If I Knew You Were Going to Be This Beautiful, I Never Would Have Let You Go by Judy Chicurel

didn’t want trouble. If anyone spotted a cruiser, they’dwhistle once, sharply, and the line would disperse, shadows creeping swiftly through the darkness. The cops had to have been pretty stupid not to know about Lips in a Hole, but whoever was behind that door must have been very crafty because so far, no one had been caught.
    “Wassamatta for you, man, just park already,” Voodoo grumbled.
    “Easy for you to say, man,” Bennie said, driving cautiously through one of the parking islands in the middle of Buoy Boulevard. “This is a dangerous part of town. Don’t want my wheels getting stolen.”
    We all laughed hysterically. “What are you, fucking kidding me?” Voodoo said, holding his sides. “Who would steal this piece of shit?”
    “Niggers,” Bennie replied. “Niggers’ll steal anything. Steal your eyeballs, you ain’t looking.” He pulled into a space and insisted we lock the doors even though one of the windows was broken and couldn’t roll all the way up.
    It was a murky, humid night, no breeze anywhere. The air smelled like a moldy sheet left in the hamper too long. We crossed Buoy Boulevard, landing on the side of the street where Buster’s Florsheim Shoes used to be. The Krackoff Bakery had been next to it, where you could buy the best raisin coffee-cake rings in the world. My mother would send me there to get a coffee ring for her mah-jongg game and on the way home I’d pick all the raisins out. Then I’d have to turn back and buy another one out of my own money so she wouldn’t go nuts. That’s how good those coffee rings were. But now Krackoff’s was gone, along with Elephant Beach Dry Goods, where we bought all our corduroys and flannel shirts and desert boots. All the stores had been kicked off the block, bought out to make way for the shiny new mall that was supposed to lift Elephant Beach from the skids and bring prosperity back to its center. We heard the builder had gone belly-up because the economy was so bad, but the other rumor was that he’d pulled out because of the black men from the housing projects staggering around drunk at ten o’clock in the morning. We heard he’d known about the projects, but didn’t think the people who lived there would be so visible.
    “Belly-up, my ass,” Desi said. “Were they blind or what that they didn’t know this from the get-go? It’s not like anyone was hiding, they’re all out in plain sight, at least when I drive over the bridge from Queens.”
    We crossed the street. Nanny was scared, I could tell. She was leaning all over Voodoo, and he had his arm draped protectively around her. I wasn’t scared, because I’d lived in Elephant Beach all my life and I hadn’t gone to Catholic school like Nanny and Liz and practically everyone else because my father said the nuns were a bunch of bitter old biddies taking their frustrations out on children and he wanted his kids to know there were other people in the world besides Catholics. “They’ll have to get used to it sooner or later,” he told my mother when they argued. It was another of the ways I was different; I had gone to Central District Elementary, on the other side of the train station, and I knew these streets as well as I now knew the Trunk. I knew about the staggering drunk black men and the junkies who hung out in the playground at Central District after dark, sitting on the swings, shivering, pumping themselves high in the air to keep warm until their connection showed. I knew all this, but it hadn’t always been this way, and because it was familiar I never felt that anything really bad would ever happen to me.
    Sure enough, the line for Lips in a Hole snaked down the alley, but it moved quickly, since nobody wanted to linger too long. Bennie, Voodoo and Nanny moved ahead, trying to find the end of the line. I wished I hadn’t come, that I was back at the lounge at The Starlight Hotel, watching Luke. He’d be there by now, huddled in a corner with Mitch, or maybe