by Peter Plate
Mandelstam hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours and needed a shave. His riot boots had given him athlete’s foot, and he couldn’t find the Brinks money. He was coming down with a head cold, his second one in three weeks. He said the only thing he knew: “You were born, motherfucker.”
The dealer and the cop were inches apart. Mandelstam was malodorous with apples, tobacco, and gunpowder. Richard exuded the charms of a man who hadn’t bathed in a week. The gunshot scars on his abdomen were milk-white and writhed like snakes.
“Get your clothes together and get on out of here,” the policeman said.
Richard Rood heeded the cue. In one motion, he fetched his suit off the concrete. Trembling in his yellow briefs, he dematerialized into the fog. He ran easterly on Market Street, hair flying, boot heels slapping against the paving stones. The Allen Hotel was one block away. Setting his eyes on the hotel’s hulking shadow, Richard smiled crookedly. Things were looking better already. The sole light was in a window on the fifth floor.
That was Stiv Wilkins’s crib. It was showtime.
TWENTY-ONE
THE WIND TICK-TICKED through the cracks in the room’s walls. A streetlight was aglow in the window and penciled Sharona’s face in shades of chrome and gold. The baby was asleep in her arms, dreaming of cats and dogs. The door opened and Stiv promenaded in with a foolhardy gait. His skin was dusky with soot. There was a hole in the crotch of his Dickies. Blood flecked his shins. The blister on his cheek had a crater with a two-inch radius.
The bleariness in his eyes reminded Sharona of the first dead animal she ever saw. It had been a blue jay in her parents’ backyard. The sun had been bright and the wind was blustery. Ants were crawling over the jay. She poked at the bird with a stick, but it didn’t move. That made her furious, that she couldn’t get it to do anything. She said, “Stiv?”
He went stock-still at the sound of his name, like a criminal caught in the spotlight. He tried to smile, but his mouth revolted and didn’t cooperate. “Yeah, tootsie,” he said. “What is it? You okay?”
“Where the hell have you been?”
“Fuck, girl, I can’t even begin to tell you.”
She was less than enamored with his preamble. “I’ve been waiting all day for you.”
Stiv gimped over to the mini-fridge, opened it, and looked in. The view wasn’t celebratory. The bulb had burned out in a heap of green fungus and there wasn’t a thing to eat, except the butt-end of a cucumber. He took a bite out of it and said, “That ain’t my fault.”
“I’m not saying it’s your fault.” Sharona kept her voice down, as to let the kid sleep. “God, you asshole, you look terrible. What happened to you?”
Stiv was noncommittal. “A little accident.”
“So where were you?”
“I was at Jeeter’s place.”
“What did you do there?”
“I sold him a gun.”
“A gun?” Sharona was incredulous. Frown lines corrugated her forehead. The seething in her eyes made her skin seem even whiter than it was. “You fuck, I thought you said were done with that.”
“Well, I ain’t.”
“Then where did you go?”
“I went to the post office.”
“What for?”
“Nothing.”
“And after that?”
“I cruised over to a house I know about in the Castro.”
“What’s with your hair? It’s horrible. You need to see a doctor.”
“I ain’t going to see no doctor.” Stiv couldn’t keep the spleen out of his voice. “Look, I’ve told you everything. Stop nagging me.”
“I’m nagging you?”
Stiv nibbled on the cucumber. “Yeah, cool it, okay?”
That was all she needed to hear. Sharona put the baby on a blanket and rolled out of bed. Scared because there wasn’t any food and terrified because she was a step away from homelessness, she mustered up what strength she had, whatever wasn’t getting sapped from being with the kid, and tippy-toed over to the fridge.
Aware of a change in her demeanor, Stiv mellowed. Sharona’s firm breasts were magnetized to the flannel nightgown she wore. He was hypnotized by the liquidity of her hips. He rotated to face her, and saw an apology in her eyes. He said, “What is it, sweetie, you want to say you’re sorry to old Stiv?”
When her hand moved toward his face, he thought she was going to kiss him. That was nice. Affection never hurt anybody. He looked at her eyes again but couldn’t interpret what was in them. She had on too much mascara to tell. Her lips were almost invisible behind a slab of sable lipstick. He closed in to smooch her, aligning his mouth to meet hers. Sharona socked him in the nose.
Reeling backwards several feet, Stiv blundered into the chair and his boots skidded out from under him. He threw his arms in the air and his chin hit the fridge door handle. Then he found himself face down on the floor. Blood trickled out of his mouth; an incisor had been chipped, and he massaged it with his tongue.
Lying there in a heap, all Stiv could see was Sharona’s pedicured feet. He wanted to belt her, but he’d been there and done that, not with her, but with other women. It was in the past, and so he was righteous. She got down on the ground next to him and droned in his ear: “You’re a shit.”
“How’s that?”
“I can smell her on you.”
His pulse jumped. “Who?”
“That bitch.”
Stiv winched his head and saw himself in his wife’s wide-open eyeballs. He didn’t look so hot. His scalp was bleeding. The hole in his cheek was infected. There was a fresh gash on his face. His hair was ruined. Sharona didn’t look so good either. Her eyes brimmed with tears; her skin was blotchy and lobster-red. The black roots in her bleached hair were starting to show. Elaborating with characteristic brevity, he said, “Man, this is really fucked.”
Gathering Booboo from the bed, Sharona organized a baby blanket, a milk bottle, an aspirator, a rubber ducky, a coloring book, pens, a pack of Parliament cigarettes, and a Zippo lighter. She put the brat on her back and the gear in a rucksack. Stiv touched his chin, getting blood on everything. He said, “Where do you think you’re going?”
Sharona paled. She had no idea where she was heading. “Out.”
“Fuck that. You can’t leave.”
She gave him the finger, opened the door and departed.
Stiv needed a change in scenery to digest the turn of events and he minced into the hall. Fucking Sharona. Who did she think she was? She had no right to boss him around. He might be an asshole; he wasn’t going to deny it. But she didn’t have to get all huffy. She didn’t trust him? That was okay. But she had to have faith that things would turn out all right in the end. It was the golden rule to being cool.
The corridor was perfumed with tomato and garlic sauce simmering on a hot plate in a neighboring room, making his mouth water. Smelling the armpits of his T-shirt, Stiv decided a shower was next. There was no hot water at this hour, but he didn’t care. He stank like a slaughterhouse.
The window at the end of the hallway was half-open, held up by a phone book. The sonance of cars honking and dogs barking filtered into the hotel from the street. Stiv’s gaze wandered to the window and lingered there. For one unnatural moment, as if it were a chimera, he was unable to fathom what he saw. He had to be having a hallucination.
Posing in between the window’s chintz curtains was Richard Rood.
The black dealer gibed, “Surprise, you bowlegged fuck.”
Richard’s salutation informed Stiv of three things. Richard wasn’t in a forgiving mood. All the mistakes Stiv had made in the last twenty-four hours were returning to plague him. And if he didn’t want to get killed, he had to leave, pronto. He shouted at Richard, “Come and get me, home slice!” and jackrabbited down the hall to the bathroom.
Your typical SRO hotel restroom is no larger than an iron maiden. It has a solo toilet, a lot of blood on the woodwork, newspapers on the floor, and no toilet paper. The house
rules at the Allen Hotel stated that nobody could occupy the john for longer than ten minutes. The mandate was to dissuade the junkies in the building from shooting dope in the can.
Bolting the rickety door behind him, Stiv flumped on the baby blue toilet lid, grateful for the solitude. The commode’s walls were painted vermilion. The garish color agitated Stiv, and fearing that it would trigger another episode, he shut off the light switch and sat in the dark. He crossed his legs at the ankles and fretted. He was going to die over four hundred dollars, maybe in this bathroom. The police would find him with his head in the bowl and his eyes gouged out. He could see his obituary: Stiv Wilkins, two-timing husband, father by proxy, itinerant musician.
Glancing at the tiny window above the water tank, Stiv had a brainstorm. He broad-jumped onto the toilet seat and had a chop at the pane with his hand. The glass gave way and shattered, falling five stories to the bottom of an interior airshaft. Stiv stuck his head out the jagged hole and shrewdly deduced that he could use the drainpipe to wriggle down to the next floor.
The toilet wobbled under him as he pushed off, forcing himself out the window. His girth didn’t make the exit simple; he found himself jammed in the window frame and scraped his legs. Testing the drainpipe, he discovered it was sturdy enough to accommodate him. Fastening both hands on it, he shimmied twenty feet downward to the fourth floor shower room window. A rat, big as a football, popped out of a crevice in the airshaft. The rodent twitched its whiskers and bared its fangs. Stiv yodeled and flung back his head: a rectangle of fuchsia night sky was high above him.
He insinuated himself through the shower room window, descending feet-first on the tiled floor. On the way in, he lost a boot. It tumbled into the airshaft and hit the ground with a resounding plop. There were two stalls in the shower room; both pungent with Dial soap and Prell shampoo. Scum honeycombed the tiling. The floor was warped from leakage. A used condom was in one drain; a syringe was in the other one. A sopping athletic sock was exiled in the dressing area. A pair of apricot satin panties was on the shower curtain rod.
Prodding the door open with his foot, Stiv had a look into the corridor. Everyone in the building was asleep, even the cockroaches. It was deathly still, a tundra of silence. His grandmother would’ve loved it.
He must have genetically inherited a talent for trouble from her. At age of eleven he was a regular shoplifter at the nearby Cala supermarket. No one had the brains to look at him—he was nondescript and puny. Week after week, he pilfered the store and was eating better as a result. Kids in school were coming up to him and saying, “Hey, Stiv, you’re gaining weight. You’re looking excellent.” Then the supermarket manager, a white dude in a butcher’s apron, busted him red-handed with a package of Ding Dongs. The police were summoned and Stiv was remanded into custody, the first arrest in what became an endless string of busts.
Cowering in the mildewed shower stall, Stiv experienced an overpowering gumbo of self-loathing and nostalgia. He was frightened of the things that had gone wrong and he was sad for the things that hadn’t turned out right. Somewhere in between the two, he had to fight for what was sweet in his life. He dashed out of the shower room into the hall on a dead run.
TWENTY-TWO
BOOSTING HIMSELF through the window, Richard Rood scouted the hallway. Trash was all over the floor. Gang graffiti was scribbled on the walls. Cobwebs occluded the ceiling. The carpet hadn’t been vacuumed in weeks. He tomcatted it up the hall and investigated the restroom. A day-old newspaper was behind the door. The sink was plugged with hair. The toilet was making water on the floor. The mirror was cracked in two. Dollops of blood speckled the toilet seat; a bloody handprint stained the wall above the window.
Richard made a study of the print. The fingers were tapered with rings on them. Stiv had small hands, like a girl. The blood on the wall had Richard mighty concerned. If Stiv was wounded, there was no saying what he would do. The boy was sensitive and unstable. He could be dangerous. He had guns and might fight to his last breath. Or he might surrender without a struggle.
A child’s shrill laughter siphoned into the hall from a room behind Richard. The lubricious voice of Jeeter Roche was carried upstairs through a window connected to the airshaft. The property manager was yelling at his wife to bring him a cup of coffee in the drug room. Uneasily, Richard shifted his weight from leg to leg and plotted his next move.
Swinging out of the bathroom, he strutted toward the emergency door located at the hall’s end. He pushed it open and jounced up the fire escape to the fifth floor. A hundred feet below him was the monochromatic panorama of Market Street. Crows skimmed over the trees in single-file formation. A solitary streetlight flickered on and off at the corner of Franklin. A ring of shopping carts had been bungee-corded together in the parking lot; three homeless men had a campfire going strong on the sidewalk. One of the fellows had a wire-haired terrier. The dog was chasing after a pigeon and had the bird cornered against a fence.
When he made it to the fifth floor, Richard flattened himself against a wall and got acquainted with the gloom. There wasn’t enough air to breathe in the place, and what air there was stank of garbage. Just like a damn jail. There were no lights in the hall and he strained his eyes. A stark-naked junkie sallied from the bathroom; the dope fiend’s eczema-blasted skin was checkered with abscesses; his dick was a squib of flesh. Getting wind of the homicidal mania on Richard Rood’s face, he went back in the loo.
For the next ten minutes Richard searched the floor high and low for Stiv Wilkins. Then he came to the last door at the end of the corridor. A frayed Massive Attack concert leaflet was stapled to it. Beer cans, candle stubs, crumpled cigarette packs, Styrofoam coffee cups, and tarot cards littered the welcome mat. Richard flattened his ear to the door’s paneling and listened closely. Someone was in there and it sounded like the loon was whispering to himself.
He gave the door three hard raps. As expected, there was no answer. He put his shoulder to it, testing its strength—the flimsy piece of particleboard came off the hinges and dropped to the floor with a bang. Richard stepped back, anticipating a counterattack, a barrage of bullets or a knife. But when there was no ambush, he stalked into the chamber.
His eyes roved over the room’s dilapidated interior. An aluminum pot of coffee was boiling on the hot plate. Unwashed baby bottles and dishes were in the sink. A cockroach sprinted across the counter. A roll of unscented toilet paper was on the floor. Diapers were piled on the chair. The radio was replaying the six o’clock newscast about the Brinks crime.
Stiv Wilkins was hiding under the bed with a .25 caliber Beretta.
Forgetting there weren’t any bullets in the weapon’s magazine, Stiv crawled out from under the bed’s frame. His motorcycle jacket was clotted with dust balls. The ashes on his T-shirt were matted with lint. The cut on his chin had congealed into a pus-lined crust. Pistol in his fist, he faced off Richard Rood.
Stiv was missing an engineer boot and his arms were bleeding. The fire had destroyed a portion of his quiff and his Dickies were in tatters, exposing his boxer shorts and the burns on his legs. The whites of his eyes stood out in grave contrast to the soot smeared on his face. Even with his fingers on the Beretta’s plastic grips, Stiv was a scaredy-cat. “What the fuck do you want?” he ranted at Richard. “I didn’t invite you in here or nothing.”
The room was unventilated, and Richard was appalled by it. He couldn’t imagine having a wife and trying to raise a kid in the Allen Hotel. No wonder Stiv was out to lunch. Placing a hand on the chair, Richard removed a speck of dust from his cuff and hectored him. “Your daddy invited me. He said you needed a damn good whipping.”
Leveling the gun at Richard, Stiv’s blood pressure went through the ceiling. There was enough adrenaline in his veins to power a rocket ship to Mars. Rancor was coming off him in a hormonal mist as he bleated, “Don’t you ever talk about my goddamn daddy like that!”
Richard Rood regarded the Beretta as if it were no more deadly tha
n a water pistol. Pointed at him, the automatic was a bad joke. Something he just couldn’t be bothered with. He languidly said, “You know why I’m here, you damn turkey. You owe me money.”
Nearing hysteria, Stiv did his falsetto. “Me?”
“That’s right.”
“You think you’re gonna get it?” Stiv’s voice went up an octave. “This money?”
Richard contemplated the next step. The choice was his to make. Should he beat the tar out of Stiv Wilkins now or wait a little bit longer. Maybe if Stiv hadn’t produced the gun, he would’ve been cooler. But the retard had upped the ante, and what was done was done. Lunging over the chair, he wrested the pistol from Stiv’s grip.
Taken by surprise, Stiv spun on his heels and made for the window. Cramming the Beretta in his back pocket, Richard nabbed the white boy by the motorcycle jacket’s collar and lifted him off his feet. Stiv battled to break free of Richard’s iron grip and kicked his legs. His mealy face was brick red under the black smudges. “Hey, lemme go!” he howled. “I ain’t done shit to you!”
Richard elevated the punk another few inches off the floor. Stiv was a marionette with its strings cut. His run had come to an end. He wouldn’t cross the finish line in victory. There would be no applause or celebration. No accolades. Silent boos rang in his ears. Stiv had taken a gamble and lost.
“All right, you obnoxious little squirrel,” Richard grated. “Where’s my goddamn money? And don’t even try to tell me you don’t have it.” He pinned Stiv to the chair and stared at him. “Four hundred fucking dollars down the tubes. Maybe I should kill you, huh? Make you die real slow.”
The closest Stiv had ever come to death was during an all-night drinking bout with the Indians who consorted by the Greyhound bus station. There had been a miscommunication about who was buying the next twelve-pack of beer. A Shoshone from Wyoming had called Stiv a snake in the grass and chased after him with an axe. Stiv got away and came back with a rifle. A truce was established; apologies were made, but he stopped boozing with Indians.
