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.At his feet are two duffel bags, brightly colored, one orange, the other yellow, both stuffed to bursting.He waits for an answer, and when none is forthcoming, he points to Portia, randomly.“We’re looking for our friend,” Portia says.The only way she knows how to make her voice meek and cooperative is to speak very softly.“Your friend?” says Dennis as if the concept were somewhat new to him, full of delicious comic possibilities.“She came here,” says Portia.“Oh, did she?” He stands up, grabs the bags.His T-shirt rises, showing a bit of belly and the gun tucked into the waistband of his pants.“Well,” he says, “I can’t say I have any memory of that.”“Her name was Bree,” Portia says, her courage returning.Dennis laughs.“What is so funny?” Portia says.Her anger forces her to move, and there is a chorus of complaint from the people to whom she has been chained.“Oh, nothing, really,” Dennis says.“It’s just…I don’t know.Bree.It’s such a cheesy name.” His laugh is hearty now.Like a mad devil, he tilts his head and roars with merriment.He shifts his duffel bags and gazes around the apartment, bidding it a fond farewell.What a shitbox, he thinks.It’s good to be leaving it behind.The long commute.The cramped quarters.The idiotic neighbors.The kitchen in name only.The constant whine of traffic from Ocean Parkway.Ocean Parkway! Where was the goddamned ocean? He could not see it; he could not smell it; it gave absolutely no evidence of itself.His new place, once found, would have at least a river view.The mighty Hudson! Or maybe down there on the South Street Seaport.Or in one of those big shiny buildings on Third Avenue within eyeshot of the East River.In the meantime, he’ll be staying in a hotel.Let the landlord of this place, the classless place, so insanely beneath him, let the greedy old fuck beat the bushes in search of Mr.Ravenswood, who, ladies and gentlemen, is about to—before your very eyes!—disappear into thin air.“Be good, guys,” Dennis says, heading for the door.“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.Oh, and if anyone needs to use the facilities, they’re right over there, second door to the right.Try not to look in the tub!”Chapter 18Rodolfo is beset with worries.So many worries! He cannot organize his mind and figure out which of his worries is most pressing, which worry to worry about first, which is second, third, which can safely be put aside for some future time.The worries are like huge waves that come from all directions, and his mind is a little ship constructed out of Popsicle sticks, out of paper, out of dreams.He is not stupid.No one who oversees a band of outcasts, finding actual indoor shelter for some, reminding the others of their responsibility toward one another; who keeps the peace among boys and girls who nearly 100 percent of health-care, educational, social work, and psychiatric professionals would deem incorrigible and unreachable, untreatable and undeserving of a minute’s freedom; who is basically president of a nation of outcasts, with some disappearing and some reproducing (and what is being reproduced is not really a reproduction in the strictest sense but a furtherance, another rung up or down the evolutionary ladder); who runs an underground enterprise with an ever-increasing cash flow, who oversees the quality of the product they sell and who, unlike many CEOs whose pictures are snapped at celebrity balls or on their yachts bobbing sunnily off some Greek isle, never allows greed and the pursuit of profit to get in the way of quality control or any other good business practice—no, no sixteen-year-old boy with Rodolfo’s cares and responsibilities can be called stupid.He is merely overwhelmed.The disappearance of Polly has destabilized his household.The defection of Alice has destabilized him.Central Park, 8:00 p.m.The summer sky is blue and purple on the east side.To the west, however, the light still lingers, smoky pastels and a sinking red sun—it looks like a blanket hanging in some tourist shop in Arizona.Every once in a while, one of the windows in the big Fifth Avenue apartments will flash red as the sun reflects way across the park to the east side.One by one, the trees dissolve into the darkness.The police are still maintaining the fiction that the two cops were mauled by a pack of wild dogs, and there are signs posted on the trees, yellow plastic with black lettering, warning people: Park Closed—Wild Dogs—Danger.Yellow tape and sawhorses block the roads going in and out of the park, east and west, north and south, around and around: all blocked, forbidden; what a laugh it is for the wild children.The dogs who once pranced through the park with their proud owners can now only look longingly at the deserted acres of hill and dale while they are leash-walked along the park’s periphery.They whimper, they strain; the squirrels look down on them from the sycamores, oaks, and maples, safe at last from constant harassment by these well-fed beasts when they, the bushy rodents, are only trying to do their job.But the dog owners know that dogs do not make good decisions.Word is that the police will shoot to kill any dog they see in Central Park—border terriers, borzois, dogs in booties, dogs with rhinestone collars; none will be spared.What’s next? Rodolfo and his kind wonder
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