Debasements of Brooklyn

by Ira Gold

  Footsteps finally sound on the stairway. I push away from Ariel’s computer and hide in the shower. I close the ancient curtain just in case it’s her mother.

  “Hello?”

  It’s Ariel. I rip the plastic sheet aside and she screams.

  “Sorry, shit, sorry.”

  From upstairs, a cry, “Ariel!”

  “I’m okay, Mom.” She motions for me to freeze. “I just almost fell down the stairs.”

  “Be careful,” a wobbly voice calls.

  “Okay. I’m okay.”

  Then Ariel looks at me. “Why . . .”

  “I didn’t want your mother . . .”

  Ariel stares at me with both anger and relief. “I told you. My mom never comes down here. You have nothing to worry about.”

  “What took so long?”

  “I got some beer. Also some Jack Daniel’s. You can chase it with the beer or Coke.”

  She has bought Budweiser, probably believing it to be my favorite. I prefer Pilsner but now is not the time to say anything. I pop a Bud but turn down the bourbon.

  Ariel herself cracks the Jack and swigs straight from the bottle. Her eyes are alight with mischief when she apologizes, “Sorry. I always wanted to do that.” Belatedly abashed, she mutters, “I’ll get myself a glass.”

  She opens her desk drawer and removes a short, wide cup with the word Chivas embossed in gold. “I usually drink vodka. But today, for some reason . . . I’m just in the mood . . .” She holds her drink up to the fluorescent light and the liquor shimmers. “My mom is going to a friend’s for dinner in a few minutes. Then I’ll bring down your bedding.”

  She is very anxious about this bedding.

  “I’m fine with the bed the way it is,” I say.

  “But I’m not.”

  Ariel smiles and I smile back. No point in wasting time. She sips her drink and joins me on the bare bed. She has lovely lips, thin but soft. Our tongues touch, and this brings all sorts of muscle slackening. She pushes me down on the dirty bed, and lies on top of me. The heat of our bodies increases with the friction of squirming against each other. Her shirt rides up and I touch her smooth back where it slides into the jeans. She wears red panties with lace trimming. I stick my hand down the back of her jeans. She squeezes her hand between her chest and mine and pinches my nipple. Her other hand unzips my fly. Grimy mattress be damned. Her fingers graze my penis and I’m ready to rip every piece of clothing off her body.

  She jumps off me.

  “What the hell . . .”

  “Don’t move, you gorilla.” She rushes from the room as if the building is about to collapse. My dick is so hard that I think it will shred my underwear.

  The longest, strangest, most pressurized day telescopes to this moment. Nothing matters but Ariel. My eyes tear. Water pools at the bottom of my sockets and starts to leak down my face.

  Shit. I think of Odysseus tossed about the seas by an angry Poseidon. We are all at the mercy of powers greater than ourselves. But what’s not mentioned is that Odysseus is an ass. “Man blames the gods for his fate,” Zeus points out to Athena, “but man’s stupidity doubles his suffering.”

  I think of my life. No individual decision sticks out as particularly idiotic. Society offers not much to a guy like me. Years and years of drudgery. Why shouldn’t I take advantage of my bulk and sit at the door of a poker room? Why shouldn’t I collect a debt or two? Why not sell pot? I never really hurt anyone. Pauli Bones kills. IRA carries lethal violence in his paunch. They bring me along for show. When I scowl, people pay up.

  I should never have dropped out of school. If only so much of it weren’t a waste of time, obsessed with monkey work and peopled by teachers more ignorant than rocks and dirt. I enjoy my freedom from tedious labor. I do small jobs and fulfill low expectations. For years all had seemed sensible, with a healthy balance between doing nothing and getting laid.

  But I was foolish to think that I’d skate. I might not have taunted the gods as Odysseus had done, but I played fast and loose with reality. When you hang with murderers, whether state supported or freelance, bad things happen.

  What I really need is a complete change. That can be accomplished. It just depends how many people get killed, who kills them, and if I’m one of the dead.

  Ariel whooshes into the room at the same speed she left. “My mom’s gone, so I grabbed these.” She holds a pile of linen that would furnish a small B&B. She grabs my shirt and pulls me off the bed. “Come on. Come on. Hold these.” She thrusts the bedding at me.

  She works furiously. “I brought two sheets because the bed is so dirty.”

  I watch her tuck in a pale blue bottom sheet. She then flaps open the second and does the same. Maybe she has worked in a hotel. Or maybe she brings guys down here all the time. She certainly knows the drill.

  She rips some pillows out of my hand. With the same dexterousness that she has dealt with the sheets, she puts on the pillowcases. I’m left holding a thick, pink quilt. Ariel must have thought that I looked at it askance because she says, “It’s the only extra one.”

  “Fuck it.”

  “Oh, you and your fuck it.” She grabs the blanket and drops it on the edge of the bed while I grab her and drop her in the middle of the bed.

  We lay side by side. This time she doesn’t worry about touching the dirty mattress. First, she bites my lip, a love nip. I don’t realize she draws blood until I swallow something salty. A drop of wine dark blood even stains Ariel’s upper lip. I brush it away.

  “What are you doing?” she asks.

  In answer I pull her shirt over her head. Telling Ariel that I’ve bled into her mouth would just break the mood. I see that along with the bedding Ariel has brought a couple of condoms serrated to each other. Pillows, sheets, condoms. Like Noah, Ariel has carried down two of everything. My eyes roam around the basement, my ark. Could this flimsy cellar protect me from the coming storm?

  I can’t spend any more time thinking about this as Ariel, maybe feeling underdressed in just her orange bra, is taking my shirt off. I wear nothing underneath and Ariel starts running her nails up and down my chest.

  She shifts her back as I unclip her bra. Her compressed breasts, larger and rounder than I imagined them, spring free. Ariel then straddles my waist, her tits waving in front of my face. A pink nipple dangles close enough to my mouth that I lift my head and swallow it.

  She freezes. I suck gently and sidle my tongue over her areola. She slowly lowers her chest, pushing her other breast into my eye. I worry that she’d smother me so I release her nipple. She instantly jumps off me and orders, “Pull down my pants.”

  To save time I also grab her panties. But she stops me. “No. Just my jeans.”

  So I yank just the jeans. Next she tells me, “Now you stand up. I want to take down your pants.”

  I laugh. Before I stopped fucking, I fucked a lot. It never went like this. It wasn’t always the same, but it was never like this.

  So I stand. And Ariel strains as she gets my pants down, leaving the underpants. So I’m in the same state of undress as she.

  “Touch yourself,” she commands.

  “What?”

  “Pull your penis out of your underpants.”

  I obey.

  “Wow,” Ariel gasps. She reaches for her glass and downs what’s left of the Jack.

  So I am literally standing there with my dick in my hand. And I can tell you, the man who coined the expression knew from experience how awkward this can be.

  I clear my throat, but Ariel seems mesmerized by the cock resting in my palm. She finally commands, “Pump it like you’re trying to masturbate.”

  I frankly don’t know the etiquette of the situation. Certainly, if I do as she suggests, I’d come all over her clean sheets. And I mean come. Never in the history of the Mafia did someone need release more than I do.

  Ariel does not repeat her request. She seems happy enough to stare until, as if in a trance, she reaches over and touches it herself.
The result of this is instantaneous. I yank down her panties. She stepped out of them like Venus from her clamshell, and lies back down on the bed. I tear the condom package with my teeth.

  “Lie down,” Ariel regains her authoritative voice. “I want to get on top.”

  She really has a wonderful body, trim, but with hips and a great tapering behind. Her thighs are thick but muscled. As I’m rolling off her, I hear an enormous crack, almost like a gunshot. I blink and realize that Ariel has smacked my ass as hard as she could. “How does that feel?”

  Is this chick nuts? Furious, humiliated, I barely hold myself back from cracking her head open.

  “How does it feel now?”

  I concentrate. “Not bad,” A warmth had spread across my butt.

  “Kind of nice?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Lie down.”

  I do. Ariel straddles my midsection with her behind pointing at my face. She begins licking the shaft. I reach between her legs and rub the side of my index finger along her slit. Her pubic hair is sticky. “Lick me,” she orders and pushes up to make herself totally available. I stick my tongue into her. Her mouth encircles the tip of my penis. I cry, “I’m going to come.”

  Her head shoots up. “Don’t you dare!”

  She takes the condom from the open pack and rolls it down. Then she slowly impales herself. I shudder with every vibration as she slides herself on. She controls her vaginal walls like a maestro, doling out sweet music with each iteration of her muscles. She sways on top of me as if dancing. Her eyes close and her head tilts toward the ceiling. She speeds her rocking but a little. I can hear the waves of pleasure crashing through her midsection. I follow her gyrations, the heat and wet increasing with every motion. Then she stops. She grabs my neck and presses me so deep inside her that I come with such explosiveness that I knock us both off the narrow bed. On the floor she still holds on for dear life, her breathing fast and rhythmic. We lie together, she on top of me, until her hyperventilating returns to mere panting. Only then does she release her death grip on my neck.

  19

  Gorilla Dreams

  Ariel holds the base of the condom as she frees herself. I’m nearly as hard as before.

  “You’re amazing,” she says.

  We climb back onto the bed, sweat dripping from both our bodies.

  She lies back, spent. I go to the bathroom. When I return, Ariel says, motherly, “I got to get you slippers.”

  “Why?”

  “The floor’s kind of dirty. Didn’t you notice?” I sit back on the bed and Ariel rests her head against me. “What else do you think you’ll need?”

  “I don’t need nothin’.”

  “Nothin’? You’re sure?”

  Of course I’d need things if I stay down here. I’d need food. Every day would be best. I’d need reading material. I’d need toilet paper. I might do without cable, but I’d want Internet. And I wouldn’t be getting to the gym regularly so some weights would be nice if she wants me to keep the edge on the body that she so fancies.

  “Do you know what you’re getting into?” I ask her.

  “Sure I fucking know.” Ariel makes her voice deeper as she rakes her nails over my back. “Do you know what you’re getting into? You’re going to be my prisoner.” My silence goads her to continue. “Don’t worry. I’ll be a kind master.”

  I don’t want to mention money. “You need some money?”

  “No. Don’t be silly. I might.”

  “I got about 500 on me. I can get more.”

  “Don’t worry about that now.”

  No. No point. I try to calculate how long the war might last. There are so many variables. They could knock off Vinnie Five-Five right away and that would be that. If they kill the captain, his soldiers will capitulate. Julius and Gus would indeed move away, believing that tough guys from Brooklyn could make it anywhere in the country but Brooklyn. Goodbye and good luck.

  But if the boys in New Jersey think the organization would be better with Vinnie than without, that would prolong things. If Jersey imports a few more Morons and Jews, we have another Iraq on our hands, an unwinnable slog perpetrated mostly by distant monsters who never glimpse the blood of the slaughtered.

  Yet even if they hang Vinnie Five-Five out to dry, that would not be the end. In his small neighborhood Vinnie is a big player. He has resources to put up a fight. Besides gambling, sports betting, and loan-sharking, he owns a busy funeral parlor and a catering hall on Ocean Parkway. He runs all the whorehouses and gets kickbacks from three Italian restaurants, a cheese shop, and a storefront that sells fake designer accessories. I remember my father had admired the little Italian marooned in a sea of enemies. “Assets won’t protect you from a bullet,” Dad said, “but it never kills you to have a few.”

  Maybe this was dad’s way of telling me to get my act together. Don’t be a putz. My father had the old Jewish habit of storing money in a thousand places, of being a man of many pockets. He had fourteen bank accounts, eight brokerage accounts, and three safe-deposit boxes. He also had a Swiss account that had sixty-eight dollars in it. Tiny amounts of money well hidden everywhere. He had been a brilliant accountant, but a lousy handicapper.

  What was left of the decimated fortune my mom got. When she died, I got what was left from her. She didn’t play the ponies, but she had relatives more pathetic than her son. One brother got eight years for hijacking a trailer of canned tuna fish. Canned for cans. When I heard tuna, I thought, well, okay. Sushi grade bluefin. In Tokyo, a prize specimen goes for $350 a pound. And this Uncle Louis was supposedly connected in the fish markets. Some connections. He left three hungry mouths. Due to his incompetence at just about everything, his captain warned him to do no more hijacking. So he got precious little help from his associates when he went to “college.” My mom paid his wife’s rent while he lived courtesy of the government. He got out a few days before my mom died. For the funeral, he didn’t even have money for a decent bouquet.

  “What do gorillas dream about?”

  “What?”

  Ariel still prone on the bed, rephrases, “What are you thinking?”

  “Tuna fish.”

  She bolts upright. “Are you hungry? I knew you were hungry.” Ariel blushes because she sounds like a Jewish mother. But then she adds, “We can get some sushi. The only problem is that the rice has to be warm for the sushi to be really good. Take-out rice is always cold.”

  Ariel is so damn cute, so excited about everything—the sushi, the war, me. And I don’t care a whit about the temperature of the rice. The quality of the fish is what counts. Of course, the rice should not be ice-cold.

  Ariel drapes herself over my shoulders. “You can teach me about crime and I can teach you about . . . other things.”

  I nod.

  “Maybe I can teach you how to talk.”

  “Maybe.” So she does like this game.

  I pull a couple of beers from the ring and give Ariel one.

  “I better not,” she says.

  “Why?”

  She takes the beer and admits, “I’m drunk. You think I always act like this?”

  No. Sober, she’d have to be nuts to harbor and sleep with a goon like me. And for this I’m grateful.

  I ought to be, however, on the other side of the world by now. Yet I have only traveled down the block, via Manhattan and mass murder.

  “My mother is going to get back soon,” Ariel says. “I should go upstairs.” She hugs me around the waist. After a second she comments, “Your heart beats really slow. That means you’re in good aerobic shape.”

  I run my fingers through Ariel’s hair. “Or maybe I’m dying.”

  “I briefly dated a cardiologist,” she explains, sounding tired. “You know, the last guy I went out with didn’t talk much either. The guy before him, the one who kept breaking up with me, couldn’t shut up. But the cat’s got everyone else’s tongue.”

  I would like to respond to Ariel more fully. The strong, silent ty
pe never impressed me. Babbling, it’s true, indicates uncontrollable anxiety, but silence often signals a vacancy upstairs.

  In the best scenario, Ariel probably chalks up my reticence to some old country notion of omerta, or a profound respect for secrecy. I don’t think she would have gone this far with me if she suspected my skull contained no gray matter. But she certainly enjoys having more gray matter than I have.

  I stay silent for one other reason: to keep Ariel out of trouble. She has no obligation to report a crime if she has no knowledge of one. Why make her an accessory after the fact?

  Ariel lets go of me and turns her face up. The tenderness with which we kiss surprises me as much as that crack on the bottom had. We clinch for a minute before Ariel disengages.

  “I’ll be back. See if you can put together a list of things you need. Don’t worry about sounding weird if you need to eat strange stuff like peanut butter and lime. I’ve seen it all.” Then Ariel trips up the steps.

  Peanut butter and lime? Seen it all? What is she talking about? Who lets a self-confessed criminal into the basement of her mother’s house? She doesn’t know that I am not the killer I pretend to be. Plenty of women are attracted to thugs, but Ariel does not fit this profile. She usually goes out with heart doctors and antitrust lawyers. Then again, she has rightly anticipated the explosive sex. Ordering me around lit her up something fierce. Why shouldn’t women enjoy dominating an imposing man? Most men fantasize about ripping the clothes off demure women. Am I going to end up her sex slave? Am I going to let her do my food shopping?

  I doze. Gone are the worries of being in over my head. Gone are the thoughts that my friends are all on the run. Gone are the thoughts that I have no friends. I only dream of Ariel who has lashed me to a pole in the Met’s gift shop and spoons peanut butter into my mouth while she drinks Budweiser.

  Part II