My neighbor, Toni, goes everywhere on her bike. You know the kind, a little girl’s bike, pink and white with a banana seat. Toni’s knees come up around her chest when she rides it because it’s so small. Ten years ago when she was twelve it would have fit her. I see her coming down the sidewalk sometimes when I’m looking out my window and there she is, pedaling along and swerving for the signs and the telephone poles and the Mexican women who push strollers past the building. It freaks me out because all day and night I hear tires screeching in the intersection in front of my building. I always tighten up and close my eyes, waiting to hear an impact at the end. I tell Toni that she’s going to have an accident someday riding that little bike around town. People on bikes get hit all the time. This afternoon I look out through the peephole and I see her in the hallway, so I open the door and say Hi Toni. I’m only wearing my shorts because I haven’t been up long but Toni just smiles at me and says Hi Sal I’m going to go to my friend’s houseyo she just got an African water beetle with four eyes. Toni says yo a lot, almost in every sentence. She’s walking that bike down the hall toward the stairs in the back of the building and it’s pretty funny to see because it only comes up to her knees. She has big hair, somewhere between red and brown, or maybe both, and she hasn’t washed it in three months hoping it will turn into dreads. Dreadsyo. That’s super I tell her. Why four eyes? Cause it’s a waterbeetleyo. As though that explains it. My neighbor, Toni, goes everywhere on her bike. You know the kind, a little girl’s bike, pink and white with a banana seat. Toni’s knees come up around her chest when she rides it because it’s so small. Ten years ago when she was twelve it would have fit her. I see her coming down the sidewalk sometimes when I’m looking out my window and there she is, pedaling along and swerving for the signs and the telephone poles and the Mexican women who push strollers past the building. It freaks me out because all day and night I hear tires screeching in the intersection in front of my building. I always tighten up and close my eyes, waiting to hear an impact at the end. I tell Toni that she’s going to have an accident someday riding that little bike around town. People on bikes get hit all the time. This afternoon I look out through the peephole and I see her in the hallway, so I open the door and say Hi Toni. I’m only wearing my shorts because I haven’t been up long but Toni just smiles at me and says Hi Sal I’m going to go to my friend’s houseyo she just got an African water beetle with four eyes. Toni says yo a lot, almost in every sentence. She’s walking that bike down the hall toward the stairs in the back of the building and it’s pretty funny to see because it only comes up to her knees. She has big hair, somewhere between red and brown, or maybe both, and she hasn’t washed it in three months hoping it will turn into dreads. Dreadsyo. That’s super I tell her. Why four eyes? Cause it’s a waterbeetleyo. As though that explains it.
I live at 348 West McDowell Street, Phoenix, Arizona, USA, Apartment 7. My neighbor Toni lives in the last apartment, number 8. It’s next door to mine. I hear her unlocking the door downstairs, and I look out the window and there she goes. She climbs on the bike and pedals away west on the sidewalk, going past the blue restaurant. It used to be an A&W but now it’s called Mariscos Mazatlan. I can’t see but I know there are men watching her, probably older men in their forties watching from inside the restaurant. She never wears a bra. She wears baggy shorts and a tank top and she looks real sexy. If I put her in a comic book I would call her Steed and I would draw her big messy hair like a mane, rippling out behind her. I watch her cross through the traffic and turn up third, past the new art gallery and the DMV and the Shamrock Bar and the pawnshop with the neon sign that says Dinero a Mexico. She’s a fantastic rider because she does it every day, all day it seems like, especially since she quit her job. I don’t know how she pays the rent now, but she couldn’t go on at the Shamrock. It’s a real dive. Not the kind of place for her. She has something whole and special about her. Nature. The way she’ll ride across town in the heat just to see a waterbeetle. The way that she can ride that bike all over town, barefoot. Anyone else would have burned soles, the pavement is so hot, but I think Toni just never puts her feet down. That’s how she is. Never on the ground.
My landlady Mabel bangs on the door so I leave the window and pull on some pants. Mabel keeps the place pretty nice because it’s historic. It was built in 1924, right downtown. From my window when I’m up at night working I can see the lights of the big buildings downtown. Bank One, Bank of America, Wells Fargo. Mabel put an expensive carpet in the hall and a big wooden dresser with books on top. She runs an antique store on Seventh Avenue and when she can’t fit something in her little shop she brings it here and puts it in the hall or knocks on my door. I open up and she smiles and sniffs the air. She worries that her tenants smoke pot. Sal, she tells me, do you have an armoire? No. Here, why don’t you use this one for a while, you can put your things in it. Which things? Your art and books and stuff. So I help her drag this big maple armoire up the back steps and down the hall toward my place. It’s not bad. The varnish is coming off the doors on the front but there is some neat carving, scrolls and swishes around the top and on the legs. Counting the armoire I have seven pieces of antique furniture, all on loan from Mabel. I push the armoire against the right side of the apartment, directly across from the ratty Queen Anne armchair with its high back and wooden legs that end in lion’s feet and the ottoman. Those are on the left side by my sleeping bag. The front wall, opposite the door, is where I keep the café patio table and the matching metal-legged chair so I can look down on McDowell Avenue while sitting at the table. That’s where I work at night, looking out at the buildings. The lamp is on that table too, it’s a real Scheaffer, but the original shade is missing and so is the original pen so Mabel couldn’t sell it. I keep my best pen, a Trimline refillable that I do all my lettering with, in the little holder thingy on the lamp’s base. I say to Mabel Thanks for the armoire. I’ll put my stuff in it. She says no problem, but she’s looking around the apartment to see if I’m keeping it clean enough. Why don’t you dust off those cobwebs, Sal? They’re in every corner. Sure thing I tell her. Get right on it.
I put on some coffee in the kitchenette and open the doors of the big chest radio that Mabel brought in last month. It didn’t work so it was just for show. It’s taller than me, made of dark wood and shaped like the Chrysler Building in New York, the one with the gothic arches that a lot of comics base their skyscrapers off of. I messed around with the radio and found an old repair manual in one of the used bookstores on Seventh. It’s for a different brand, but radios were all the same back then, and it works now. I play KOY on it, which a lot of people don’t know about—the swing and oldies station. And I turn it off when Mabel is around because she’ll sell it now that it works. While I wait for the coffee I start some sketches. Most people who don’t read comics think that Marvel publishes them all. That’s not so. I work for a company in Wyoming that has nothing to do with Marvel. We’re not mainstream. We’re different, fresh. The company started as four kids at the university drawing in their dorm. Once a month I pack up my storyboards and my sketches and send them all off to Cheyenne in a big FedEx box. My comic’s called McDowell because I named the main character after my street. He’s this tall architect with a square jaw who is also a master of a secret martial-arts tradition that is only taught and practiced in an ancient temple in Thailand. He commutes. But this afternoon I sketch the frame of that little kid’s bike and then I start on Toni’s hair billowing behind her head. I try her breasts a few times but I can’t get them quite right. They’re different from the breasts I usually draw. Lower, fuller on the bottom than on the top. Teardrops. I’m used to drawing breasts that are squeezed into spandex bodysuits. I give up and try a four-eyed African water beetle but that’s not working either. It keeps coming out like a fat cockroach because I don’t know what it’s supposed to look like. Then I think to shape the body like a Zulu war mask. The coffee starts to bubble on the stove. Coming, dear, I tell it.
It’s late afternoon and I see this girl pedaling up the street. Traffic is mad heavy on McDowell this time of day and you can barely look out the window for all the sun shining off people’s cars. The street has three lanes going east, two going west, and a big turn lane right in the middle. These people fly by at fifty, and this is right downtown. One day I’m going to see someone get hit, I’m sure of it. It’ll be right down in front of my apartment. It’s dangerous as hell down there. I walk into the kitchen because that window opens. The heat rushes in at me as soon as I crack it open. I want to ask Toni out. I always have wanted to ask her out but I can’t. I get weak in my hands when I think about it, and if I think about it when she’s nearby I get weak everywhere. It’s been that way with girls and me. I have a new idea, though. I’ll ask Toni in. There’s plenty to talk about here in my apartment, even if she doesn’t care about my work. There’s the new armoire, for instance. And I can make coffee on my stovetop. I’ll sit her down at the café table with the view and I’ll pull the old-fashioned box grinder off the top shelf in the kitchen and I’ll put some coffee beans in it and spin the handle and the beans will funnel in and crackle and growl through the mechanism. That’s my latest piece, I’ll tell her. Classic. Do you know much about armoires? How about radios? I rebuilt this one myself but don’t tell Mabel, I’m afraid she’ll sell it. And I’ll pull out the little drawer of ground coffee and scoop it into the basket filter and fill the bottom chamber with water before I drop the filter in place. But I don’t know what she’ll say. I can’t even imagine it, which worries me because I can imagine practically anything. You don’t last long in the comic business unless you can imagine just about anything. But I can’t imagine what she’ll say (though I know she’ll say yo in the middle of it) and I think that’s why I’m so afraid. It’s a terrible thing not to know what someone is going to say. So I’m actually relieved when I stick my head out the window into the blistering afternoon and the girl on the bike is Carla, not Toni. Carla’s just a hooker. The only one who hasn’t left the neighborhood and moved south to Van Buren. Carla’s breasts are easy to draw. Last time she was up she stayed for an extra hour and napped in the Queen Anne. She was wearing one of those push up bras and I did ten pages of sketches. She didn’t charge extra. She said it was enough knowing that kids across America would be gaping at the boobs of a worn-out old whore from Phoenix when they bought comic books. That made me mad and I rushed her out. It was so perverted. I haven’t talked to her since. I wouldn’t do that to kids.
Still my neighbor Toni hasn’t come home, riding her little girl’s bike up the sidewalk. It’s almost dark, and the longer she takes the less courage I have to invite her for coffee. I’ve gone over it all in my mind a hundred times. I set the top on the coffee pot and carefully screw the two pieces together. Not too tight, of course. That damages the seal. Light the gas on the stove and turn the flame down to approximately three eighths of an inch while I entertain her with conversation. Have you heard this one? It’s Benny Goodman. KOY doesn’t play him enough. It’s always Dean Martin and Glenn Miller. The bottom of the pot heats up, condensation forms all around it, and still Toni says nothing. I try not to look at her legs or at her tank top but I can’t help but sneak a tiny peek and I turn red. Of course I’ve seen right down her shirt tons of times, when I’m looking down from my window and she’s on the sidewalk below standing astride the bar of that little pink bike. But that’s different. What’s your favorite comic? I ask, trying not to look at her skin when she’s so near. That’s what I really don’t want to do. Bring up comics. There are a lot of reclusive, perverted comic book freaks out there. I would die if she thought of me like that.
The streetlights are on even thought the sun hasn’t set and there is one right outside my building that buzzes pretty awful. Another girl on a bike bumping along the sidewalk on the other side of the street and I know it has to be her. There’s no missing the way her knees stick out to the sides like wings on a baby bird. She passes the Shamrock and the pawnshop and the DMV. She pauses at the big windows of the art gallery because one of her friends is a partner there. She likes his art. I’ve heard her standing on the street below my window talking to her friends about what a great artist he is. She palms the glass and keeps her feet up on the pedals. She’s yelling in the window at her friend. On my paper there is another cockroach. This one is wearing an African war mask and I’m trying to decide where to place the eyes. Four of them. When I look back out Toni is darting across the street. She doesn’t wait for a hole in the traffic, she just pedals like mad until she hits the median then lays back on the banana to glide across. People hit the brakes for Toni. She’s carrying a brown paper bag in one hand, gripped along with the pink rubber handlebar grip. I scramble to the kitchen window and open it. Hi Toni what’s up I say. S’upyo she says, from behind her sunglasses. Nothing. It’s time to ask her up, but what if she doesn’t like coffee? I hadn’t thought of that. Toni’s the kind that would like herbal tea. I don’t have that. Not one leaf in my entire apartment. How was the waterbeetle I say instead. So awesome dude. I thought the eyes were maybe like high-beams you know, switch’em on. But it’s like they’re all open at once to see underwater for the fish and above water for the birds. It’s like a superpower, I say. Stupid move. You wanna see ityo? She says. You have it? My friend is going to see her boyfriend in Tucson. I’ve got the beetle. Bring it up I tell her.
My neighbor Toni is coming by to visit and my hands are shaking. I can hear her working the lock on the front door of the building, right below my apartment. I slam my papers together. No time to put them in a portfolio. The door downstairs just closed. I kick my sleeping bag into a ball in the corner and I open the front door of the armoire and throw my drawings and my books in there. Dirty clothes on the floor. Why didn’t I clean them up? I scoop them in my arms and dump them beside the sleeping bag. Second thought. I pull the sleeping bag over the pile and shove it all in the corner. I feel my head catch on a low-strung cobweb. Broom closet. Right by the bathroom. I attack the cobwebs with the broom. I hit each corner fast. Sticky grey. Smears on the wall. Toni bangs on my door. Open upyo she says. I got the beetle.
So I answer the door out of breath even though Toni was the one who dragged her bike up the stairs in the back. She leans on the doorjamb and so do I—the other one. I can’t feel my hands shaking because I’m panting. Toni opens the brown bag. It’s like a lunch bag from junior high. It’s right here she tells me, check it out. Why don’t you come in, I say, let’s look at it on the table. She peeks into my apartment like a Neanderthal has just invited her into a cave, but she says coolyo. I lead her to the table and lean the broom against the wall by the window and she says you got some cool shityo wheredya gettitall? Coffee, I say? I don’t listen for her answer because my extremities are going numb having her right here in my apartment. I do the things like I planned, pouring the beans into the old grinder. Go ahead and make some for yourself she says, from the table. Nice chair. It’s very comfortable, I tell her, try it out. I listen to the machine chewing up the coffee beans while I crank the handle. Hopefully she’s not looking at my pile of clothes or the grey streaks of cobwebs pointing at the corners of the room. So what do you do in here all the time, she says? I work at home I say, dropping the coffee filter into the base. I screw the top on tight. I fixed this radio, I say. Have you ever seen one this old?
I turn the burner on. I am about to tell her about KOY and Benny Goodman, but from the other room I hear her. Great armoireyo. Did you get it from Mabel? Can I look inside? I say yes, to the first question because I’m concentrating and don’t hear the other in time. Do you like sugar? I say. Nice drawings, she calls back. Why are you drawing cockroaches? I rush around the corner to take the drawings from her but I hear the squeal of tires out the window and a loud noise. The sound is like crumpling an old drawing, only squeakier because there’s metal involved. I rush to the window and look out and sure enough, there’s a bike and a person all mangled in the center of McDowell. They’re lying in the middle of the street in front of some SUV. Cars are stopping both directions and someone has leapt out of the big truck. I turn back around and there’s Toni holding a picture of herself, hair all billowed out behind. Dude, she says. Is this me? How many pictures do you draw of my titsyo? Someone was hit, I say, someone was hit on a bike just now. Dude. You creep me out. Toni backs up toward the door. Come on I say, someone just got hit. Stay away, she says, slipping out into the hallway.
It’s Carla the hooker, but she’s not dead. Busted up pretty good. Probably a dozen broken bones, one of the cops said, it’s not going to be pretty. She’ll be down at County: they take cases like hers. And I get back up to my apartment when it’s all over to find the burner still on and my coffee maker all melted down. The handle, the seal, all burned up because I forgot to put water in and then I left it on when I went down to the accident. My drawings of the beetle and Toni and Carla are all gone, and so is the first half of next month’s McDowell. Toni walked out with them but she left the empty beetle bag on my table. I’ll look in the dumpster tomorrow for my work after Toni rides off. I turn off the gas and use a rag to put the coffee pot back on the counter. It should go in the trash. I flick on the old radio and sure enough it’s the Glenn Miller Orchestra. I sit at the table and push the old brown bag aside. It’s dark now and the lights of the yellow Wells Fargo sign atop its skyscraper and the blue Bank One sign atop its building shine through my window, as peaceful as the moment before a villain takes out a skyscraper. The trombone section takes off, with only a pulsing drum for accompaniment. Glenn himself played trombone. He starts a solo and I see a shape in the corner, down below the cobwebs, and in one fluid motion I reach for the broom and swing. It’s an instinct you develop living downtown. There are roaches everywhere. I hear the crunch, like a bicycle folding up on the grill of an SUV. I cringe. I roll the broomstick over in my hand and it’s gruesome. I can’t make out any of the four eyes.
