Hells Kitchen

discount cosmetics store. “Yo, bee-utiful lady, we make you mo’ bee-utiful than you already be.”
    Carol laughed, blushing, and continued quickly past him.
    A block farther she nodded at a shabby tenement, similar to Pellam’s.
    “Home sweet home,” she said.
    Carol gave a quarter to a panhandler she greeted as Ernie. They stopped at the deli, exchanged a few wordswith the counterman and walked to the back of the store. She held up a can of coffee and a six pack of beer. “Which one,” she mouthed.
    He pointed to the beer and he could see that that was her choice too.
    Not too distant kindred souls . . .
    Her apartment was next door, a decrepit walk-up with beige and brown paint slapped over dozens of generations of other layers. They walked up the stairs. He smelled old wood, hot wallpaper, grease and garlic. Another firetrap, Pellam thought in passing.
    On the landing she abruptly halted, stopping him on the step below. A pause. She was debating. Then she turned. Their faces were at the same height. She kissed him hard. His hands slid down her shoulders into the small of her back and he felt the ignition inside him. Pulled her even closer.
    “Turiam pog,” she whispered, kissing him hard.
    He laughed and cocked an eyebrow.
    “Gaelic. Guess what it means.”
    “I better not.”
    “‘Kiss me,’” she said.
    “Okay.” And did. “Now, what does it mean?”
    “No, no.” She laughed. “That is what it means.” She giggled like a girl and stepped to the door closest to the stairs. They kissed again. She dug for her keys.
    Pellam found himself looking at her. And as she bent forward, glassesless, squinting her bad eyes to open the lock, he saw an image of a Carol Wyandotte very different from the stony, hustling Times Square social worker. He saw the sad pearls, the sweatshirts, an elastic-shot cotton bra, the fat at her throat that Fiber-Trim would never melt away. Whose nights were filled withthe tube, in a room peppered with Atlantic Monthly s and Diet Pepsi empties, a dresser filled with more cotton socks than black pantyhose. The Archway cookies packages she’d automatically tucked out of sight when guests walked into the kitchen, a fat person’s instinct.
    Don’t do this for pity, Pellam thought to himself.
    And in the end he didn’t. Not at all.
    Eight months is, after all, eight months.
    He kissed her hard and, when the last deadbolt clicked, he pushed the door eagerly open with his booted foot.

SEVENTEEN
    On the west side of Manhattan near the river was a forlorn triangle of a tiny city block that contained seven or eight old buildings.
    To the west, where the sun was now setting, were vacant, weedy lots, the highway and, beyond, the brown Hudson River. To the east, across a cobblestoned street, was a low row of apartments, a gay bar and a bodega in whose window was a display of filthy pastry, sliced pork and custard. This was the Chelsea district of New York, the bland, harmless cousin of Hell’s Kitchen, which was just to the north.
    The tricorner building at the northern-most end of the block ended in a sharp prow. It was a shabby place to call home but the residents had few complaints about their apartments and they didn’t know that there was really only one major problem here, a building code violation: Gallons of gasoline, fuel oil, naphtha, and acetone were stored in the basement. The explosive force of these liquids was sufficient to level the building and to do so in a particularly unpleasant way.
    This particular apartment was a spartan place andcontained minimal furnishings—a chair, cot, two tables and a battered desk covered with tools and rags. There was neither an air conditioner nor a fan. The TV, however, was a thirty-two-inch Trinitron and it sported a remote control that was ten inches long. On this screen at the moment was an MTV music video, the sound off.
    Sitting immediately in front of the flickering screen, which he paid little attention to, Sonny was slowly braiding his long blond hair. Without the benefit of a mirror, the task was taking him longer than he wanted. No damn mirror, he thought angrily. Though the problem really was his shaking hands. Damn sweaty, shaking hands.
    At one point he looked up—toward but not really at the TV screen—and paused. He leaned toward a fifty-five gallon drum filled with acetone and knocked several times, listening to the sonar echo of the thump. It calmed him somewhat.
    But not enough.
    No one was