Midnight Taxi Tango Read Free

believe me. But I’ve had time. It’s been more than four years since I died in some unspeakably violent way at the foot of the ornate archway at Grand Army Plaza and then woke up days later in a phantom safe house on Franklin Ave., body broken and every memory shredded. I find new life in each moment like this: the midnight brownstones breezing past me, the siren song of something foul dragging me forward. This is life, and really, anything is better than the sheer emptiness of so many lost memories.
    â€œThe streets is hungry,” a little old lady mutters when I roll up, sweat-soaked and out of breath, at the southwest corner of Von King Park. She has a rusted old cart in front of her and a head scarf tied around her wrinkled brown face. “Streets be feedin’ when they hungry.”
    A bloodstain the size of a trench coat shines up from the dark concrete at me. It catches the sickly orange glare of streetlamps and the pulsing blue emergency lights. They’ve already decorated the spot with police tape. The ambulance must’ve screeched off just before I got there; I hear its wail recede into the night. A few feet away from the bloodstain, a motor scooter lies in a heap, like someone just crinkled it up and tossed it there.
    The cop nearest me has icy blue eyes and looks young and entirely unimpressed. I ask him what happened and he just shrugs and looks away. I turn to the old lady, still standing beside me and chewing her mouth up and down like she has the mushiest piece of steak in there she don’t wanna let go of.
    â€œOne’a them Chinese delivery boys,” she responds to my unasked question.
    â€œWhat hit him?”
    She nods up the block some, where a
Daily News
truck idles with its hazard lights on. A guy with a baseball cap and a goatee stands outside, talking on his cell phone, eyes barely holding back tears. An ugly human-sized dent marks the side of the truck.
    I shake my head. “Damn.”
    â€œStreets is hungry,” the old lady says again.
    â€œYou see anything right before? Anything weird?”
    She turns her attention from the street; those ancient cataract-fogged eyes squint up at me. “Was just a small one, eh.”
    â€œA small . . . what?”
    She flinches, eyes back on the street, far away. “Don’t play stupid now.”
    â€œA small ghost.”
    â€œAy.”
    â€œYou see it clear?”
    She shakes her head. “Just fleeting-like. Came and went, came and went.” She chuckles softly. “He’ll be back though, eh. He’ll be back, yes.”

CHAPTER TWO
    Kia
    I don’t know why I can’t stop thinking of Giovanni today. This is probably all Carlos’s fault, with his damn incessant searching for an invisible past. Whatever it is, I can’t shake it: it’s like there’s a tiny Gio hiding behind all the little potion vials and sacred pots on the shelves around me. I came in to the botánica early even though it’s Saturday, because I couldn’t go back to sleep and lying in bed with the sunshine creeping over me just wasn’t cutting it. Yes, I have trig homework. No, I don’t care. And Baba Eddie doesn’t have any readings till two, which means he’ll waddle in at 1:58, sipping his coffee.
    But here I am.
    The sunlight finds its way through the saint statues in the window display, lands on me and warms my skin. I feel old even though I’m not.
    And then a breath of spring comes through the open door. It’s tinged with frost but still carries that freshness, that new-soil, sunlit-fields goodness, and it should make me happy but it doesn’t.
    Giovanni.
    This always happens, this second week of March, and Ialways forget and turn myself in circles wondering why I can’t find my way out of this hole, why every thought hurls me back to a dim, cramped place that doesn’t know sunlight. But anniversaries will do that, creep up on you and settle in