the last four digits scratched out, and a photo of Michael Jordan after the ‘96 NBA Championship. Beside them, a missing-person flyer curls at the corners. The face is faded to a blank oval.
I stand there longer than I mean to.
At the register, there’s a jar full of poker chips and pennies with a Post-it note that says TAKE ONE. I set the drink on the counter, along with a rock-solid pastry I don’t remember grabbing, and ask the ski-masked clerk for Advil. A French song is playing softly out of an old three-dial radio sitting on the back counter, next to a mini New Orleans Saints football helmet replica and a black ashtray.
He looks up, smiles, and lets out a rolling laugh.
“Ayee, man, yeah.”
He reaches under the register and flicks out a small packet.
“Nah, wait.”
He leans back under, then kneels down and disappears for a moment.
I wait.
“Ayee, man,” he says from under the register.
“Yeah?”
He pops up.
Something hits me in the face, and a high-pitched ring starts in my ears.
“Gimme yo shit!” he shouts over the ringing.
My hands are already at my waistband when I realize he’s holding a neon green water gun, pointing it at my face.
He leans back on the stool and lets out another choppy laugh, tapping the water gun playfully on the counter.
“Fuck, dude.”
I wipe my face. I’m not sure if I want to laugh or put my head through the glass display holding erection pills, cheap cologne, and titanium-coated pocket knives.
“Man, getchyo ass outta here.”
He gestures toward the door with the neon water gun. Just over his shoulder, there’s a painting of Joan of Arc in a wood-carved frame.
I feel the loose change in one hand, then the plastic bag in the other.
I shake my head and walk off, the clerk’s rolling laugh following me out the door.
The bell chimes.
The door shuts.
The ringing in my ears stops.
Outside, the air feels wet and electric. Puddles in the street reflect the flickering neon signs mounted on the buildings. Across the street, there’s a deli squeezed between a pawn shop and a Korean nail salon. All the windows are dark.
An all-black Coupe DeVille with a hand-painted rose on the driver door idles in a handicap spot. Exhaust ghosting under the bumper, the rear lights glowing amber.
I wipe my face again, look at the water on my palm, and laugh under my breath.
Down the sidewalk, three silver-haired Black men stand under a pole light. Somewhere, a saxophone plays. Blues echoes off the brick buildings towering overhead.
I light a red and start back to the motel.
As I get closer, I hear their deep belly laughs.
“Know what I’m sayin’?” one of the men says. He’s wearing a thick camo jacket and talks with a slight lisp. “So, I was, uh, like, well, I’m gonna play this motherfucker.”
He coughs into his sleeve.
“Look. I can’t act like I don’t have any talent. Never have. That’s not what it’s about. You, uh, gotta really play.”
Smoke funnels into the spotlight fixed on them. The rest of the street is dark. A/C units hum under the faint brass sobs.
“So I was talkin’ to him and I was like, well, okay. I’m gonna see how far I can take this shit. He said, well, you know then, let me hear the tapes. I’m like, no. You either believe I got the good tapes or you don’t. If you don’t believe I got ‘em, then let me leave.”
“Ohh,” one of his buddies says, hands in his pockets, nodding.
“If you believe, then give me the shit.”
The man in camo stops to drag his cigarette. Two large rings catch the light.
“It’s like this. If I’m sellin’ you hand grenades in a back lot, I’m not gonna let you throw my hand grenades. You either believe I got good hand grenades or you don’t. If you believe I got good hand grenades, give me the money. And if I let you throw one, you’ll just say that’s the only good one in the case. You know what I’m sayin’? You can’t pick. You either believe these is real or not, or let me go.”
“Right, right,” the third man says, lifting a brown paper bag. He’s wearing a dark hoodie and wool fingerless gloves.
“Man looks at me and goes, man, you got some good, uh, business sense. Have you ever been to business school?”
He pauses.
“I said, no, I sold hand grenades before.”
Their laughs fade after I turn the corner at St. Regis Avenue. I keep walking, the plastic bag hitting my thigh, full of the stuff you buy when you aren’t trying to get better but just stay operational without having to change anything else. When you can’t afford to change anything else. Touching my face again, I smell chlorine or plastic or something from the water gun. At the same time, pain shoots through my shoulder, more intense than before. I stop and close my eyes. It’s all black.
When I open my eyes, I’m standing across from a burning car in an abandoned lot. The clouds inhale the dark smoke billowing through the buildings. A charred black Volvo, flames licking out the window, lighting up the graffiti-tagged brick wall—mostly gibberish, miscellaneous street tags, but above all of it, a wheatpaste print of black-and-white prayer hands, dead center in the flames whipping against the wall.
The pink-and-blue motel lights blink behind me. I turn. A black Coupe DeVille is parked in front of my motel—my room is on the second floor, but the car sits right below it. The same all-black Coupe DeVille, rose painted on the door. I get the feeling I’m being watched. Everything is silent, except for the idling engine purring steadily. There’s a bouquet of dead funeral flowers on the dash, the driver’s seat empty. I move a little slower, trying to look through the window as I pass. I look closer. I see an object behind me, someone behind me. My hand shoots to my waistband and I spin and jolt back.
“Johnathan Horowitz, a pleasure to meet you.”
A man in his late forties, a little younger than my driver earlier, in a slightly less formal suit, stands there with his hand stretched out toward me, the other behind his back.
I hesitate. His hand doesn’t budge. There’s white powder on the sleeve. Reluctantly, I shake his hand, firmly.
“Uh, are you following me?”
He jerks his hand back.
“Goodness, I must’ve just missed you at Donny’s.” His suit is messily put together, the red-striped tie loosened, the first few buttons of his shirt undone, revealing tattoos across his chest and a few chains. There’s hardly any hair left on his head, and what’s left sticks out in every direction.
“The store?”
“Yes, you’re exactly right. Donny’s.” The man smiles, a full gold grill catching the floodlight above the stairs. There’s an enthusiasm in his voice unfamiliar to the middle of the night. “Oh.” He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a glittery business card. His collar is dark with sweat. I take the card.
Johnathan Horowitz, Associate Vice President, pressed into the card in metallic foil. I flip it. Basil Business Ventures. A little basil leaf, pressed in the same foil.
When I look up, he’s holding out a pink box with a white bow on top. The man, smiling behind the box, cracks it open. Powdered donuts.
“You deserve something sweet.”
“Really, I’m…”
“Ah, ah, ah.” Cutting me off, he pushes the box closer to me.
“I… uh.” I take one.