DC – I am Batman

The noise hit him at the door.

Kids' voices layered on top of each other in the acoustics of a room too small for the number of people in it. A basketball bouncing off-rhythm against a wall. Someone's phone playing music that was mostly bass. A girl yelling "THAT'S MINE" at a boy who yelled back "IT WAS ON THE TABLE" and both of them at a volume that suggested the argument was recreational.

The East Side Youth Center was a storefront on Mercer between a laundromat and a check-cashing place. The sign outside was hand-painted and the R in CENTER was peeling. Inside: fluorescent lights, folding tables, a couch that had survived things, a corner with beanbags and books, a counter with a coffee maker and a box of granola bars. The floor was linoleum that had been mopped recently and would need to be mopped again soon. The whole place smelled like floor cleaner and peanut butter.

Julie was in the middle of it.

She was crouched next to two kids at a folding table, pointing at a worksheet and saying "Try it again, but read the whole problem first" and the kid on the left was already reading and the kid on the right was braiding her own hair and looking at the ceiling. Julie touched the ceiling-looker's shoulder and the girl's eyes came back down and Julie moved on to the next table without breaking stride.

She saw him in the doorway and smiled. Quick, bright.

"You came."

"You invited me."

"I invite lots of people. They don't come." She crossed the room toward him, stepping around a boy with a basketball and over a girl who was sitting on the floor drawing on butcher paper with markers. "Fair warning. It's loud, it's chaotic, and Donna has the flu so today's staff is me."

"So it's you."

"It's me." She looked at the room. The basketball was bouncing again and two kids were fighting over a green marker and the ceiling girl had gone back to the ceiling. "Welcome to the clinic."

He took off his jacket. Put it on a hook by the door. Rolled his sleeves up.

"Where do you need me?"

Her mouth pulled at the corners. "Everywhere."

The kite belonged to a boy named Andre who was maybe seven and who had opinions about kites that were total and without qualification.

The kite was red. It had a rip in the fabric near the leading edge and one of the cross-struts had pulled free from its pocket and the bridle line was tangled around itself twice. Andre presented it with both hands extended, careful, like it was alive and hurt.

"It's broke."

"I can see that."

"Can you fix it?"

He took the kite and turned it over. The frame was bamboo, light, dollar-store quality. The rip was along the grain of the nylon. The strut had pulled free because the pocket was torn at the seam.

He crouched down and pulled the strut free entirely. No needle for a re-stitch. Tape would add weight at the wrong point. He untied the bridle line, cleared the tangles, re-threaded it through the attachment points. Then he took the loose strut and re-seated it by folding the torn pocket fabric over itself and securing it with the bridle line tension, using a modified trucker's hitch that held the strut in place without adding material. The knot was small and tight and it held.

Andre watched with the focused intensity of someone whose entire world was currently a kite.

"The rip," he said. "Do you have clear tape? Not duct tape."

"Julie has tape."

Andre got tape. He cut a strip and laid it over the tear from the inside, smoothing it flat with his thumb, invisible from the outside. He tested the frame tension by pressing the center of the cross and watching the flex. Even.

"Here." He held it out.

Andre took the kite and inspected it with more critical attention than most adults gave to anything and then grinned and ran and the screen door banged shut behind him.

He looked up. Julie was across the room, standing by the coffee maker with a cup halfway to her mouth. She was staring at him. The cup hadn't moved. Her mouth was slightly open.

"What?"

"Nothing." She blinked. Looked at her coffee. Looked back at him. "You just. You have good hands."

She turned away. Her ears were red. She poured coffee into the cup she was already holding and it overflowed and she said "damn" and grabbed a napkin and mopped it up without looking at him.

He went back to the kids.

The boy who fought was named Marcus. He was in the corner by the beanbags with his knees up and his hood pulled forward and his jaw set. A bruise on his cheekbone, going yellow-green. His knuckles were scabbed.

Julie had mentioned him at the counter. "He comes every Saturday. Gets in fights during the week. Won't talk to me about it. Won't talk to Donna either. He just sits in the corner and I let him because at least he's here."

He grabbed a beanbag and dragged it over and sat down next to Marcus. The beanbag was flat from years of use and he sank until he was basically on the floor with his knees higher than his hips.

He didn't say anything.

Marcus looked at him sideways. "Who are you."

"Bruce."

"You a counselor?"

"No."

"You a cop?"

"No."

"Then why are you sitting here."

"Beanbag was open."

Marcus looked at the beanbag. Looked at the fifteen other beanbags scattered around the corner, all empty.

"All the beanbags are open."

"This one was closest."

Marcus went back to staring at the wall. He stared at the wall too. The basketball kid went past them twice. A girl came and took a book from the shelf above their heads and left. The music from someone's phone changed from bass to a song with a piano and then back to bass. A fly was working the window, bumping against the glass in that committed way flies had, like the plan was sound and the execution just needed one more try.

He sat. Marcus sat. The silence got less heavy the longer it lasted.

"You ever been in a fight?" Marcus said. Still at the wall.

"Yeah."

"You win?"

"Sometimes."

"What about when you didn't?"

"Learned more from those."

Marcus's jaw worked. The scabbed knuckles flexed on his knee. "My mom says I gotta stop."

"What do you say?"

"I say they start it."

"Do they?"

Silence. Marcus pulled his hood down a fraction. His eyes were dark and tired. "Sometimes."

He didn't push. They watched the room together. The pigeon on the window ledge sat there doing nothing for a while. Then it flew away. Neither of them mentioned it.

"You know how to play chess?" Marcus said.

"Yeah."

"Julie has a chess set. It's missing a bishop."

"We'll use a marker cap."

Marcus got up. The hood came down the rest of the way. He crossed the room and came back with a box that was missing its lid, half the pieces wrong colors from replacements pulled out of other sets.

They played. Marcus lost the first game in eleven moves and said "again" and lost the second in fourteen and said "again" and lost the third in nineteen.

"You're getting better," he said.

"You're letting me."

"I'm not."

Marcus looked at him. Measured him.

"Okay," Marcus said. "Show me the opening again."

He showed him. Marcus leaned forward to watch and the anger in his shoulders loosened by degrees.

At noon Julie kicked everyone out for lunch. The kids scattered. Andre and his kite went to the parking lot. The ceiling girl went to the bodega. Marcus left without saying goodbye, which Julie said was normal.

Julie leaned against the counter with coffee that had gone cold an hour ago. Her eyes were on him, head tilted, mouth pressed flat.

"You sat with Marcus for forty minutes."

"He wanted to play chess."

"He doesn't talk to adults. He barely talks to me and I've been here a year."

"He talked to me."

"I noticed." She put the coffee down. "What did you say to him?"

"Nothing."

"You said nothing for forty minutes."

"Nothing for ten minutes. Then he talked. Then chess."

She studied him. Head tilted. "How did you know to do that? The nothing thing. The sitting and waiting."

The honest answer involved a compound in the mountains and a girl who cleared snow because it was all she had.

"Some people need space before they can talk. If you fill the space first, they don't have room."

Julie's mouth opened. Closed. She looked at the chess set with its wrong-colored pieces and the red marker cap standing in for a bishop and her eyes were bright and she picked up her cold coffee and drank it and was quiet.

"You coming back next week?" she said.

"Yeah. I'm coming back."

She smiled. Her whole face did it, mouth and eyes and jaw.

A car horn outside, long and angry. The sound of someone who'd decided honking would fix whatever honking couldn't fix.

"I should restock the granola bars before they come back," Julie said. "Last week DeShawn ate nine."

"Nine."

"He's fourteen. Fourteen-year-old boys are basically a mouth with legs."

She went to the supply closet. He picked up the chess pieces and put them in the lidless box. The red marker cap went in last.

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