Edward Lee: Selected Stories

by Edward Lee

  But she couldn’t do that now. She was pregnant.

  “Jessy’s got herself a little smack-baby comin’,” Leon had told her the other day when he’d gotten out of jail. She was starting to show, her 95-pound frame sporting a tight shiny pot belly. “If this one lives,” Leon had said, “give it to me. I know people who buy babies. They won’t know it’s all fucked up till later. It ain’t really a kid, Jess. It’s a junk-baby, it’s like takin’ a shit. Come on, I’ll give ya twenty bucks for it.” Fuck you, she thought. Leon had been her pimp when she’d first arrived three years ago. He’d been smiling down at her when she’d stepped off the 194 bus; he knew. But he’d kicked her out of the crib after only a few months, and knocked several teeth out as a going-away present. “You’re a waste’a my time, bitch. That shit’s uglied you up so bad, you scare all rummies out’a Piss Park.” But she’d been pregnant before—three times—and she’d always miscarried. It was either the skag or malnutrition, or both.

  She’d worked her way down fast. Never “pretty” to begin with, her face was slightly elongated and eyes too far apart—the fetal alcohol syndrome was all that she’d ever inherit from her mother—and now the black skag just made it worse. The scabs flecked her face like a leprosy. Makeup wouldn’t cover them, and if she picked them off, they’d just bleed for hours and re-form larger. On some occasions, though, she’d get lucky, when johns picked her up on Jackson Street too drunk to notice what she looked like, but mostly she’d been relegated to the bum bars, the bottom of the trick barrel. They didn’t care. The downside was they always spent their SSI money within a week of the first of the month, then it was gone. Grueling blow jobs behind bus stops, between dumpsters, in urine-drenched alleys. At least in Baltimore she’d had steady tricks.

  Each day progressed like slow drool. Perpetually constipated, dizzy from low blood sugar, half-paralyzed from initial withdrawal. She felt weightless, a husk in dirty jeans and flip-flops. Her zombie-like trek led her through downtown’s bowels while she pleaded to a god she didn’t believe in for just one scumbag to blow for twenty dollars. Unless you could prove state residency, the rehabs would back-burner you. Three to six months. How can we reach you when a slot opens? Oh, just give me a call; I live under the trolley bridge at Fourth and Jackson. Bridge-surfing was easier; to get a bed at a shelter you either had to camp out (in which case the cops rousted you) or bribe a counselor. Instead of leaving the King Dome up to at least keep the homeless out of the rain, they’d demolitioned it for a new stadium they couldn’t possibly pay for, and the latest “beautify downtown” plan closed two more shelters.

  Fuck it. She’d wash in Lake Union and sleep under bridges.

  Dumpster-diving kept her fed and pan-handling could generally cover a couple of bangs a day—then it was on to the bars and the alleys. Surprisingly, none of her four pregnancies had been from johns. Even before the eruption of black-tar scabs, ninety-nine percent of her tricks were just quick blow jobs in cars. Instead, her pregnancies had resulted from a multitude of rapes. At night, the animals assumed their turf. Between the psychotic bums in Piss Park and the gangs north of Ninth street, Jessy was mere sexual meat whenever her addiction forced her across these lines. She’d nearly been killed once by several members of some gang called the Kay-Mob. “Never seed me a ho THAT ugly!” she’d heard. They were about to crack her head open with a two-by-four after an hour-long train behind the Aristocrat. “Bust the bitch’s coconut!” But they’d fled when a car pulled into the lot. Jessy had seen in the headlights that none of them could’ve been older than fifteen.

  She could never understand it. Even in all her hardship, and in all the appalling things she’d witnessed, she could never understand how people could be so monstrous, so absolutely evil.

  Each miscarriage felt like a disembowelment, and they’d come with the quickness of rifle shots. There was nothing she could do but leave them there and run away shrieking into rainy darkness. Killing herself seemed mouth watering, like a box of bonbons being viewed by a fat boy through the candy-store window. But the skag would never let her. It was always “I’ll just cop one more time, then do it,” but she knew that that one more time would last forever.

  Not caring was her only source of vengeance. The Red Chinese spies stealing military secrets? Forty-car collision on I-5 kills twelve? Wild fires in the Midwest scorch 100,000 acres and leave hundreds homeless? So what? The world didn’t care about her. Why should she care about the world?

  Spad seemed to care, though.

  She’d met him a year ago. She’d tried to steal a flower from the market—one of those phony red-satin roses. The security guards had chased her all the way down the Pike’s Market Hillclimb and across the train tracks before they’d given up. A few minutes later, though, Spad appeared in a dingy pea-coat with a TeleTtubbie e on the sleeve. “After all that, you definitely deserve these,” he said, and gave her a handful of the phony roses.

  He was just like her in a way: looking for something when there was nothing left to look for—only he hadn’t given up. He was slim and handsome, and didn’t abscess nearly as badly as most. He taught her to always use the surplus insulin syringes from the exchange; they hurt more but you could always sense the vein more precisely. Spad was smart. He was interested in things, and this fascinated her. Every day he’d jimmy open a paper box and read the Times, but he’d always put it back when he was done. He even believed in God. “We’re all spirits, Jessy,” he told her once. “We’re immortal. When we die, God saves us.”

  “Well why doesn’t He fucking save us now?” she argued back. “How could God put us in a shitty world like this?”

  “God didn’t make the world shitty, we did. But don’t worry. He’ll forgive us.”

  For some reason, this sounded hopeful to her, or perhaps she was just impressed by his ability to hope at all.

  Spad got a lot more tricks than she did, but he always shared the money with her. Once he’d ripped off a john just so he could rent them a room for one night at the Bush; it was her birthday. The lumpy bed felt like heaven. He taught her how to have fun. During the WTO riots, they gleefully tore through the crowds and picked protestors’ pockets. They’d moon police from the Jackson overpass and steal pizzas from the Pagliacci’s on Stone Way because they always left the back door open. They’d hang on to the back rails of the waterfront street car and laugh in the breeze. Even in their mutual curse, Spad taught her to laugh.

  Then he began to die.

  Of course, in a sense, they both were, and they knew it, but Spad’s AIDS made the notion much more immediate. The sarcoma on his back and the backs of his legs told them all they needed to know. “It’s not that big a deal,” he’d said earlier on, smiling. “My only worry is how are you going to steal pizzas without me?” Jessy’s grief bottled her up; she didn’t know how to deal with all those black emotions at once. She’d never cry in front of him—that would make him feel dead already. Soon it was up to her to cop for both of them, and she didn’t do very well. At least in the summer she could make more panhandling from the tourists, but it was nearly impossible to leave him. Her worst fear was that she’d come back to the bridge with a couple quarter grams and he’d be dead. She’d be alone. What would she do then? She supposed she could kill herself by his side, but what of the baby? No, she couldn’t do that. Nothing was fair, ever.

  Meanwhile, he got sicker and sicker, to the point that he could barely move most of the time. On a good day, though—like today—he managed to walk with her down to the waterfront. She panhandled all day in front of Red Robin while he slept beneath the abutments of the public pier. She made over forty dollars, then she went back to him…

  “Did you make your wish?” he asked. He looked like a skeleton in rotten clothes, and he’d been coughing up more blood. Somehow, though, he seemed at ease.

  “No such thing as wishes.”

  “Of course there is. You made forty dollars today.”

  “I didn’t wish for it. It j
ust happened.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Yes!” Her voice sounded like a stranger’s, bitchy, argumentative. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him. So she looked up at the sky.

  The falling star was still there, a streaking white fleck over the mountains beyond the Sound. There was a naval post over there, in Bremerton, and she’d always heard it was a good place to turn tricks. Other girls would tell her that if you hitchhiked the main drag after midnight, the servicemen would pick you up in a heartbeat. A girl could turn ten tricks in a few hours. Unfortunately, Jessy could never afford the ferry ride to get over there.

  More bad luck.

  “I have to go cop,” she said. “I’ll be back in a while.”

  More coughing, more blood. His nearly dead hand squeezed hers. “Make a wish first, just for fun.”

  Irritation was the only thing that could mask her sadness. “I’ll tell you what I’d like to wish for,” she spat. “An earthquake, right here. Split the Sound right open and suck everything down, the whole shitty city, all the people, everything. Fuck ’em.”

  “That’s too hateful,” he remarked. “You’re not hateful. Make a real wish.”

  She wished they were dead. Her, Spad, the baby, all together. Painless. No more scabs, no more tricks, no more bridges. That’s what she wished for. “There. I’ve made it.”

  “So…what’s your wish?”

  “You’re not supposed to tell!” she objected, “Or it won’t come true.” Again, she wanted to look at him but couldn’t. She wanted to kiss him. Couldn’t.

  She just kept looking at the sky, at the star. Two more appeared. Maybe this would be a meteor shower, like the ones she’d seen over the Chesapeake so long ago.

  Finally, she asked him, “Did you make your wish?”

  Spad didn’t answer. His hand lay limp in hers; he was dead.

  She refused to look at him. She should just get up and walk away and not look, because she didn’t want to remember him that way. Looking would hurt too much, and she was sick of hurting. Silent tears shined on her cheeks. She felt short of breath, ripped off yet again by God or the universe or whatever.

  The falling stars—three of them now—seemed to slow down. She didn’t understand at first; usually falling stars disappeared in a wink, but these were arcing over the Sound in long glittery white streaks.

  Jessy would have no reason to know what a MIRV was, or an air-burst proximity warhead. It occurred to her, though—in another second—that these weren’t really falling stars. She gripped Spad’s hand tighter. She had enough time to smile and feel warm. Then the sky turned white and her wish came true.

  MAKAK

  Casparza was repulsive—a human blob. He couldn’t pack the food into his fat face fast enough. Look at him, Hull thought, disgusted. Just another greasy spic blimp.

  But the girl—she was beautiful, and all class. She’d said her name was Janice. Too old to be squeeze, Hull decided. Mid or late-twenties. He’d heard all the stories; the fat man was a short-eyes, a kiddie-diddler—anything over 15 was over the hill. So how did Janice figure into it? She looked like a typical American businesswoman. Come to think of it, Hull had seen lots of Americans milling about the plush villa. What were so many Americans doing here? This was Peru.

  And the black guy? Hull had noticed him at once. Weird. The guy was just standing there off by some trees. What is this? Some voodoo fucking freak show? Hull thought. The guy had dreadlocks past his shoulders, and he was wearing some dashiki-looking thing with something hanging off the sash. Hull had never seen a black man so black. Like anthracite. And the guy hadn’t moved. He just stared at them from afar, blank-faced.

  “So, Mr. Hull,” Casparza bid. “This is most irregular. We rarely deal direct, especially small-timers. But I know some of your people. They say good of you.”

  That’s nice to hear, you fat shit.

  Casparza weighed 400 pounds plus. The grinning face scarcely appeared human—comic features pressed into dough. He wore a preposterous white straw hat, and pants and a shirt that could tarp a baby elephant.

  “The goddamn DEA interdictions are killing us,” Hull informed him.

  “They’re killing the major cartels too,” Janice pointed out. Her voice seemed reserved, hushed. Perhaps she was Casparza’s spokeswoman. She had straight, pretty, ash blonde hair and wore a rather conservative beige business dress. A tiny pendant hung about her neck, but Hull couldn’t make it out. She primly held a lit cigarette, though he had yet to see her take a drag. She hadn’t eaten, either. The servants had brought food only to Hull and Casparza: some brown mush called aji, a stinky napalm-hot fish stew, and slabs of something the fat man had merely referred to as “Meatroll! My favoreet!” Dessert had been anticoucho collops of fried sheep heart on sticks.

  Hull hadn’t eaten much.

  “And now my amigo would like to buy from me,” Casparza went on. His accent hung thick as the rolls of flab descending his chest.

  “That’s right, Mr. Casparza. Our middlemen are getting blanked out. The Bolivians can’t be trusted, and the Colombians are losing eighty percent of their orders to seizures. My whole region is going nuts.”

  Which was an understatement. Peru had been the number three producer; now it was number one. After the hostage thing, the Tactical Air Command had clobbered the Colombian strongholds and Agent Oranged a hundred thousand acres of their best coca fields, and now there was talk of dropping a light infantry division into Bolivia. This was bad for business; Hull had money to make and customers to please. He needed ten keys a month to keep his region happy, but now he was lucky to see two. The fucking feds were ruining everything. He’d had no choice but to come to see Casparza in person. The fat man had a secret.

  “You guarantee delivery,” Hull said. “Nobody else does that. You’ve become a bit of a legend in the States. Word is you haven’t lost a single drop to the feds.”

  “This is true, Mr. Hull.” Casparza’s huge black-hole mouth opened wide and sucked a piece of sheep heart off a skewer. It crunched like nuts when he chewed. “But my production surplus is no very good.”

  “The influx of orders is maxing us out,” Janice coolly added.

  “I understand that.” Hull trained his attentions on Casparza, though the girl’s straitlaced beauty nagged at him. At first he thought the pendant around her neck was a locket; closer peripheral inspection showed him a tiny bag of something, or a tied pouch. She’s probably some whacked out New Ager from California, Hull snidely considered. He hated California. It’s probably a pouch full of crystal dust or some shit, to purify her fucking aura. But of course that didn’t mesh with the rest of her looks—primo, neat as a pin. And there was something about her eyes—just…something. “We’re a small operation, Mr. Casparza. I only want to buy ten keys a month.”

  “You know my price?”

  “Yes,” Hull said. Goddamn right he did. The drug war had jacked prices through the roof. A year ago a kilo of “product” ran for 13.5 a key. Now they wanted 25. Casparza charged 30 and he got it. Nobody knew how he evaded seizure losses, and nobody cared. They just wanted the fat man’s shit. Even at 30 K per drop the profit margin remained huge considering street value and higher pocket prices. But Casparza was a millionaire. He needed Hull’s penny-ante business like he needed another helping of meatroll.

  “I can pay thirty-five a key,” Hull finally said. The offer would be taken either as a compliment or a grievous insult. Hull knocked on the table leg.

  “Hmmm,” Casparza remarked. “Let me think. I think better when I eat.”

  You must think a lot, ya tub of shit.

  Sunlight dappled the huge table through plush trees. Hull could smell the fresh scents of the jungle. He looked at Janice again. Yes, it was a tiny pouch at the end of her necklace. She smiled meekly, but her eyes did not match.

  “You remind me of home,” she said.

  “Where’s that?”

  She didn’t reply. Her eyes seeme
d to beseech him, yet her face remained composed. Hull thought he could guess her story; a lot of the cartel honchos paid big bucks for white girls. Was that what her eyes were saying? Her eyes, Hull thought. They looked sad, barely extant.

  Casparza shoveled more fried meat into his face, then chugged down a third tumbler of yarch, which smelled liked sewer water but didn’t taste half bad. Hull craned around; the black guy in the dashiki was still standing off by the trees. He couldn’t be a bodyguard; he was a stick. Besides, Casparza had more guns than the White House. The black guy hadn’t moved in an hour.

  “Who’s the shadow?” Hull eventually asked.

  “Raka,” Casparza grunted, cheeks stuffed.

  “Mr. Casparza’s spiritual advisor,” Janice augmented. Spiritual advisor, my cock, Hull thought. He didn’t believe in spirit. He believed in the body and what the body demanded of the lost. He believed in the simple objectivities of supply and demand. Spirit could go fuck itself. Spirit was bad for business.

  “Raka is from Africa, the Shaniki province.” Casparza wiped his fat fingers on the tablecloth. “He helps me. He is my guiding light.”

  You need a guiding light, dumbo. You’re so fat you block out the sun.

  Hull squinted. The black unresponsive face stared back unblinking. Was he staring at Hull, or through him? The braided dreadlocks dangled like whipcords. Hull still couldn’t identify the thing that hung off Raka’s sash.

  Casparza chuckled, jowls jiggling. “You are wondering how I do it, yes? You are wondering how it is that I lose no product while everyone else loses their ass.”

  Sure, blubberhead. I’m wondering. “That’s your affair, Mr. Casparza. I’m just a businessman trying to stay afloat.”

  Casparza’s grin drew seams into his immense face. “Truth is power, and spirit is truth. Think about that, amigo. Think hard.”