Waiting for Leonardo -- Chapter 2
story © 1999 Ria-angelo


December 18th, 2002
4:37pm

Dave drops his suitcase next to my miniature Christmas tree and groans. "You paid $30,000 a year at school to end up with this?"

"No, I paid $5,000 after financial aid every year to eventually have a penthouse overlooking Central Park, and a summer home in the Colorado Rockies, and a weekend getaway bungalow on the California coast. This is the first step. You like it?"

He grins. "It's cozy." I take his coat and let him wander around while I putter. He follows the walls of the narrow living room, admiring the thirty or so posters and clippings and photos I've taped over stains in the paper, then bends down to examine the shelves I've filled with my music and rocks and figurines and some of my favorite books. After watching him for a minute, I climb over the back of the couch and point out the stone with the Celtic cross painted on its surface.

"This one's from Ireland, sophomore year."

"Ohhmm?"

"And remember this?" I grin and hold up a corked bottle three-quarters full of brackish green water. Tiny pebbles stir in its bottom. "Some of it's evaporated, but - "

"Australia!! I got you that from Australia!"

"Your sophomore year."

Dave winks and gives me his best Aussie accent. "Welladay, Maiss Meg, hahd ta breng ye back a bit o' tha Land Doon Undah, ay?"

I frown. "You promised me a wallaby."

"It wouldn't fit in my carry-on."

"Want some iced tea?" I ask, bouncing up.

"Sure, that'd be great, Meg," he says, going over to the TV. "Hey, was this you and Liz's VCR?"

"The very same. By the way, I don't have iced tea," I tell him with a wink from the doorway. "How 'bout some grape juice?"

Dave turns, very slowly,and flips his light mop of hair off his face to squint at me. "You don't have grape juice either, do you…"

"Awww, you're too quick."

We end up with chilled Gatorades, which is all I really DO have in the fridge. We sit in the middle of the floor of my 'bedroom', staring at everything I've jampacked into the 12'x14' space over the last year and a half. All my books and comics occupy the cinderblock and plastic shelves I've covered the back wall with. They help muffle any sounds from the next apartment. My one window, recessed into the brick wall, faces the church, just at the gutter of its roof. I'd already shown Dave how to perch on the 'windowseat' so the cardboard wouldn't collapse, so he could see the steam pipes of what I called "Comic Book Alley" below. "Very nice," he'd pronounced. "Dizzying, but nice." I've always liked it cause it looks like a giant poster of the Mirage Turtles in an alleyway that I used to keep over my bed at school.

I'm twenty-three now, but there's a corner still dominated by old stuffed animals and various toys collected since childhood. The rest of the room is a blaze of colors and images from posters, track awards, dreamcatchers, magazine cutouts, framed art and photos, Christmas lights, and random pieces of eye-catching fabrics. I love bringing friends here, hearing their reactions. The floor's a chaos of notebooks, art supplies, and computer equipment, all centered around the laptop on a milk crate by the bookshelves.

"Meg," Dave ventures finally, "This is boggling."

"That's why I sleep on the couch in the living room."

"How much writing do you actually get done in here?"

I sigh thoughtfully, pretending to count on my fingers. "Enough to earn seventeen rejection slips a month?"

"C'mon, not that many!"

"Oh, all right, only twelve... I'm slipping! Three of my poems from freshman year got accepted for this anthology down at NYU two months ago. We'll see if they're gonna be used or not this summer. If not, I'll finally get my average up to thirteen."

"Well, good luck." Dave gives me one of his twinkling half-grins. "So, what do you say we go get some dinner? Know any good spots yet?"

"I know this incredible place in the Village where all the chairs and lights and dinnerware are mismatched antiques, and the walls are a 'menagerie of mirrors'."

"Let's do it. Maybe we'll see some Turtles on the way."

I swat him.

December 19th, 2002
8:59am

Dave is as hard to wake up as ever.

"Dave. It's me. Just warning you, there's gonna be some noise in here in a minute."

"Oh, okay, Meg," he says, half-sitting up and squinting at me in the slant of half-light that's filtered through to the air mattress on my bedroom floor. He flops back down, then, and is asleep about three seconds later. I shake my head and sit back, not bothering to take off my uniform yet.

"You haven't lost your touch," I whisper, thinking of the many times I'd gone in to wake him for our morning Native American History class, junior year.

Last night had been great - dinner was fantastic, and we got to do some fun shopping before meeting my friends Sarah and James outside the Miss Saigon show on Broadway. And what a show! The flashback scene with the helicopter taking off, lifting the American soldiers away from a war-torn city and the desperate women and children tearing at the fence between them and safety, had me in shocky tears for half an hour... We'd hit a few dance clubs, enjoying the lights of Manhattan at night, before heading back and crashing around two.

The first resounding peal of the bells crashes through the room, jolting Dave up in a frantic grab for cover. "What the hell!?!!"

"It's the bells next door," I manage to tell him from the floor, kicking with laughter. "You look SO --- "

That's as far as I get before he gives me a faceful of pillow.

9:28am

Starbucks is a classy coffee shop usually more expensive than I can afford, but it's close to my street and Dave's offered to pay, anyway.

I'm reciting their names like a grocery list as Dave chats. He's distracting me, talking about the lighting and tech work at Miss Saigon. I half appreciate it.

I run through the list again, matching name to personality and choosing the one I need most at this moment. Not steady old Don, not smooth Leo - both too mellow and I need some fire to keep me awake for the rest of today. Not Raph, he's grouchy when he's tired.

Mike, then. Perkiness and happy colors, like morning donuts.

Sipping my hot chocolate, I imagine Mike beside me, sprawling in the tiny Starbucks stool, listening to me mentally rattle off ideas of stuff to take Dave to see and do. I think he'd say to let it be, let things flow, that a good ninja knows when to plan out everything and when to give the City the reins.

Sounds like a good plan to me.

8:37pm

We have sushi in Chinatown, our shopping bags filling the other seats at the table. It's not the best kappa maki in town...I know a real Japanese place uptown that does much better, but we'd ended up in the snowy, crowded warrens of Chinatown's five-story brownstones all afternoon and it's easier to stay. I'm willing to compromise for it with loose rice rolls and pasty ginger. We wander some more, talking about college times, like the night eight of us stormed the library with waterguns and crazy outfits.

We're laughing about one of the campus radio shows he deejayed, and I feel my pulse start to race. I look and look and look as we walk and I break out in a sweat of excitement.

Damn. "Dave?"

I point.

"Wow. Kinda creepy, isn't it?" he asks me, turning for a better view. He sees it, too. I'm so relieved - I'm not being crazy! - I could hug him. I find my voice.

"Yeah," I say. "Creepy. I'm almost waiting for the snowballs..."

It's impossible, but we're walking past a board fence, with flapping posters and graffiti, and beyond it is the thirty-foot deep pit of a construction site, right on the edge of Chinatown. I don't know how many times Eastman and Laird had visited Manhattan before they drew the Leonardo Micro-Series book back in '86, but this is a dead-ringer for that scene, and all of a sudden I'm scared.

Dave's strayed away from the fence, probably remembering the Foot that popped up and pinned Leo's arms with their chains, before dragging him down to the muddy pit where Shredder nearly killed him. But I can't do that. It's like fate or something, my stomach's going into heavy aerobics as I press up against the fence, peering between the planks like I'm at a zoo.

I'm not sure what I'm looking for, but I'm disappointed.

There's gotta be a million construction sites like this one in the world. And none of them are gonna be in the middle of enacting a Turtle comic, Meg.

"We should talk Golden Harvest into coming down here," Dave's saying. "We'd save them a fortune in building a set."

He's so close to what I'm thinking I shiver. "Nah... Hollywood could never do a movie as good as the first Mirage stories."

He shrugs. "You're right. Eastman should see this though, he'd get a kick out of this place."

"I dunno about that..." I whisper, forcing myself away, to keep moving with him.

"What?"

"He gave up on the book, Dave. Him and Peter finally bailed. It's all old business now. Why would they care about seeing a place like this? It would just bring back bad memories of giving up on their dreams."

We argue for a block about creators and rights and whether it's possible to stick with a dream for all of your life when you never expected it to survive in the first place. Meanwhile, my mind's clicking a hundred miles an hour. What if stories come true when you believe in them hard enough? What if that place got built because the stories have to someday become real? What if it's like the Neverending Story, or the fairies in Peter Pan, and all the people who believe in the Turtles made them live?

I suddenly know where I'll be on Christmas Eve.

2am

I sneak off the couch, leaving Dave snoring in my room, and head for the stairs. Tired as I am, I can't sleep - been working nights too long and there's so much to think about. From the roof, the taxis still cruising and the few people out walking look like tiny toys, moving very slowly. I wonder if they'll all make it home safe tonight. If they're famous or they die dramatically I might find out tomorrow, with the rest of the City, in the news. Meanwhile, they never look up or guess I'm watching, or care if I make it to work tomorrow after waving goodbye to Dave at the train station.

There's nothing to do but go on with my life and hope that somehow, I'll have real meaning.

"You're not missing anything," I tell Raph. "You always wanted to be human, to be able to be with other people and care and be cared for. But it's as hard for us to get to each other as it was for you. We just try to stay alive. Try to help out our friends as best we can. But for every friend there's a couple of million strangers out there that couldn't care less."

He won't listen though. He'll be just as morose and frustrated the next time I pick up a comic or watch the first movie. Cause he can't change.

That doesn't help me sleep any better.

December 21st, 2001
10:58pm

Her nametag says "Lori" and I don't know whether to be happy or jealous that she's here. The WFC project got finished last night and our new assignment is here, in her crew's territory under Greenwich Village.

I do mean 'her crew'. She's thirty-something and a lot tougher than I am and working for her is amazing. Her guys trust her absolutely and she's already gained our team's respect.

"All spratch back here, Silko?"

"Yep." What's spratch? I'm tightening a water pipe's joints, the wrench is bigger than my forearm. "Just another couple of links," I gasp.

"Keep it up." She catches my eye and flashes me a grin, startling in the middle of her smudge-dark face.

Her own crew down here. She's been working for years and years to get to this point. Part of me wants to be like her, wants to accomplish as much, prove myself that good. The rest is feeling my shoulder muscles twist in protest as I yank the wrench handle back another notch, reminding me I only took this as a temporary job - another year or two maybe, until my freelance stuff starts selling steady enough.

5am

"I got the job back when my uncle got sick. He stayed with us, my dad had his hands full with me and my brothers already."

"Brothers?"

"Got three, how'd ya think I knew how to handle running my own crew? Eh?"

We smile, take bites of our apple pies in the subway café.

"I've always wanted to have brothers."

"Ahh, they're a pain. You've got a crowd now, though."

"Huh?"

"All of 'em down there. We're your brothers. Learn that fast, Silko. It's the one place in this City where you let your guard down, trust something 'sides your own head." Lori taps her forehead, then mine. "Below, gotta make all your heads one. That's what keeps you alive. Get it?"

I nod. Like going into battle, you don't fight alone, you fight as part of the team. Fight alone and you end up like Raph, razored and gasping and confessional in Return to New York before sending Leo to take on Saki one last time. 'We're your brothers' she'd said. I set those words in a back corner of my mind, to take out and look at a little later.

"Thanks for having breakfast with me."

"S'all right. Silko, that's the job, specially for us girls. Reachin' out. Givin' a hand back to the ones comin' on behind. Askin' for a hand of the ones ahead."

"Did you have someone helping you, when you first came on?"

"Sure, there's a few of the guys didn't mind a lady watchin' their backs downside. They were the ones who get it's family down there. There's us that are part of the circle, and that's for life. The rest, they take the job and work it til they get tired of it or get dead."

"You're going to work the tunnels for life?"

"Ahh, til I get too old for it. This work gets in the blood after awhile, guess I'll end up doin' street duty or settin' out assignments then. You?"

"Me? Uh... I think I'd like to stay for a couple of years. Cause I want to be a writer, mostly."

Lori throws back her head and laughs, startling the two businessmen at the next table. "Whyn'tcha say so, Silko? You coulda been tellin us stories all along. Brighten up the place. You start tellin' tomorrow. I'll guarantee an audience of one."

"The crew might not like it much..."

"We'll warm them up for it. Brothers, remember?"

I wonder if Mike ever talked out his stories while working with his brothers. "I'll give it a try. Not sure what they'd want to hear though."

"Christmas Eve's the day after, why not somethin' holiday-like?"

I think it's a great idea. I spend my sunrise hour thinking how nice it is working with someone I don't have to look 'strong' for.

December 23rd, 2001
1:14am

"And in the long black stretch of sky, emptied of its power, they looked hard but couldn't see any stars."

Henry strikes, shoves the wedge I'm holding a little deeper into the crack of rock.

"There was only the sound of settling snow and their own hoarse breathing. Abby started shivering. 'I'm cold... Let's get out of here.' So they started back down the hill."

"Little more to the left, Silk."

He says it soft and quick, like he hates to interrupt. He really is interested! "'Kay."

"That's good." Slam. Henry's arms seem to burn orange as they swing again through the lamplight.

"Just beyond the trees, a few hundred yards back from the road, they found a falling-down old barn, and she followed Jesse through the broken boards of the side into a pile of dusty, ancient hay... A little later and they were settled for sleep, some burlap to keep them warm as they curled in the hay, when they heard something." Andy's moved a little closer, holding the light for us. I raise my voice. "It sounded like a cat... Or the wind... No, there again. Abby sat up, to hear better. Again it rose and then she knew it, knew the sound and she had to move. 'Jesse! Jesse, that's a baby crying! A baby in here!'"

Lori strides by with a box of tools. She winks.