by John Rechy
‘And there's a weird bar at the corner,’ Cob says.
‘My sister's waiting for me for dinner,’ Jerry says hurriedly. An excuse to get away from them? Suddenly, to withdraw. No, not a withdrawal—a postponement. He wants to be with them again.
‘We all have to split,’ Shell says. ‘I've got to say goodbye to my old lady, she's going to the fucking beauty farm.’
‘Again?’ Cob asks derisively.
‘Yeah, again,’ Shell says flatly.
‘She pays like a thousand dollars a day at that beauty farm,’ Manny exaggerates, impressed by Shell's wealth. Then abruptly, feeling alone: ‘I don't have to split yet.’
‘Your mother's with some new dude?’ Cob aims.
‘Who's yours with?’ Manny snaps.
‘His sister,’ Shell says.
Cob turns abruptly toward her.
But Shell ends the hostile interlude: ‘I'll pick you up after dinner,’ she tells them. ‘We'll do the interrogation then.’
‘Far out!’ Manny agrees.
‘Who are you going to interrogate?’ Jerry asks softly.
‘We, man; who are we going to interrogate,’ Shell corrects. ‘You're the fourth angel.’
‘Maybe we'll interrogate you,’ Cob tosses at Jerry.
‘We don't interrogate each other,’ Shell deserts Cob.
‘No?’ Cob smiles. Quickly: ‘I'll drive this time, man,’ he says to Shell.
Shell shrugs coolly. But instead of getting in front with him, she sits in the back of the car with Jerry.
His proximity to her—a warmth touches Jerry's body. Despite his desire to withdraw for now, he's glad they'll be together later, even if he'll withhold his commitment to their experience, whatever it will be. There's the howling void of loss. To fill it with their motion!
They left Jerry at his sister's. He stares after them as the car dashes away—Cob clearly trying to outdrive Shell. Jerry feels a new part of his life may be beginning, with them, another part may be dying. But does he want it to die? It belongs to his mother.
After dinner. He waits anxiously for them outside.
There they are. Shell is driving, Cob is in front with her. They haven't picked Manny up yet.
But he's waiting for them before a broken-down house. An old couch—gutted, cotton bowels spilling—squats heavily on a rickety porch. ‘I don't know how late!’ Manny calls back in Spanish to someone inside the dilapidated house. He gets in the car. ‘My old lady bums me out all the fucking time. She sends me off to that fucking J.D. home whenever she wants me out of the way, but she always wants to fucking know when I'll be home.’
They drive away.
Night is coming down, an arc of blue still lights the edge of the sky.
Shell parks the car in an alley behind a boarded-up house.
Its windows are blinded by nailed crossed boards—stark X's like marks signaling imminent destruction. Grassless, its lawn is covered by accumulated weeds. The house seems to be waiting desolately for the hungry machines that will devour it and spill it out as dust. Tangled grotesquely as if they had clawed each other to death in a desperate battle, tumbleweeds crouch against the walls. Wounded. Dead.
On the corner of the same block is a bar—obviously popular from the many cars already parked in the surrounding lot. As if to shut out curious eyes, its windows are painted black.
The four get out of the car. Shell is carrying a paper-towel tube, the towels gone, and a large flashlight, unlit. Wearing the purple glasses even in the twilit dark, Cob carries a transistor radio, turned up now on the savagely beautiful sounds of the Rolling Stones.
From a back window, they draw loose boards apart, and they climb into the abandoned house; they replace the boards carefully in dooming X's.
Inside: large, empty, echoing rooms drowning in the odor of enclosed emptiness, trapped space. Light from the cars speeding along the ramp to the freeway rushes rashly through gapes in the crossed boards and into the house, revealing, in flashes, walls peeling in monster shapes.
This is angel headquarters,’ Manny laughs. His words echo eerily.
They've entered what was obviously the living-room. There's a gutted, crumbling fireplace, powdered cement like ashes on the floor. Electrical wires have been cut; like severed veins. The house is dead. Jerry feels as if he's moved physically into the empty part of himself.
Shell sits on the decaying floor. Immediately she begins to work mysteriously on the towel tube. Manny sits down too. Facing each other across the gray darkness, Jerry and Cob remain standing. Then Cob breaks the tense closeness by sitting down. An outsider, stretching the time of his deliberate exile, Jerry remains standing for long moments. Finally he joins them on the floor. He sits between Shell and Cob.
Carefully, Shell has cut a round hole the size of a fifty-cent piece into the cardboard funnel. Now she's covering the hole with a strip of tinfoil, which she secures with masking tape. She depresses the portion over the hole. With a pin brooch, a golden subdued eye in the darkness, she punches several holes into the tinfoil. From a plastic bag she's removed from the pocket of her skirt, she takes out a brownish-green chunk and fills the hollow. Now she smiles at Jerry: ‘This'll stone you.’
‘It's hash,’ Manny announces.
‘It'll get you so righteous ripped,’ Cob promises Jerry.
Jerry feels excited. Escape!
Legs crossed, they move closer together in a rectangle. Shell presses the improvised pipe to her mouth. Cob holds a match to the hash as her palm alternately covers and uncovers the open end.
Retaining the smoke she drew, Shell leans over, holding the pipe to Cob's lips, still working her palm against the opening to allow the air in. He hits. Now she holds the pipe for Manny They are involved in a ritual, with rules. Now she includes Jerry in the ritual.
He inhales, feels the smoke in his lungs and almost coughs it out, holds it. Waits expectantly.
Then the mysteriously intimate ritual is played again. This time Cob holds the pipe to his own lips, then to theirs. They take turns holding the pipe, passing it from mouth to mouth until the hash is smoked.
Seized by the mellowing mood, Shell leans back on the floor, floating in the darkness. Manny lies down. Cob sighs. The music from the radio evaporates into the dark air.
Jerry concentrates. What does he feel? What do they feel? With bitter disappointment, he says aloud: ‘I don't feel anything.’
Wordlessly, Shell fills another pipe with hash. She holds it to Jerry's mouth, Cob lights it. Jerry inhales deeply, deeply, withdraws.
‘More,’ Shell says.
Jerry inhales from it again.
‘More!’ Shell repeats.
Again Jerry hits.
‘More!’ Shell holds the pipe relentlessly to his mouth, hardly allowing him an interval to breathe. ‘More!’
Jerry inhales audibly.
‘Are you stoned now?’ Shell demands.
Jerry waits before answering. He wants to join them. But nothing. He shakes his head.
‘It's the downers,’ Cob says.
‘I'm stoned,’ Manny giggles. ‘Man, I am so fucking messed up and ripped! I got off on the first hit, man!’
Now: A silence. The silence of the house raided by the melting rock sounds from the radio.
What Jerry does feel is Shell's sensuality. He stares openly at her, so close—so calm suddenly.
‘You dig her?’
At first Jerry didn't know who had spoken the easy words, they came without origin out of the darkness—as if pulled from his mind. It was Cob who spoke them.
In the cloudy darkness, Shell's expression is intact.
Manny giggles: ‘Shell, man … Shell … She's really … Wow!’
‘Do you?’ Jerry asks Cob back.
Shell sits up. Her laughter rushes into the empty dark house.
Manny says: ‘Shell don't dig anyone, right, Shell?’
‘Right,’ she says. Then: ‘Just us! The four angels!’
She has allo
wed—forced—Jerry and Cob to withdraw.
Now minutes flow with the music, which mingles with the advancing darkness as night invades the old house, swallowing even the outlines of dim shadows.
‘What about my interrogation?’ Manny asks. Shooting out of his mind, mangled memories—the J.D. home! The interrogation: ‘Confess! You do grass, acid, smack?’ Solitary! The cramped filthy cell! His arm wrenched back, a fist blackening his vision! Cockroaches! Filth! And the sound of others shouting!
‘Yeah, we've got to do Manny's interrogation,’ Shell says.
‘Who are we going to interrogate?’ Jerry asks again. We … But will he flow with them in the current they choose? Will he stay?
‘A faggot from that queer bar at the corner,’ Cob clarifies viciously.
The drug's mellowness has ended abruptly.
Suddenly the four are standing.
‘We need a decoy,’ Shell says.
‘Jerry,’ Cob chooses.
An aspect of unreality springing darkly into reality. Stirrings of a new anger. But: ‘I wouldn't know what to do,’ Jerry withdraws from the sparking excitement.
A sinister, dark-glassed presence in the black room, ‘We'll tell you,’ Cob says.
‘Why not you, Cob?’ Jerry tosses.
‘Yeah, Cob, how about you?’ Shell asks.
‘Because I've got to be here,’ Cob says.
‘Why?’ Shell challenges.
Cob answers himself: Because otherwise you'll be in control. Aloud he says: ‘Jerry's the new angel.’
‘Man, if the dude don't want to …’ Manny starts.
‘Do you want to, Manny?’ Shell asks him. Is there a hint of accusation?
‘It's not that I want to, it's just that if like the dude don't want to …’ Manny feels slightly on trial.
‘Okay. Manny,’ Shell chooses, releasing Jerry.
I'll never see my mother again, the thought almost forms on Jerry's mind as if he's about to surrender one world to another.
4
Jerry's world: A voice has been stilled, a body has disappeared. And his need of his mother is unchanged. That is death: sudden silence. And frozen memories. The despised hospital. And the next night—or the next?—time was a black ocean surrounding him—when was it that he sat outside the locked mortuary where her body lay?—sat under the dark sky and kept a silent vigil.
Quickly now, he looks at Shell, Cob, Manny. They stand outside in the waiting night. To stir time, ‘Let's start!’ Jerry hears his enraged words.
‘Like the cat's really up for it now,’ Cob says. Satisfaction? Resentment?
‘The interrogation!’ Manny says eagerly.
Stars are dear in the field of sky.
From cars parked in the lot surrounding the crowded bar, young and youngish men and women move into it, occasionally stopping to talk to someone recognized.
The large flashlight in her hand like a weapon, Shell studies the milling groups. ‘Okay,’ she assumes command. ‘We'll stay here, and you'll go out to the lot, Manny. When you have someone, we'll split inside and wait for you.’
‘What'll I do?’ Manny asks cautiously.
‘Just hang around the lot,’ Cob says.
‘And look like you're really up for making it,’ Shell instructs.
Resistance to commit himself to this adventure. For a few moments Jerry wants to leave. But the empty night contains death. He'll commit himself in stages.
An ambiguous smile wounds Cob's wolfish face: he retains his dark-purple stare steadily on Jerry.
Carried by the excitement of the approaching adventure, Manny has moved quickly into the car lot.
‘Why do you keep looking up?’
Shell's words surprised Jerry; he realizes he's looking at the sky, clear but black like on the night of his lonesome vigil outside the mortuary.
‘Just looking at the sky,’ he attempts to dismiss. But the memory of death choked his voice.
Shell's words assault with unexpected brutality: ‘And the sky makes you want to cry?’
‘I'm just looking at the sky,’ Jerry says angrily. Now his words come in bewilderment: ‘The sky seems so dark since my Mom …’ Unexpectedly he blurts: ‘I locked the room immediately after!’
‘What room?’ Shell seizes.
‘Her bedroom. I locked it. I haven't opened it since.’ Jerry's voice almost breaks again.
Cob glances quickly at Shell.
She looks back at him as if exchanging a silent message.
Then, in a controlled voice, so controlled that her words are almost whispered, Shell says to Jerry: ‘Diggit: crying is the worst shit. When you cry, it's all over for you because that's when the shit takes over. When you cry, you're through.’
‘We'll teach you to stop,’ Cob's tone matches Shell's as he echoes her words of this afternoon.
‘You don't have to teach me anything!’ Jerry says firmly. ‘I wasn't crying.’ And he has conquered the welling tears.
‘Good,’ Shell smiles.
A tension, a closeness. The three stand in the shadows of the alley, watching Manny.
Flexing, his hands in his pockets to tense his muscles, Manny leans against a car in the lot. Three youngmen on their way to the bar pause to look at him.
Quickly, one of the group—he could have been twenty, thirty—makes an about-face toward Manny.
In the alley: ‘Watch him fuck up,’ Cob predicts.
‘No,’ Jerry defends Manny, ‘he'll be okay.’ The boundary of his commitment is extending.
In the car lot: ‘Hi!’ The youngish-man's eyes reveal his age as closer to thirty.
‘Hi,’ Manny answers. He doesn't know what to do.
Silence.
‘Are you hustling?’ the youngish man blurts.
Echoes of talk in the detention home; the state institution. Youngmen bragging about hustling other men. Manny understands. But he doesn't answer, he doesn't know what this man wants to hear. ‘Well—uh …’ he stutters.
The youngish man sighs. ‘You are,’ he determines sadly. ‘And I don't go for that. Good luck.’ He walks away.
In the alley: ‘He fucked up!’ Cob blurts.
‘Give him a chance,’ Jerry says.
‘You want to go?’ Shell shoots at Cob.
In the parking lot: Manny turns frantically toward the shadowed alley. Are the three judging him? … Often it seems to him that he's on the brink of an unjustified verdict, an undeserved sentence.
Another group of youngmen on their way to the bar is approaching. They pass him without acknowledgment. Panic! Then: Interminable empty moments:
Broken suddenly by the presence of a very effeminate youngman clearly in his early twenties. ‘Hello!’ he approaches Manny aggressively. ‘You want to come with me? I've got a nice place and lots of booze!’
‘Booze!’ Manny says indignantly.
The effeminate youngman says uncertainly: ‘Don't you drink?’
‘Oh, uh, yeah, sure, man,’ Manny says carefully. ‘But I got a better idea,’ he rushes.
‘Really?’ the effeminate youngman says deliriously.
‘That house over there,’ Manny points to the boarded house. He can discern the outlines of the three in the murky shadows. ‘It's empty. We could like go there, man.’
‘Is it safe?’ the effeminate youngman hesitates.
‘Yeah, sure,’ Manny is impatient, knowing Shell and the others are watching.
The youngman is becoming progressively more effeminate, like a very young but very aggressive girl. ‘But my place is so much more private—I've got a car.’
‘The house is closer,’ Manny says.
The youngman cocks his head—and now he's the complete parody of a girl: ‘You are horny … Okay, let's go!’
In the alley: ‘He's hooked! Let's go inside!’ Cob says.
But Shell makes no move. ‘He's like a girl,’ she says.
‘So what?’ Cob confronts Shell.
Approaching the dead house, Manny realizes with be
wilderment that the three are still standing outside. What's wrong? Now Shell is actually coming toward them! What the hell!
‘Who is she?’ the effeminate youngman blurts.
‘I'm his sister,’ Shell says toughly. Cob and Jerry wait nearby. ‘What the fuck are you doing with my brother?’
‘Oh, Christ,’ the effeminate youngman says despondently.
‘You'd better fucking split!’ Shell says to him.
The effeminate youngman sees Jerry and Cob now; he retreats quickly. Now he's running.
Jerry feels relief. The interrogation has been aborted.
‘What the fuck is the matter with you, Shell?’ Cob demands angrily. ‘You deliberately blew it!’
‘Yeah, man, what the fuck is this?’ Manny asks.
‘He was wrong, that's all,’ Shell says quietly.
Cob studies her harshly. Then he laughs loudly, as if he's glanced at an exposed secret. ‘You know, Shell, you're really funny.’
‘One day I'll fucking show you how funny I can fucking be,’ Shell warns. But a smile clings determinedly to her face.
‘You don't scare me, Shell.’ Cob's dark-shielded eyes trap her.
‘Why should I want to?’ Shell asks him. Quickly to Manny: ‘You'll have to go get another guy, man.’
Manny moves back to the car lot. He doesn't understand, but he wants to avoid a hassle.
The three retreat back into the shadows of the alley.
In the parking lot Manny waits. He should have insisted they interrogate that guy. He smiles, imagines a confrontation with Shell.
‘You always smile?’
Manny sees a man in his upper twenties, tall, well-dressed; slender, good-looking, masculine; his hair is longish, his sideburns are full.
‘Oh, uh, yeah, I smile a lot,’ Manny chooses his words carefully.
In the alley: Stirring shadows: Jerry, Cob, Shell.
‘He'll do!’ Shell says.
‘Maybe he won't come, though,’ Jerry says, and hopes suddenly the man won't, that the scene will end now. And with Shell's anger. Yes, Shell's anger in defeat. He faces his antagonism toward her too, antagonism mixed with desire. Deliberately he moves out of the heavy darkness, his outline thrust into the wing of the corner streetlight.
