The AntiChrist Was Conceived in Queens

Chapter 1 - Death & Life

Note: this book can be purchased at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00817OW6M in ebook format.

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Chapter 1

Death & Life

Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they love it shall eat the fruit thereof.

~ Proverbs 18:21

Family isn’t for everyone. Especially not for his kind. Like marriage, some people just aren’t born with the gift. That’s why Rain was going to stay out of Leo’s way for the next few days.

When Leo was in the kitchen Rain would be in the showroom, sweeping, cleaning glass, making change, whatever. When Leo was in the showroom Rain would be in the kitchen, or the alley, or on the sidewalk. Anywhere Leo was not, that’s where Rain was going to be.

Leo had this thing about them eating dinner together at the shop, though. Rain couldn’t avoid him then. So he just showed up at the beaverboard dinner table when he was called that Friday evening, bad Friday, mashed up in his mouth the extra-spicy-flaming-hot meat patties Leo had left on the plate for him, swallowed them without tasting them, put out the fire with some Cola Champagne, and kept his eyes on the table and his cooling mouth otherwise shut while he occupied himself listening to Martense’s soul worry about Mo’s whereabouts again.

The Reynolds’s dinner table was always quiet, except for the sounds of Leo tearing into his food; but Rain knew this was something else. This was holdover silence from yesterday haunting him, threatening him. The guilty have no peace.

And they get really tired, too.

Sitting there in the empty showroom after dinner, racing through Manchild in the Promised Land, Rain noticed his breathing and heartbeat was revving even faster than his eyes, and he was feeling really tired and nauseous. Like when you’re way too scared to even move your feet in the face of danger.

Man, this guilt was really messing with him.

After lock-up Leo and Martense drove home in the Delta 88 and Rain walked. They didn’t even have to make verbal arrangements for this, it was just understood that Rain would be finding his own way home. And he needed the one mile walk to get himself together. Slow his heart rate. Get rid of the jackhammer working overtime in his skull. To catch his breath in the cool fall air.

When he got home no lights burned in the living room. Pops, their upstairs tenant, was sitting in the beach chair under the front awning talking on his cordless phone and taking in the night smog and distant sirens and shift workers trudging to and from their Friday night slave, and all that made New York what it is. And Rain was feeling worse.

For this assignment Pops looked like an overripe plantain forgotten under the sink. Jet black and wrinkled with a little bit of yellow showing, a patch of white somewhere on top.

Rain knew Pops was smiling because he was seeing some yellow, but he barely heard what Pops was saying. “Praise the Lord, hijo! What a beautiful night to be a part of God creation.”

“G’night, Pops,” he said, reaching for the doorknob, mad that it was playing hide-and-seek on him now.

“Hijo, you no look so good.” Phone stuck to his ear, hand over the mouthpiece. “You okay?” Sounding like he was miles away in Cuba still, talking underwater.

“I just need some sleep,” Rain said, determined to snag that doorknob. And then everything went quiet and stiff for a second that seemed like an hour, or an hour that seemed like a second. Next thing Rain knew he was hovering over himself watching Pops laying hands on his rigid body sprawled across the welcome mat, rebuking the devil in the name of Jesus, telling Satan to get his filthy hands off Rain because he belonged to God.