by Sweet, W. G.
He watched the cars slide by and tried to work it out in his head. The problem was he was too far off the edge of down. He needed to be more up, high, wasted to think straight. The brain just didn't work without the sauce. He needed some good shit, and for that he needed some money. Just enough to get enough good shit to get a good high tonight and maybe a good high tomorrow when it all wore off and the jingle jangles set in? … Maybe, he decided. Maybe. Bobby turned away from watching the cars as the paper bag bounded over his feet and tumbled along the avenue. The diner down the block was calling. Sometimes he had scored in the parking lot, there were truckers, creeps, who knew, but they were in this area for one thing and it wasn't the food. All he had to do was find the right guy and he'd be set. He looked once more at the traffic and then turned and walked off toward the diner.
New York: Rochester
John Simons
The sidewalks below him were crowded. John stood at the apex of the steps that led up to the old court house. It was impressive. He looked down at his hands, shifting the small silver canister from hand to hand, rolling it across his palm, treating it as though it were just a small fascination to occupy his mind, when in fact he knew it was something more. He didn't know what, exactly. He wasn't paid to know what. Maybe someone up the ladder knew what, he didn't, and it was likely he never would, but it was something more than just a shiny little object to occupy his mind.
He had done hundreds of these small jobs. Little things. Little things that probably meant nothing in the scheme of things, at least that's what he had always told himself. A little mental salve to prevent an infection of the larger truth. Little things he never heard a single thing about later on. Little things, but he suspected this time, this job was not a little thing at all. He suspected this was a big thing. He suspected he would hear about this one down the road. He suspected this one would come back to bite him in the ass.
The trouble was, in for a penny, in for a pound. It all mattered. He had taken job after job where he might leave an item on a park bench. Drop off a set of wheels in the middle of the desert. Switch a suitcase at an airport. Little jobs. Little jobs and he had never said no. Never complained about them. Never turned one down. And so here he was about to press the activator on a small, silver canister that might do anything. Anything at all. And was he worried about that? Yes, he was.
It was not so much worry for himself. He didn't really believe the thing would blow up. He didn't truly think they would take him out that way, if there was ever a reason to take him out, that was. He quickly shut down that line of thought. He had too much to worry about right now without starting a whole new avenue of doubt.
So, no, he did not believe it would blow up. He believed it would hiss and release a giant cloud of some sort of toxic gas, gases even, he amended. Waste, poison, something, but, if that were the case, how could he safely set it off and not be contaminated himself?
The instructions were to walk to the top of the courthouse steps, depress the red button, and then toss it away. No specific direction, just away. It apparently didn't matter. And, he thought now, wasn't this exactly the way some terrorist would do it? Do an attack? A poison gas attack? An unclassified viral attack? He had seen a few movies, this was the way he would do it if he was writing the script. The girl beside him spoke.
“If this is going to take much longer you're gonna have to pay more. I know I said it would be cool, a fifty, I mean, but standing around here is wasting my time. I got places to be. I got...”
He cut her off. “And you ain't got no money yet. And if you do want the money then you need to shut the fuck up.” He went back to his self observation. A second later he looked back at her. “Hey, hey,” he soothed. She had begun to pout. Just another street girl with a habit and too much time on her hands to feed it.
“Look...” He waited for her to look at his hand. He held the small vial upright. “Do me a favor, okay? I was looking around because, well because, I want a picture right here. Now all you have to do is push this little red button... Aim at me, it's got a little camera in there...You can't see it, it's one of those new ones, like them spy ones? So all you got to do is point it at me and then press the button.” He held the canister and looked around. She tried to take the canister from his hand and he snatched it away.
“Goddammit, Dude, You want it or not?” She stamped her foot exactly like the spoiled child she was and was destined to always be.
“Yeah... Yeah I do. Just... See that corner over there? The top of the stairs? That little what-do-you-call-it hollow between those two pillars? Wait until I get there and take the picture.” He handed her the silver canister and started away.
“Hey! How the fuck am I spos'ed to tell? There ain't no screen thingy, what-the-fuck-it-is?”
He turned back and smiled. “Just face it to me and do it. It's not supposed to have a thing, screen, just do it.”
She turned the canister to her face. It was only about four inches long, maybe an inch thick. It didn't look like a camera at all. She turned it back to John and clicked the button. Nothing, not even a click. It didn't work. It was bullshit just as she had thought.
John froze when he saw her push the button, but nothing happened. Nothing at all. She had pushed it just a few inches from his nose. No odor. No vapor he could see. No anything. He pulled it from her fingers and flipped it back and forth. The red button was depressed now and although he tried to work a thumbnail under it to pull it back up he couldn't do it. He bought it closer to his nose, nothing. No odor. He pressed it to his ear. No hissing. It was a dead. A dud. Whatever it was it did nothing at all. Maybe it had even malfunctioned. He hefted it a few times and then let it drop from his fingers. It hit the stone step below him with a small metallic click, and then rolled away to the edge. It dropped to the next step, but it didn't have enough momentum to find it's way across that step to the next. He turned back to the girl.
“You broke my camera,” he told her.
“Did not, and that ain't no fuckin' camera anyway. You think I'm just stupid?”
“I do think you're stupid. You broke it. You broke it and so I ain't paying you. Fact, you should pay me for breaking my camera! Besides which, you pressed it before it was time. You fucked the whole thing up. I shouldn't pay you shit. Not a fuckin' dime.”
“Yeah?” she asked. Her eyes were wet, but they were also hard. She looked around at the crowd. “That's okay, because you know what?”
“What?” John asked. He smiled. She was stuck and he knew it.
“What is, I'm fourteen. Fourteen. And I bet you if I was to start yelling right now, oh, something like rape. If I was to say Rape!” She raised her voice a little and a nearby couple flashed their eyes at the two and slowed.
John flinched and drew back from her.
“Yeah, see? So, now if I was to do that I bet your tune would be different. I just bet it would.”
“Twenty,” John said. His smile was gone.
“You said fifty. Fifty is what you said, and it should be eighty.” She picked eighty out of a hat. It was three more dimes, and three more dimes was a lot better than five. “It is eighty. It's eighty because you tried to rape me!” She raised her voice once more and John's hand plunged quickly into his back pocket. He flipped a fifty and three tens at her from the wallet he quickly pulled free, and she had to scramble to catch the money. Two of the tens fluttered to the stone step below her and she flashed a hard smile at him. The couple that had cut their eyes at them were now stopped and staring at the two of them. A cell phone appeared in the woman's hand and when John met her eyes there was something there he didn't like at all. The girl scooped up the money, muttering as she did, and John headed down the stairs two at a time. A few minutes later he had blended into the crowd and was making his way away from the downtown area.
Seattle Washington
Bobby
The prostitutes were just beginning to show up in force, waiting for the early morning traffic. Bobby Chambe
rs sat with his back against the wall of an alley: Needle ready, and a speed-ball cooking over a tin of shoe polish. There was a bum sleeping a little further down the alley. Bobby ignored him, watching the mixture in the blackened spoon begin to bubble, melting together.
Two hours before he had been sitting in the diner waiting for his world to end. He had paid for the bottomless cup of coffee the place advertised, but ten cups had done nothing to improve his situation. He was still sick. He was still broke, and he needed something to take the edge off the real world, which had been sucking pretty hard at that time. A trucker had come in and ate his dinner just two stools away from Bobby, but every time he had worked up the courage to ask him for a couple of bucks the guy had stared him down so hard that he had changed his mind.
He had just made up his mind to leave. Even the waitress was staring hard every time he asked for more coffee. The cops couldn't be far away, when the trucker had reached back for his wallet, pulled it free, took a ten from inside and dropped it on the counter top.
Bobby watched. It was involuntary. One of those things you did when your head was full of sickness and static. Just a place for your ever moving eyes to fall. The wallet was one of those types he had seen bikers use. A long chain connecting it to the wide leather belt he wore. Hard to steal. Hard to even get a chance at. The man stuffed the wallet back into his pocket. Sloppy, Bobby saw, probably because he knew the chain was there and so if it did fall out he would know it. He turned and put his ass nearly in Bobby's face as he got up from the stool. The wallet was right there. Two inches from his nose, bulging from the pocket. The leather where the steel eye slipped through to hold the chain, frayed, ripped, barely connected. The man straightened and the wallet slipped free. The chain caught on the pocket, slipped down inside, and the wallet came free, the leather holding the steel eye parted like butter, and the wallet fell into Bobby's lap. He nearly called out to the man before he could shut his mouth. His hand closed over the wallet and slipped it under his tattered windbreaker. The waitress spoke in his ear a second later.
“Listen...”
Bobby jumped and straightened quickly in his seat, his heart hammering hard against his rib cage. Busted. Busted and he had shoved the wallet into his wind breaker, double busted...
“Listen,” the waitress continued, “buy something else of get the fuck out. You hear me? Otherwise, my boss,” she turned and waved one fat hand at the serve through window, “Says to call the cops.”
Bobby stared at her in disbelief. He was sure that everyone in the diner had seen the wallet fall into his lap. He swallowed. “Yeah... Okay... I'm leaving,” he said with his croaky voice. Sometimes, getting high, he didn't speak for weeks. It just wasn't necessary. When he did he would find his voice rusty, his throat croaking out words like a frog. Sometimes he was right on the edge of not even being able to understand the words. Like they had suddenly become some foreign language. He cleared his throat, picked up the cup of cold coffee and drained it. “Going,” he said.
He got up from the stool, kept one hand in his pocket holding the wallet under the windbreaker and walked out the front door.
L.A.: 2:00 am.
Beth
The night wore on. Midnight came and went and the club shut down for another day. Beth worked at cleaning up the last little area of the bar as two of the dancers finished their drinks and hushed conversations, smiled at her and walked away. A short conversation with Don, probably some crude remark, Beth has seen how both of them had instantly stiffened their backs after he spoke. It wasn't just her, Don was an actual creep. Whatever he had said the two girls chose to ignore it, turning away, making eye contact with Beth, waving as if they had been at the bar talking to her, and when Don looked back to see who they had been waving at they slipped out the door. Don mad his way over to the bar.
“You scared my honeys away,” he told her.
“I think you can do that all on your own,” Beth told him.
“What's that supposed to mean?” Don asked.
Beth frowned and shook her head. Sometimes she wondered if Don even knew what a creep he was. How he made the girls who worked here, her included, feel. “It means that not everyone is always on the same page,” Beth said. She had changed her mind at the last second. She had to work here. Don was the nephew of the owner. Creep or not he was part of the package.
Don looked confused.
“Donny, it means that sometimes you just have to let things happen. Go slow. A girl wants to think it was her own idea to like you,” she told him.
“Yeah... I can see that, but when you need it you need it. Some of these bitches need to be on point.” One finger disappeared into his nose and then he seemed to suddenly remember she was there. “You know, me and you need to hook up. I got ...” One massive hand settled onto his shoulder and he stopped in mid sentence.
“Disappear, Donny. I need to talk to Beth right now,” Jimmy told him as he sat down at one of the stools.
“We was just talking, uncle Jimmy.”
“Right. And now you're done talking... Unless you're not? Am I interrupting you?”
Don turned beet red. He laughed to hide the embarrassment. “No... No,” he turned and walked away.
Jimmy turned to Beth. “I guess you'll have to get used to the kid. He's a pain in the ass, but he's my pain in the ass... Load to bear,” He turned and watched Don step out the door to the parking lot. “Donny,” Jimmy yelled. Don poked his head back in the door and looked at his uncle. “Take a good look around out there, make sure the lot's empty and the girls all got to their cars okay.”
“Okay, uncle Jimmy,” Don called back. The dopey smile that he usually wore settled back on his face as he stepped out into the darkness. Jimmy turned back to Beth.
“Billy Jingo,” he said.
Beth looked at him.
“I think that kid is bad news for you... Not telling you how you should live your life, just distributing advice... A girl like you, a singer, don't need a distraction like that. The customers don't want to see no boyfriend hanging around. Spoils the fantasy that you're singing just to them.” He held her stare.
“It's not like that, Jimmy. Billy is a friend only... Lives in the same building.” She had caught the fact that he had said she was a singer. Something she wasn't yet, unless...
“Uh huh. But he wants you. The kid is like a love sick puppy. If you could step back and look at it you would see it clearly. Are you telling me you are smart enough to handle Donny and you can't see this Jingo kid has it bad for you?”
Beth shrugged. “No... I know... I know that... But he knows it isn't going to happen. He knows what the deal is.”
“Good... That's all I'm saying... But you need to tell him to stay away... Can't be hanging around while you're working... See?”
Beth nodded. “I see.”
“Good, cause next week you start as my lead act. I know you...” He stopped as Beth lunged across the bar and hugged him, squealing as she did. He hugged her back, laughing.
She kissed his cheek and then the smile went away a little as one hand cupped the side of her breast. Her eyes focused on his own. “I think we'll become good friends, baby,” he told her. She nodded as his hand roamed a little further and then trailed away across the flat plains of her stomach. She pulled back. Jimmy wore a crooked smile on his face. “So we understand each other?”
“Yeah,” Beth told him.
“So smile then. Let's have a drink... On me... Pour us something good, baby,” Jimmy told her.
3:00 am
Beth stepped out into the darkness of the parking lot. She had spent over a month trying to convince Jimmy to let her sing. The Palace had huge crowds every night. Everyone knew that scouts were constantly cruising the crowd looking for talent. More than one act had been discovered at the Palace. Harry knew that and played on the reputation. Singing here could lead to the big break she was looking for. She had gotten her wish tonight, and more than she had bargained for, a relations
hip with Jimmy. She wasn't sure how that was going to be defined in public, but in private it was going to be defined as a sexual relationship. He had just defined it for her, she would have to wait to see what the public definition was going to be, but she had a good idea how it was going to be.
Nan, the dancer Jimmy was currently seeing, was going to be upset. Jimmy was not subtle. It had been clear that they had been seeing less and less of each other. She had no doubt that her first night he was going to make it clear she was his. Like a dog marking his territory. She sighed. Off the street but still getting fucked for money. She hated putting it that starkly in her head, but that was the plain truth. She was still selling it, just different terms, better money, better protected. She heard footsteps running behind her and her breath caught in her throat. She turned as the club door that exited to the parking lot banged shut.
“Beth,” Don yelled. “Beth.”
She stopped and waited.
“Uncle Jimmy said I should drive you home... He don't want you walking.”
She sighed. She had half expected it. Don ran the twenty feet from the door to where she was. She changed direction and walked slowly toward Don's car. Well, she thought, at least there would be no more bullshit from Don.
Twenty feet away on Beechwood Avenue, the prostitutes were just beginning to show up in force, waiting for the early morning traffic.
Seattle: 6:00 P.M.
Bobby
Bobby Chambers sat slumped against a wall in an alley off Beechwood Avenue, in Seattle's red light district. He had been dead for over six hours. The money he had stolen, had allowed him to indulge in his habit for over eight hours with no sleep. The last injection had killed him.
The Cocaine he had purchased had been cut with rat poison, among other things, so that the hype who had sold it to him could stretch it a little further.
The constant hours of indulging in his habit would have killed him anyway, but the addition of the rat poison was all his overworked heart could stand, and it had simply stopped beating in protest.
