While I wait for the re-release of my novel JUST ACROSS THE STREET IN NEW YORK CITY on 2 February, I thought I’d give a weekly installment from the book . Here’s the first !! I hope you like it.

By the way, the fabulous cover art is by Sanaan Mazhar

WINTER 1989

§§

TOULOUSA BELL

She hefted her purse to the other shoulder to walk upstairs from the subway at 23rd Street. The Manhattan street was wider than in Queens, wider and but not cleaner. Dog poop, empty brown bottles, and broken umbrellas were scattered on the sidewalk. She turtled into her wool muffler against the grey clouds and cold air.

At the Triplex, she wanted to bust down and dance. She would’ve done it in her Queens neighborhood, but she chose to look mature walking into her new job. In two weeks when she got her first paycheck, she’d pay the gas and electric bills for the seven people in her apartment, with enough left over to buy books.

Toulousa stood up straight and went into Max Gambardella’s office with her hand stuck out for a shake. Max responded by putting a red vest with a movie camera sewn on the breast pocket into the hand and pointing to the concession counter.

After an hour of selling Milky Ways, 3 Musketeers, Junior Mints, Gummy Bears, four sizes of popcorn, soda pop, and hotdogs, Toulousa Bell was an expert at the cash register. She’d always been talented with numbers, words, and people. Adding junk food into the mix was a no-brainer. Her skinny hips and dreadlocks swayed with the rhythm of the jingling coins she counted out as change.

At the first lull, she took a plastic cup out of her bag and filled it with coke. Max had told her at the interview that there was one perk with the job: she could eat all the popcorn and hotdog buns she wanted. Not the candy or hotdogs. Those were inventoried every night and matched up with the money. The soda cups were counted too, but the employees could drink soda as long as they didn’t use theater cups. She intended to take advantage of this perk.

Swallowing two gulps, she studied the space outside her counter. A black kid swept up popcorn from underneath the water fountain in the waiting area. It was a “split level” theater, with one step going down from the concessions to the screening rooms. Another step led down to two 25-cent video games, the bathrooms, and a black leather bench. The Triplex’s red carpeting and wallpaper made it feel like an old tavern.

From the left, a fat blond woman came out from behind a red curtain revealing a glimpse of the ticket booth. Toulousa called over to her, “Do you want a hotdog bun?”

The big blond looked over her shoulder, then pointed to herself, like she was asking whether the question was aimed at her.

“Yeah, you. You want a hotdog bun? I’m gonna have one before the next batch of customers arrive.” She loaded a bun up with mustard, ketchup, and relish, held it out, and said, “My name’s Toulousa Bell.”

The fat woman’s eyes dropped to her feet when she said, “Carolyn Duffy.”

But then her eyes crept upwards. They were pale blue eyes, lighter than a blue snow cone, lighter than the Manhattan sky. They were like fishbowl water. Those blue eyes fixed on the dreadlocks. She had never been this close to someone with dreadlocks before.

Finally, Carolyn spoke, “Could you add mayo?”

“You’re the first person I’ve met who mixes mayonnaise with ketchup and mustard, but my motto is ‘I give you what you want’.” She rolled the cuffs of her white work shirt back showing off skinny wrists, squirted white stuff on top of the green relish, and handed the concoction across the counter.

Carolyn took what was offered, but Toulousa held onto her end of the bun for a split second and quipped, “So this is how you keep your girlish figure?”

Carolyn felt like she’d been slapped. Her pudgy face fell so the blue eyes disappeared, and she dropped her end of the bun.

Toulousa reached across the counter, grabbed Carolyn’s hand, and put the bun in it. “That’s a joke, honey. The truth is, you look good to me.” She smiled at the blond, displaying all her big teeth. Yes, she liked the way Carolyn Duffy looked, as if she were bread dough going into the oven.

Carolyn sniffed the bun, took a bite, and nodded a thank-you.

The rest of the morning, in between pulling out candy bars, filling coke cups, and popping corn, Toulousa felt Carolyn Duffy looking at her through the crack between the red velvet curtain and the ticket booth wall.

When Toulousa wasn’t busy with customers, she read The Vampire Lestat. She was a reader. She was never bored as long as she had a book, and that was never, because she didn’t go anywhere without two or three library books in her bag.

She held her book steady when a kid came out of theater # 2 where National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation was showing. He stood in front of the concession counter, waiting to be noticed. Toulousa kept her nose in the book, turning the pages, one at a time.

The kid coughed to announce his presence. Then he tapped a coin on the glass countertop. Finally he said, “You, lady. You gonna help me here or what?”

Toulousa looked up from the book and said, “Who you think I am? Your momma? Get your own popcorn.”

Carolyn Duffy watched the mini-drama from the ticket booth, until Toulousa cracked a big smile and called out to her, “It’s nothing. I’m joking with him.”

The kid curled his lip, “Big fucking joke.”

“Your momma let’s you talk like that?”

He didn’t shrink. “My momma gave me money for a Baby Ruth.”

“Well, here’s your Baby Ruth,” Toulousa said, pulling one out of the counter. Then she scooped popcorn onto a big napkin. “And I’ll give you some free popcorn if you go the rest of the day without saying ‘fuck’.”

He slapped a $5 bill on the counter and answered, “I don’t want your fucking popcorn.”

She grinned and gave him his change. “You’re a smart guy. That’s good. Don’t ever let anyone buy you.”

He looked at the tall skinny woman sideways and took his change.

Toulousa winked and told him, “Get outta here. You’re missing the movie.”

The kid left, and Carolyn disappeared behind her curtain.

§§

When she got home from her first day at the Triplex, Toulousa smelled chicken roasting and heard Coco crying. Without taking off her coat, she dropped her bag next to the playpen and scooped out the baby, swinging her up to the changing table. Two minutes later, Coco gurgled, happy and dry.

The baby’s bean-brown skin was the same color as Sharon’s eyes. Sharon was Coco’s momma. Joe, Coco’s daddy, had black eyes, just like his big sister Toulousa. Joe’s skin was black too, like Toulousa’s. Well, almost black. More than dark brown, sort of gun-metal black.

Joe had one more year to finish his computer science degree at NYU. Sharon worked part-time at the snack bar of the Jamaica YMCA on Parsons Boulevard, not far from the apartment where she lived with the Bell family on 153rd Street at 90th Avenue in Queens, New York.

A year back, Sharon had danced into the kitchen of the Bell apartment where Toulousa was frying eggs and chirped, “I missed my period.”

Toulousa had grabbed Sharon’s hands and joined in the dance. “You and Joe are going to have a baby!” she chanted. “I bet she’ll be fat and healthy.”

“She?” Sharon had asked and gotten a wink as an answer.

Toulousa had been right. The baby girl was already two months old.

With Coco balanced on her hip, Toulousa leaned down to kiss the cheek of the woman stirring jerk sauce at the kitchen stove.

“How was Day One?” Mamie Bell asked, without missing a beat with the sauce.

“I finished the book I started on the subway ride going in. The boss let me work without hanging over me, the money matched the register at the end of the shift, and my co-workers, a young guy who’s the usher and a fat woman selling tickets, they’re good.”

Mamie nodded and said, “You can trust fat people.” Mamie was big — real short but real big. She stopped stirring and looked up at her daughter. “You, you’re an exception. You’re the only skinny person I trust.”

Toulousa grinned. “You’re right. I’m honest. At least most of the time. And I’m skinny.”

“Bean pole skinny,” Mamie said, turning back to the stove. “You’ve been skinny since you were born. I thought you were a snake or one of those long dogs when you were coming out of me.”

“A dachshund?”

“Yeah, a dachshund.” She glanced over her shoulder, “But you were a little girl baby, not a dog, and I loved you at first sight.”

“Is Sharon home yet from the YMCA?” Toulousa asked.

Mamie shook her head No. But it didn’t matter, because all of the Bell’s in the apartment helped with Coco, and that included 13-year-old Jonquil who sat at the kitchen table.

In the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, Jonquil had something she didn’t have at her home on the island of Jamaica. Back there, she had six brothers, all wanting to get at her. In New York, Mamie made sure no one touched her.

The not-touching rule included Toulousa of course, lying next to the 13-year-old on the fold-out couch at night. Toulousa entertained her young cousin with New York City history every evening. Jonquil’s favorite bed-time story was how the Statue of Liberty’s arm crossed the Atlantic for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1875, and ten years later, the rest of Lady Liberty arrived in New York from France in 350 separate pieces.

Toulousa challenged Jonquil to find a story about New York that she hadn’t heard. The girl had surprised her a couple of times already.

“How was school today?” Toulousa asked Jonquil.

The girl growled at the math book staring at her from the kitchen table. Then her expression cleared, and she said, “In history class I learned a New York fact. Wanna hear?”

“Tell me,” Toulousa said.

Jonquil pulled one leg up under her on the kitchen chair and said, “Did you know that the first subway opened in New York in 1904, and Italians sold the first pizza here in 1905.”

Toulousa grinned. “That’s interesting. Not as good as the Statue of Liberty but good.”

“Wait. It gets better. Since then, the price of a slice of pizza and a subway token have always been about the same.”

“You mean when one price goes up, the other goes up too?”

Jonquil nodded. “Yeah. Weird, huh?”

“That’s one I hadn’t ever heard. You’re doing good, girl.”

Jonquil looked back at the math book, chewing on the eraser of her pencil, but Toulousa could see the smile on the girl’s face. It was tough for Jonquil to catch up with the other students in her new school, but she was determined and hearing praise from her aunt helped.

Jonquil wasn’t the first child to show up in Queens from the old neighborhood in the Caribbean. Mamie Bell’s husband was killed before she came to the United States, and since then, Mamie presided over the New York household, even though Granddaddy Papa was the oldest in the apartment. Mamie had raised five children in Queens and cooked for a steady stream of people who joined her table. It was Mamie’s rule that anyone was welcome in her home if they needed a safe place.

Toulousa swung Coco over her left shoulder, hoisted a basket of laundry onto her right hip, and headed to the laundry room in the basement. While the clothes swirled in the washer, then the dryer, she fed Coco a bottle of formula. Coco’s hands danced around the bottle, and her eyes fixed on her aunt’s face, as if she were listening while Toulousa read aloud from The Bonfire of the Vanities.

When the dryer clicked off, she loaded the basket with Coco and the clothes, and hauled them to the elevator.