by Jane Brooke
Paper signs in the windows, touting Six Guns to city cowboy duds, to Tony Llama Cowboy boots. It looks good; she can’t stand the clothes she is wearing.
Stepping from the curb, she J-walks, murders her cigarette butt into the concrete. Once across the street, opens the door, looks behind her, Nada, no men with guns, hatchets or bolt cutters for that matter, so she enters.
Ten minutes pass, she exits, Mandal again, or whatever Mandal is at the moment.
Tight black Levi’s, hip huggers, sleeveless black-T-shirt, black leather bomber jacket, black steel toed work boots, a Boston Red Socks cap slotted on her black wig, huge shades still covering those amazing eyes.
Two bulging, plastic bags dangle at the end of her sinewy and cut arms, broad shoulders supporting it all.
Extra jeans, t-shirts, heavy work boots, under garments, she wears men’s BVD’s now, a modest girl. Other stuff, boxes of ammunition for the guns. A tire iron, an Axe handle, a tin of Bulls Eye, gun powder, still legal. It’s mostly for hunter guys, purists capping off their own bullets. You know, to inflict homicide on elk, deer and sometimes each other.
Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
Freeze dried snacks, candy bars, a six pack of beer, a pint of Wild Turkey, a pack of Orioles, a new eight inch hunting knife. Just the stuff an average girl needs to have some fun in vacay time. In her other hand, the bag with her old disguise runaway rags. Glancing at them, she groans, moves to a trash bin and lopes them into it.
Pack of Marlboro’s from her jacket pocket, roll playing, she rips it open with her pearl white teeth. Lips like melons pluck one. She flicks the Zippo cap; kick starts her smoke, inhales, exhales, feeling so much better.
Turning, she gazes through smoke down the asphalt street. It’s the usual stuff in an industrial part of town. Junk yards, wreckers, tow truck operations, Chinese takeout, no cats or dogs around, salvage companies, some street walkers, reclaim your beer can centers. You know aluminum cans, automobile carcasses from car wrecks, copper plumbing thieves ripped off from the local schools trading for more amphetamine fuel. Lots and lots of used car lots, the fucking reason she is there to begin with.
Nodding, sweeping sonar eyes, ping, ping, ping, she’s actually feeling pretty good about how everything to the moment has gone down. Adjusting her sunglasses, she begins to move down the sidewalk towards the used car lots. She has failed to see the peeking eyes shining from the stores plate glass windows.
Moments pass, a shop girl moves out the door, to the trash bin and, then retrieves Mandals ex getup. She smiles. She scrutinizes the pretty silk things, rubs her jaw and glares down the street at the blond that was wearing the black wig. No matter, she likes gifts, turns and walks back into the Big Western Store, pretty much death and life now in her sales girl hands and memory.
Dick’s
DICKS QUALITY USED CAR’S: The sign, with half of its neon bulbs burned out was much like its owner Dick. He was a shady character burnout, pushing lies, rusted metal, re-capped rubber and re set odometers to anyone left on the planet gullible enough to buy his rap.
Dick is hung over, another brutal night sucking rye, too much cocaine. He was wondering when the roving band of cockroaches would leak out of his ears, relieving his pounding temples.
He was a 52 year old, living the all or nothing last stand life of a life-long party animal. He was on track for a massive heart malfunction, which could break dance in at any moment.
Ash spills down his plaid pants, past the white patent leather belt coming to rest on red, patent leather loafers. Moans of cranial grief, he peeks out the window, his day grows a smidgen brighter. Out in the lot, a slinky, sexy doll, wearing slim fit jeans, looking interested at probably the only ride that did not need a transplant, something he was dire in need of.
Drawer opens of his oak laminated desk, he grabs a breath spray, gives his mouth a sprits’, adjust his toupee, adjusts his clip on tie, stands, weaves, smiles, begins to move.
A ‘Master of his Universe’, Romeo of the Patent leather universes is on the prowl.
IN THE lot, Mandel eye balls a faded, lime green, 1975 Cadillac, El Dorado, rag top. She holds the brain of an artistic savant. The Caddy, about as long as a Winnebago hits all the bells and whistles inside her bent spinner.
Flash cars, driven by pimps, gamblers, criminal types, Wall Street types and perverted Catholic Bishops, sicken her. Cosmetic world, where everything hinges on looks, hype, six pack abs, instead of what can be produced from the brain enrages her.
In a global village, folks gone zaftig over Brittany pierced belly buttoned bimbos. Where marginal talent was something touted, adored, the whore she is, understands the brain is the only organ that is unique; gosh she is such a thinker girl.
Spin doctors, cheer-leading the Dumbing of America makes her head ache. Nothing on earth impresses her except passion, desire for an artist’s, his work; attributes so lacking in every man she has ever met.
She forgets that she is a prostitute, a thief, a grifter, a habitual liar and the other ghastly thing that she did.
Selective memory can be good at times, even for genius whores. Her eyes glaze over failing to remember if she has murdered another human being yet. She is not sure.
Coming out of her morphine drip of thought, she will ponder on that later.
One tire kicked, two tires kicked, a rap of knuckles on the door panels. She checks her knuckles. Still there, that’s good.
She likes the icon from a time Detroit was cool, had style, soul, turns, gawks and, then shushes a smile from her lips, as she stops in mid stride. From out of an acid trip past, a disco world, a guy looking like a Vegas Wayne Newton, strolls towards her, patent leather, Dacron, polyester everywhere. Most men had left any semblance to originality long behind them, but this dude has something, she giggles in her brain to herself.
He sidles up like a drip of butterscotch plaid, maybe thinking he can score twice; once with the Caddy and the other with the sleek doll as he purrs. “I can see ya got great taste, doll.”
‘Doll, your fucking kidding me’ sweeps around her brain.
She likes him. Why not cut the player some slack.
Fighting a grin, she lights up a Marlboro, tilts the pack at him, snaps the Zippo shut. Unable to help himself, Dick follows the smoke from her lips into the smog as if it were the last bit of oxygen left in the world.
“You think so?” She purrs.
She tilts the pack some more, fights grinning and cuts him out a smile.
A debonair guy, he takes a cigarette, catches the lighter in mid air, smiles as Mandals says. “Nice catch.”
Seduction is her specialty plying everywhere around both of them.
He looks her over, as well as the lighter. He nods in approval, lights up his filtered cigarette. Handing the Zippo back, he’s living in a world of delusion.
“Thanks doll, sweet lighter.”
She slots the lighter into her jeans change slot, she smiles.
“Thanks...DICK...Right?’
He takes some Beechnut out, tilts the pack at her. She nods, no. He shrugs his shoulders, peels back the tin and pops the gum into his mouth.
“Right, Dick. Like I was say in’ Miss. It is Miss, is it?”
“That’s right. How about you? There a Mrs. Dick at home?”
She was having a fun time at her own time consuming expense.
Dick, a player at the local Elks Club, was already counting the thread count on a set of sheets at the York Deluxe Motel. He smiles his seducers smile, chews gum, smoke’s a bit. He uses his usual Styx, which usually gets him tail from the strippers over at the Pink Elephant. Cosmetic idiots who when drunk or stoned enough would fuck him just as easily as they would a fucking Cameroon Baboon.
“No doll, No Mrs. Dick. I’m takin’ applications though.”
“Bet the list is a long one, uh?”
Dick grins, sucking smoke into his collapsing lungs, smoke twirling out of his nose like he seen Sean Penn do in one a those movies over there at the Paradise drive in.
“Yeah, but it’s getting shorter by the minute.”
“Yes, well that’s great news.”
Mercurial moods, switch time, mood change. She morphs, her eyes close, no more the imp; she’s on the time clock.
Jerking the mood back to serious, she blinks, eyes roll around her head, come back, nothing sweet in them any longer, playful either; maybe death, maybe not.
Dick sees a different doll, not the sex toy he was day dreaming about screwing silly later, anywhere, even in the back of that Caddy he is praying he will off load on her.
Mandal, now a cold rolled pipe of breathing, talking stainless steel, cuts to the chase.
“How much for the Caddy?”
“Well, as you can see, she’s a classic.”
About to continue, like a nail gun she tacks through his eyes and staples his brain to the back of his head so he can get on with it; the reality of car salesmanship.
“Last time. How much for the Caddy or I scoot?”
Boom one minute; bust the next, boom better.
“Two Grand, guarantee her for 30 days.”
“That long, huh?”
Negativity was not her thing.
A black Lincoln Town Car cruising by with tinted windows gets some gitty-up into her.
“SOLD.”
Dick, about to rap more, but that ends when she digs in her bag, rummages around a world of money. Hand gun flashes by, another, and for a sec he thinks the twist is going to gun him down.
He exhales as the minx fishes out twenty crisp new C-notes, layers his palm with them. She waves four more-tight Benjamin’s in front of his blood shot eyes.
“Another four hundred if we can get the paper done in ten minutes?”
He snaps the green paper out of her hands.
“Done doll. Come on honey; let’s get you in those wheels.”
A hitch in his loafers, he turns and leads Mandal to the trailer he uses as an Office. Through the aluminum door, inside, sets her small butt on a plastic chair and, then whips out his famous seven-minute paper work.
Checking carbons, inking paper here and there, he thinks’ that life is sweet. This trick sweetheart, spooky as she was, whoever the fuck she was pretending to be just paid for some serious cocaine for the night.
He’d be a hero at the Pink tonight, humming away, he could hardly wait.
DICK, FROM, DICK’S quality Used Cars, watches as the Ermine in the black wig, seen that immediately, wings out of the lot, top down.
She was edgy, seemed to be looking over her shoulder a lot. With the serious coin in the sack and the weapons, he figures he pretty much knows why.
That don’t concern him now, for he knows several nude honeys that adored coke, ludes, ecstasy, pot, speed, mushrooms and heroin as much as they loved ass fucking by anyone who could supply them with their nose candy and other treats.
Looking out the window, he picks up the phone and, then watches as the cunt hits the street, smokes the wheels and rips down the Ave. As his coke dealer comes on the line, the last thing he sees are a couple a duel finned tail lights disappearing up the ramp of the Interstate.
The doll is moving south.
He would remember that babe, she had made his day.
“Yeah Mickey, Dick, 3 grams my man. Jack it with a gram of China White...oh yes...
Road Trip
ON THE Interstate, 65 MPH, freedom at last.
It’s, cold, but warmer places are before her.
Needing wind on her blond, she whips off the black wig, flips it in the currents, squeals, manic, happy, rear view mirror, black wig crushed by an eighteen wheeler. Her work boot guns the fuel, 70 MPH now.
The Great Escape is in full bore now.
Happy gal, but for manic depressives, this is just a state of things at the moment; it could change at the drop of a hand gun hammer.
As intelligent and as Mensa qualifying that she is, artists can never trust their brains; common sense is not her strong point. Buying a show boat, flirting with Dick, had been a no-no. She had fucked up; just hadn’t known it at the time.
Never the less, she felt free for the first time in her messed up life. Thoughts of suicide, replaced by terror, usually a Ferris wheel spinning in her head, had vacated, for the moment.
Unfortunately, when a gangster gets the grumps, vacations of thoughts of eating your own gun can be the least of a girl’s fears. Smiling, she feels her luck is holding.
The Caddy coughs, wheezes, gives up some smoke, seems to like her, rights it’s self, catches high octane. She whoops. The De Ville expedites cleanly down the Turnpike. Buzzed cut blond hair, wind, freedom feels good, buts its cold. She reaches over, tools around her valise, finds a black knit hat and plunks it over her white locks.
Clawing a cigarette out of pack, teeth weld on, lighter ignites, wind funneling the flame, she inhales, exhales, wind in the yawl.
Vegas and a future, down south and, then North, 3000 mile trip, straight ahead. Road trips are fun, she settles in. Great fun, no nails in the tires yet, yet a single nail called destiny can right fuck up a girls dreams; something she would learn soon enough.
Feeling giddy, she rummages through her bag, finds her apple music machine, did not forget that. Savage, needing music, head phones on tiny ears, click, music, “The Bangles sing.”
“It’s a perfect daaa-aay, everything is going my way....It’s...A...Perrrrr....feeeeect....daaaaaay.”
She lips sinks, slouches, slaps a boot on the dash, smokes, rams’ the accelerator.
Zoom, in a flash of Bangles blond she is gone.
FOR THE rest of day she tools south, pleased the Coup De Ville shows no sign of her advanced age. Sipping Wild Turkey, she calms, time not to think, not worried about the fact that Tony’s posse might be sniffing out her blood trail.
It was time to reminisce about a fucked up life; a born loser life.
There had been nude dancing, then ‘Out Call’ in Manhattan, Hampton’s, had a regular John, big luxury Yacht anchored at the Chelsea Piers in NYC.
Men wanted to change her, make her better, own her; of course fuck her.
She had done a few stints in Europe, luxury, first class, private jets, lots of fucking, beaches, motor boat rides, skiing, arm candy for the rich, women too. Marriage was mentioned, often. Many of the tricks wanted her to stop whoring, companion time, image thing, allowances, crib penthouses, drivers, whatever her platinum cunt wanted. No one got it, she, so fucking exotic, brainy, beautiful, a rare stunning toy every kid wanted to own. She had hated every fucking one of them.
After, selling out, she became Tony’s girl.
Deals were struck. He bought her, body, her cunt, lock, stock and barrel, minus her heart and brain out right.
She dragged the poor Dago everywhere.
Anything she had ever asked for, he ever said no. He adored her.
He was an addicted junkie for her; she being that opium pipe, the burning white flake, so enticing, so intoxicating. Tony unable to put down the pipe he loved the white drug of her addiction. She drove him flat stoned crazy.
Love is like that, even when a genius whore is loved by a sociopath murderer. Go fucking figure.
No self worth, no self esteem, confused all the time, an artist trying to suss it all out. Sometimes they never do.
Ask Van Gogh what he got for his gift. Pain was her only outlet, that’s why the scars, faded silk lines on her face, off-setting a brain like a Kansas wheat threshing machin
e, fighting fields of burning chafe.
She had sold out, not for the usual reasons. Tony gave her freedom, an opportunity. Since she owned his brain, connected to his cock, she moved him around like a pawn on some mobster chess board.
With only one ogre to pay homage to, to answer to, though she did whatever she goddamn wanted and, whenever she goddamn pleased, she buried herself in learning.
From his estate in The Hampton’s, to his various cribs in NY and NJ, she literally became a queen.
What she did have, was something rare in a world of the ordinary. She had moralistic integrity fueled by a red-hot hatred of all falsehoods.
An artist, on a journey of enlightenment, she was willing to pay the VIG; even if it meant debasement of her body, cunt, soul but, never her brain or her heart. Clinically, she was dangerously mentally ill.
She was a compulsive liar, unhinged no matter how you fucking turned the cards.
Born of genius, completely self destructing as she breathed, she feared almost nothing in life, except the thugs in NJ, that were now hunting her. Tony adored her, for though she literally burnt through his patience, bank account like an oil rig fire, she somehow made his life better.
What does not kill you makes you stronger.
Years, it had taken her to finally submit to Anthony Uruguay.
In time, she had grown to respect him. His world was cut of truth, unmitigated violence and savage honesty.
Hate someone; kill them. Lust for it; take it. Love someone; give them everything. Protect them from terror, from poverty, from the distracting crap of life.
It had been a gift from The Fat Man that had finally allowed her to pursue her passions.
She had opted for him, his power, a God of his jungle, a brutal survivor, a bullet proof vest shielding her from being distracted. Nothing could penetrate it and she had known it and had abused it.
Anthony Uruguay had fucked her, so fucking what.
It’s always a trade off, youth, skin, beauty for a man’s lust; she knew that. It didn’t bother her. She was allowed to do her thing, educate herself, learn, spoil her bitch ass silly and she had.
