The Soho Press Book of '80s Short Fiction

by Dale Peck

  Finally I says, Nancy, you comfortable? I can call you that, right? Oh yes, she says, and I’m comfortable, but Ron must be worried. You mean the President, I says. No, she says, I mean Ron, Jr., my son. He was with me tonight. Then damn right, I agree with her. Like if I thought some drug addict at Odyssey House was to fuck with my mother or my sister I would be getting my gun already, they would not be alive today. You must care a lot about your mother and sister, she says. Yeah, I’m a family man. You want to see a picture of my baby girl? You mean a picture of your girlfriend? she says. No, I says, my little baby girl, she’s a cute little thing. But weren’t you just telling me about your girlfriends? says Nancy. I didn’t tell you about no girlfriends, I says. Tito the only one brings girls up here, that why I got to clean the house up for him. I don’t trust fooling around with no girls anymore. You never know who they been with. They all sick.

  Sick? asks Nancy, and she starts playing with that hem again. Well, I says, I know this girl lost all her weight. They says she got the AIDS. Had these terrible headaches in the hospital. They wanted to cut her head open but she wouldn’t let them. She left in the middle of the night ’cause they said they wouldn’t let her out.

  The First Lady lets go of that hem. The poor girl! she starts shouting at me. Yo, wait a minute, I tells her. I know rich people got delicate stomachs. But it ain’t my fault. Me and my uncle are helping her out all the time. Anytime she wants to get high, we get her some dope ’cause we be willing to protect this dude that supplies it.

  Oh, but this is terrible, terrible, says Nancy, like a little chick all of a sudden instead of an old lady. This is so terrible that I can’t believe what you’re saying is true. You are giving heroin to an AIDS victim. Well, yeah, I says, we are doing what we can because we are good people. We try to help out when we can. If I have my facts straight, she lays on me, drug abuse can give that awful disease to people. No shit, I says, you mean we’re making her get more sick?

  Just a minute, Tito interrupts, and he lets go of China Sue. Every time we get her high she thanks us and telling us how much better she is feeling. But that’s only temporary, Nancy shoots back, you’re killing her. We won’t do it no more, Suzy promises. But the First Lady has already got a whole different look on her face, a bright idea. Write a letter to me, at the White House. A letter? says Tito. Well I ain’t going to sign it. We’re going to make certain this young girl gets help, says Nancy, that’s all. You mean you got something that will make her feel better? I says. And she nods. It’s all the lady will tell us and it sounds mysterious. Probably something only she can get hold of.

  So I am worrying how am I going to write this letter when the worst thing happens. Because the doorbell starts to ring again. I keep making like it’s not, but whoever it is is leaning on it like the First Lady did before. And the more it rings the madder Tito is getting. Until finally he starts calling out my name: Carlos, c’mere! And I go over and he shouts in my ear, Go downstairs and get rid of you-know-who!

  That’s when I realize I still got just my shorts on and run into the bedroom red as a beet. I start pulling on my pants quick so I can get down there and get rid of her before she gets inside the building—’cause I know who it be! But I know it’s too late too, ’cause, someways, she is always getting in this building. I can hear those heels, then her calling through the door, Carlos, Carlos honey, open up!

  Don’t you answer that fucking door! Tito hisses at me, but she hears him and shouts back, What’s a matter, you got a girl in there?

  So Nancy grabs her purse quick and stands up. What’s going on? she says loud, which is what we didn’t need. All you ever do is lie to me! comes through the door, and Wait till I get my hands on you! Oh, says Nancy, even louder, Look at the trouble I’m causing after you were so nice. Young lady! Don’t worry, I am not his girlfriend, I’m Nancy Reagan!

  Bitch! comes the answer through the door, I’m Diana Ross! So Nancy gets right up and opens the door and says, You see? I’m not his girlfriend.

  Well, it’s this black queen comes up here sometimes. Calls herself Chaka Con, like the singer. She gives Nancy the onceover and can’t believe her eyes. Honey, that drag is so convincing! But do you really want to look that old? Connie, shut up, says China Sue, this is the First Lady. Hmm, hmm, says Con, looks like the Last Lady to me.

  Connie comes over to sit on my lap. Whatever got into me, thinking you was cheating on me. I take back everything I said.

  Chaka, you got to leave, Tito tells her. I just finished saying to Carlos that he got to ask me first before he bring a drag queen up here. But instead of getting up, Connie gets mad. No queens, huh. Then what she doing here?

  Connie, I tells her, this is Nancy Reagan for real. Ok, says Connie, it’s a big world out there, and anybody can be anything they want. Nancy Reagan’s got class and I can see somebody wanting to do her drag, if they can afford it. I ain’t complaining. Now I’m black so I want to be Chaka or Sheila E., but if I was white, I’d probably want to do Farrah Fawcett or somebody.

  What you want here tonight? growls Tito. Ok, I’ll get to the point. I come to get a ten but I only got five and I can bring the rest to you tomorrow. I don’t sell that stuff no more, says Tito. What’s a matter with you, says Connie, you know you can trust me. I really want to get high, baby. I’ll make it worth you while. Both a you.

  Chaka Con licks her lips and looks at Tito, then at me.

  Me and Tito try to give the First Lady a look like what is this queen talking about, but Nancy has turned into some kind of statue. Maybe she has slipped a Valium. Chaka starts looking her up and down. What you doing here, honey? I ripped my dress, says Nancy. This isn’t the girl you were telling me about, is it? Oh no, First Lady, I swears, this one don’t take no dope.

  Chaka Con takes in Nancy’s purse. Oooh, look at that! It’s just like the one Nancy was carrying on TV tonight. Where’d you get it and how you know she was gonna have it tonight? You come here to cop, girl? Why else would a white queen with an expensive purse come all the way down here? Come on, honey, share with your sisters, I’ll give you five and you give me a rock.

  So all of a sudden Nancy gets this look in her eyes like something dawned on her. No, that ain’t it either, how can I explain it? It’s like maybe that is happening somewhere in her head but then she deciding to show that to us. And slow like a statue with a motor in it she turns to me and says, So that’s what’s going on.

  Tito hops up fast. After all this is the President’s wife. You going to believe any nigger drag queen come in here out of the street, Mrs. Reagan? he says.

  The Con hops up too. Wait a minute, dudes, what is going on here? I demand to know! Who is this queen and why is she making everybody so jumpy?

  Chaka Con, says China Sue, I am trying to tell you! This is the First Lady! She come here to get her hem sewn.

  So Chaka walks right up to the First Lady and looks into her face. And then she takes a good look at the hands and the shoe size too, and says. Holy Shit, you’re her! And she grabs hold the First Lady’s hand, says, Mrs. Reagan, I didn’t know, will you ever forgive me? I have admired you for such a long time. All my girlfriends love you.

  It’s perfectly all right, says the First Lady. I know you didn’t know.

  Chaka Con grabs a mirror out of her purse, checks herself out fast and throws it back in. Have you, have you known these folks long? she asks. We just met tonight, Nancy tells her. Umm, excuse me for asking, but in that purse, would you happen to have a needle and thread? No, honey, I mean Mrs. Reagan, I don’t, says Connie like some kind of lady, I do all my sewing at home. In fact I am known as quite a seamstress. If you like, I will send my address to the White House and you can drop by for alterations anytime you please.

  But Nancy gets a deep-freeze look in her eyes again, I never seen such a hard look, and gives a long sigh that everybody can hear, before she says, How kind of you to offer. Now who
expected her to say that after that look and that sigh? But I need help now, she goes on, and drops her head and covers up her face with her hands. You can hear a pin drop.

  Suzy is looking down at her feet, ’cause she don’t want to see the First Lady that way. Me, I keep quiet. Finally Chaka says, Listen, now buck up, lady, c’mon now, I mean you are the First Lady, you ain’t supposed to be crying like that over one silly little hem. Now cut it out, will you. You got responsibilities.

  It’s easy for you to say, Nancy whimpers, you don’t know what it’s like. Nobody does. So Chaka Con gets up and puts her hand on the First Lady’s shoulder. Mrs. Reagan, Mrs. Reagan child, you stop that crying now. And the First Lady says. Well, we have feelings too.

  Can I ask you something? Chaka says. You want me to get that needle and thread for you? Same color as the dress you’re wearing? That would be ever so kind of you, the First Lady mumbles through her fingers.

  Then don’t you worry, Mrs. Reagan, croons Connie, but—uh, well there ain’t no stores open now, oh I mean I could get you some black thread—the First Lady shivers a little when she says this to her—but to match your color, well I’m going to have to go all the way up to 128th Street, to a friend’s a mine . . .

  Nancy looks up. Then you’d better hurry. Do you need cab fare? Well, the cab costs a lot, I hate to ask you for that, child, says Chaka Con. But already Nancy is opening that purse and all of us kind of leaning over to peek inside.

  How much do you need? says Nancy.

  How much do I need? How much do I need? says Chaka. Mrs. Reagan, I got lots of needs. See this wig? See these shoes, see this dress? Well, the wig costs money, the shoes costs money, and the dress costs money. You know how it is, don’t you. I been looking for a job. I sure hope I find one tomorrow. Because, you know, I’m not like those other niggers out there. How I look, the kind of image I have, well, that’s important to me. I can’t stand people don’t take care a themselves. People who let themselves go and ain’t got no respect for themselves. They make me sick, you know what I mean? They lying in their own shit, they expect other people to carry the load for them and then’s they don’t appreciate it when’s they do! And I don’t want to be one of those people. I mean it’s hard for all of us, ain’t it? All I need is just a little headstart, things is bad now but all I need is just a little push to get me going ’cause I got plans. And once I get going nothing can stop me. What you got in that purse there, anyways?

  Nancy shuts that purse fast. You—you got a weapon in there? Connie says, and she looks up at Tito and swallows. Don’t believe everything you read in the papers, Nancy sneers. I didn’t mean nothing by that, Mrs. Reagan. Now listen, you want me to get that needle and thread for you?

  The First Lady’s eyes kind of go dim. I suppose so, she says. Well, gimme a hundred dollars, says Con.

  Nancy starts to freeze up again but makes a big effort. She looks real hard at Chaka Con and she starts to blink a whole lot. I pay it back to you, says Chaka. So Nancy goes back in that purse and takes out two fifty-dollar bills, hands ’em to the Con. Tito, Chaka says, can I talk to you for a minute? But what about the thread? Nancy says. Oh I’m going right out, child, lickety-split.

  Chaka gets up and gallops into the bathroom.

  So now me and Suzy are sitting there alone with the First Lady, and Suzy is just looking down at her feet and finally says, I got to get a drink of water, and trots away too. And I’m left there staring at Nancy so after a minute I says excuse me too and go in the bathroom too. And Tito is just now lighting up that pipe and Chaka Con got it stuck between her lips. But when she sees all these folks and only one little rock in there, she says, C’mon, load it up, I want a king-size toke.

  So we begin to get high, and ’cause Tito has really packed that pipe up, after two tokes my head is rushing like you wouldn’t believe. So when we hear Nancy banging on that door, we look at each other and bursts out laughing. But finally Tito says, Well we got to go out there. And ones of us got to go find that thread for her. And that’ll be you, right, Chaka Con? And Connie looks at him and says, Unh, unh, baby. I’m the one got us this money to pay for all this shit, I ain’t going nowhere. So Tito says, Carlos, you got to go and find that thread. And I tell him, I’m too stoned. So we decide that we going to tell her that Chaka just remembered that friend she thought she had on 128th Street ain’t there no more, she made a big mistake. And if she asks us for the money back, we only give her twenty because she owes us the rest for letting her chill out here. ’Cause wouldn’t the kind of hotel that she would go to cost even more?

  So we go out there together and tell the First Lady just how it has to be. And everybody is waiting for her to get shit-faced mad and call that bodyguard to come back here. You can imagine how surprised we are then when Nancy don’t get mad at all. She just sits there, with that alligator purse in her skinny lap and her knobby hands folded on top of it. Life has its slaps in the face, she says, I’d be the first to admit that. So Tito tells her no hard feelings but some folks don’t find it so easy to get by. And Nancy answers him back, I’ve seen more than you can probably imagine. And Suzy says to her, But First Lady, I thought you was living in some kind of wonder dream. And Nancy Reagan looks her straight in the eye and says, Well, the dream I am living, that fairy-tale dream that I wake up to each morning, in which I am lying next to the kindest, bravest, and most understanding—and I suppose the most powerful—man in the world, well that dream came true for me but I had to work for it. Lord knows I worked to make that dream come true. And looking around me at you, I see these bright, young shining faces. Sure they have suffered a lot already, but they still are alive and burning and aching with the desire to have the things they should have.

  And then she says, Do you know what? I’ve got a funny feeling. Call it an intuition, but you and you and you and you, you’ll have that dream someday. And that’s why it is such a joy to look into your eager young eyes and see the power to make it happen . . .

  Well, I didn’t hear the rest of what Mrs. Reagan was saying, ’cause suddenly my head started to float. It was like—well it was like we are always going to movies me and Tito and my friends. It’s all we ever do ’side from getting high. Now here comes the part where the basketball player kid who up to now is the underdog meets some older person making him realize that he can make it too. It’s the part we all like the best, but we never knew nobody who was going to do that in real life. I mean somebody who could really say that to us. So it was a great high. And suddenly that nervous skinny old lady sitting there got changed into some kind of holy lady. Or a queen. Yeah, that’s it, a queen holding out this wand, and each time she points it at somebody everything goes all right. You gonna be rich now. Or maybe that’s not it. But it is like you going to be rich and have everything you want.

  But the most bugged-out thing of all, that’s when I look over and see Connie and she’s crying. I can hardly hear her but she is saying that, O, Nancy, you came to visit us and we done treated you horrible, girl, we showed you no respect, you know what I be doing with that money you gave me already, I—

  Hush! Says Nancy. There is no need. I don’t need the thread any more because the experience I have had here is a million times more fulfilling than any press conference or TV camera. I will go back to Odyssey House and tell them about this experience. Nancy stands up and it’s like a ray of sun shining on us, and she says, Would you mind if I used your bathroom?

  So Nancy gets up and goes to the bathroom. And we keep sitting there saying nothing. I look at Tito, and China Sue, and Chaka Con, and I see changed people. Nobody can talk.

  Then we start to hear it. I guess I was the first one. Plop plop plop. And I realize I can hear the First Lady. And Tito looks up and so does Chaka Con and China Sue, and we look into each other’s eyes, and finally I says it, because I know that’s what we all thinking. Wouldn’t it be fresh if we could get a look at the First Lady taking a d
ump?

  So one by one we all get up and tiptoe toward the bathroom door to peer through the crack, to watch the First Lady drop her load. She’s got her dress all bunched up and held out in front of her, and the panty hose are just kind of shoved down at her ankles. I don’t know but I expected the First Lady to roll them panty hose down. And then she reaches for the paper—and if you thought about it—well wouldn’t the First Lady take just a few squares at a time and put them on top of each other all neat so that the edges matched? Well this one just grabbed the end of the roll and yanked. But then something else happened, and I don’t know if I want to tell you about it. But ok, I will, and what happened then was, instead of lifting the edge of her ass off the seat and wiping, the First Lady stood up. And when she did, it knocked us all on our ass, because the biggest cock you’ve ever seen flipped out the top those panty hose.

  Well at first it was like a punch in the gut. I mean, being stoned and all, we couldn’t get over it—that the First Lady wasn’t no lady. But finally Chaka Con gets enough breath and says, Child, child, child, you mothafucka, you pulled the wool over our eyes. And the First Lady yanked up the panty hose and pulled off her wig and came out laughing, big, loud, low laughs, laughs I heard before. And Tito, who can hardly get his breath neither, manages to cuff me on the head, gasping, You fool, didn’t I tell you it was a drag queen. And then still laughing, everybody goes to punch Brand X, ’cause that’s who it was. This drag queen Brenda from the Deuce. They call her Brenda X or Brand X most the time. And Tito still gasping, I knew it all along, and Brand X laughing and laughing and saying, Like hell you did, and going to grab that crack pipe, saying, Give me that shit, ’cause I am the one who paid for it. And Suzy laughing and saying, No you wasn’t, it was Nancy Reagan. And where’d you get that kind of money, girl, Chaka Con is saying. You wouldn’t believe the sick trick from Washington, says Brand X, gave me five hundred to put on this drag so he could pretend he was fucking Nancy Reagan. And then the pipe starts going around and our heads fill up with smoke and the First Lady shrinks away, right back to TV size.