Soaked from the Inside

by Will Lucas, 16

Written during , taught by Daniel Ehrenhaft

January 2005

Joe Gallo hated the snow more than anything else he could think of. Ever since he was a kid he had lousy experiences with the snow. He'd caught pneumonia at least 3 times and those terrible ordeals seemed to consume all of his memory of being a kid. Joe was covered in snow and he felt like a idiot. Tripping into one of the last piles around, his new water proof boots were completely soaked from the inside. The scene kept replaying in his mind. At least 10 people he worked with that had seen him, Policemen, Detectives were all laughing at him. They were not being rude but it was clear that every one of them was poorly disguising some type of laugh.

The detective quickly hurried himself into the precinct. He walked into his office to drop of his briefcase before getting the key to his locker. He walked over to the bathroom. It seemed as if it was just as cold inside as it was out. Joe had insulated his windows in plastic to keep the warm air in. But the cold air came through somewhere and either the heater wasn't working or he was going crazy.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Kensin just woke up. He had last night's tee shirt over his eyes. He loved getting up slowly. Stretching every limb, cracking his back. And every single joint in his hands and toes. This slow procedure almost became a ritual. He was not lazy, he just taught him self to get up earlier. He had no alarm or (solicitous) mother to help him out of bed. He normally woke up to the whistle of the tea kettle, by sound of the obnoxious Chinese weather reports his father put on whenever he thought it would rain or snow. It looked like it would rain today, but it always seemed to rain in Chinatown.

Kensin got up and boiled some water and moved to the window. He opened it just a crack to see if it had gotten warmer. Kensin prayed for spring, he couldn't wait to wear shorts and scandals. Spring for Kensin was like Christmas eve. May 1st was his birthday and one more month and then its summer. The mimosa tree outside his window would bloom and the beautiful blossoms would glide into his apartment through the open window in the kitchen and land on the checkered white and black tiles that lined the floor. They are truly amazing flowers. There like something out of a Dr. Susues book. The flowers were pink, green, and white silky tufts of hair. Some times he and his father would sit for hours and just watch the blossoms fly through the house.

It was cold and wet outside but something seemed warmer. Kensin thought he smelt a faint waft of springtime mingled with the smell of fried dumplings and fresh fish from the street below. He walked back from the window leaving it open to the kitchen. He turned the radio on and flipped through till he found a station playing some Marvin Gaye album. He fixed himself tea and walked back into his room. He left the door open all the way so that all the light that was reflected from the buildings across the street bounced in.

Kensin was exhausted even though he had got enough sleep his body ached from the night before. He had gone to his friends sweet 16 and had danced with some girl for hours. As he recollected the night before it seemed more like a dream than anything else. Pieces of the night started coming back to him in small fragments. Later that night the beautiful girl he had danced with pulled him down a flight of stairs to large desolate ballroom. There was no one around. The music from the party above them crept through the floorboards and filled up the empty ballroom. Kensin remembered that they had climbed up to the counter of the empty bar. It was like something out of a old fashioned move. Run DMC echoed throughout the room as they stared up at the magnificent chandeliers. Then they kissed for what seemed like hours.

He didn't even remember the girls name. He got her number but he didn't have the energy to call her now. He hadn't gotten home till like three in the morning. The trains moved so slow late at night, he might have gotten home faster if he walked. He turned the shower on. It took awhile to get hot water, that is if there was any today. Kensin walked over to his small rusted sink. He found a rag and began to scrub the layers of paint that encrusted his hands. He had Capoeira class in a hour and he always got yelled at by the security guards at his dance school whenever he came in dripping with paint. Normally he didn't care. He didn't need clean hands to do martial arts. But last time he walked in they heard the clinking of spray paint cans and they threatened to call the police.

***********

Gast unbuttoned his tight shirt. The subway felt like it was a hundred degrees. He wished there was a regulation about how many people could be allowed onto a train because his dad's suit was getting smashed between the closed doors. When the doors opened, Gast got off quickly and walked to the next car. It seemed more packed then the first. He tried to cross through to the end of the car but there were way to many people for him to make it through. Two cops opened the doors to the train and pushed there way through to him . He turned around and put his face up against the doors and closed his eyes to try and stop the constant flow of tears coming down his face. When the officers reached him the train seemed to get less crowded or people scooted away from the officers trying not to bump into them. The cops stared at Gast with almost a demonic glint in their eyes.

The smaller officer placed his hand on Gasts shoulder and said, " take it easy kid " "we ant gonna arrest you crazy fucks ." The second cop pulled out a pad of paper and stared flipping through it as the first cop continued to talk. "So I heard the service is at a temple. This hero of yours was a jew." Gast tightened his hands on the 45 millimeter inside his jacket. The cop grabbed him and turned him around, he shoved a photograph in his face that he pulled out of the pad of the paper. "Its too bad you can't tell how big his nose is from the morgue photo."" your hero anit so pretty now is he." Gast looked down at the photo it was a picture of Cen One. Or his body it least. Cen's head was smashed in with bullet holes.

*************************

Joe Gallo walked out of the prescient in the same mood that he walked in with. He hated being a detective and he hated being part of the vandal squad. He always wished he had just stayed a regular cop. Even if he got paid less he it least had some respects.

It was his lunch break and he wasn't hungry. His self-consciousness at work devoured what little apatite was left after he ate all those energy bars at work. He looked up at the park across the street. A large group of men of all types and sizes had gathered around a table. Joe walked over to see what they were all leaning forward and staring at. A small boy probably around 8 or 9 years old was sitting at one end of the small checkered table. A old man who could easily pass for homeless because of his raged appearance and long white beard was seated at the other side of the table. On the table was a chess set. The two opponents faced each other with intense, monk like concentration. No one spoke. The child moved one of the pieces across the board. The silence was unbearable. Joe couldn't remember the game, or the rules it least. He slowly walked away trying not to draw attention to him self. He felt out of place. Joe crossed the street and started walking back to the precinct. He cut through a public garden and looked across the street. He stopped in horror and backtracked quickly he hated walking by S.V.A. (School for Visual Arts). It was lunch and kids from all over the city that were taking summer programs would be outside. Ten, twenty kids would be hanging out all over the block. Break dancing, rapping and smoking. He hated walking down that block. When a police officer or a detective walked through them the kids would stop what ever they were doing and stare. Joe hated meeting eyes with one of those kids. If he didn't and walked quickly they would always laugh at him or make some derogatory comment about the badge hanging around his neck.

****************

Kensin threw some clothes on grabbed his keys and left. He locked the door took his bike key of the chain. He tossed the other keys under the door mat. He didn't need them till he got home. They weighed him down and he needed to go fast. As he ran down the stairs he took the handle of his switch blade and skimmed it against the metal poles that held up the stair case. The sharp sound spilt the silence that had enveloped his desolate apartment for far to long that morning. He hit the first floor and bounced out onto the street slamming his heavy red door behind him. Kensin worked his way through the thousands of people that occupied Canal Street. The street was one big tourist trap. Cologne stores occupied each corner of the block. He stopped at a parking meter where his small red bike was chained up. He desperately needed a new bike the old red paint was slowly pealing of revealing the original white bike. The spokes and gears were rusted and dirty. Kensin had to leave it a couple blocks away from his building because he couldn’t let his father know he had one. His old bike his dad had gotten him for his birthday a couple years ago was stolen recently. Kensin rarely had money for the subway any money he acquired was spent on paint. But Kensin still needed to get around the city quickly and quietly. So he borrowed his friends dads lock clipper. They were like gigantic wire cutters that custodians used in schools to clip combination locks on lockers. But it worked on bike locks too. So Kensin snuck out at like 2 in the morning and walked all the way down Broadway to The Village and stole the first biked he found. He had to leave the bike out in the snow and the rain so that his father wouldn’t know it was his.

Kensin got on his bike and instantly blended in with the thousands of people making there way through china town.

***********

Ghast hoped off the train and quickly made his way through 59th street the two Oficers lagged behind him but they made sure they didn’t lose him through the swarming waves of people trying to fit on the uptown D train. Ghast slowly made it up the stairs to the 1 and the 9 train stop. He looked around for a seat but they were all taken so he leaned up against the wall. He felt more nauseous then he ever did in his life. He felt like his insistence was trying to slither out of his body. Any minute now it would slide up his thought and out his mouth and land with a splat on the cold subway floor. He closed his jaw with extreme force locking his teeth together preventing any type of self digested regurgitation. He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead up against the wall. The cold tiles felt good. As he stood there he began to ignore everything around him. He blocked out the entire subway station. He blocked out all the cops all the heavy coats, umbrellas, handguns, roaches, rats, closed caskets, and melting snow. For about thirty seconds, he was a kid again curled up between his mother and father on their big blue bed. They were asleep but Ghast was just waking up. The hiss of the radiator had faithfully keep him asleep for hours but a faint tapping slowly opened his eyes. It was fall and beautiful yellow leaves smacked up against the window as the wind sent them flying up over the neighborhood like a swarm of deranged bats. The window had been left slightly open and cold air was slowly creeping down his back. Ghast leaned over to close the window but he didn’t have the strength to close it. He was to comfortable for any early morning effort. Ghast ran his fingers over a small hairline crack leading up from the bottom of the window. As if a slug had crawled in and the slimy residue it left behind had frozen over night.

Whack, a hand bag smacked Ghast in the face spinning him around. As his neck whipped around a bit of accumulating flem spun out of his mouth and stuck to the side of his face. But he didn’t think any one noticed but he didn’t have the guts to turn around and see. He still felt the ominous presence of the police officers 30 yards away from him.