The Yoga of Max's Discontent Read Free

Max. “What?”
    Andre burned more weed in the makeshift bowl attached to the hollowed pen-tube wedged in the suction hole. He took a giant suck from the bottle’s mouth and inhaled deeply. “Do you know what I tell them young gangbangers about you?” said Andre, enunciating each word slowly. “I don’t say shit about you going to Harvard or working on Wall Street. Everyone in the projects knows that. I just tell them about St. Paddy’s Day years ago when a bunch of us went to the city. You remember?”
    Max blinked away his sleep, trying to focus. Andre never spoke of their childhood. “I guess.”
    â€œYou don’t remember nothin’, bitch. It was before all the shit went down,” said Andre. He took another drag. “We were twelve then. Or thirteen. You sagged your pants low and rapped and drank in the 6 like all of us. Muscle or Pitbull or someone dared you to ride hangin’ outside the train when we got off at Canal. You did it for ten seconds, then fell off and bloodied your nose on the platform. Later that night, we smoked up and you stole a record from Bleecker Bob’s. Then, we got back home and crashed.
We
crashed, that is. You came back and studied all night for some stupid math quiz. You recall?”
    Max didn’t. There were too many such days growing up. “I think, yes,” he said.
    â€œThat’s what I tell these kids. Do what you gotta do to survive in this hell, but go back each night and get your shit together. Piece by piece, build your motherfuckin’ empire,” he said. He leaned forward on his wheelchair. “You gonna be okay, Ace. On the real. You’re always hustlin’, always okay. And Ma’s suffered enough. She’d want to be at peace herself.”
    Max throttled the question that came to his lips. Is that what his mother was feeling? Andre would know, though he never talked about the day fifteen years ago when Max and he were caught in the cross fire between the Black Spades gang and some local toughs outside a bodega on Cypress Avenue. One moment, they were sucking ice pops. The next moment, three punks wearing gold chains with pistols in their hands appeared in front of them. There’d been a blaze of yellow light and popping sounds. Max had crashed down on the road, knocking outtwo front teeth. He was staring at his bloody gum tissue splayed on the ground when Andre fell beside him, his cream shirt colored in red. “Pop, it hurts, Pop,” he had shouted. The bullet had pierced his liver, tearing through his spleen, and lodged into his spine, paralyzing him from the waist down. A deep sadness rose up within Max.
    â€œSome world this is, where you’re better off dead than alive,” said Max.
    Andre looked at him with soft, mellowed eyes. “Don’t hate, Ace. You always took my shit harder than me,” he said. He put the bong down and tossed Max a cushion. “Sleep for a bit?” His arms were thin as spindles and his body was twisted in an effort to avoid pressure sores from sitting in the wheelchair all day. Max’s stomach knotted in despair. He forced himself to get up.
    â€œNo, man, I gotta be with Mom,” he said. “I just wanted to drop off the C’s.”
    â€œCan I see her today? I’ll get a ride into the city.”
    Max nodded. “She’ll like that.”
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    MAX WALKED OUT of the apartment. Instead of going to the subway station, he turned on Alexander Avenue. In the dim light of dawn, 141st Street looked as if it had been bombed by a fighter jet. Overflowing trash cans, a vacant parking lot with heaps of tires, puddles of vomit outside a bar, thugs slumped against closed pawnshops with flashing neon lights. He stopped ahead of Willis Avenue and looked up at a blackened window in the corner-most building of the Mott Haven housing projects cluster. His mother, Sophia, and he had spent most