by Rob Sedgwick
Mom goes from the surprised look of just being bitten to complete retreat. You can hardly notice it, but it’s there. After seven years of marriage, she’s an expert at this. And it all happens in a blink.
“Excuse me?!” Ben says.
“I’m sorry, darling, I don’t—”
She is now a wafting tissue, impossible to catch. She’s there, but she’s not there. She drinks, she tilts her head sideways as if she’s sincerely trying to comprehend a foreign language she’s hearing for the first time. But her genius lies in her unnoticeable subtlety: you can’t tell she’s gone. Ben certainly doesn’t notice.
This is how she survives.
Ben barks incredulous, hot: “Should?!? Pat, please do not tell me ‘should’ in my own house, in front of my frescoes, in front of the children.”
“Darling, I’m so sorry, I—”
“It is abundantly disrespectful, and I find it hurtful. So, Jordan, an answer.”
“Si—”
“And don’t fucking ‘sir’ me anymore, son of a bitch!”
“I’m so sorry, si—Mr. Heller, I forgot the question.”
“Jordan?”
“Yes, Mr. Heller.”
“You are not astute.”
When Jordan starts dealing pot, he uses “Ben Heller” as his pseudonym. At airports, train terminals, snazzy hotels, it’s “Hello, Mr. Heller, how are you today?” In the mid-eighties, airport security is civilized; you don’t need identification to travel domestically. People trust one another.
One night Jordan and his friend Barry (a.k.a. Tiny Tim) are sprinting into the Phoenix airport with a huge suitcase filled with pot. They’re late for their flight. Attempts to check the bag are stymied. “It’s too late, sir. You’ll have to check it at the gate.”
“But why? I mean can’t you just put it on the thing, the—”
“Conveyor belt?”
“Yes, the conveyor belt, and then I can be on my way?”
“It’s really no problem, Mr. Heller. You just take it to the gate and they’ll check it for you there. It’s too late to check here, I’m very sorry.”
“This really isn’t convenient.”
“I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Heller, but I see from our records that you’re an excellent customer—first class, wow—and I’m so sorry I can’t accommodate you. Because we value your business so much, let me get you a skycap. He’ll just have to bring it to security to check the contents of the—”
“Yes, NO, that’s all right, we’ll take it ourselves, it’s fine, we’re happy!”
“Thank you for your continued patronage. We know you have a choice—”
“In airlines. Well, sometimes not.”
Jordan and Barry look up the long escalator. It’s 11:00 p.m. They have to forgo regular checking, during which luggage goes unexamined, and go through the more intense scrutiny of security. They arrive at security with their bag full of serious-jail-time contraband. Jordan now knows the phrase “conveyor belt” because his bag is on it and about to be X-rayed. His pulse is throbbing visibly in his neck.
The bag slides into the X-ray compartment. Its contents come up on the screen. Jordan quickly makes small talk with the security guy to distract him. He finds out he’s twenty-five, from Phoenix, and Jordan ascertains immediately he’s not the kind to wield his power heavily.
The three of them concentrate on the little screen. There’s nothing to be seen but a huge, black amorphous mass, plus a little space around the edges of the suitcase.
This confuses the Phoenix kid. He ponders as Jordan and Barry eyeball the screen. Jordan is so scared he is calm.
“What gate, please?” Jordan says.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Heller, but what’s the—”
“What’s the what?”
“Your suitcase, the contents, what is—”
“It’s just stuff. What gate, please?”
“Sir, I’ve never seen…It’s usually more jumbly and there are little spaces between the…I mean, I’ve been here for a little while, but I’ve never seen…it’s so dense.”
“Sometimes luggage is very dense.”
“And black.”
“Well, I don’t know why you have to go bringing color into it. Ha, ha, ha! Just joking. We’re going to be late. What gate, please?”
“That’s really funny, Mr. Heller, sir. Gate seven, sir. Seven.”
They dash and reach the gate in seconds. All clear.
“Sir?” The guy at the gate stops them. “There’s no name on the tag.”
“What?”
“Your bag. Your name. It’s not on it.”
“The plane is going to leave without…the name is Bellick.”
Oops. Mistake. Can’t use real name!
“How do you spell that, sir?”
“H-E-L-L-E-R.”
“That’s how you spell Bellick?”
“No, no, no. I mean Heller, H-E-L-L-E-R.”
“Oh. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Heller.”
They board the plane. Safely in first class, they start laughing the crazy-cuckoo laugh of Daffy Duck discovering hidden treasure in some cave. (“I’m rich! I’m comfortably well off! I’m financially secure! Hoo hoo!”)
They order a legion of Bloody Marys. Goody gumdrops.
All’s a success.
28
Now that I was a financial success, I started paying Ben back here and there for the fifty thousand in bail. But in my downtime from the soap, seeking distraction, I longed for some amore, and that’s why God provided the service.
Once upon a time, the escort index was the thickest part of the yellow pages. After a boys’ night out with Kevin and my friend Tom at a luscious and high-end stripper bar, where we were treated like gold because my brother-in-law was famous, Tom and I decided it was time to call the service. He whipped out the old yellow pages and flipped to the escort section.
We had just dropped off Kevin and headed straight to Tom’s restaurant, Portnoy’s Complaint, to let our fingers do the walking.
The restaurant phone rang as soon as we walked in.
Tom picked it up. “Hello?”
“Hey, Tom, it’s Kev. You guys aren’t gonna do hookers or anything, are you?”
“Of course not. Why would you think that?”
“Just don’t, okay? There’s too much AIDS and stuff flyin’ around.”
“Wouldn’t think of it. And thanks for tonight. A lot of fun.”
“Tell Robbie I said goodnight.”
“That Kev?” I asked when Tom hung up. “What’d he want?”
“Told us not to do hookers, Bob.”
“Oh.”
Tom remembered a great Korean hooker joint downtown. Finding the number in the good old yellow pages, we called, then zipped into a cab downtown.
“Why Korean?” I asked Tom.
“Better work ethic, Bob.” Tom likes to call me Bob because of the blandness and perkiness of the sound. Bob. It’s someone who might belong to something called a Rotary Club.
Arriving at our destination, we were patted down for weapons and paraphernalia, and then permitted entrance to the boudoir. We were given a short beer each and a parade of ladies. Even though I was so drunk I was almost seeing double, I still knew a hot piece of ass when I saw one. And there she was: Jeannie. Whoa.
We went into a back room, which was no bigger than the cube Jordan and I had been put into in prison. I was hard immediately. She was a total pro.
“You so big.”
“Yes.”
“You so handsome.”
“Yes.”
“You so strong and big.”
“Yes.”
“And you so hard and big and strong.”
“Yes.”
“And handsome.”
“Yes.”
“You the best.”
“Oh yes.”
“You make me feel so good.”
“Oh yes!”
“I want you.”
“Yes.”
“I need you.”
“Yes.”
“To come!”
“Ye—”
“NOW!”
“YYEESS!” Mount Krakatoa erupted.
I could tell she dug me.
I lit a cigarette. “You really like me, don’t you?”
“I rike you very much.”
“You’d like me for a freebie, wouldn’t you?”
“I would rike you better for another two hundred dolla.”
Jeannie left to get another beer while I mulled over her offer.
“Bob, you got a nice ass,” Tom called from the adjoining cube.
He sounded like he was right next to me because the wall didn’t go up to the ceiling.
“I finished before you, so I peeked over. You were going at it like a little monkey.”
“She’s gorgeous, right?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“And she looked like she liked me, right? She liked the way I was fucking her.”
“Now, Bob, let’s not—”
“What?”
Much as I knew that this was just a business transaction, in my misty drunken stupor, I had a sentimental yearning that perhaps Jeannie could actually like me, and I could maybe take her away from all this.
“Bob, she’s a hooker.”
“But I was kissing her a bunch of times.”
This had to be something deeper than business to Jeannie.
“Bob, I hate to tell you, but she might as well have been doing her nails.”
I skipped seconds with Jeannie. Tom and I waddled into a cab and went home.
29
My first day at Dwight High School, I meet a girl named Tara. The second I meet her, I know she’s great. She’s wearing long white painter’s pants and has long brown hair that hangs down to her ass. She looks fantastic in a sixteen-year-old way. She’s hanging out with her best friend Tina, who is laser skinny, pouting, luscious with makeup, and basically looks like a very sophisticated hooker. Tara is guileless. You get the feeling that if Mick Jagger walked into the room and she were talking to you, she would just keep talking to you. She smiles, asks me earnestly if this is my first year here. I say yes.
I’ve finally started to grow into myself, and girls think I’m attractive. But Tara seems to just like something about me. I think she’s trying to play it cool, but I’m so nervous about meeting attractive girls I can’t stand still. I can’t stand still anyway, but around a pretty girl with a great ass I just twitch a lot and my heart beats so loudly it sounds like there must be thunder in my chest.
We end up sitting next to each other in constitutional law. I can’t do anything in Constitutional Law, so she helps me out. She is an A student. We play ping-pong together in the gym and she smokes me. I’m usually hungover when we play. When I miss, I miss big and twirl around. I must look oafish. Some of the other kids laugh.
I am drunk often in the morning, or at least severely hungover. Nikko and I are getting high all the time by now, so we figure why not start the day out right at dawn. Sometimes I’m still drunk from the night before. Nikko rolls two joints, and we toke up first thing. The pot billows into a smog, but it doesn’t matter. The parents are two floors down and still fast asleep. It will dissipate long before they get up. And they barely come up here anyway.
Nikko is so good at rolling joints. I’m hopeless, but I’m great at smoking them. I suck in a pencil-thick stream of air loaded with pot, and I suck until my lungs are completely full. Then I hold my breath. Hold. Hold. Hold. Then I open my mouth and let it seep out from the back of my throat. The vapor curls out of my mouth. The opening in my throat is so small it makes a frightened high-pitched squeal. Then there’s a rush to my brain. Life is woozy. My face is free.
I’m engulfed by a big cloud of smoke. It tastes like a harsh green breakfast.
I break out the Johnny Walker. It’s a knife first thing in the morning, acid ripping up the insides. But soon the warm happens, then even more looseness.
—
In math class, we get our tests back. I’m in the back, my feet on the empty desk in front of me, reeking of booze, and I’m worthless in all things math. I get a 55. One of the superboys in the class has a tantrum because he got a 95 instead of the 98 he thinks he deserves. He whines and is mean to the math teacher because he knows she won’t retaliate. She wears double-thick coke-bottle glasses, and her eyes dart to the right all the time. Knowing that the math teacher can’t stand up for herself, Tara says that 95 is a great grade and that it’s only three measly points less than 98 for Christ’s sake, and that he should be happy with that and stop being so selfish and rude.
He squeals at her to shut up in a tone that could screw up bats.
She pulls back as if she has been hit.
I go cold inside. I take my time standing up, then flip the empty desk high in the air for emphasis. It spins once and then crashes into another empty desk. When everyone is quiet, I tell the kid if he says one more word to Tara I will kill him. I don’t know how to fight really, but I know if he says one more thing to her, I’m going to learn really fast. Also, with the booze, I feel no fear. I feel a dead courage, and I don’t care what happens. I stare at the kid with what must be the terrifying stare of a drunk who just stares and stares and keeps staring.
Genuinely afraid, he says, “You should talk, you should talk, you…you…”
This bolt of something goes through me that I could really kill this guy. I’ve won, even though he’s light years ahead of me in all other categories in life. “Sit the fuck down. I got a 55. Be happy with what you got and shut up.”
He is near tears now, but he sits down.
Still, months go by before I can bring myself to actually ask Tara out. It is leaping off the highest cliff. She’s so lovely. She’s the captain of the volleyball team and the basketball team; all the older girls look up to her, love her, go to her for advice, and she is patient, kind, and considerate of everyone. My crush on her has become a monster of want and paranoia. If I ask her out, everyone in school will know, and then where will I be?
But by now it’s gone on way too long, and if I’m going to do something I’ve got to do it now, today. I’m leaving school and I haven’t run into her—I’m just out the front door and phew, no sign of her, thank God.
Oh no.
Right across the street, where everybody smokes and hangs out, there she is. With a bunch of other kids from school. They all look at me. She starts to cross the street toward me. I’m trapped. There is no way out.
A truck passes by, and I want to leap onto the side of it so I can disappear. But it’s too late. She’s crossing the street smiling at me. Oh my Christ here we go. My heart is ten times its normal size and is pounding so hard it wants to vomit out of my throat.
She says, “Hi.”
My ass muscles go so rock hard they are suddenly infested with goose pimples. I manage a lame “Hey” back to her.
She says through this wincing, incredibly cute smile: “It’s so funny, I just wanted to tell you that all these people are telling me that you’re going to ask me out, which I know is ridiculous because if that were going to happen you would have asked by now.”
Sometimes there is a Rubicon you have to cross. The only reason I know that word is because the headmaster just used it in a letter to me and spelled out what it meant. And if I was ever looking at a Rubicon to cross in my life, it is right now.
I toss my book bag onto the sidewalk as the best way I can think of to look cool and nonchalant and impressive in front of her, put my arm around her shoulder, walk her down toward First Avenue away from everyone else an
d say:
“Well, as a matter of fact…”
And then just more silly words come out of my mouth that mean nothing except that I think she is adorable and wonderful and that I would love to take her out sometime and maybe that time could be this weekend.
“Yes, I’d love to.”
I am terrified. But also happy.
I wish I could keep walking toward First, even though it is completely out of my way, because I’m drowning in the shame of having been found out in my enormous crush. But I have to get my book bag that I threw on the street to be cool. None of the kids seem to care, but I know this will be big news in two seconds, all over school.
I pick up the book bag and try to saunter to Second Avenue.
Once I turn the corner, I sprint.
I run home to the townhouse that is twice as big as any other townhouse to get smashed with Linus, watch Bugs Bunny, and tell him that I finally asked Tara out! He giggles like a teenybopper and says, “Oh, Rob. Your life is more dramatic than a Jane Austen novel!”
We do shots of the very exclusive Barbancourt fifteen-year-old rum chased by Becks beer.
It is 2:45 in the afternoon, our usual cocktail hour.
30
I was to be arraigned at 40 Foley Square before the Honorable Judge Ashberry and enter a plea of guilty. It was just me, Warren, Ron, and the forever-nerdy Brad Fine,. Judge Ashberry emerged from chambers. We were in a sterile government courtroom. I was so numb I felt as though I’d been shot up with Novocaine.
“Mr. Sedgwick, you are aware of the charges brought against you?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“And you are aware that you are striking a plea agreement between yourself and the US Attorney?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“And that by doing so, and if you intend to plead guilty, you are aware that you are waiving your right to a fair trial?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“So, how do you plead?”
“Guilty on all counts, Your Honor.”
“You’re absolutely certain?”
