Sex, Thugs, and Rock & Roll

by Todd Robinson

  His face looked bloated and blotchy, his eyes red-rimmed. Was it too many showers, too many drugs, or did he dive into some of the larger tanks to do his work? A trace of white powder dotted his upper lip.

  “Jeez, Patrick! Couldn’t you wait?”

  His brother rubbed a finger across his upper lip and put it to his mouth. “You wouldn’t believe how physically demanding fish can be sitting in front of the computer screen all day like you do.” He sighed, opened his mouth, and threw a Rolo in. “Lately, I’ve had to drag that damned cart with me everywhere. I can’t leave it in the car because I let the policy lapse. Dad’ll skin me if someone takes off with it.” He laughed lightly, and then harder as he looked at his finger. “You know what this shit is, Denny? It’s goddamned tank cleaner. I hope it wasn’t what I put up my nose half an hour ago.” He unpeeled another Rolo, then offered the roll to Denny.

  “Probably no worse than a dozen other things you’ve ingested.” They drove along in a companionable silence, munching their candy.

  “So, why can’t this lathy take a tathi into town?” The caramel was affecting his speech.

  “He gave me a lot of crap about making sure her room’s okay. Getting her flowers.” Denny nodded at the slim bouquet of carnations in the backseat. “I ordered the orchids for her hotel room from Dad’s shop, of course.”

  “Who the hell is this chick anyway?” Patrick interrupted. “I don’t remember the old man doing anything like this before. Flying his girlfriend in, putting her up in a fancy, schmancy hotel. Wooing her.”

  “Wooing?” Denny repeated, immediately attracted to the word. “Does Dad woo?”

  “We all woo. I’ve never been convinced that screwing is that wonderful for women. Wooing makes it seem better. Puts a spiffy gloss on a messy business.”

  “Anyway, he’s not wooing Nahla. He’s giving her the Olga treatment.”

  Patrick blinked twice. “So that’s how it is. When were you planning to tell me?”

  Denny shrugged. “I thought it might not pan out.”

  “Oh, how thoughtful. Are you sparing me or cutting me out, Den?”

  Denny pulled into a short-term parking lot, and the brothers hurried over the bridge to the terminal. “Dad’s probably a pretty fair wooer—growing up like he did after the war. Was there anything too corny for them?”

  “That’s what they should call them. The corniest generation.”

  “Even the word corny is corny,” Denny offered.

  “Exactly.”

  Trying to keep pace with his taller brother, Denny quickly grew winded. “Dad should have taught us his wooing techniques instead of how to field ground balls.”

  “No one bothered to tell us we’d grow up to prefer women to line drives.”

  “I have a theory,” Denny said. “Actually it’s Monica’s. She claims Dad didn’t teach us anything useful on purpose. That way, he can keep us under his thumb. Don’t you find it odd that he never let us change a tire, mow the grass, or balance a checkbook when we were kids?”

  Patrick had lost interest. “What’s her name?”

  “Who? Oh, Nahla.” At that moment, Denny caught sight of a woman in a wheelchair being pushed in their direction. If this was Nahla, she’d already run into some trouble. One of her legs was missing.

  “Oh, Christ,” Patrick said, watching the wheelchair approach them. “Did Dad mention that little detail?”

  Denny shook his head. “Not a word.” Both men grinned simultaneously as the chair approached them, the uniformed airline attendant smiling with relief as the handoff was made. “Miss Khalil?” Denny said, half kneeling in front of her. “Nahla? Do you speak English?”

  She looked around and removed her shades. “Where’s Michael? He promised he’d meet my plane.” Her tone had the familiar mix of petulance and imperiousness used by all Patterson-related women. Clearly, she spoke English.

  Denny didn’t answer immediately. He was wondering why Nahla didn’t wear an artificial leg. If it was a matter of money, why hadn’t Dad stepped in? He glanced over at Patrick, who was apparently struck dumb. “Dad’s stuck in Dearborn with a client,” Denny finally said.

  “Unavoidably detained,” Patrick added, coming out of his trance.

  “Then let’s shake a leg,” she said, without a glimmer of a smile. Patrick looked at Denny from under his thick eyebrows; Denny tightened his mouth. Was she a kook? Both men looked at her missing leg without meaning to. Or at where the leg would be if it hadn’t been missing.

  “Yes, I’m here for a new leg,” she said easily. “Odd as it seems, Detroit is where I had it made originally, so they have the precise measurements.” Looking at their glassy stares, she added, “I lost it at sea.”

  The original or the artificial one? Denny wondered. Images of a black-stockinged wooden leg floating like jetsam filled his head. He wondered if she dressed it separately before strapping it on. “Christ, how did that happen?” he finally managed to get out.

  “The porter carried it off with my cases and by the time I realized his error, it had disappeared. I find it easier going through security without it,” she explained. “So I always remove it. You’d think Homeland Security would make allowances, but a one-legged woman only seems to increase their interest. I get strip-searched all the time.” The brothers tried not to look at each other or her missing leg.

  “Who would have taken it?” Denny asked, aghast.

  “You’d be surprised,” she said without elaboration.

  “Do you insure something like that?” Patrick asked.

  “Certainly you insure it! It’s the most valuable thing I own. Every inch has to conform to the rest of me.” She held out the other leg for their inspection. If the missing one had been a perfect match, she had lost something pretty spectacular, Denny thought. Twice.

  “Well, the car’s just across the bridge,” he said weakly, moving her chair in that direction.

  After a few fumbling moments loading the chair into the trunk, they were back on the freeway. “Nothing ever changes,” she said tiredly, looking around. “Fists, tires, potholes, rust, gunshots, cacophony.” She directed them to the hotel, obviously familiar with the route. The check-in went smoothly although she changed her penthouse suite to a room on the first floor. “You get worried about fire,” she told the clerk.

  The corridor to Nahla’s room was mirrored, the carpet plush enough to give Denny’s arms a good workout. This was where Patrick might have come in handy, but instead he cavorted ahead of them, chattering in that desperate way he had at the end of a hit of coke. He fit the key in the lock with some difficulty and finally stepped aside, allowing the chair to pass. Inside, they found a young man wearing only patent leather shoes and black socks held up by garters making love to a pantyless woman in a violet bridesmaid’s dress in a king-sized bed. With the frilly, hooped skirt framing them, the couple looked like a midpicture sequence from an old Busby Berkeley movie.

  “How entertaining!” Nahla said, and proceeded to address the pair in a series of languages until she hit on the correct one. “Spanish!” she finally announced. “They’re friends of one of one of the maids. Apparently, Conchita told them they could use this room for an hour.” Nahla looked at both Pattersons. “Could you see about getting my room switched again, Dennis? I’ve lost my appetite for sleeping here.” She nodded toward the jumble of bedclothes, the tangle of limbs, and the distinctive tang of fresh sex.

  Denny tramped back to the reception desk, where a clerk informed him there were no vacancies, and, in fact, the room Nahla had rejected minutes earlier had been given to a new arrival. “Not even the wedding suite?” Denny asked, certain his father would spring for it. The clerk shook his head.

  Denny opened and closed his mouth several times, trying uselessly to come up with the proper threat or bit of reasoning to bring it home. But if the hotel had no more rooms, what could be done? Glumly, Denny returned to the room and told Nahla the news, wondering how Monica would feel about an overnight
guest. Between them, they could carry Nahla up to the second floor using that fireman’s hold they’d learned in middle school. They could settle her in and if he heard her rise in the night on her one good leg, he could rush in and…But he doubted Monica would approve of bringing her with them. Or condone, for that matter, the execution of a one-legged woman in her own home.

  “Call Michael,” Nahla demanded immediately. “He’ll deal with it.”

  “No need for that. I’m sure I can…” Denny started to say before realizing he had no idea at all about how to handle it. Money, threats, tears. Why hadn’t Dad taught them such things? It was their business too, wasn’t it? “Your turn,” he said weakly, passing Patrick the cell phone.

  “I thought I was only here to provide muscle,” Patrick complained as he dialed the number.

  It took Dad less than five minutes to sort things out, although they never learned what means he used. If he was annoyed at the interruption in his evening, he didn’t say so. If he was angry with his sons, he kept it to himself. Patrick slipped the phone into his pocket and they waited in silence for the inevitable call from the front desk.

  Nahla’s room was a newly available suite on the first floor. She offered them a drink, which they both declined, recognizing the lack of enthusiasm in her invitation. Denny stopped at the desk on the way out to see about redirecting the flower delivery.

  “I wish I had ordered more than two dozen,” he told his brother in the car. “She deserves the entire shop after that debacle. The cart’s refrigerated so they won’t lose their freshness.”

  “Yes, I well remember that cart. You know, Denny, you hardly notice her missing leg after a minute.”

  “In some ways, it makes her even more attractive,” Denny agreed as he swung onto 1-94. “I wonder how…” His voice trailed off.

  “You mean how did Dad find a girl like that?” Patrick asked. “Or how she lost her leg?”

  “I mean—I wonder what it would be like to make love to her.” Someone who couldn’t get away, Denny was thinking.

  Patrick nodded. “The delivery guys shouldn’t have much trouble with Nahla. She has a certain amount of spunk, but how far will that get her with a couple of gorillas?”

  “Handy she’s not wearing the artificial leg. I wonder if Dad had something to do with that.” The brothers paused to contemplate this. “Remember the trouble they had with Olga? Dad goes for the big girls, doesn’t he? He likes the big bottoms.”

  “Did we ever find out why Dad got rid of Olga? What did she do?”

  Denny shook his head. “Dad’s not very forthcoming.”

  “I wonder how Mom’s survived all these years,” Patrick said, popping another Rolo into his mouth.

  “She’s long past fitting into a florist’s cart,” Denny finally said. “And he must know we’d draw the line there.” He said it firmly, hoping to convince himself.

  Monica was curled up in the farthest corner of the king-sized bed when Denny crept into their room. She might as well have worn a Do Not Disturb sign across her chest. The phone rang just as he was headed for the bathroom. He picked it up and took it with him. “Denny?” an unfamiliar voice said.

  “Yes?”

  “Denny, this is Ralph. You know, from across the street?”

  He looked out the bathroom window and saw lights. “Ralph! I didn’t recognize…Home again? Great! Anything I can do? I’ve thought about—”

  “Actually, there is. I was wondering if your father was taking on new clients. We have some legal problems. Well, not problems exactly. Questions. We have some questions.”

  “You want my father?” Had he even mentioned Dad to Ralph?

  “I—or, that is, we—we heard he was a…a crackerjack attorney. Good for a special sort of…” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, the name sounded familiar and then Matt put it together.” He cleared his throat again. “He’s not retired, is he?”

  “Not completely. You know, I’m an attorney myself, Matt.”

  “No kidding. Do you have a practice?”

  “Well, no, but the majority of attorneys don’t actually have practices.”

  “Would he have a problem with my calling him this late? Your father, that is,” Ralph interrupted, adding softly, “We need someone experienced in litigation.” He sighed quietly. “Funny how your closest friends can turn on you. Just because we both got out alive is no reason…”

  “No, he’s used to late calls.” He hung up a minute later and his thoughts returned to Nahla. The missing leg was certainly a lucky break. He tried to picture her as she had looked earlier at the airport, but the image of how she must look stuffed into the florist’s cart kept pushing it away.

  Denny slunk into an almost empty theater showing the movie Girls Girls Girls XXX the next day. It was the only spot in town cognizant of the fact that a small but select group of patrons couldn’t watch certain types of DVDs at home. As he made his way down the dark, center aisle, he managed to trip over some obstruction in his path, breaking his fall in the last seconds by grabbing a nearby seat back. What the hell? Had the usher left a trash can? Was it a patron’s wheelchair or oxygen? Someone’s bike or shopping cart? A passed-out moviegoer?

  Running his hands up and down the impediment, he discovered it was a hose of some sort. Some kind of mammoth vacuum cleaner perhaps? On his knees, the smells of popcorn, rug cleaner, vomit, and licorice nearly overwhelming him, he followed the hose it to its source—a tank, then a carrier, and finally, Patrick, gawking at the screen. Denny wasn’t sure whether Patrick could see him, but that afternoon both boys pretended the dark was absolute, impenetrable. There was not another soul in the theater, so Denny had his choice of seats.

  Across the city, as always, Michael Patterson conducted business.

  Eulogy for a Player

  Richard J. Martin Jr.

  They say that prostitution is the world’s oldest profession. Pimping, then, is the second oldest. You are a pimp. I know that because you said you were a pimp and being a pimp is just like being an actor—once you say you are one, you are. You’ve made your choice and now you want the knowledge that will make you an elevated pimp, the kind that makes money.

  In order to pimp hard and pimp right you have to understand that you are part of something larger than yourself—something that has gone on long before you and will continue long after. You also have to learn a little about the theory and concepts behind pimping. Most of the would-be players out there are long on practice but short on theory. You must understand that like the prostitute, the pimp provides a service. Today, I’m going to tell you how you can provide that service, but you have to keep this to yourself until it’s time to pass it on to the right person. That’s part of showing respect for the game.

  One of the country’s most famous pimps, Fillmore Slim, once said, “You pimp with your mind and not with your hands.” He said this because people often confuse pimping with extortion and strong-arm robbery. Beating women and robbing them of their money is not pimping. If you want to make it by being an intimidator, then go ahead on. It’s easy. You just find somebody weaker than you and rob them. Just remember to victimize people that are outside the protection of the law. Don’t just focus on prostitutes. Beat on weak drug dealers, dishonest store owners or dope fiends or anyone else that the police won’t protect.

  But being a pimp is harder—it requires a different mind-set and a different skill set. If you pimp right, you won’t ever have to raise your hand to a woman and you’ll always let her know that she is free to leave at any time. You will start to provide a service instead of standing around saying that you’re a pimp, waiting to get paid—and things will go better for you. That’s why we’re here today.

  I know you have a working knowledge of pimping practice; you’ve got game and Mack-ability, that’s why you’re here. You’ve got your pimp clothes, your pimp rap, and you’re working on a pimp car but you don’t really need that until after you get started. You’re familiar with terms like “t
urnout,” “catch,” and “knock,” which describe the ways you might break into the game. You’ve looked at yourself in the mirror for a long time and you know that you can do this. You’ve practiced standing the right way, talking the right way, and feigning disinterest. That’s good. You’ll need all that stuff, and you’ll need that kind of confidence to make it once you get your first working girl. Those things are essential to the practice of pimping.

  Now let’s talk about theory.

  What most young players don’t know is that the quickest way to make money as a pimp is to fall in love with a prostitute.

  You think I’m crazy, but remember…the pimp provides a service. His service is to meet the needs of the prostitute. In return, the prostitute provides the pimp with all her money. This is the pimp equation.

  To really be successful pimping you have to understand Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Need—players call it The Pyramid.

  See, the pyramid is a triangle; you know what a triangle is, right? To categorize human need you divide the triangle into five different parts, each of which represents a basic need that all human beings have, including prostitutes. The largest area of the pyramid—the part at the bottom—shows the most pressing of human needs: food, air, and water, called “physiological needs.”

  Everyone needs these things to survive and everybody that is alive is getting them. You probably won’t be able to find a prostitute that is not getting her needs met in this respect, at least not in America. However, at every other level of the pyramid, there exists an opportunity for you to be a pimp. Because the pimp assesses prostitute need and then finds a way for the prostitute to get her needs met.

  At the second level of the pyramid is the need for safety and security. You might be able to find a way in here. The prostitute may not feel safe. She plays a dangerous game. She is unsafe from crazy tricks, from unscrupulous police, and from intimidators masquerading as “pimps” (not like you), who might beat her or smear her makeup. To get in at this level you will say something along the lines of “I want to protect you,” but that is usually not enough. You need to combine this need with a need from one of the other levels of the pyramid.