A Night in the Bronx with Ron Ron

by Aaron O'Farrell (Australia)

Making a local connection USA

Ron was a black kitchen porter in a café on the upper east side. He was in his 50s and had faded tattoos on his forearms. One said “Ron Ron.” Whenever he smiled, two gold teeth glistened in his mouth. Ron washed cups, plates, cutlery, and pots in a steel sink next to a hissing and squealing coffee machine. He often cursed servers for adding another stack of dirty dishes to his workload. He called them, “punk ass motherfuckers.” He called me, “Irish.” Every day, I bought weed off Ron and headed across the road to Central Park. One day, Ron came with me. We sat by the lake, passing a spliff. Ron told me about the fifteen years he spent in prison for armed robbery. He said prison was good for him, that it calmed him down. He reckoned he read over a thousand books there. His favourite was Robinson Crusoe. Before we went our separate ways, Ron invited me to his apartment in the Bronx on the weekend. He said we could listen to old school New York hip-hop, smoke, and drink pineapple cognac. I told Ron I’d love that, then held out the money I owed for the weed. He refused and we parted. I took the subway back to Brooklyn, listening to music on my headphones, as the train screeched and rattled through the tunnels beneath the city. Saturday came. Ron told me to text him when I arrived at the subway station near his building in the Bronx. He had already sent me his address, so I didn’t text. I started following Google Maps on my phone. It was late evening. The sky blushed as the sun disappeared behind buildings. Along the sidewalk, crowds streamed in and out of grocery stores. I stopped to look around. I was immediately in somebody’s way and told to keep moving. I turned onto a quieter street. Groups of people lounged on the porches of their buildings, talking to neighbours and passing friends. Outside a corner shop, men sat at a fold-up table smoking cigarettes and playing checkers. I waved hello. They smiled and waved back. When Google Maps told me I was at Ron’s building, I texted him. He came outside in disbelief. “I told you to text, Irish.” “I didn’t want to bother you.” Ron laughed and shook his head. We went inside the lobby of his building. There was a rusty shopping cart on its side next to a broken washing machine. The walls were covered in graffiti. Warm smells – dinners being cooked – filled the corridors. Ron lived on the top floor. We passed some of his neighbours on the stairs and he greeted them. When they saw me, they waved hello, snorting laughter at me as if I was a dog walking on my hind legs. Ron had no furniture, so we sat on plastic boxes, the kind used at cafés for milk deliveries. His lights didn’t work. The fading daylight streaming through an open window made do. Soon, the blue glow of an old TV in the corner of Ron’s living room was our only light. Ron went into his kitchen. He came back carrying a glass bottle of alcohol, and what looked like a tin of paint; there was a pineapple logo on the tin. He poured me a cup of pineapple cognac from the glass bottle. Then he took a penknife from his pocket and stabbed the lid of the tin. He tipped the tin towards my cup. Yellow syrupy juice trickled from the hole Ron had made with his penknife. Ron kept his front door open. Random cats came and went like a breeze. I don’t like cats, but these cats were mellow. I reckoned they were stoned from the thick smoke filling Ron’s apartment. Or else they were Big Daddy Kane fans and had followed the soothing beats purring from Ron’s speakers. When it was time for me to go, Ron insisted on walking me to the subway. Armed white police men and large black vans with flashing lights lined the sidewalk near the station. I told Ron that something must have happened. He laughed quietly to himself.