Bodega Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page A

family. But the nigga is stupid, bro. So when we get there he is going to open the door and that nigga, bro, that nigga talks in songs. Like, he fucken grew up on radio.
Ese tipo está craquiado.
”
    When we arrived Sapo parked the car right next to a fire hydrant. Outside the walkup some men had set up a table and were sitting on milk crates, drinking Budweisers in paper bags and playing dominoes. They had a small radio at their feet tuned to an old love song,
“Mujer, si puedes tu con Dios hablar pregúntale si yo alguna vez te he dejado de adorar.”
Across the street, on the entrance wall of a project building, was an altar, meaning someone had just died. There were flowers, a forty-ounce Miller, pictures of saints, and pictures of the deceased, with six large candles burning in the form of a cross. Sapo led me inside the old tenement where the storefront butcher shop Casablanca had been been serving up meat to the neighborhood for years. We walked up three flights. Inside the tenement the walls were torn up, thestairs creaked, the smell was of old and decay; the only thing worse than the smell of a tenement is a pissed-up elevator in a project. If you look at the floors of an old tenement, you’ll see layers upon layers of linoleum from different years. All in different colors. Sapo stopped at a steel door that looked like it was imported from Rikers Island.
    A tall, big man with a baby’s face and the shoulders of a bear opened the door. He was Bodega’s cousin. He was slow, but only in intelligence. Later on I would find out that he was actually light on his feet, like a feeding grizzly. I guessed he was in his forties and was stronger than he knew. I mean, this guy could hug you and not know he was killing you. He was a child of AM radio’s Top Forty heyday. Word had it he started to talk in song years ago, when AM radio broke his heart by going all talk. I figured Bodega kept him as someone to watch his back or at least to watch the door.
    “Oye, como va. Bueno pa gozar,”
Nene said to Sapo, who then introduced me.
    “This is my main-mellow-man Chino. Yo’r cus asked for him.”
    “Chino, yeah, bro.” Nene looked at me and extended his hand. I met it. “Hey, it’s cool, bro. You a businessman, I take?” Nene asked me. I just shrugged. “You cool, Chino, because
any businessman can come and drink my wine. Come and dig my earth.
” And he let us inside. Sapo just shook his head and muttered curses under his breath every time Nene used a piece of a song. It was something Sapo had to tolerate, a clause he had to accept if he was going to work for Bodega.
    Inside was nothing. Just bare rooms. I had never gone to Sapo’s place, but I’d heard it was the same way. It had to do with not owning too many things because you never knew when you had to disappear for a while. You had to travel light and easy. Nene led us into a room with a desk, two chairs, and an old, dirty sofa with a
Playboy
magazine stuck in between the cushions. Standing behind the desk was a man in his forties with a goatee and the droopy eyes of an ex-heroin addict. His hair was curly and he was about five feet ten. He was talking on a cellular phone and when he saw Sapo and me he quickly smiled, cut off the conversation, hung up the phone, and motioned to me to take the seat in front of him. Sapo sat on the dirty sofa and pulled out the
Playboy.
    “Sapito, this is your friend?” Bodega asked.
    “Yeah, this is my main-mellow-man, Chino. He’s smart, Willie, yo he’s smart. I useta copy off him when we were in school. Till I got tired of that shit.” Sapo was excited. He was happy that I was there, as if he wanted me to be part of some crew. I saw Bodega scope me out and shake his head, as if he was disappointed. As if he had expected someone else.
    “You a friend of Sapo, right?” He asked, knowing full well that I was.
    “Yeah,” I said, not really knowing how to answer.
    “So check it out, Sapito tells me you go to college.