Chimesy’s by Jeff Klebauskas
This wasn’t Wallenberg or Love Park or FDR or EMB.
It was Chimesy’s beneath the Nabi where Nelson Kopko donates plasma for chicken and broccoli money, dirt weed money, truck money if one of his Grind Kings cracks and there’s a used pair of Independents at Nate’s Sporting Goods for Twenty. He was in high demand—two months out of Scranton High, a versatile type AB. Loose change and singles weighed down his Jncos and made the constant hitching obligatory. A cotton ball medical-taped to his cubital fossa like he had just busted out of the hospital finished off the look. Four dorks on rollerblades were eyeing the same bench he was from the other end of the courtyard. They’d been riding a cultural wave the entire decade and Neko was part of the oncoming crash, making room for the tsunami forming just beyond the breakers. He flew forward expecting the path ahead to clear. He put his push-foot down when it didn’t and slowed himself, stopped. “Juke, move,” he said.
Julius Cruz was on foot in the middle of the runway, huddled over one of several metal-cage trash cans that dotted the area, dropping Dutch Master guts into the receptacle like a respectable citizen, his World Industries deck off to the side, wheels-up. He heard his name and shuffled backward without looking.
Neko returned to his starting point then pushed, floated, 5-0’d the bench and came back to Earth, dodging pebbles mixed in with the random shards of broken concrete strewn about.
The spot was subpar but serviceable. Its courtyard designation for the surrounding buildings had degraded but the nickname remained even after the Nabi took over the landscape in 1998. Chimesy once lived in the now empty apartments above. Chimesy perked the mass exodus with a penthouse-to-coke-den conversion. Chimesy had competitive bench-press medals and muscles on top of muscles that meant nothing to the judge, yet his essence stayed hovering like a deity over the bricks, scowling at the dorks with their Solomons and K2s laced tight, plastic shells around padded boots creaking with every move. They couldn’t be blamed for not having a merciful mentor with a handbook like Neko had in ninth grade. Juke came through with the intervention, his older brother’s abandoned Blind deck in hand, surface scratches obscuring the cartoon grim reaper on the underside. Neko was forever in his debt for the identity, the prefabricated enemies therein.
He had to admit the dorks were good though.
Ryan Nurran torqued his bench. Ian Ilgiskas torqued Juke’s ledge. Manny Donavossi Japan-360’d the three-set while Hudak watched over like a second-rate Chimesy who would never come close to deadlifting eight-fifteen if he tried.
Neko tasted the defeat and retreated to the parking garage annex with Juke in tow. First floor had a grass gap, a bank, a curb. Second floor, a bigger bank, smaller curb. Third, a sidewalk with a six-set at the end that was doable if the cracks were navigated properly.
First floor won. Neko pop shuvit’d the grass, kickflipped the bank and 50-50’d the curb. Spot demolished.
Juke made alterations. 180 over the grass, frontside, heelflip on the bank, a rough noseslide on the curb, sloppiness acknowledged. The blunt tucked behind his ear came loose and tumbled off his shoulder then his forearm before vanishing into a nearby bed of mulch peppered with divots from every failed trick that had occurred there over the years. “I got more at the house,” he assured Neko and granted himself a do-over on the noseslide but the dorks showed and interrupted the flow.
“What the?” he said.
“What the?” Hudak repeated in a caveman voice.
Neko noticed the blunt behind his ear and jealousy hit as hard as Ilgiskas’s kneecap hit the asphalt after a botched soul grind. He dusted himself off, sat down, pulled his camo pant leg up to inspect.
Juke grabbed a trash can to heave half-seriously, but the shit was bolted down, and he wrenched a bicep trying.
The dorks rolled, their laughter infuriating and discombobulating until the intrusion.
Two scrubbed-up collection specialists broached on their way back from lunch—one still chewing whatever he'd decided on at the deli caddy-corner. He swallowed and said, “Not the time or place, guys.” His sidekick had a foot in the metal-framed door with Nabi Biomedical etched into the glass, positioned like he meant business. “Don’t make me get security.”
Out-groups turned inward and a mob formed, dorks included.
Neko popped the tail, caught the nose of his Birdhouse. “I'm a patient,” he said, revealing the cotton fixed to the crook of his elbow. “You want me to take my rare blood somewhere else?”
A COLTS bus on Adams sounded its horn at a former passenger who crossed in front. The scene developed further when said passenger sounded back, likely more upset from the La Nina heat than the beep.
Hudak breached the street noise. “What do you mean security?” he said. “The guy who sits in that booth and tells people where to park?”
Crickets from the scrubs. They were dead inside from saying no and yes to people they’d been wanting to say yes and no to all week.
“That’s right, back to work,” Hudak said and the glass door closed on the uniformed.
“That’s going to be you in that booth someday, Hoodrack,” Juke said, rotating his arm at the shoulder. “Inline’s done.”
Hudak’s grin almost hid the resentment. His crew fanned around him and retook the garage, Ilgiskas’s knee good as new. “Vultures are circling, Julius,” he said, gliding off. “Your whole lifestyle’s getting commodified when Tony Hawk drops.”
“Hope so,” Neko said, latching onto the idea of a future. “I’m running out of blood.”
Hudak knew the pivot was coming, a double-edged social shift toward the likes of Neko and Juke well deserved because this wasn’t the Brooklyn Banks or El Toro or Hollywood High or Burnside.
It was Chimesy’s and everyone who had come before went nowhere by default.
Jeff Klebauskas received his MFA from Temple University where he worked as fiction editor of Tinge Magazine. His work has appeared in Philadelphia Stories, RubberTop and Sleet Magazine. He lives in Philadelphia.
