Two

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best to make you like everybody else, means to fight the hardest human battle ever and to never stop fighting.

E. E. CUMMINGS

Bobby Rosa sat in his Quickie wheelchair in the middle of Central Park’s Sheep Meadow, checking out all the beautiful young babes. He had his headphones on, Motley Crue’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” leaking out, thinking that his own crew would love all these great shots he was taking. Man, these chicks must’ve been starving themselves, probably doing all those Pilates, to look this good. Finally, he saw what he was looking for — three thin babes in bikinis lying on their stomachs in a nice even line. They were about thirty yards away — perfect shooting distance — so Bobby took out his Nikon with the wide-angle lens and zoomed in.

He snapped about ten pictures — some whole-body shots and some good rear shots. Then he wheeled toward the other end of the Sheep Meadow and spotted two blondes, lying on their backs. From about twenty yards away, he snapped a dozen boob shots, saying things to himself like, “Oh, yeah, I like that,” “Yeah, that’s right,” “Yeah, right there baby.” Then, right next to the blondes, he spotted a beautiful curvy black chick, lying alone on a blanket. She was on her stomach and the string on her bikini bottom was so thin it looked like she was naked. Bobby went in for a close-up, stopping about five yards behind her. He snapped the rest of the roll. He had another roll in the jacket of his windbreaker, but he was happy with the shots he’d gotten, so he pushed himself out of the Sheep Meadow, on to the park’s west drive.

A panhandler came up to Bobby, with that annoying sadeyed yet pissed-off look that all homeless fucks had. The guy looked strung out and the smell of piss, sweat and booze made Bobby want to puke.

“Got a few bucks, buddy?”

With the headphones on, Bobby couldn’t hear him, but he could read the guy’s lips. He gave him a long stare, thinking there was no way in hell some scumbag like this would have had the balls to come up to him back in the day. Just then, the Crue went dead, right in the middle of “Bad Boy Boogie,” as the cassette got mangled — cheap rip-off piece of shit he bought on the street in Chinatown, what, ten years ago? He tore the crap out of his Walkman, thinking he had to go current, get one of those iPods. Then he flung the messed-up tape at the guy, spat, and said, “Here’s some Crue. Broaden your fuckin’ horizons, jackass... and take a fuckin’ shower while you’re at it.”

The guy stared at the tape, stammered, “The fuck am I gonna do with this?”

Bobby smiled, not giving a shit, and said, “Stick it up your ass, loser.”

And then he continued up the block, cursing to himself and at the people he passed. Nine ways to Sunday, Bobby Rosa had attitude, or in the current buzz jargon, he had issues.

When he got back to his apartment on Eighty-ninth and Columbus, Bobby went right to the second bedroom, which he had turned into a darkroom, and started developing the film. The three chicks in a row came out great, but the pictures of the black babe were Bobby’s favorites. Somehow the woman reminded him of his old girlfriend, Tanya.

Bobby added the tit shots to the collection in his bedroom. He had three walls covered with Central Park boobs, taken during the past two springs and summers. He had all shapes and sizes — implants, flat chests, sagging old ladies, training-bra teenagers — it didn’t matter to him. Then he had an idea, and said out loud, “The Hot Chicks of Manhattan.” It had a nice ring to it; he could see it as a coffee table book. He could make a few bucks on the side and it was kind of classy too. Rich assholes would have it out right next to their champagne and caviar. Then, laughing to himself, he took the ass shots and added them to his collection in the bathroom. Next, he went to his shelf, grabbed another tape, The Best of Poison. Letting “Talk Dirty To Me” rip, he leaned back in his wheelchair, admiring his work. He bet, if he wanted to, he could sell his pictures to some classy art magazine, one of those big, thick mothers you have to hold with two hands.

After a few more minutes of staring at the walls, Bobby looked at his watch. It was 2:15. He realized it was past his usual time for his bowel routine. So he went into the bathroom and transferred himself onto the bowl. As he dug his index finger into the jar of Vaseline he laughed out loud, asked, “This suck or what?”

About twenty minutes later, Bobby called the lobby and asked the doorman to send a maintenance guy up to his apartment. When the little Jamaican guy arrived, Bobby asked him to take out a big box from the back of his hallway closet.

“I thought you had a problem with your shower?”

“Yeah, well I don’t,” Bobby said.

He was a strong little guy, but the box was so heavy it took all his strength to carry it a few feet. He was out of breath.

“What the fuck do you have in there?”

“Oh, just some old clothes,” Bobby said, handing him a crisp twenty-dollar bill.

When the guy was gone, Bobby opened the box, tearing off the layers of masking tape. Finally, he got it open and removed the bubble wrap, getting a head rush when he saw his weapons. He had three sawed-off shotguns, a couple of rifles, a MAC-11 submachine pistol, two Uzis, some smaller guns, and a gym bag filled with boxes of ammo. No two ways about it — you got hardware, you got juice. Suddenly the world took on a whole other perspective: Now you called the fucking shots. Poison were into “Look What the Cat Dragged In” and he thought, Man, this is it, guns and rock ‘n’ roll.

He took one of his favorite handguns out of the box, a .40 millimeter Glock Model 27 compact pistol. The “pocket rocket” didn’t pack the power of a shotgun or a Mag, but he loved the black finish. Holding a gun again gave Bobby the same buzz that it always did. The only thing better was firing one, feeling that explosion of power coming out of his body. He’d had a lot of women in his time, but given the choice between a woman and a gun he’d take the gun. It didn’t talk back and it got the job done, plus, it made you feel like a player and you didn’t have to reassure the motherfucker.

Aiming out the window, Bobby zeroed in on a pigeon that was sitting on the ledge of a building across the street. He felt the muscles in his index finger starting to twitch. He’d always been a great shot, practicing on the range down on Murray Street in between hold-ups. “Bang,” he said out loud, imagining the bullet exploding through the bird’s brain.

Bobby was sweating. He wheeled into the bathroom and splashed cold water against his face, then he stared at himself in the mirror. This was happening a lot lately — looking in the mirror, expecting to see a young guy, but seeing an old man instead.

He muttered, “How’d that happen?”

He used to have thick black hair, but lately his forehead seemed to be getting bigger and bigger, and he had more gray in his hair now than black. He’d grown a beard over the winter, hoping it would make him look younger, but no luck there — it had come in mostly gray too. He used to only get wrinkles around his mouth when he smiled, but now he had them all the time, and the circles under his eyes were getting so dark it looked like he was going around with two permanent shiners. Although his arms and shoulders had gotten big from pushing himself around, his legs had shriveled up to almost nothing and he had put on a gut. Fucking brews, man — they kept you trucking but blew you out.

“What’re you gonna do?” he said.

Maybe forty-seven wasn’t old for some people, but it was old for a guy who’d spent fourteen years in prison, one year in Iraq, and three years in a fucking wheelchair.

It was time to get back to work.