Charming as a Verb

One

The first hustle, if you want to call it that, is also the simplest: Smiling.

Now, please don’t be one of those douche-nozzles that go around telling women to smile more or anything, but as far as the daily life of a seventeen-year-old Black guy of above-average height goes in this city, I learned a long time ago that smiling goes a very long way.

Not smirking, not grinning. An earnest Smile.

In a place like New York where everyone—8,550,405 people as of 2019 and rising with every breath—is shoving their way through the masses (see: unwashed and running late), Fight Face at the ready, the combination of Eye Contact + Smile is like pointing a flashlight into someone’s eyes. You can almost see their retinas dilate sometimes.

Case in point.

Hi, Henri! Mrs. Ponech smiles back as she opens the door and adjusts to the megawatts awaiting her on her doorstep. Goodness! she exclaims. Look at you two, both so happy. It must have been a good walk!

Yeah, Pogo and I have our own routine, I say as I remove the nylon harness in two quick unbuckles. Riverside Park is our domain, ain’t that right, Pogs?

Pogo is a nine-year-old mutt terrier with some pretty advanced tooth decay that occasionally requires some free-of-charge brushing. He is now ignoring me entirely, too preoccupied with wagging up a storm at the overwhelming sight of the owner he saw just half an hour ago. Terriers are an out-of-sight, out-of-mind breed when it comes to their thrice-weekly walkers.

Have a nice day, Mrs. Ponech!

Wait, wait one second. She disappears into the railroad hallway of her apartment and comes back a moment later, now cradling Pogo, and hands me a neatly folded little green square.

You don’t have to do this, ma’am. Like I said—

I know the app says they tip you guys, but we all know that’s BS. She smirks conspiratorially, nodding to my Uptown Updogs T-shirt as if this transaction places us both firmly on the outside of rampant capitalism. Tip your dog walker: stick it to corporate America.

Well, thank you very much, ma’am. I’ll see you on Saturday, Pogs.

In the case of Mrs. Ponech, every five Smiles or so get me an envelope with three crisp twenty-dollar bills. I will happily take it.

My half-trade is dog walker to the twenty-five-block radius that stretches from 96th and Broadway to 121st and Broadway and, horizontally, from Riverside Drive to Morningside Drive. That rectangle delineates the Uptown Updogs official zone of service. It’s all I can manage with my senior year schedule. Last year, even with the SATs, I could easily clear between twenty to thirty hours per week—give or take a mug of Dad’s sludge coffee. (Haitian beans, ground by hand in his old-timey coffee machine that echoes around the entire apartment when he gets up at four a.m. It’s a concoction that could send a horse out of cardiac arrest.)

Senior year, however, comes with too many balls to juggle.

Between attending FATE Academy, staying on top of the ridiculous amount of homework typical of FATE, the mandatory extracurriculars, and helping Dad with his superintendent duties around the building, I’ve had to narrow my clients to our neighborhood and go the extra mile to make sure they get nothing short of the best service possible. I really can’t afford to lose on the income. No with college around the corner.

That’s where the second hustle comes in: a brand. In our case, a branded website and matching T-shirts. See, I’m not just another dog walker: I am a dog walker of UptownUpdogs.world.com. The walkers of Uptown Updogs can easily be spotted around the Upper West Side by their lime-green T-shirts with deep blue cursive writing on the front and back.

I step outside and turn left onto West End Avenue, tightening my scarf. New York City is still hungover from the holidays and slowly getting the legs of its new calendar year under itself. On every other street, you’ll find stacked in front of brownstones Christmas trees still green with bits of silver tinsel glimmering between their branches. They’re right at home next to the poorly folded boxes from brand-new electronics and the recycling bins swelled with boxes from toys and colorful wrapping paper that has served its purpose of being torn apart by happy hands. All the joys from the holidays are now a set of household chores to get through as quickly as you can or put off as long as possible. It was a snowless New Year, preceded by a snowless Christmas, and a mostly snowless December. The big snowstorm little kids were waiting for this year so they could swarm Central Park and make fashionable snowmen never came. This whole winter might end up being a matter of bare trees with occasional trash bags at their branches, cloudy afternoons, and the chilled breaths of those of us who wake up early enough.

No dogs for you today, H?

Gigi, one of the late-afternoon dog walkers of the 110th dog run, greets me as we both find ourselves standing at a streetlight and trading Smiles of recognition before falling into synced steps. Some people get competitive, but I don’t mind Gigi. She’s cool. She’s wearing her City College sweatshirt underneath her open winter coat. Most dog walkers in this area are college students or what I like to call Aspirers. (People who moved here to pursue comedy, writing, theater, TV, and need to make ends meet every month until they make it big or move back home.)

I already dropped them off. I’m just going home to change and then headed back to school.

School? It’s almost six!

FATE has strict extracurricular requirements, I bemoan. Class doesn’t actually end when the four p.m. bell rings. The computer labs and art facilities are open until, like, eleven. It’s dystopian.

Jeez, Gigi says, not even bothering to hide her disgust. No wonder all those little bundles of privilege go on to rule the world. Present company not included.

Oh, make no mistake: I fully plan to rule the world, Gigianne. The Haltiwanger dynasty is a House on the rise.

Is that a new T-shirt? she asks, pointing.

Maybe? I shrug. I, um, I have a box of them. They don’t pay us well, but they keep us well stocked in swag.

She suspiciously narrows her eyes but keeps focused on her own set of leashes. Gigi likes to triple-book her dogs, which is too dangerous for me. The Berjaouis would have a heart attack turning a corner to find Buddy entangled with other dogs.

God, I have to get my toe through those Uptown Updogs doors, Gigi continues as we keep walking toward the Wyatt, my apartment building. My best clients got priced out of the neighborhood, and I’m not going to freaking Queens. Did you tell them about me? Gigi presses, and I start to feel bad. It’s not the first time she’s asked me.

I did, I lie. The boss isn’t hiring at the moment. Says the pile of prospects is yay high.

Yeah, the website says they’re full. You lucked out.

I’ll put in a good word for you when I can, I say, turning toward the Wyatt’s lobby. I promise!

Sorry, Gigi. There’s no central Uptown Updogs office. The entirety of Uptown Updogs exists on my laptop.

You see, for all the Mrs. Poneches of the world, people still love the safety of a faceless corporation, as opposed to a random kid on Craigslist—especially when it comes to their dogs. And I say this as a former random kid from Craigslist who could barely rub three dogs together.

Since joining Uptown Updogs, I’ve become a lot of small dogs’ second-favorite person around the neighborhood of Morningside Heights. Twenty-one dogs, to be exact. And it goes hand-in-hand with the Smiling: each of these pup families gets a personalized version of the Smile. That is another mistake people make: giving the same smile to everyone they come across, regardless of circumstances.

There is no such thing as a universal smile.

And while I’ve considered letting Gigi in on my scheme because she is always very nice and attentive to her charges at the park, the risk of blowing up my spot is too big. The dog walks are just a stepping-stone, and I won’t be renewing the URL for Uptown Updogs come college acceptance letters. There’s a master plan in the works—and it is wrapped in Columbia University ivy.

So, yeah, there’s no circumventing that this is a bit of a scam. But what can I say? Dad calls it the Great Hunger. That thing that draws everyone around the world here, to America, to New York City. Whether you’re the worker scraping off the gum from a monument, the busy CEO that looks to the monument in question on their way to work every day, or the philanthropist tycoon worth billions and chiseled into marble for all the money they’ve donated to the city. Where you fall between the three, in America, the land of opportunities and blockbusters, depends on how hungry you are for it. How much gusto and hustle you can muster in pursuit of your goals and for that better life for your children.

Haltiwanger Hunger is its own brand of Hunger.

Ma! I’m home for exactly nineteen minutes! I shout, hanging the spare leash, ball thrower, and bag of dog treats in the doorway of our apartment.

Our building is a classic Upper West Side institution that also offers the amenities of the modern midtown high-rise building. As the super, my dad is responsible for running the day-to-day of the building, fixing things when they break down, and dealing with the demands of the wealthy tenants. It’s a pretty thankless job, but we get to live in this apartment rent free, even if it is by far the smallest of the bunch. An aboveground basement, really, considering the limited sunlight, leaks, and cold drafts in the winter.

I grab a Pop-Tart from the pantry while stripping off today’s Uptown Updogs shirt, which goes into the laundry pile by the hallway. Luckily, FATE does not require a uniform for after-hours extracurriculars, but in my case, everyday attire actually requires more preparation.

Henri, Ma mimics, mouth full of pillow, pronouncing it the French Haitian way: Uh-ree.

You asked me to wake you up. So I’m waking you up.

Light snoring.

MA!

Just . . . give me, like, mmm’ten.

I roll my eyes and disappear into the bathroom, still smelling of dog and now running late.

Yo, Ma! Do you have the good leave-in conditioner? I shout, purposely slamming the medicine cabinet a little too loudly.

Don’t ‘yo’ me, Henri, she grumbles, getting up and pushing past me to get into the bathroom. Her tattoo, a faded peach (before the emoji), is visible on her shoulder. Like I said, very close quarters. There’s something very strange about witnessing your 5' 6" Haitian mother slowly get more ripped than you. All her firefighter training has paid off. The woman is dangerously close to getting deltoids on her deltoids.

When Mom became a firefighter—or rather, became the sort of paralegal that tells her husband and son over dinner that she wants to become a firefighter, complete with a three-page plan of how it is all within grasp for us as a family in the next four years—I hadn’t predicted that I would become a live-in alarm clock. She’s currently a probie (probationary)—see also: firefighter in training, rookie, runt, worst schedule, and all kitchen duties. Her hours at the station are, by design, all over. There’s a pecking order. Probies are expected to adjust quickly, be they nineteen-year-olds still living at home or middle-aged women with a son and husband.

Have you ever seen a burnt body? Dad had simply asked, quieting the table. To him, it was a nonstarter—but all three of us knew even back then that that’s just how things go in this house. Somewhere between what Ma wants and what Dad wants, well, it’s not even a contest. The Haltiwanger household is a matriarchy.

I’m not due at the station until tomorrow, Ma explains. I want to cook us a meal tonight so we can have a good family dinner and plenty of leftovers for you and Dad. So, tell me: what’s next on your busy schedule, then, son of mine?

I catch the kitchen oven clock through the bathroom mirror’s reflection.

Debate practice, meeting up with Ming, and then interview to walk a new dog.

She shakes her head, chin resting on her hand. I read an article that most kids your age consider six p.m. the end of the day. Free time to play video games and chat on the phone and worry about their crushes.

Those are only the kids boring enough to agree to take a survey of what they do with their free time, Mom. Who wants to be that?

She shakes her head, now fully audibly peeing.

Mom! Gross!

I’ll see you later tonight, okay! Don’t eat out!

I let the apartment door close behind me, shaking my head and smiling—I still have a few private ones left, no capital S Smiles, no Smile™—and head back toward school.

Two

I attend FATE Academy on the Upper West Side. For the uninitiated, that is the Fine Arts Technical Education Academy. Around the streets of Manhattan, you might recognize us by our gray slacks and skirts, purple blazers, and navy ties. FATE is a very woke school, very woke. We pride ourselves on our wokeness. The student body is diverse and amassed from all corners of the city. There’s a giant photo of Barack Obama in Freedom Hall. Freedom is the south wing, Voice is the east, Action is the north, and Mindfulness is the West. (All that is missing is a recycled, environmentally conscious Sorting Hat to bring it all home at this point.)

Dad had pinched me when I made that joke during our tour.

You’re only laughing at it because you’re inside it now, Dad said. Believe me. Kids are writing their homework on tiny chalkboards in Haiti right now. This is a true gift for us.

My schooling is and has always been an us issue in the Haltiwanger household, which explains the bow tie he wore that day as well as Ma’s ironed hair and new dress when we were given access to this inner sanctum.

I was still in middle school over at MS 250 when we had first learned about the existence of the Fine Arts Technical Education Academy. MS 250 with the same off-putting sea-green walls in every classroom and metal-detecting security checkpoints that did not work, which only made passing through them more unsettling every morning. But for FATE, the elitest of the elite schools in Manhattan, diversity and inclusion have become key words, and simply spitting out another generation of world-wrecking Finance frat boys is no longer in vogue. (Don’t worry, they’re still alive and well.) And since these schools are looking to diversify their student body, and since I am: a.) very smart (not bragging, just true); b.) Black; c.) poor (sounds depressing that way, but strictly speaking, also true); and d.) the kid of immigrants, the admissions director literally shook my hand four times over the course of my interview. And so I was to be a FATE student: tuition, spaceship-looking building, and megawatt future all included.

Another point of pride at FATE are the extracurriculars, which are, in fact, curricular here and mandatory for students. From chess to basketball to fencing, you can do anything here at the highest competitive national level, but you have to pick one, which explains my presence on the debate team. On paper, debate was the right fit for me according to Mr. Vu, my academic adviser. Charming and unafraid of public speaking! You’d be wasted anywhere else. It’ll be a breeze for you.

At the time, he had failed to mention that the debate team’s current iteration is the prized child of Greg Polan, the team captain who insists on three practices every week. We placed third in the state last year, behind The Chapin School, and Greg sees it as his mission to get us the gold trophy before the end of his tenure in another year and a half. Sophomore students can afford to have these lofty goals—we seniors can’t think about much beyond the C word these days.

This explains why I’m now rushing back to FATE for yet another practice, late again due to a rush-hour train delay at Times Square. On the way in, I spot Corinne Troy, already sitting pretzel style on the bench outside the classroom. Mass of curly hair, stuffed under a pink beanie, and thick horn-rimmed glasses; it would be very easy for a boardwalk artist to turn her into a cartoon. She has the room booked right after us on Wednesdays.

You’re late, she notes without looking up from the chemistry book she is currently reading. Again.

Happy New Year to you too, Troy, I say, jumping over her backpack. I throw her a wink, which lands like she just smelled a fart.

How vile, I hear behind me as I sneak into Room 402-B, twenty-seven minutes late.

I can’t help it. Corinne Troy is one of those hyperfocused FATE students you just kind of have to shake your head at sometimes.

Also: she lives in my building. She and her mother moved in a few years ago. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve seen her in slippers and a fuzzy purple bathrobe with lime-green flower petals after she locked herself out of her apartment and needed Dad to go let her in one Sunday morning, but I simply can’t be afraid of her after that. Dark-skinned Black people don’t tend to blush easily, but she was ten shades of red that morning—a stark contrast from the terrifying Type-A-with-extra-assignments-and-perfect-attendance-on-the-side Corinne Troy who stomps around FATE Academy.

And one last fun fact. That interview for a new dog I mentioned earlier? It’s with her mom, Chantale Troy. I can’t wait to see the look on Corinne’s face when she finds out I’m going to be walking her adorable new pup.

I stand in the back of the mostly empty classroom, hearing a snatch of Greg’s monotonous and stilted rebuttal to today’s topic. Something about Texting Spaces Being Allowed in Movie Theaters, according to the emailed schedule. Yadira is taking notes, fighting back a yawn. She’s adopted a pretty drastic hairdo over the winter break, and the shaved side of her wavy black hair has externalized that intimidating part of her personality that previously didn’t come out until she actually, y’know, spoke. On the stage, Yadira is a debate chimera of perfect posture, piercing eyes, and retort that always skirts the line between well read and downright condescending.

Now, a typical LED headlamp puts out roughly five hundred to a thousand lumens. Your average smartphone can easily meet that wattage, Greg sputters.

He’s panicking, even with Yadira being the only person in the room. His facts are correct, I assume, but as always, his voice is full of contradictions, stilted and frantic. To say that public speaking does not come naturally to Greg is an understatement. He is phenomenally smart—three of his essays have already been featured in small print magazines and one of them even won a statewide contest. But unfortunately for Greg, he is also the embodiment of the word harmless: cursed with big innocent eyes and curls so bouncy you have to control yourself not to pull one to watch it boing.

Multiplied by the average number of times people check their phones, with check ranging at less than two minutes of continuous usage, the cinematic viewing experience becomes a veritable, um, ordeal.

All right, I’m calling it, Greggers, Yadira says, putting down her pencil and making a T with her hands. You’ve officially lost me.

There are no big real-world topics at these debates. No gun control, no immigration. Nothing that could derail a YouTube comments section. We’re high schoolers, after all. We tend to be given topics that audiences might discuss among themselves in the hallway after the competition.

Yay or nay: should J. K. Rowling have come down on Dumbledore’s sexuality or leave the page to speak for itself? Double-dipping a chip at a party: ethical or monstrous? Rushing to the airport to declare your love: romantic or emotional coercion? I swear, they just go by TV sitcom premises. Where the rhetorical academic rigor comes in is in the soundness of the arguments, thoroughness of counterarguments, and creativity of delivery of the three-person teams.

I was building up to my thesis, Greg says defensively, catching me out of the corner of his eye. I’m highlighting the clear link between the luminosity of phone screens and the theater experience.

Yes! Yadira says, rolling her eyes. And the strongest argument against this premise is obviously the disturbance of aggregate luminosity. That’ll get us a round of applause.

Greg doesn’t take notes well. And Yadira doesn’t give them that well, to be completely honest. Not a fan of the soft touch, that one.

She has a point there, Greg, I say, clearing my throat and stepping into the auditorium. Hello, children.

You’re late, Haltiwanger!

Which does not negate her point, Greggers, I continue, because the best way to defuse Greg’s annoying thing about punctuality is to ignore it until he forgets. You don’t want the judges to check their phones while you’re actively making a point against using phones in theaters.

Thank you! Yadira exclaims. "But you are late, Henri."

Aye, aye, captain! I salute jokingly.

The worst thing about being on a debate team with Greg and Yadira is being on a three-person debate team with Greg and Yadira that’s been on a winning streak all semester. The momentum is . . . suffocating.

H! comes a familiar voice as a silhouette appears in the doorway.

Hey, Evie. I smile as Evie Hooper peeks her head into the room.

I thought I heard your voice. What are you guys doing in here? she asks, leaning against the door and smiling in that way she tends to do. Like the whole world is a photo shoot.

Debate practice, I answer. You?

Yadira throws her hands up as though she’s given up any idea that we’d get back on track for the remaining few minutes of practice.

Film. She shrugs. I was editing something in the lab.

Two short film competitions and an internship at Fox Studios last year. Evie may come off as a detached, white downtown girl who likes to knot her uniform blouse and defiantly wear her tie undone around her neck