The Yesterday of Tomorrow

THE YESTERDAY OF TOMORROW

The room is unfamiliar. I don’t know how I got here. Another place, another day where the feeling of betrayal replaced what is familiar to me, what is important. I shivered as I left the shower and began my morning ritual minus a hot cup of coffee and a glazed donut. Some might mistake me for a cop, but not for long.

I hate that everything I cherish and have experienced will be erased when I die. I’m sixty-five years old. I have lived longer than I have left to live. Most of the time, I don’t think about it. Yet, there are other times when I dwell on it with an uneasy fear that there are things I will never do again.

The frailty of the human mind is an enemy of the soul.

The sun had found its way through the half-open drapes, bringing a sliver of brightness into the room. There was a knock at the door. I put on my coat and straightened my tie, looking around the apartment, wondering if I would ever see it again. It had only been home for a short time, but I had become attached to the place with its musty smell and constant rattling of the unpainted windows due to the elevated trains that kept coming and going at all hours of the day and night. It reminded me of my parents’ apartment on 125^th Street, a place that held many memories, especially with my friends who were more like brothers. LaShawn Person and Michael Reynolds were those friends, my brothers, or whatever moniker one might apply to three boys who grew up together in Harlem and forged individual paths into adulthood. My name is Robert Gordon and this is my story.

In the neighborhood, I was called The Kid because I was younger than the other guys.  I liked it.  It gave me a presence.  Wherever I went, whether it be at the corner bodega or the movie theater on 123^rd Street, people knew me as The Kid.  Once, the cops were looking for me about a robbery.  They asked Juan, who owned the bodega, if he knew Robert Gordon.  He shook his head.  The cops then provided a photo and a description.  Immediately, Juan said, “Oh, you mean The Kid!”

We didn’t live very far from Garvey Park but more than a stone’s throw from the Harlem River, two of the notable areas where we used to hang out as teenagers, seeking excitement but finding none, and finally making our way back to Juan’s bodega, called JJ’s. The last I knew, it was still there on the corner of 125^th Street and Lennox Avenue.  Juan remained the proprietor and would have to find someone else to take over due to LP’s untimely demise.  It was our default loitering spot where we would pitch pennies and sit on old milk crates, smoking cigarette butts we found on the sidewalk, and watching the #1 Train travel by, rocking the rails and causing flakes of rust to flutter down from the underside of the tracks to the ground.  In the sunlight streaming through the rails, the flakes looked like gold. One of our boyhood legends was that there used to be an old man who would collect the rust flakes, dye them gold, and sell them to tourists.  We always laughed and said that, one day, it would all be ours!

I opened the door. “You ready for this?” asked the U.S. Marshal at the entryway who identified himself as Agent Markum, while another agent stood behind, surveilling the surroundings while I made my way out. “No need to lock it.”

I smiled, thinking of the Stoic premise that mandates ignoring what one can’t control and that each one of us determines the ultimate response to a situation. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

We took the stairs to the ground level. A car with another agent was waiting for us. They put me in first, continuing their scanning the environs for any possible glitch to the detail they had been assigned. I could imagine the directive. Pick up the asset and make sure nothing happens to him.

As we made our way down the Westside highway, I kept thinking of all those things I had done to put me in this predicament. The botched drug deal. Turning away from the Massucci family when things got messy and my cousin murdered by the Family. For me, it didn’t seem real, like my mind is trying to trick me into believing that I did all these things or that any of these things actually happened.

We travelled in silence except for the occasional expletives from the driver. I guess it would have to be me. “Is anybody going to say it?” I was interested to know.

The main marshal hesitated to respond. “I don’t like saying things about people I don’t know and I don’t know you and probably never will except for this ride to the courthouse. Why did it take so long for you to come forward? There are those from around here that think you’re a rat and you signed your death warrant when you agreed to testify.”

I didn’t hesitate to respond. “My father often told me that the only person I had to live the rest of my life with is myself. If I let the scumbags go free who killed my friends just to save my own hide, I would betray them, my father, and myself.” I looked out the window as hundreds of buildings in the Bronx passed by in an instant. I turned back to Markum. “What do you think?”

“I don’t care,” Markum said. 

“You must,” I countered.” Otherwise you wouldn’t have said anything. Come on, you’ve got to have an opinion.” 

Markum took a moment to gather his thoughts. “OK, hot shot, I think you’re more guilty than you say you are. There, I said it. Are you happy now?” 

“No sir. I’ve spent most of my life not concerned with what others think about me. But, this time it had to do with my friends being murdered. It hit home and I wanted to avenge their deaths and this is the best way I know how.” 

Time had gotten by and we were at the courthouse. A bevy of police directed the vehicle to a safe spot down the street covered by a small army of cops. Markum took me out of the car after surveying the area with his partner and we entered through a rear door, then whisked up to a holding room on the second floor.

As we went into a room secured by court security and two NYPD officers, I looked around likely for the last time as me being me. Witness protection was my next stop. I was getting nervous.

Markum noticed my uneasiness. “Just remember what your father told you,” he assured me.

I loosened my tie and smiled and went back in time to the small tailor shop in Harlem that my father operated. I remembered how my father would work until all hours of the night to be sure his customers’ needs were met.  He would rub his hands with Ben Gay to soothe the pain from the countless hours of sewing and measuring.  One of my father’s prized possessions, though, was a vintage Singer sewing machine (one of the “luxuries” he allowed himself) that he had bartered for with Henry Ling, one of the local Chinese merchants.  I recalled how my Dad felt that this was progress and elevated his status as a tailor even though such machines had been used for years.  My father led a simple, normal life, and was happy.  I had tried the normal life but wanted more.  Dominic Scialessi had given me that taste and I savored it.  My father disagreed.

            “You’re not a fighter, Robert.  You have a good heart, like your mother.”  He smiled.  “You’d make a better priest than you would a gangster.”

            I looked at my father.  “I can be tough, Pops, if I have to be.”

            “Not that kind of tough.  You will be strong for your family.  You will be strong in defense of others.  But, if it came down to breaking someone’s legs because he owed money to your boss, could you do it?”

            I thought briefly and held my father’s hands.  “If it meant that I didn’t have to suffer the pain you feel in your hands every day, yes, I think I could,” I reasoned.

            My father tightened his grip.  “At least I lived long enough for these hands to be painful, my son.  I wish the same for you.”

            “Hey, get ready hotshot,” Markum interrupted my reverie.

 “Thanks for the nudge,” I replied. It was then that I came to grips with my future, as short as it may be, and the probability that I would never see my friends and family and that musty apartment in the Bronx again.

Such is life.