Like a wanted man, I' m leaving Youngstown, Ohio. The Greyhound station reeks of hot rubber and oily fumes and pulses with strange life: a skinny old Nigger in white cowboy boots and a red Stetson nervously moves around the other awaiting scum who hides into the anonymity of their winter coats with collars drawn high. Mud and grease splatter under my feet and dad' s as we walk to the platform. The droning of an idling diesel engine shields our conversation from prying ears but we don' t have much to say to each other.
Fred and Tony got busted, and I should have been busted too, but my quick thinking saved my ass, bolting out of Fred' s car on my fours and hiding behind a pile of farm machinery. The cops got them both; I heard the cuffs snapping around their wrists. At least they kept their mouths shut and didn' t say something like "Hey, where' s Ken?" Believe me, that wouldn' t be beyond their stupidity.
Anyway, I was the stupid one by agreeing with them to go into the District looking for Christmas trees to sell. We dragged those sorry looking pines for miles of knee deep snow, heaved them over a chain link fence and hog tied them on top of Fred' s car – which is still sitting at the police lot. Just as we finish strapping the loot, we see a flashlight beam moving up the railroad tracks, sniffing the snow. "Cops!" screams Fred and the light beam connects with us. Thanks Fred.
Cops and a tow truck chased us all over town. The pine trees clung to the roof of Fred' s car for dear life as we bounced between snowbanks and frozen sidewalks. Fred and Tony are going to see the judge in a week, and my dad, who knows people at the D.A.' s, advised me that it would be a good time to pursue an out of state education. A friend’ s loyalty is sorely tested when the D.A. promises sweet deals in exchange for accomplice’ s names. I know Tony’ s mute stubbornness is beyond the reach of leniency offers, but I’ m doubtful about Fred’ s loyalty. As they say, there is no honor among thieves; not among the likes of Fred.
My dad agrees with me, so here we stand, huddled shadows expelling frozen breaths under cold and anemic lights.
The old nigger is the first to board the bus, cutting through the line, obviously in a hurry to skip town. We all have our reasons, I suppose. I' m heading for Florida, Daytona Beach, to learn to be an airplane driver, and to get out of this cold and mud and the pathetic sight of abandoned steel mills and unemployed drunks.
From my seat I scan the station for cops rushing toward my bus, but only dirty slush and snow and a darkness jagged by the spillover of electric lights lie under the cold air. My dad waves good bye as the bus departs and I reciprocate. He turns his back to me and starts for his rusted pick up, sloshing through the station under his burden of incoming solitude and college tuition.
It' s a heavy load for the old man, but he didn' t hesitate when he offered to help me. Tough old Polack, he would eat his own old boots to save money to feed me. It' s not stinginess; it' s just that every penny he earns adds a layer of rough skin to his already too callused hands.
The bus accelerates, and lurches and continues to accelerate, and I look in the direction where the old nigger sits, and his grin full of white teeth greets me, glowing in the semi-darkness like a half moon, and he says," It' s good to be outta here. Yes sir."
Debbie' s bus heads north on Interstate 95, leaving south Florida behind, maybe for good. At least that is what Debbie wishes. Her window' s tinted glass reflects a translucent outline of her young face with hard lips caught between a smirk and a frown. Outside the tinted glass the orange groves bloom with myriad white specks spread like white caps against a green sea of orange leaves. She can not smell the blossoms but she can remember their fragrance, strong and sweet, and she remembers how that fragrance used to pervade the otherwise stale air of the apartments and rooms and shacks and trailers and holes in the wall where she grew up.
The fragrance came through the apartment' s window riding on shafts of dusty light. The slanted rays filtered in through the interstices in the Venetian blinds to prove to twelve year old Debbie – who had slept on the worn out couch – that the morning was still young, turning from orange to yellow, preparing to turn into intense, blinding white. Snorts slid underneath the closed door where her mother and her mother' s boyfriend shared their hangover. Boyfriendsare what her mother called them, mostly alcoholics and white trash, one nighters, good for nothing. She got up from the couch, used the toilet and went to visit with Franky, the next door neighbor who was always nice to her.
Debbie cannot smell the scent of the blossoms inside the bus, but she remembers it anyway, and the memory of that smell brings with it the links of memories as if by pulling one in, the others would follow, like pulling a chain out of a dark, bottomless well.
Franky' s face comes to her somewhat diffused, like her own reflection on the bus' s window, but much more distorted. Memories fall apart after so many years, just like a newspaper left on a water pond, and that' s fine with Debbie because, like old newspapers, who needs old memories? It' s his face all right, but she cannot make out the line sunder his eyes or the stubs on his cheeks. They sat and smoked together because that' s what they always did, smoke, and Franky always gave her cigarettes for free. Now, looking at the groves hurry pass her window, she realizes that even then nothing came for free.
First, he gave her cigarettes if she touched it. The more she touched, the more cigarettes she got, and she liked, likes, smoking, so touching it was not a problem for her. Putting it in her mouth took some money, the first money she ever earned, and the longer she kept it in her mouth, the more money Franky gave her.
The moment she felt Franky' s body wince at the touch of her lips, she discovered that she had the means to make men do things for her, like give her money and cigarettes. A revelation flashed inside her young head and she understood why her mother did the things she did, unashamedly, without remorse, and with business shrewdness.
Too many problems at home with mother, and her boyfriends who wanted her to do tricks for free. And drugs. And money. And cops. To hell with everybody, she had decided, and she had taken the first bus to Daytona Beach where the spring breakers were having a ball.
Tall southern yellow pine forests flank the highway in a blur of greenery slashed by brown trunks, and she cannot connect those tall, gaunt pines to any smell in particular. She cannot even remember what a Christmas tree smells like. They never had one.
I don' t like picking women up on my old motorcycle; it' s too obvious, and even the most retarded of passersby knows what you are up to. Picking prostitutes up is a very private matter, at least for me. This is my first free night in a long, long time. Classes and flying during the day keep me busy. Damn, it gets awful sweaty in those airplanes when they make you hold on the ramp or the taxiway. At night things don' t get easier, working as a bouncer until two o' clock in the morning, you know, trying to stretch that student loan and dad’ s and my own money as if they were a piece of bubble gum. But tonight I' m free, and horny, and cash is burning a hole in my pocket. It doesn’ t take but a few dollars to put a hole in my rather thin pockets. Getting a girlfriend is cheaper, they tell me, but at least doing it this way I don' t have to put up with any bullshit, and God knows I don' t need any.
The boardwalk simmers with tourists, mostly fat kids and even fatter parents, all bitching about how hot and muggy the night is. No pussy in sight. Atlantic Avenue is a good bet, so I head in that direction, and in my way I see her for the first time: blond, kind of, nice figure with small breasts, and the working girl trade mark cigarette pack in her hand.
"Hi hon. You looking?" she asks me as I stand beside her as if I were waiting to cross the corner. I’ m incognito.
"Yes, I am," I answer, still looking at passing cars.
I face her. She smiles and pretty dimples form on her cheeks. She is not beautiful; she is cute instead, and outgoing, I can tell.
"Fifty bucks," she says in a pleasant voice.
"I only have forty," I say, which is the honest truth.
Her smile and her dimples seem out of place in a hooker; they belong on some goody-goody commercial. "O.K. You' re kind of cute," she says.
We walk side by side to her room, blending with the crowd, and make small talk. And then we make love, or have sex, or make sex and have love, I don' t know which one it is. But it was well worth forty bucks.
A summer sun hammers the long line of tourist-packed vehicle strickling by in their way to the beach ramps. The street boils with Yankee cars loaded with old farts dressed in polychrome polyester, and rednecks driving pick-ups that blare Lynyrd Skynyrd tunes out onto the hot sidewalks. The sundry procession goes by, inching its way to the Atlantic with its rewards of overcrowded beaches and piss filled surf.
Debbie stands by the corner, clutching a pack of cigarettes in one hand, her other hand resting on her hip, her rump haughtily shoved to a side and well defined under her light summer dress, a brief dress that exposes the two masks tattooed on her right shoulder just below her hair line. One mask smiles and the other one is sad. She chose that particular tattoo out of the fat and dog eared book a scroungy looking biker artist had given her to pick from; to her it spoke of life' s good and bad times.
Men stare at her with a fixation that would make any woman blush, but she stares back with cold brown eyes and a Mona Lisa smile. The sea breeze tousles her dress and dark blond hair; her small breasts push their hard nipples through her dress' s light fabric. It' s too hot for a bra; besides, she doesn' t own any, an advantage of having small tits, the only advantage she can think of.
Women also stare at her. Some turn their noses up as if offended by an unknown smell; a few laugh among themselves; and others become angry at her sight: she' s giving away for cash what they cherish as a God given treasure, that hair covered slit between their legs that holds the promise of good husbands and happy families. Debbie' s is for sale by the side of the road like a hot dog or a T-shirt, and their men look at it, so easy, reachable and cheap, and their own slits, sitting on upholstery bought with five year loans, drop a notch in value.
She saunters on the sidewalk and trusts her rump in the air with practiced provocation, holding the cigarette pack in one hand, a lit cigarette on the other. She stares at the men in the passing cars, never deflecting her hard eyes from their own scrutiny. It' s hot but breezy and she enjoys the air blowing between her naked legs, carousing her exposed crotch.
She gets a kick out of lifting her dress and showing her triangle to some nerd looking guy, watching his eyes grow big and his brows arch like a cat' s back. It' s amusing to her what the slight sight of a tuft of curly short hairs can do.
Two Chinks in a rental car gaze at her from the curb with their mouths held open in a frozen ooooh. She boldly approaches their car and sticks her head and shoulders through the passenger side window making sure that her dress sags enough to show them her brown nipples.
"Hi hon. Looking for a good time?" She smiles and runs her tongue' s tip over her lips in a long, circular motion. The Asian men remain frozen on their seats, the ooooh fixed on their lips. "For fifty bucks each you can have some good American pussy." She brings the cigarette to her lips, takes a heavy draw and blows the smoke against the wind. The men talk to each other in Chink; she sees smiles crossing between them, and before they can reach their own decision, she opens the rear door and gets into the car, sliding over the seat to a stop, sitting with her legs purposely spread apart. The two men are now staring into her inviting slit resting over the upholstery. Their car joins the traffic stream and heads for her motel.
Through the window a light sea breeze comes in to tangle with the curtains. We both lie naked on bed. I rest on my back and Debbie' s head is leaning on my stomach, and she has my member in her mouth, slowly working her lips up and down its length with smacking sounds. The TV is on and she is watching the Lucy Show, and I don' t know what' s more important to her, my dick or Lucy; but that doesn' t matter. I gently run my fingers through her gossamer hair and feel the warmth of her face on my belly. Her lips give me a deep and intense pleasure. Life has stopped at the window unable to violate our cocoon of hired intimacy. Life' s Problems await for us out side while the living present belongs to us, Lucy, and the sea breeze. Our universe is nothing but the space inside this cheap motel room. Is this love? Who cares?
My days are long and filled with heat and the drone of engines. I fly with the cowling and the doors off but the wind behind the propeller is still warm and humid. My back sweats and my wet skin sticks to the vinyl seat; I can' t say enough about the glamor of flying. Truck drivers have it easier, with their air conditioned cabs and the ability to stop anywhere they want for a piss and a cup of coffee. All I can do is sit, sweat and buck the wind all day long; long periods of boredom dotted by the stress of picking up banners, rising the nose at full throttle while the banner refuses to leave the ground, hoping the damned kite won' t stall in this tug of war with me sitting in the middle. I get out of the cockpit only to refuel and to take a piss behind the fuel pumps. I hurry back into the airplane where now the odors of gasoline, airplane and sweat are mixed in a sickening cocktail.
I quit my bouncer job because I got tired of dealing with drunks and the late hours. I got to take a chick home now and then but I quickly learned that drunk broads are not much fun in bed. I had one pass out and piss on my bed. Another puked in my bathroom but missed the porcelain throne (how, I don' t know) and I had to clean the mess the next day, a rather unpleasant affair when it is done inside an old cramped trailer in the middle of summer. Girlfriends and one nighters are nothing but trouble so I' m still sticking to professional pussy and I don' t mind paying for what I could get for free.
From the heat of the cockpit I jump to the heat of the kitchen in a greasy spoon, Al' s Dinner, on US 1, by Port Orange. Being a short order cook is not that bad; I get breaks to use the bathroom and Johnny, the proprietor, is quite a character, and old Yankee from upstate New York that has more tales than a convention of liars and who speaks like James Cagney in one of his gangster movies. But Johnny is not liar or make believe poser; his honest straightforwardness doesn' t allow him to bull shit anyone. It is just that the man has enough wild stories of his own to keep me flipping burgers and washing dishes with a smile on my greasy face, and for that I' m very grateful. Johnny has been beaten, arrested, fooled, abused, and generally treated like a dog through his colorful life full of odd jobs but his up beat disposition doesn' t seem to have taken a dent and all his misfortunes are now nothing but jokes to laugh at. And laugh we do.
"Never got into a knife fight with a Porto Rican?" he asks me while I' m scrubbing the hot plate.
"Never, and I' m not looking forward to it." And there goes Johnny, with a new tale and how he ended throwing two Puerto Ricans over the side of a bridge into the river below. He also shows me the scar on his left arm…
"One of them ' coons cut through my coat that I had wrapped around my arm to use as a shield. A sharp knife that was." His dark blue eyes shine as a kid' s looking at a train toy and he laughs as if the six inches of scar running along the top of his arm we retickling him. Despite his joviality, I wouldn' t like to get into a knife fight with him on a bridge, or anywhere else.
The nights go fast and the usual customers come and go. They sit at the counter, mesmerized by Johnny' s tales and eat my food with far less enthusiasm. They come to Al' s to be entertained, not to eat; they buy food and coffee as the admission ticket to a friendly conversation. We got drunks, former drunks, bikers, vets, rednecks, mechanics with dirt packed under their fingernails, and divorced women who are way past their prime and who only got wrinkles on their faces as compensation for putting up with losers and their lousy marriages. All are welcome at Al' s and we make merry company. I have learn more about life standing behind the counter next to Johnny than I ever did behind my desk at school.
It' s late at night and the clock' s hands are approaching closing time. Our routine is to close and then Johnny and I have our meal. After, we clean up and Johnny does the cash register then he pays me before we leave the place and go our different ways home. I' m washing the last pile of dishes when somebody enters the joint. I don' t bother to look back because I' m up to my elbows in dirty water, scrubbing a big pot. Johnny and the double barrel shotgun under the counter can cover my back.
"Hi handsome," a female voice comes from the other side of the counter. I pay no attention because I think the voice is talking to Johnny.
' Hey fly boy! Too busy to say hello?" The voice is now louder and with a hint of annoyance.
I turn around and there is Debbie in a flimsy summer dress with her little nipples pushing the thin fabric out.
"Debbie…! What are you doing in this side of town?" My smile comes upon my oily face. I can see myself wearing a food stained and dirty apron and a white paper cap. I' m both glad seeing Debbie and I' m embarrassed at the same time. Soapy water drips down my fingers onto the greasy floor.
"A customer drove me to his place and afterwards didn' t want to take me back to my motel, so I started walking and passing by I decided to have a cup of coffee and something to eat." Her dimples, her damned dimples with her smile make me feel like a dupe.
"It' s gonna take you all night to get back to your place," I say.
"No really. I will get another customer on my way back, or more than one, but I will eventually find a john to take me home."
During this time the unflappable Johnny just stood behind the counter and smiled. It was obvious that having a whore in his reputable establishment was of no consequence to him. He walked to the door and flipped the sign from "Open" to "Close" and came back to his place behind the counter. I just stood where I was, water now just a trickle running down my fingertips.
"Well," says Johnny. "Are you gonna offer the lady something to eat or are you just gonna stand there like a dummy?"I snap into action, dry my hands while Johnny asks Debbie, not really asks, but tells her what she will have for dinner. While they made small talk I got dinner going for the three of us: double cheeseburgers with bacon and onion rings for everybody. Once done I placed the three servings on the counter and before I had time to say anything, Johnny grabbed two of the dishes and took them to a little corner table by the window.
"You two can eat here," he said, a devilish smile on his face. "I will eat at the counter while I close the register."I knew Johnny long enough to know that he was full of it. Closing the register meant grabbing all the money and giving me my cut. He never counted anything, he just grabbed the cash in a bundle and put it in his pocket and went home. But there he sat, counting bills and eating alone while I had to sit with Debbie by the window. Right after we sat he had come over with a pair of beers and had placed them on our table.
"No beer license in this joint but we are closed so… who gives a damn?" His boyish smile in his wrinkled face made me go along with his idea of a joke. I knew he had a joke up his sleeve some where, but he didn' t seem too keen to go for it, at least not yet.
"He' s so cute," says Debbie after Johnny walked back to the counter.
"He' s nuts," I say aloud so Johnny can hear me. "And he knows it." Johnny smiles behind the counter and ignores me, chopping down on his dinner.
We sit across from each other and start to eat in silence. It was obvious she was hungry. I chew and watch the traffic go by US 1. I picture Debbie walking alone on the dark sidewalks, waiting for a john to stop to either make more money or get a ride back to her place, or both. Late at night and waiting to be picked by strangers, maybe some crazed nut, and her only defense is her cute dimples. I shake my head in disbelief, still looking out of the window.
"What?" she asks. Her eyes are inquisitive, as if trying to see beyond the expression on my dirty face and right into my mind.
"I don' t want you walking back alone tonight. It' s too dangerous. I' ll take you home." She smiles but doesn' t contradict me and lowers her gaze as if embarrassed. She chews for a few seconds, swallows and then says in a soft voice," Thank you. You' re an angel."
Behind me Johnny speaks.
"Good night. I' m going home. Your money is on the counter."
"Good night," says Debbie. "And thank you."
I turn just in time to see him winking to Debbie, the old coot.
"See you tomorrow," I say. "I' ll lock up for you."Johnny' s stocky frame disappears through the door and he ambles away, probable thinking of the fun he was going to have at my expense the next night.
Alone we eat. We make small talk and drink our beer in short seeps. There is no reason to hurry but there is no reason for us to bedinning together either but somehow it feels right to be alone and together this night. I' m filthy with kitchen stains and smell like onions, and she is also dirty in a way that hurts me when it shouldn' t because it is not my business. At least she doesn' t stink like I do. The dirty cook and the prostitute; this ain' t the Lady and the Vagabond; this ain' t fucking love story but two losers eating together, probably a joke in the making if Johnny has his way.
I take her home in my jalopy. I' m free of the apron and the hat but the onion stench still hangs around me. She doesn' t seem bothered by it, but why would she? Her line of work requires a strong stomach. We talk, we laugh and have a good time. I drop her on the sidewalk in front of her place. I can see another girls sitting on lounge chairs, smoking and waiting for their johns to drop by. I know a few. Before she got out of the car she kissed me on the cheek. Her tender touch still burns. She smiles and the darned dimples make me look like a fool again. She walks away, says hello to her coworkers and before entering the lobby she turns around and waves at me, blowing a kiss with her hand. I smile and wave back. What a fool I' m.
Next night Johnny says nothing to me about Debbie. Not even one question or remark. Maybe, after all, it had not been a joke.
Pencil on legal size yellow sheet
April 27, Daytona Beach.
Dear Tony:
How are things out there in Youngstown? Any steel mills left? Anybody left in town? Every pizza man in Dayton a is from Ohio, union men working for tips. I haven’ t finished school and I already have a huge student loan to pay back, and the Old Man is broke. I have been flying banners for an out fit in New Smyrna beach. The pay is crap but at least I get to put lots of hours in my logbook. It' s hard on your ass when you spent all day sitting in a plane. It' s hot, noisy and when you have a head wind the damned thing barely moves, but at least I' m getting the hours. A few many more thousands of hours and then I can get a job with an airline (by then I will be forty at least).
You know, if you want to come to Florida you can stay with me until you get your shit together. My trailer is small and I don' t have air, but you' re welcome to stay. I don' t know how you can stand those winters out there. Once you get used to this weather there is no turning back. How is your job bagging groceries going? I tell you, you could make better money around here shucking oysters.
Did you go to court yet? You haveto be fucking stupid to take on three cops at once. I suppose there is nothing better to do up there than beat on cops. If you see Pam, tell her that she can give you the fifty bucks I lent her the last time I was there. The bitch is playing dumb. You take care of your self.
Bye.
Ken
No doubt about it, the old man is a Yankee; he talks with that adenoidal accent, like a gangster from a black and white B movie. Fat gold rings peppered with jewels shine on his dried fingers dappled with liver spots. Debbie sits with her back to the passenger door, one leg bent under her body, the other stretched in front of her at an angle. The angle increases and her golden crotch flare sunder the strong sunlight. The old man almost loses control of his big car when he catches a glance of her genitalia. She giggles like a mischievous child caught stealing cookies would.
"What' s your name?" she asks knowing well he is going to give her a false one.
"Art. Name' s Art," the old man says while trying to both drive and look between her now closed legs, his bloodshot eyes nervously darting between the road and her groin.
"What you have in mind, Art?" She carefully pronounces Art, as if it were a super hero' s name, mocking the old man, but he doesn' t catch on. The old fart tries to speak but his Adam’ s apple get stuck in his wind pipe and words cannot come through his dried up lips. Debbie knows what he has in his mind but she asks just to see him choke in his own embarrassment. She finds delight in making her customers pay more than money for her services.
"I don' t know. You tell me," answers the old man, obviously nervous.
"What about half-and-half, you know, half head and half fuck," her voice rings as pleasant and natural as if she were talking about the weather.
The old man' s grip on the steering wheel tightens. His eyes are now fixed on the road and looking out of a drawn and blushing face. No words come out of his lips even though they quiver as if grasping for sounds.
"It' s gonna cost you," she continues in a relaxed voice. "Fifty bucks." She can do it for less, but it never hurts to ask for more.
"Fine," he manages to say.
"O.K. On the next block, hang a right," she says.
"Where' re we going?"
"I have a place; it' s safe," her legs open briefly, then close again; she enjoys making the old fart sweat. The big cart wists and turns through narrow streets inundated with sunshine while the old man silently follows her directions.
The cushy ride, the gentle and cool conditioned air and the isolation from the outside world relax her; smoothly gliding through reality with a well tuned suspension is such a fine feeling, and she enjoy sit while she can. Fifty bucks for screwing an old man with a pencil dick ain' t a bad deal, she thinks. She doesn' t see the man holding his wilting member in his sickly colored hand, his hairy back, sagging chest, and varicose veins. Seeing things is not good for business. She only sees fifty bucks, easy fifty bucks.
"Right there, that green building, you can park over there," she commands. The car slows down, pulls into a parking space and stops; its engine remains idle.
Debbie has no time to waste," Let' s go. Come on." She tries to get out but the electric locks are down. The old man stiffly grips the steering wheel and his stare into the distance turns void and far. The veins in his throat bulge, his lips quiver, and his voice roars," You whore! You damned whore!"
She is still trying to get out, her body leaning against the unyielding door," Of course I' m a whore! Who the fuck you think I am? Mother Teresa?"
"You whore, you will burn in hell! Repent from your sins or you will burn in eternal hell!" The old man' s voice roars with a raspy and trembling power. His angry eyes burn a path to hers and his face twitches as if electricity were flowing under his mottled skin.
She struggles with the door," Come on, man! Let me go, you asshole! Open this fucking door!" Her voice is angry but firm.
"Repent and He will save you!"
"Fuck you! Let me out!" She pounds with her fists on the window. "I' m gonna scream, you asshole! Open!"
"Your soul is lost! Pray with me and repent from your sins!"His eyes close in religious fervor. She screams as loud as her lungs allow. His eyes open. Passersby are looking into the car. She screams again, still pounding on the window. His trembling hands reach for the unlocking master button on his door. The lock snaps free with a click, and she bolts out of the car.
"Asshole!" She slams the door shut and speeds away from the car. "Fucking nut!"
The old man is gone. After a cigarette Debbie goes back on the street because she has to make rent money. The sun shines with pristine opulence; thunderstorm clouds simmer over the ocean line.
Our feet sink into the wet sand and foam bubbles between our toes. The surf is brownish and frothy. An aircraft' s laboring engine comes overhead. It' s Seven Two Papa, and Ron is probably flying it. The old Champ flies in a crab, fighting the stiff wind trying to push it inland. The banner behind it, Reggae at the Beach Pub, makes a sound of its own, like a plastic bag tied to a car' s door handle while speeding down the highway.
"You working tomorrow?" Debbie asks me.
"Yeah. Another long fucking day," my eyes are still fixed on Seven Two Papa. "I hope the wind is not so strong. Bucking the wind all day long is n' t fun."
"It must be pretty neat to fly up and down the beach,."Debbie says. Her eyes follows the little airplane that continues to fly north defying the wind and earning a living.
"At the beginning it is; later on, you get sick of it."
She walks into the surf, knee high, and the waves' crests kiss her dress' s hem. "This is fucking great, isn' t it?" Facing the ocean, she brings her arms high over her head and spreads her fingers as if trying to catch breeze and sunshine. I stand beside her. The rolling waves slap our legs; yes, it is great. The past and the future don' t matter; but right now it' s fucking great.
With the cops cracking down on prostitution – no good for family vacationers and business, preach the city leaders – things become difficult on the beach side. Now Debbie works Ridge wood Avenue. Glaring sunlight adds brightness to the scandalous and shabby storefronts of biker and tittie bars, and to the huge yellow, dirty movie theater. It is a subtropical colorfulness that masks the harshness of a life lived from day to day, from minute to minute, devoid of any plausible future, or expectant with such a sordid one that there is no point to think about it. She doesn' t think about hers.
Her eyes are half closed, in part due to the glare, in part to the downers she has taken. A sedated drowsiness has a hold on her body. Her gait is slow and at times staggering but she doesn' t know that. She stands by the corner, wrapped inside the Mandrax bubble she has created for herself. Outside the bubble things move at the speed of light, in a blur of intense light and motion; sounds are far distant and muffled, but she is happy inside her bubble where life exists at a more peaceful pace.
A beat up station wagon pulls in front of her and stops. Automatically, as if reacting to a surviving instinct, she approaches the passenger door window and leans her body through it. A small and dark young man smiles at her, his sharp teeth shining like ivory daggers.
"Hello. How arre you doing?" He drags his r' s with a powerful accent. He' s got to be one of them foreigners who goes to the school by the airport, she thinks, then she forgets she thought of that.
"Hi babe," she manages to open the door and get in. The wagon rolls over the hot asphalt, flanked by traffic on all sides.
"What' s your name, hon?" she asks from inside her bubble, her voice reverberating from invisible walls. He says a name but she doesn' t get it. Hon will do. She props her legs over the dashboard, lifts her dress and pulls her pink panties down, exposing her crotch to Hon whose jaws drop almost to his chest.
"This goddamned thing is giving me a fit," she tugs at her panties and pulls them off. Her legs stay over the dashboard; the mat of hair on her groin exposed to the world with a delightful indifference. A truck driver on her side, enticed by the erotic view, almost rams an old lady in front of him.
"Pleaase, coverr up. No good to show thing like that," says Hon with one eye on the road, the other on the thing. She giggles in pleasure and runs her fingers through her mat, rubbing hard the bulges around the slit.
"What' s the matter, Hon. Don’ t you like it?" Her body becomes heavy and sluggish. The bubble starts to close on her.
Somehow she succeeds at showing Hon the right motel. They enter her room. She takes his money, heads for the bed and lies on her back with the money clenched in one hand. Her dress rests high up her waist and her legs are spread. Then the bubble crashes on her, heavy and solid. Her senses sink into the crevasses of her tired body, weighing it down with such a burden that she sinks into the mattress like a heavy marble statue. Reality bursts like a bubble to be replaced by nothingness.
She wakes up with the money still in her hand. A flaky and sticky film of dried semen is stuck to her belly. Her judgment is still muddled, but she thinks of a new meaning for self-service. "Help your self, Hon," she says aloud to herself. The ceiling fan above spins with a blurred motion, and she gets dizzy.
Tonight I' m getting the special treatment. I don' t know why, but Debbie is trying to be sexy and romantic, or romantic and sexy. Whatever. The many candle lights create soft dancing shades on the walls. A tawny light floods her room and keeps the outside world at bay.
"What' s going on?" I ask. "Is this going to cost me more?"
"No. It' s not going to cost you more," she says, and I can sense a very brief animosity in her voice, but it vanishes in a moment. "You' re a special customer."
"Me? I' m a cheap skate. What' s so special about me?
"You' re nice."
"So, what' s the big deal? Everybody is nice when they get what they want."
Her smile and her small dimples look beautiful by candlelight. The needle marks on her arms are not so noticeable under the soft light. "You' re nice and you know it." We embrace and her warm body makes me stronger and protective. I can feel her heartbeat on my chest; I feel femininity and flesh and desire under her dress. Her nimble waist nicely fits the crook of my arms. We make love, touching, sensing, pressing, baiting, smelling, tasting. We fill our senses and block life. Sensuality, as solid and real as the air we breathe, grows between us like the lights precariously dancing wrapped around the wick of the fast burning candles, destined to die and melt into a puddle of wax, ready to disappear at the slightest of breezes. But that will be the future. Now is ours, sensual and soft.
An unctuous sea spray film covers the windshields of the cars parked along the street. The moisture laden air irradiates heat, and Debbie walks through it, her skinny body displacing that humid air, absorbing its heat, sweat wrapping her as a pasty shroud. The humidity shows itself under the streetlights as a diaphanous and diffused glow where bugs leave traces of their dashing paths. A cigarette pack is in her hand, and she walks with a trained disdain that proclaims her free and guiltless spirit, and she unashamedly stares into passing cars with a direct and defiant gaze. She can see through those faces above the steering wheels: the lust, the desire, it' s all there; if they only had the guts to stop and pick her up.
A dark and rusted utility van cruises the street. It' s the third time it goes by, and the driver has been checking her out. Maybe it will stop the next time around. She lights a cigarette and waits. There it comes. Both the driver and Debbie look at each other, and then she moves between parked cars and waits at the edge of the open street. The van stops and the driver leans over to unlock the door with his tattooed arm, strong and vascular. In a dash she climbs into the van which speeds away.
"Hi hon. What’ s up?" Her greeting is casual as if she were in a familiar van with an old friend.
"Lookin' for some fun, if you know what I mean." His voice is also very casual.
"Fifty bucks, half-and-half, my place," a long plume of smoke comes out of her mouth and nostrils as she speaks, and she smiles, small, cute dimples forming over the corner of her lips.
"Fifty dollars!" exclaims the driver. "You ain' t the last fuck on Earth, you know."
"How much you got on you?" Another dirtbag she thinks, wants to get laid for nothing, like pussy grew on trees.
"Thirty bucks." His unsmiling face needs a shave, long and dirty hair cascades from underneath a Harley Davison cap.
"A blow job is all you gonna get for that much."
The man drives in silence, pondering the offer, or looking like he' s pondering over something," Alright, but we don' t go to your place." He arches his thumb over his shoulder. "Back there will be fine." There is a bench seat at the very back, and no windows. Rusted tool boxes, empty fast food bags and Styrofoam containers litter the floor. The van takes one of the ramps and lands on the beach. The rising tide and its effervescent surf lick the van' s bold tires. They park on an unlit and lonely spot facing the murky ocean where traces of white foam ride, barely discernible, atop the darkness of the waves. Both move to the bench seat and sit.
"I want my money first," Debbie requests with firmness, and throws her cigarette to the floor and steps on it, rubbing her sole over the squashed butt.
"How I know you' re any good?" he asks in a gruff voice.
He is starting to get on her nerves, the jerk," I' m good, probably the best you' ll ever have."
Solid and unexpected, his fist squarely lands under her left eye and knocks her from the bench seat. The metallic edge of a toolbox gives her another bruise on her left hip when she hits the floor. Before she has time to gather her senses, he jumps on her, tugging at her clothes, his dirty hands searching her dress, her panties, her body.
"Where is the money! The money, you fucking bitch!" His hands grope for the crispiness of paper, searching for a flash of green.
"Get off me!" She screams. His open hand lands on her face with a clapping, numbing sound. Her head twists and hits the side of the van.
"Fucking shut up!" He turns his attention to her cigarette pack. Tearing it apart he finds a small square of neatly folded bills. His smile flowers through his crooked teeth. He leans over her and reaches for the door handle above her head, opens the van' s sliding door and shoves her out with a kick.
"Mother fucker! Mother fucker!" Her cussing has not diminished since she hit the sand. The door slides shut. The van starts and disappears into darkness, two small red dots gliding over the sand and escaping from her. Her face burns in pain and her eye is swelling shut and feels like it' s ready to explode, and her hip pains her. Lying supine, she vainly screams against the breeze and cries to the night and the surf. The waves continue to break against the sand, unabated.
"You get two for the price of one," Debbie says to me. She is leaning over my new old car' s window with a cigarette nervously burning between her fingers.
"What' s the catch?" I ask. Debbie doesn' t give it away for nothing, and I understand; hell, I don' t fly for free either.
"Well, I need to see this guy tonight, you know, we have some business," she puffs on her cigarette. "It' s not far, by Volusia Avenue." Her smile is working at its best. "I just need a ride."
I have nothing better to do tonight, so I agree. Two for one. I don' t know if I' m going to be able to deliver. Shit, I' m the one who should get paid; after all, I' m doing all the work.
We drive inland, on Volusia Avenue. Traffic is light tonight, probably too hot and muggy for the old farts to leave their condos. Lowlifes without air conditioning like Debbie and I go out anyway; it doesn' t make a difference to us.
"What' s that bruise under your eye?" I had noticed it while talking to her through my window.
"Some mother fucker hit me on the face and ripped off my money," she answers in a calm voice, almost a whisper although her body language is one of jitters.
"You called the cops?"
She takes the last draw from her cigarette and throws the butt out of the window. "Sure I did; basically, they told me to fuck off." She pauses to light another cigarette. "They said it was my own damned fault for working the streets."
"That wasn' t nice."
"Fuck' em all."
Her mind is tuned to a different frequency tonight. It' s going to be a wham-bang-thank-you-ma' am night, two in a row – maybe. I give her the money in advance after she pleaded for it," Man, I need that money to pay that guy, or he' s going to get mean." Her pretty smile brings her dimples back. "You don' t want anything bad to happen to me, do you?" It' s amazing how she can switch moods to fit her needs, like flipping frequencies in an airplane radio, back and forth.
She takes me right into Nigger town. I park between two junked cars(a perfect disguise for my old clunker). She sneaks into a house using the backyard gate. I slide downwards in my seat and lay low, waiting for her, keeping an eye on my mirrors, just in case.
Time passes by and I start to get uncomfortable. Buying drugs should not take this long. I' m pretty sure they don' t give free samples. Something is wrong. I wait for a while and nothing, no Debbie. Damned, I got ripped off tonight; she pulled a fast one on me. Noway in hell I' m going into that house looking for her. After a long wait I conclude that I have been taken. "Two for one," I say to myself. "Sure, there is one born every minute."
The Trailways station on Volusia Avenue is next to Nigger town. I took Debbie here once so she could get her fix and for that I got a free blow job and she let me play with her tits. I wish dating respectable women were that easy. The station is dusty and the parking lot reeks of diesel and rubber, not different than any other bus station anywhere else. I have no idea why my mind links what I see to Debbie; it' s getting kind of annoying. My annoyance gets pushed aside when the bus arrives. The door opens with a clang and passengers start to descent the steps: matrons holding small children in their arms or dragging them out by their hands, Metallic a types with cheap sung glasses and just an overnight bag for luggage, soldiers eager to go home, and the last to come down is Tony, big Tony, dressed in a brown suit with padded shoulders, a skinny dark blue tie and steel toe working shoes on his feet. In his hand there is a gym bag with our high school colors. I' m sure he has at least one gun in there. He' s wearing a pair of sunglasses that make him look like John Belushi in the Blues Brothers; the only thing missing is the hat. The man likes to be stylish but doesn' t know how and can' t afford to. Style is not something you pick up in the rough Youngstown neighborhoods. What he had picked off the street is a tough guy look, and it is not just the look but it is the real toughness in him that shows up on his face. His nose is crooked to his left. Tony doesn' t remember which fist fight gave him that crooked nose, and he doesn' t remember the details of his broken ribs and fractured jaw and other scars. To him, all those scars are what happens when he tries to live his life, something as elementary as breathing to stay alive.
But I love the big fella. He' s a stand up guy and will never go back on his promises. He spent time in the slammer after that Christmas tree fiasco and told the D.A. to stick it up his ass when he came around with promises of leniency if he would testify against his partners in crime. Fred took the deal and Tony got the book thrown at him. I' m sure Fred didn' t give me up because he didn' t want to face a really pissed off Tony after he got out of jail. Just the same, Fred left for California right before Tony was due for release from the county jail. Distances keep your bones unbroken.
"Ken!" Tony drops the gym bag on the ground and hugs me. He bangs his fists on my shoulders. I can feel his strength through his cheap suit and on his affectionate beating of my back.
"How you doin' " I say.
"Glad to be here, out of that shithole."
We wait for his bag to come out of bus' bowels. When his worn out duffel bag is out, he picks it up with one hand and we walk to my car parked outside next to the sidewalk.
"How' s my old man doing" I ask.
"As always, working his ass off and keeping to himself, but he seems fine."
"And your parents?"
"Well," he seems to be looking for the right words before he continues. "Their livers are holding up amazingly well."
I say nothing. Some things don' t change.
The door to her place is open, and she knows some thing is amiss; she always locks her door before leaving. A closer look confirms her fears: somebody has kicked the door in and the flimsy lock lies on the floor surrounded by bits of wood. Her stuff litters the floor. She rushes to the bathroom and lifts the toilet' s tank cover. Taped to the inside of the cover is a plastics and wich bag bulging with cash. Relief lights up her thin face, and she places the cover back over the tank. Her pot is missing. Somebody went through her drawers and took a bag half-full with goodsin semilla. Her TV is missing too. From the pay phone at the corner she calls the cops. Being ripped off really pisses her off, and the cops may as well now about it; after all, they give her enough grief, let them catch some shit now.
A young rookie shows up looking like a spring breaker disguised as a cop, his dark Ray-Bans failing to hide his baby face. She doesn' t know him, yet. He' s trying to be all business with his new clipboard on hand. The radio perched over his shoulder keeps on transmitting unintelligible words.
"How much was that TV worth?" he asks from behind his sunglasses.
"Three hundred bucks," she quickly answers, even though she only paid fifty and didn' t ask Charley where he got it from.
"Do you mind if I look around?"
"Look as much as you want, hon," she says, puffing on a cigarette.
He walks around her room, his radio still going, and she wonders how he can stand that constant clatter. He' s now hunching over her coffee table. With his pen he pushes to the center of the table a syringe that had been half hidden under a TV guide. His pen is now searching into her ashtray where a metal roach still holds a tuft of white paper and weed in its teeth.
"What' s all this?" he asks and stands erect behind the shield of his glasses suspended over his serious baby face, and his radio turns mute at last.
"I don' t know," she expels a long plume of smoke on his direction. "My friends come here to party when I ain' t home." She knows that he knows her answer is bullshit.
He approaches. "Put the cigarette out and turn around; place your hands behind your back." The cold handcuffs snap around her too thin wrists.
On the way to booking she thinks that it was good to get busted. Things were getting out of hand. Heroine is a good friend, but a demanding one, more than coke. "I need to gain some weight back", she thinks. "Being too skinny is not good for business."
The band shell looks pretty under the glistening sun. The congested sidewalk doesn' t bother me. At the beach access ramp behind the band shell there is a gathering of onlookers. An old flatbed truck loaded with watermelons sits on its rear bumper with its front wheels high in the air at the foot of the steep incline.
Among the onlookers is Debbie, cigarette pack in hand, cheap mirror sunglasses shielding her eyes. I haven' t seen her since the "tw of or one" deal, and that was over six months ago. As if by magic, she has gained weight on all the right places. Her body is full and curvier; her hair shines with a healthy brilliance. I stand behind her, imagining my fingers running through her hair, just like the wind is doing now. She finally looks back and I see my own eyes reflected on her shades. Smiles and dimples flash as bright as Florida sunshine.
"Hi there!" she exclaims.
"Hi," I say, still sulking from the "two for one"deal. "Long time no see."
"You never came to visit me." Her smile goes into a reproaching mode.
"Visit you where?"
"In jail. I got busted. Didn' t you know?" She speaks with a happy voice. The watermelon truck watchers hear her and automatically move a few steps away, as if her criminality were to rub off on them.
"No! I didn' t know!"
"I was sure that any of the girls would have told you."
"Well," I say. "I was being truthful to you, so I didn' t screw any other girls." The watermelon truck watchers now move a step away from me. Debbie' s smile is delightful, so full now.
"Sure as hell. You cannot keep your pecker in your pants even if you life depended on it." The watermelon truck watchers are now paying more attention to us than to the truck. We both laugh. I grab her hand (it feels so warm and sensual) and pull her away from the crowd. A few envious eyes follow us as we go to my car.
"You want to go to Ponce Inlet?" I ask. Never before had I asked a working girl to come with me just for the fun of it. The question came out without thinking, as if I were a dummy through which an inner voice talked nonsense.
"Sure, if you buy the beer." Her quick acceptance further surprises me. I find myself driving to Ponce Inlet with Debbie, clueless about both my asking and her acquiescence.
We leave the car by the side of the dirt marina road. Six-pack in hand, we walk to the dunes, go over them and descent into the jetties. The tide is receding and the jetties spread in front of us like water mirrors reflecting strikes of sunlight. We pick a jetty that looks like a big jacuzzi. We strip and get in with only our necks sticking out of the water. The cold beer tastes good under the hot sun. Banner planes fly overhead, some heading back to New Smyrna, others going to Daytona Beach.
Debbie caresses me under the water. Her feet rub my legs; her toes play with my crotch. We make love under the water, our heads above it, our bodies submerged in the salty water, its fluidity becoming one with us, and we kiss, and this is the first time we kiss and by that I mean a really wet one, full of flavor. It is Debbie' s rule that she never kisses a customer. She can blow and screw the most disgusting of men for money, but she will never kiss anyone; that' s too personal.
Touching her feels good. Knowing she is with me feels good. Having her feels good. Her smile makes me happy. Is this love? Or is this craziness?
The gages are in the green. R.P.M. is well below red line and the engine churns with that so familiar monotony. Ponce Inlet is coming up under my left wing. The high tide covers the jetties under a cloak of breaking waves, and my mind tries to cover the memory of making love to Debbie on that spot. Nevertheless, my mind is clear, and the memory appears visible underneath the surf, shiny and undistorted.
The old lighthouse grows abeam of my left wing now. My nose points towards Daytona. The banner behind, Tonite Rock & Roll; at the pier, tugs at my tail with a persistence that reminds me of those thoughts that refuse to leave us alone regardless how fast or high our minds go.
Anybody can have sex, good sex. But sex with strings attached is love, isn' t it? I wonder if I' m falling in love with a prostitute and a junkie (she swears she completed a detox program, but that' s Debbie talking), or is it just a passing whim, or it' s just plain good sex. She sells her sex for money; I sell my flying for money. Are we not the same thing?
Human figures populate the beach. Who has the answer down there?Nobody probably. Flesh is such a powerful thing; its smell, and texture, and warmth, and Debbie' s flesh is so… so… free. No games, no pleading, no promises. Her flesh is available to all just by asking and paying. Other women make such a big deal of going to bed, as if having sex were a religious experience, but for Debbie it is like breathing; in and out, that easy.
A whore and a junkie, human trash with a beautiful smile drawn upon a face marked by cute dimples. Small breasts and needle scarred arms, warm skin touching mine, unconditional sex, or love, or affection – I don' t know – to be taken as it comes, without questions or promises, without spelled or implied guarantees.
Atlantic Avenue surges abeam of my left wing. Debbie' s favorite corner is empty. She may be sleeping it off, or she may be servicing a paying customer. It' s not my business and I don' t want it to be my business. Can this be jealousy? Do love and jealousy come hand on hand?
"Dad, I want you to meet my fiancé, Debbie The Whore. Debbie, this is my dad."
I can see my dad grunting; that short and raspy grunt that denotes surprise, and his clear blue eyes squinting to penetrate through the bullshit.
"Yes dad, she' s a social worker, fifty bucks a pop, some times two for one."
I start to laugh aloud. A flight of unsmiling pelicans goes under my plane.
We lie naked on her bed. Sex was good, of course. Debbie purrs on top of me, breathing with a somewhat heavy cadence, her face resting on my chest. Working girls always get out of bed as soon as they are finished and run for the bathroom to cleanup, but Debbie is just resting on my chest, docile as a contented cat. My hands caress her body, warm and sweaty, curvy and delicate, female and lusty, all mine, right now. Dad, I want you to meet my fiancé, Debbie The Whore, that thought does not go away from my mind, and I don' t find it amusing anymore. She smells good, and it' s not perfume; it' s her own odor. Respectable women pay big money to smell good, to have nice skin, to have pretty smiles, to be desirable. Debbie just lives from day to day, from high to high, but she has all those things. God gives bread to those who don' t have teeth. My hands continue to caress her body with delicate, whirling motions.
A deep sigh escapes from her. As if suddenly she had remembered something important, she gets up and runs to the bathroom, sits on the toilet and grabs the douche bottle, and starts to clean herself up. We look, really look at each other, and the world around us fades and only our knowledge of each other remains tangible.
Debbie, who are you? Why do I desire you with such force? She knows my thoughts. The empty distance between us is no barrier; my closed lips are no obstacle. My hands told her how I feel and my eyes scream to her with desire, and her eyes tell me what a fool I am.
I' m back at the Trailways station. I wonder if I will ever go the airport to pick somebody up. My dad decided to take the bus because he had doubts about his old pick up truck making it all the way to Florida. Hell, he had doubts his rusted truck would make it out of Youngstown.
It is dark and I can smell fried chicken. I must be downwind from the Bojangles across the street. The scent makes my stomach growl with desire. Maybe the old man will also be hungry and we both can dine on some fine spicy chicken and biscuits. No fancy restaurant for us.
Graduation is in a couple of days. I’ ll get a piece of paper that says I' m a college man and the F.A.A. gave me more papers, little rectangular cards, wallet size, that say I' m an aviator, you know, commercial, instrument, multi engine, flight instructor kind of aviator. After all the money and effort I, and my dad, put in the sepapers you would think they would be good for something. So far all I can think of is that they are good for wiping my ass. The student loans need to be paid and I have no idea how, and my dad, dear God, I almost didn' t recognized him when he came out of the bus, so old and tired, as if the burden of my education and his solitude had turned his hair white as snow and the sag under his eyes had become one with the sag on his cheeks. I felt guilty for his premature aging, of his burdens at an age when he should be enjoying some peace and some money in his savings account.
Life dealt him a bad card when mom died. At times I felt he just wanted to fold and leave for good, no reason for going on living, but the tough Pole hung in there. Maybe he did it for me, to be there for me even though he didn' t care much to be there for living his own life. He never had anything worth stealing; the only thing worthwhile in his life had been mom. He loved her beyond measure and when the big C took her away, well, he didn' t fall apart – that wasn' t in him- but the future ceased to be a thing of much importance. Since then he has lived from day to day, doing what was required of him, living a mirthless life where only memories brought a smile to his lips. And I feel guilty because I have nothing in my power to make the old man' s life less painful. I' m a college man, the first in the family, but what good is it? All I can do is treat my old man to some fried chicken and biscuits.
We carry our plastic trays full of chicken and biscuit and soda and sit in a booth by the window. Volusia Avenue is busy. I don' t know what to say to my dad. I wish I had good news, like I got a real flying job that paid a decent salary and not a few dollars by the hour. Our conversation covers the initial and mandatory inquests about how relatives, friends and acquaintances are doing, as if knowing about other' s crappy lives would make ours look some what better.
"Any luck with a job" my dad asks.
"I got the degree and the licenses but I don' t have the hours," I apologize. "Nobody will hire a young pilot with the few hours I have."
"What are you gonna do?" My dad talks without really looking at me, his eyes moving from his dinner to Volusia Avenue. There is no anger or excitement in his words. He knows what it is like to want to work and not to have a job.
"I' ll keep on towing banners until sores grow on my ass, you know, fattening my logbook." I stop to drink. "But eventually I need to start flying multi engines and turbines if I' m ever going to get a job with a commuter."
"How you gonna do that?"
"Catch twenty two." I say. "You need the hours to get a job but they won' t give a job because you don' t have the hours."
My dad laughs, thank God. He is looking straight at me.
"Someday you will be flying for Delta or Eastern and then these days won' t seem so bad."
"Amen to that." My dad and Johnny, beaten by life but not down, standing on two legs with bloodied noses and black eyes and not giving up, still optimists to the end. I know he is proud of me being a college man and an aviator, and he would be prouder if mom could be here. All I pray for is that I won' t disappoint the old guy.
Sitting atop a dune, among sea oats, I can see the jetties in front of me. I cannot tell where the river ends and where the ocean starts. A school of dolphins frolics on the silver waters, their dark and sleek bodies intermittently flashing on the surface with amazing speed. Sex and love, I cannot see where one ends and the other starts. Maybe it' s all the same waters and we, like dolphins, swim back and forth without noticing the difference.
Debbie is gone for good. The other girls told me. She packed her few things, said she was tired of Daytona Beach, and left. Just like that. Nobody knows where. I will always wonder if my hands and eyes scared her. I was scared. Dad, I want you to meet my fiancé, Debbie The Whore, somehow I know she read this thought right out of my mind, like a giant banner flapping in the breeze, and she got scared.
Other cities, other men, life continues for her as a heaping of time to be lived as best as possible, without strings. I stand and raise my arms over my head as I deeply breathe trying to fill the emptiness that swells inside me.
I can either say that Tony is a well connected man or that he is a magnet for trouble. I know he has tried the honest work for honest money route and has come up empty handed. Empty handed means making the kind of money I' m making working two jobs and still not being able to afford anything but food and rent, barely. The tried and tired wisdom that if the sucker keeps at it, somehow, like magic, things will get better, ain' t happening, at least not fast enough. Tony gave it up but I' m still trying.
Look at my case: I' m no longer flying fabric covered, made out of tubes, tail dragger antiques; now I' m flying worn out aluminum cans that leak oil by the quart. Lucky me gets to fly at night through thunderstorms with half my instrument panel in the dark because the gages are out of service, with a few duffel bags of bank checks in the back. The job pays better and I can afford to eat at Bojangles more often, and instead of flying up and down the beach I now fly between cities.
Still, the money sucks, and the student loan monkey is as big as before and doesn' t want to get off my back, and my dad needs a new truck.
When I don' t fly at night I stop by Al' s to help Johnny and to make a few extra dollars. Between orders I say to him," Hey Johnny, you' re a respectable business man now."
"Sure I am. Look at this coolinaryempire. Even the roaches are respectable." He winks an eye and laughs.
"I know you have worked your ass off all your life, just to keep food on the table but…"
He is now looking at me with a straight face. I don' t know if heal ready knows what I' m talking about or if he is just thinking another joke up.
"Haven' t you ever got tired of it? You know, working like a nigger and having nothing to show for it."
"Many a time, more than you can imagine." He is not joking this time.
"Well, I got this friend, from up north… he is a hard guy, connected, always on the move, making cash under the table and not too legally. You know what I mean."
Johnny nodded, his eyes fixed on me with an intensity I had never seen before.
"Well, he' s always offering to cut me in, and I know it is the stupid thing to do, but there are days when I' m so flat ass broke, his offers look mighty good." I don' t know why I' m asking Johnny these questions. I think it' s because I respect the man, as peculiar as he may be. He didn' t get to be this old and hard by accident.
"I did time for listening to friends like yours," said Johnny. "Easy money comes and goes the same way. I tell you, keep doing your honest work. I' m dumb and hard headed and this joint is the best I could do but you are smart and you can and will do better."
A couple of customers walked in and sat on the stools. Before taking their orders Johnny looked at me one more time and said "Don' t listen to fools. I' m an old crank and un-educated but ain' t a fool."
When I left Al' s that night my mind was made up. I would follow the old coot' s advise and stay out of any funny business. If I didn' t get killed flying aerial junk I may eventually get a job that would pay a living wage. Maybe.
Of course, good intentions, nothing but mental hogwash, cannot stand against the hard facts of reality. When I pulled into the trailer park Tony was waiting for me on the steps of our dilapidated hovel. His things stood next to his second hand Camaro. I got out of my fifth hand wreck and walked toward him.
"Moving out?" I asked.
"Yes," he said, then smiled and added," We are."
"We?"
"Yes man. Pack your shit and let' s go to my new place."
"I cannot afford a new place. I can' t barely afford this dump."
"Don' t worry. It’ s on me." Tony grinned like a devil.
There are those decisive moments in your life that mean the difference between what it is and what could have been. You know them, you recognize them years later when you look back and wham! It hits you right between the eyes. Then you say to yourself," if I only had done this, or that" and you know that your life would have been quite different. I don' t want to say it would have been better, I just mean different. I gave up long time ago trying to second guess missed opportunities and how good things could have been. That' s bullshit. All I know for sure is if I had acted differently at those decisive moments, things would have been different for sure, but I dare not to say they would have been better, or worse. I leave that to God or whoever is in charge.
Standing in front of Tony, looking past him and through the door of the trailer at the squalor inside, that was a decisive moment in my life. At the time it looked like just a decision between living like white trash or like white people, between sweating between wet sheets or sleeping in air conditioned, a choice that bore not much debating. Today I know it was a choice between minding my own business, like Johnny had told me, or getting dragged into Tony' s.
I packed my things and went with Tony. That night I slept in a dry bed without a big fan at the bottom of the bed blowing hot and humid air through my toes. Man, that was life. It was the beginning of anew life, for better or for worse; up to this day I don' t care to debate which one. Like the Catholics say, it was God' s will.
"And now!… from Miami!… here she is on the center stage! Deboraaaaah! Please gentlemen, give her a hand!"
Booming music stifles the D.J.' s stentorian voice. Nobody claps. Debbie in high heels ambles on stage wearing a translucent negligee and a G-string stippled with sequins. The pumps chafe her feet and her crotch flares in a rash of too many close shaves and sweat. But she smiles and her dimples, so wholesome and cute, form above her thin lips.
Money sits in front of her, inside the pockets of drunks and on the counters beside drinks and smoldering cigarette butts. Eyes, dazed, bright, drooling, and indifferent follow her. She bends over and grabs her heels exposing her derriè re to a fat, bearded guy, the one with drooling eyes. She knows by instinct which one will let go of his money; it' s just a matter of showing the right part, of playing the perfect slut.
Drooling Eyes smiles and flicks a dollar bill in his fingers. Debbie turns around and squats in from of him, wide and inviting, and runs her hand from her crotch along the inside of her leg to the garter where a couple of crumpled greenbacks await company. She lifts her belt and Drooling Eyes slides the dollar bill in a long and slow path along her thigh, rubbing his wedding ring on her skin, and his eyes brighten as his hand inches toward her belt.
"Thanks honey," Debbie says.
"Anytime babe," he says.
She kisses him on the cheek, stands and does a complete turn on stage, dancing as she searches for more tips. She wishes she had big tits, then she could shake those babies like Cynthia on the left stage does, round and round, like udders under a running milk cow. But she knows a few tricks of her own, like splits and bending over far enough to touch her forehead on the floor, and undulating her pelvis in provoking ripples.
The flashing overhead lights bring a sweat to her skin that takes after the juice exuding from a meatball under a heat lamp. That' s right, a meatball, a piece of meat, she thinks. She still has three more hours to go. She smiles and her dimples, so wholesome and cute, form above her thin lips.
With such a smile she ought to be working down the road at Disney, Helen told her, wearing a polyester suit and greeting tourists in to the monorail. Grandmothers in flowered sack-like dresses and screaming brats wearing rat ears are not her bag though, Debbie knows.
She leans back until her palms rest flat on the floor. Her legs spread and her belly pulsates in waves of flesh. The money is right there in front of her, twisted around the fingers of a hand yearning to touch her.
"My feet are killing me," Debbie says to Helen as they both step into the parking lot after closing time, gym bags under their arms.
"Them bunions gettin' too big girl."
Neon signs along O.B.T. glow through the veil of a sultry ground fog. Red and Blue lights flash across the road where cops and paramedics gather like vultures around a figure lying on the ground.
"Damn, I' m parked right there," complains Helen.
They cross the street and land on the sidewalk just as the paramedics push a gurney into the ambulance. Drooling Eyes lies on it, wrapped in bandages and tubes stuck in his arm and up his nose.
"What happened?" Debbie asks a deputy.
"Got mugged," says the deputy. "Where' re you two going this late?"
"We' re parked right there," says Helen, pointing to her beater.
"I' ll walk you to your car. Who knows where that mugger is hiding."
"Thank you sir."
They drive north on O.B.T., right through Nigger town where the black whores stand on the corners flagging cars down, and Debbie is grateful that she is not working the streets, but has a nice, legal job instead.
First thing, Tony and I would fly around the countryside in a Cub or a Champ, low and slow, put-put-put. You cannot believe the amount of shit growing out there. A forest fire would get the whole county high; I ain' t lying.
We would find the shit and then Mike would plan the snatching operation a lacommando, decked out in camies, faces painted, you know, the whole nine yards. Mike had been a Marine, one of those reckon guys, and he knows his stuff pretty well. We would get maps at the county office showing all the farmland and swamps so we knew where to go and hide, and how to get the hell out. I tell you, it was a real military operation, nasty work but fun.
Waddling in swamp water up to your armpits, watching out for water moccasins coming at your face, or a damn gator biting you in the ass, that wasn' t fun. The fun was getting to some Redneck' s pot and stealing it right from under his nose.
We got found out a couple of times, but by then we already had the shit and we were on our way out. Here we were, back in the swamp with a bale of green pot on our heads and the water around us would explode with a sharp crack, you know, fucking bullets aimed at us hitting the water. Damn, they came close. I suppose had we had antlers them rednecks wouldn' t have missed. I can picture my ugly head hanging on some shack' s wall," Yup, I got them Yankee mahself, stealin' mah pot."
We made good money selling the stuff to college students and bikers. I' m walking on money right now, two hundred and fifty dollars worth of it; these fancy snake skin boots are so damn soft they won' t stand straight when you get out of them.
It was hard and risky work, and my skin looked like a pepperoni pizza' cause I had insect bites on every square inch of my body, but when there is money in it you don' t think about stuff like that.
You want money? Forget about pot. Coke is it, but then you aren' t dealing with Bubba anymore. Stealing pot meant undercover work in the wilderness, sneaking in and sneaking out, hush-hush, you know, we looked like walking bushes. Pot was a game of cunning and smarts. But Tony and Mike decided to go after cocaine. That shit doesn' t grow in the Florida swamps. Junkies have it. Dealers have it, so they went after them. Now it' s a game of confrontation, of big guns. I don' t like it. Would you shoot some asshole for coke? No way… I just drive, and keep my head low and my fingers crossed.
The vacuum' s hose inhales dirt after digesting Mr. Twonbly' s two quarters; down the silver slot they went, one after the other. It' s Sunday morning; bright and deeply clear with an intense blue sky that stretches from horizon to horizon. Mr. Twonbly climbs on his minivan armed with the hose, and he twists his middle aged body between the seats and the console while wrestling with the vacuum, mechanical serpent of electrical sibilance, and he, Laocoö n of modern age.
He doesn' t like going to church in a dirty vehicle. Rise and shine, clean your soul of mortal sin, wear a good suit, eat a hearty breakfast, clean the van, because it is Sunday, the day to be good. These thoughts flash in his mind like the Fasten Seat Belts signs in an airliner.
A clump of candy wrappers ("Good for your breath," says Mrs. Twonbly), a few crumpled balls of tissue paper ("The seal lergies are killing me," says Mrs. Twonbly), and a sheet with directions to go to somebody' s home ("You' ll love meeting them, they are such a nice people," says Mrs. Twonbly), this harmless hodgepodge of trash collects in Mr. Twonbly' s small hands which carry the neat pile to the big fat barrel sitting beside the Vacuum' s steel armor. His hands part and turn face down, and the barrel swallows the paper jumble.
What' s that?
Mr. Twonbly sees a flash of color coming thorough his own trash. He parts the trash and exposes the color. Oh mighty. His eyes bounce inside his eye sockets, right and left and back. Nobody is looking. His hands roll the colorful magazine into a tight paper cylinder, and he pulls it out of the barrel in a swift motion:from barrel to under his arm to the van.
Mr. Twonbly' s van idles under the shade of an oak tree, by the Dumpster behind the car wash. His eyes dance once more in his face, and he unfolds the magazine, or what' s left of it.
A naked blond with two faces tattooed on her right shoulder, one sad and one happy, is on her fours with her genitalia staring at Mr. Twonbly' s taut face. The same blond is now on her back, her shaved slit exposed with a caption under the picture that reads "Diana likes it hot in Atlanta." If Mr. Twonbly could take his eyes off her crotch, and stop fantasizing about Mrs. Lubkemann own' s (the choir lady), he, perhaps, would notice the blonde' s cute dimples above her smile of thin lips.
Ken circles around the block in Tony' s car, his fingers sticky around the steering wheel. A cold sweat slithers between his back and the worn out vinyl seat cover. He is not used to this kind of sweat. He goes around once, twice, three times, every time in a different direction, never approaching through the same street. The house sits at the corner, light green, cinder block with an open carport sheltering a black Trans Am. Lights are on. Is that good or bad? Damn, where are they?
On the fifth pass, Ken sees Tony and Mike walking on the side of the street like two guys going out for a night stroll. He stops the car, doors open and they hop in. Before the doors close Ken hits the gas. Easy… take it easy. They drive by the green house where normality doesn' t seem bothered. Nobody speaks.
"How did it go?" Ken asks, unable to contain his curiosity any longer.
"Fine," says Tony. His burly figure shifts on the passenger seat as he opens his coat. A small package comes out in his big hand. "About half a kilo."
"Let me see," says Mike from the back seat. Mike leans forward to grab the package. Ken can see the glitter of Mike' s glasses inside the frame of the rear view mirror. Tony opens his coat again and pulls a black revolver that looks huge in his big hand. He opens the glove compartment and throws the revolver in.
"I tell you what," Tony says. "The bigger the piece, the less shit those mother fuckers give you." Tony laughs in short snorts, and Ken feels Tony' s weight pushing on the bench seat as his chest heaves.
From the back seat Mike speaks," That bitch got hysterical when you put that thing in her face. I was ready to whack her on the head. Jesus, screaming like that."
"I bet you she doesn' t think that her boyfriend' s coke business is so cool anymore," Tony says. "She fucking shut up when I stuck that barrel down her mouth." Tony' s and Mike' s laughs reverberate inside the metallic darkness of the car.
"Tony," Ken almost whispers," what' s gonna happen the day some dealer or his bitch pulls a gun on you?" Ken' s voice chills the air and the laughs drop frozen and shatter into silence. "Are you gonna shoot them dead?"
Mike sinks back into the shadows deep inside the view mirror, and Tony' s countenance becomes as rigid as pavement.
"You know, shit happens," says Tony in an unconvincing voice, like if he had never thought of that possibility.
"Yeah, shit happens," says Ken in a whisper.
Sparrows, dozens of them, a whole flight; yes, a flight. Debbie remembered that much from school. Fishes swim in schools; animals run in herds; wolves hunt in packs; sea gulls fly in flocks; helicopters fly in gaggles (where did she learn that one? She couldn' t remember). Airplanes fly in flights, and she remembered that one from watching CNN. Now she was confused. Is it a flight of sparrows, or a gaggle, or a flock? Whatever it is, the sparrows stood outside her window jumping over the serrated fence top and bouncing like Mexican jumping beams among bare, spidery branches, so happy and so carefree.
Her face hurt. Bruce' s hand had left her skin blue and bruised. No good for business. Her head hurt with a deep and pounding headache, like a pulsating beach ball trying to pop out of her head. She had tried not to mix drinking and drugs, but she could never resist.
She closed her eyes and tried to remember last night. Dance, dance, lights and heat, dance, dance, money and touching hands. Coke in the bathroom, coke in the dressing room, uppers at the bar, nicotine in the vending machine, alcohol in customer' s glasses. The rat standing in the hallway.
Of course she remembered the rat just outside her door, waiting for her arrival, dirty, filthy thing. And Bruce too, drunk and all fucked up.
"Hon, I' m dead tired. Can we do it in the morning?" she asked. He grabbed her by the hair and slammed her on the bed. His hand felt hot on her face, more times than she cared to remember. "Don' t you tell me what to do!" he yelled. His breath slathered over her sweaty skin, a breath like the smell of stale beer in a hot can abandoned on a parking lot, and she felt his penis proving, bending itself into inconceivable shapes, penetrating.
Debbie opened her eyes and tears fell, one by one, warm and humid they rode down her swollen cheek. The sparrows danced outside her window in a bliss of cold morning sunshine. Her sphincter flared in burning pain. The bastard had done it again. Her body shriveled in to a tawny parchment and her skin dried up into cracked tissue, and then shed into pieces that landed on the sheets to turn into dust. Her bones turned black and her whole skeleton dropped flat like the armature of an old cage. Her spirit hissed out intact through the window mesh and joined the sparrows on the branches, so warm under their coat of fluffy feathers.
The sparrows took her high above the roofs, high above Atlanta and its trees, and a new country showed itself to her, so big and so free.
Debbie jumped out of bed in an outburst of pain and anger and tears.
"I don' t have to put up with this crap!"
New cities awaited, new pains too. She filled her one bag in a hurry. Put the clothes in, leave the memories out.
Her body tilted to the side holding the luggage as she walked towards the bus station. Under yellowing maples, her feet kicked brown dead leaves like parting waves in front of a steamer carrying a miserable cargo in its hold.
The topless girl lay by the pool, and her taut breasts stood straight as if attracted by Coral Gables ' sun. This represented a conspicuous example of the gravitational pull between bodies, thought Ken; but again, it also remained Ken of other things.
"I bet you, you can tell time by looking at her nipple' s shade, just like a sun clock," said Ken with a Jack Daniel' s on the rocks turning into water in his hand. Clink-clink went the ice cubes around and around.
"To hell with time," said Tony. "I bet you she knows better tricks than that."
Foreign voices came from behind, and to Ken they sounded like"Vengaporaqicompadreyakitiyakyakitiyak." A handful of rough looking characters sporting jewelry that beamed glints of opulence tailed a dark, bold and mustached man in a white suit. Ken and Tony put their drinks down and stood facing the arriving party.
The rough characters surrounded them at a distance with hands crossed on their laps. The bold man advanced, smiled and stretched his hand to Ken," You must be the fly boy that Tony told me about."
"Ken, my name is Ken, sir." They shook hands. A strong handshake.
"Raú l Ortega," the bold man said with a polite smile. "You can call me Mister Ortega." Ortega pointed to the chairs and with a grand sweep of his hand said "please." They all sat down and Mister Ortega said something to one of his minions. Ken heard him saying yakitiyakwishkeyatikiyak, so he figured Mister Ortega had ordered some whiskey, or maybe he had said "stupid Americans." Ken couldn' t tell, not that it really mattered either.
Ortega' s lackey returned with a golden drink full of ice cubes. No napkin, no coaster and no little umbrella, but of course, Ken figured, what' s to be expected from a guy hired to bust heads?
"Your friend Tony says you want to fly for me," said Ortega, all business now. The waiter-bodyguard stood two steps behind Ortega with hands crossed on front and a bulge under his Hawaiian shirt. The rest of the lot was checking out the sun clock. Yakitiyak sounds came from that direction carried by the breeze that whirled around Ken' s face.
"Yes sir, Mister Ortega," Ken said, and then he paused to check his words before they came out of his mouth. "I just want to hear from you what' s the scoop. I know there are risks, and I can take risks, but I' m not suicidal."
"The scoop," said Ortega pronouncing it tet escop," is straight. We give you a plane, you fly south, we load it, you fly north, we unload it, and you go home with your pockets full of cash."
Ken looked Ortega right in the eye. "Mister Ortega, let me ask you this," said Ken and then he paused again to carefully pick the right words. "How many pilots and planes have you lost?"
Ortega smiled and took a long sip from his drink, gold and diamonds sparkling from his thin, brown, manicured fingers. "I don' t care about the planes. They are paid for, or we just borrow them." He laughed and his bodyguard echoed him.
"The only pilots I have lost are the ones that tried to screw me," said Ortega, a cynical smile spreading under his lust mustache. "They all went for a swim in the gulf, and now are heading for Canada." His bodyguard laughed like if it were meant to be a joke.
Ken put on his poker face, unreadable, even though his stomach got squeamish. He missed stealing pot from the rednecks in the swamps, being up to his chin in brackish water among snakes, predictable snakes.
"Of course," added Ortega. "One of my pilots got caught. What a dumb ass he was. If you' re smart, the Feds will never lay a hand on you." Ortega didn' t mention that the dumb ass pilot had also jumped in the gulf while on bail.
Ken lay back on his chair to think about his future, or lack of. The villa' s stucco walls radiated pure whiteness under red tile roofs and the sea breeze tousled the umbrella' s overhang. Comfort everywhere.
He was falling behind on his student loan after he had quit driving Tony and Mike around on their excursions. He had decided armed confrontations were not his calling after Tony couldn' t sit for a week because his ass was full of bird shot; he had to pull it all out with tweezers and then had to patch the mess with Band-Aids and a bottle of peroxide while having to look at Tony’ s hairy ass crack…
Flying bank checks for a living was a losing struggle: long hours, bad pay, shitty airplanes. His last 206 had landed on a cow pasture with oil smeared over the windshield and the propeller standing frozen in front of him like useless metal. He knew the worn out engine was going to give up, and so did his boss, but the bastard was too cheap to overhaul it. Then he wanted Ken to fly the 182 that had a gas leak so bad the smell was enough to make anybody sick; a flying firecracker is what it was. He had enough of that crap. Now Ortega sat across him with the promise of money and sunshine by the handful.
Easy money. It' s not a job, it' s an adventure. Be all you can be. A few good men. Aim high. But the money was the real lure, lots ofit, enough to pay his student loan and give some to the old man who needed a new truck.
The sun clock lady stood and her tanned skin stretched like a horse' s hide, smooth and shiny. She knew Ortega' s men were watching her breasts, and her balloon shaped ass cheeks squeezing out from the sides of the narrow stripe of her g-string bikini. She let her jet black hair unroll down to her shoulders as she watched Ortega hugging and patting a cute Gringo on the back. The other Gringo looked clumsy and was too big for her. But the cute one, he had nice buns.
West ward rides the bus
Full of people and their things,
It glides along I-10
Rushing to meet New Orleans.
From its smoked glass window
Debbie' sown reflection looks back at her
With cute dimples over thin lips,
The bruises from the last beating
Don' t show on the translucent screen.
Humming of tires on the road below
Comfortable grunt of a Diesel behind
The cold blue sky comes through her own image,
uninvited, and Debbie' s eyes open wide,
Look at the bayou!
Look at the sweet gums in circles stand,
Look at your face, you whore!
Where is your life going to end up?
She doesn' t know.
Going away somewhere, anywhere,
Is her best and only plan.
Pack your meager things
And leave the memories behind.
Westward rides the bus
with her things inside
And so does Debbie
With demons in her mind.
"What' s your name, honey?" says Debbie into the receiver' s speaker from behind the unapproachability of her glass cage.
"Aleksei," says the young man on his end of the receiver, his sea blue eyes staring at Debbie topless behind the glass. "I am Aleksei. What is your name?"
"My name is Deede." Debbie' s free hand reaches under her panties and her fingers dance under the fabric. "If you put more money into the slot, I' ll take this thing off, honey."
She smiles and her cute dimples make Aleksei' s own shine on his pink face. He takes a couple of dollars out of his jacket, rolls them in to green, thin cylinders, and pushes them through the slot beside the glass pane. Debbie' s eager fingers pick the money on the other side. Controlled, deep breaths come through the receiver, both ways.
Her panties come off and her bold slit greets Aleksei under the red light. Debbie sits back on the stool and spreads her legs to expose her merchandise. Aleksei smiles.
"What you call that?" asks Aleksei in his strong accent, pointing at her crotch.
"Pussy, dear."
"Pussy-dear?"
"No, no," laughs Debbie. "Pussy. Just Pussy. Say it."
"Pussy."
"Good boy," says Debbie, and Aleksei smiles as his cheeks turn beet red making his blonde hair brighter under the dark light.
Silence flows through the glass and through the receiver' s line. Smiles flash across the void like light signals between ships at sea, and Aleksei' s face blushes so red that Debbie thinks he' s going to get dizzy and pass out.
"You want to see more?" asks Debbie; her own free hand caresses her bony body and her small breasts in sensual strokes, small and circular like a magical rubbing to force pleasure to surface on her skin. Aleksei is too fixated on her breasts and long neck to answer.
"If you want, you can wait for me after work," she says. He now looks at her, eye to eye. His lips don' t move but Debbie knows what he desires.
"I' m out of here at midnight. Wait for me at the corner of Bourbon and Toulouse."
"Yes," he says nodding. "Midnight."
"And honey," Debbie says and pauses. "This is gonna cost you, you know that, don' t you?"
Aleksei looks down as if ashamed and murmurs into the speaker," How much?"
Past midnight a chilly air blows through the old balconies. Decrepit buildings lean against each other as if trying to warm each other up. Like dominoes, if one falls, the others will follow. Debbie wonders what' s inside her that is holding her whole life together. Is her own strength laced with steel cables like these old buildings? Debbie sees over stressed rusted and frayed cables holding her insides from disintegrating into a miserable jumble.
Music booms at a distance from lighted bars and open balconies. Bar patrons stumble by. No Aleksei in sight. Damn. She is ready to go to her room when Aleksei comes running across the opposite corner, his jacket opened to the cold wind.
"Sorry, I late," he apologizes.
"You' re gonna catch a cold," says Debbie as she closes his jacket over his breast.
"Cold?" he laughs. " Siberia cold. This nothing."
They go to her tiny room. Cash up front because this is business after all. Debbie lights a black voodoo candle and turns the light off. She disrobes in a second but Aleksei' s shyness slows him down. His white body shines like snow under moonlight. And they make love, gentle and slow.
Debbie closes her eyes under the cover of his warm and strong body, and she caresses him as if he belonged to her.
Where is Ken?Comes the question from nowhere. Where is Ken? She repeats to herself, and she holds this stranger closer to her, dreaming about how things could have been and not how they were.
"Where are you from?" asks Ken, leaning back on the booth' s leather, so smooth and lavish.
"Right from here, Miami," says Sonia, and smoke escapes from her crimson lips. Her fingers capped with matching crimson fingernails hold a Virginia Slim slowly dissolving itself into the conditioned air. "Where did you think I was from? I' m as American as you, honey."
The "honey" raises a faded memory in Ken' s mind, but he quickly gets over it. Sonia' s nipples stand like rivets under a silk dress that duplicates the smoothness of her sable hair. He feels taken by her thick and dark eyebrows arching over her deep brown eyes, and that cleavage, exuberant and pleading to break loose, right on his face. Damn it. What would Ortega say if he knew she was with him in this stylish restaurant, Ken wonders, having a nice dinner paid for with his own money?
"Don' t you worry about Ortega," she says.
"What?"
"Don' t you worry about Ortega," she repeats.
"Do you read minds?" Ken gives her a baffled look, and she laughs, her bosom trembling in ripples of tight flesh.
"I don' t read minds, only faces, and your face was wondering about me and the boss. I can go out with anybody I please as long I' m available to him at the snap of his fingers."
"Oh," said Ken, not knowing how to answer. He wishes he could be as cool as Bogart in Casablanca.
"Just like you, honey, ready to jump when he asks for it."
"Hey, I just fly for the guy."
"I just spread them for him," she says in a whisper mixed with smoke. "What' s the difference?" Her tongue' s tip goes around her lips once, a slow and provocative motion. An indecipherable signal as far as Ken went.
Ken takes a sip from his drink – not a mug – but a fancy glass with ice cubes in it. Even the little cubes look expensive. "You have a way to screw any body' s evening up, you know."
"Yes, I do. But I' m also good at making up for it," she says with a smirk. "If I feel so inclined," she adds.
"How do you feel tonight?" asks Ken, one finger in his drink chasing an ice cube around the glass' s rim.
"I feel willing."
They made love in his place, on the rented couch, listening to Chuck Mangione' s Feels so good in the rented stereo. Rent to own. Pay now, don' t need to buy later. Everything is for rent for a price. Her dark and hirsute pubis intrigues Ken the most, rising like shadowy smoke up her navel. Her dark and huge nipples stand like hubcaps over her breasts, quite a mouthful of flesh, of woman.
After doing it twice, she returns from the bathroom and gets dressed in silence.
"Where’ re you going?" asks Ken from the floor, lying between the couch and the coffee table where he had landed after his last orgasm.
"Have to go, honey," she says and smiles.
She picks her Newman-Marcus purse up and leaves, turning before going out of the door to say "Will see you again; it was good."
"Yeah, right," says Ken sitting on the floor naked, his hard on still up, and confused about how things happened so fast. Expensive women, and plenty of money, and a new truck – paid for – for his dad. And flying big iron between Colombia and Florida. Money coming out of his ass like farts after a chili and beer dinner. Damn.
Ken reclines his head on the couch and laughs. He connects the"honey" to Debbie, like if his mind were a pinball machine and the little ball had finally made it all the way to the bottom. Debbie, that cute whore from Daytona Beach, and he thinks that he knows what she felt when he used to slip a twenty dollar bill up her dress and into her panties, if she happened to be wearing any.
Traffic on LBJ became the customary four-lane parking lot at rush hour. Hordes of commuters inched out of downtown Dallas on their way home to fan into the northern suburbia like ants leaving their nest, and Debbie got caught in the middle of it. But she didn' t mind it too much; the minivan had a nice stereo and the A/C worked real well, so well she had goose bumps and her nipples had turned hard.
The child seat behind her had been a clever touch. John had bought it at a pawnshop to give the van that wholesome mom look. She smoked with great panache, blowing the smoke out through the small slit between the door' s frame and the window glass, the stereo playing Stevie Ray Vaughan' s Life by the Drop. Another easy few grand. No more whoring. She only had to screw John, her boss, which wouldn' t be so bad if it wasn' t for his fetishism for anal sex. Debbie shifted in her seat. It felt like hemorrhoids, she thought. Why do men like that more than pussy? She couldn' t figure it out. Maybe it is because they cannot do it with nice girls, so here comes Dee, all greased up like a fair pig – and they want her to squeal like one too.
Good money anyway, each trip, plus free coke. Sometimes more if the load was good. The traffic along the Loop unplugged itself and now hundreds of cars moved in a loose formation over the asphalt. The I-20 Shreveport exit sign appeared across the windshield, and Debbie smiled. She was on her way to Atlanta to pick a load; sometimes it was a kilo, sometimes as much as five, neat little bundles wrapped in shiny tape full of bitter dust. She would drive all day and night, straight. A couple of lines would keep her going strong. She felt like a million bucks, and she knew she could drive to New York if she wanted; well, maybe with the help of a couple of more lines along the way, just in case.
Cuba ' s Eastern tip sneaked under the golden clouds that half hid the sinking sun. After circumventing Guantá namo base' s radar, the old Twin Beech followed the surf towards the yet invisible airstrip planted somewhere past the palm trees, right at the foot of the sierra. An open map laid spread on Ken' s lap and his eyes bounced back and forth between the coast and the paper, looking for the turn, the curve, the landmark that would give him his bearings.
Tony sat in the copilot' s seat, attired like Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark, minus the whip. He had pleaded, like a little brat, with Ortega and Ken to come in this trip, just for the kicks of it. Dead weight is the last thing an overloaded smuggling plane needs, but both Ortega and Ken had agreed to let him have his way, poor big child.
"What the hell is that?" had asked Ken when he saw Tony getting ready to climb into the door less plane in Colombia with a black and boxy looking gun in his hand.
"I' m a sucker for these things, you know," had said Tony with a mischievous smile, like a kid trying to sneak a pet armadillo into the house. "It' s a MAC10."
"You ain' t taking that. All I need is you blowing a hole in my plane."
"Shit, man, don' t be such a party pooper," had pleaded Tony, all droopy eyes. Ken could have sworn he was ready to burst crying.
"O.K., but I don' t want you horsing around with that thing."
Now the end of their first leg of the trip appeared in sight over the nose. The Twin Beech had followed the coast line almost at coconut tree level until meeting a finger of land that showed the way to the airstrip, three clicks inland. Two parallel lines of sparse lights -homemade runway markers – titillated ahead against the background of darkening hills.
Mixture full rich, props forward, throttle back, flaps down, gear down, Ken greased a three point landing on the dirt strip, all done in a steady, coordinated ballet of pulling, twisting, reaching and manipulating of what looked like gizmos to Tony, who just sat with his toy on his lap, his fingers tapping its lock in nervous expectation. Cuban soldiers should be waiting.
A light flashed on one side of the runway. The black hills blocked the last flare of sunlight coming from the west, and neither Ken nor Tony could make out who was behind the light.
As the Beech taxied towards the light, Ken said to Tony," I' m gonna hit the landing light when we get closer. Keep an eye open for anything strange."
"What' s not supposed to be strange, anyway? Said Tony. "This is god damned Cuba."
"You know, something like the McDonald' s clown."
"Or Ed McMahon."
They both laughed until the landing light came on. It bathed in white halogen light a fatigue clad figure holding a flashlight in one hand, a rifle in the other. The figure brought one arm against its face to block the light.
"You blinded him," said Tony.
"And probably pissed him off," said Ken shaking his head.
The Beech came to a stop and the engines cut with a couple of pops. The runway lights, oil fires burning inside cans, shone against the unfathomable darkness of the sierra crowned by the scarlet remnants of the sunset to the west. A dark, inky blue sky suffused itself with the sea to the east.
Ken got up from his seat and squeezed past the bales of coke that formed a narrow corridor along the sides of the fuselage. Tony came behind, barely fitting through. First outside, Ken greeted the soldier, a young kid, eighteen at the most. Tony followed him, gun in his hand. Ken noticed Tony' s gun, and almost shit his pants.
The soldier and Tony sized each other up, and their guns. Tony walked to the soldier and said "buenos dí as" in a bad Spanish.
"Buenas noches," responded the soldier.
Tony reached into his front pocket and pulled a pack of Winstons and offered one to the soldier, who took one with a smile. Now Ken started breathing again.
The soldier stood at a distance, AK-47 shouldered and smoking Tony' s American cigarette without any trace of socialist remorse. Tony gave him the whole pack," hell, the poor kid probably is smoking some shitty Russian stuff." While Tony pumped gas by hand into the Beech from a drum, Ken added oil to the oil tanks. Standing on the wing, Ken saw headlights approaching the runway.
"Mira, mira," said Ken to the soldier while pointing in the direction of the approaching lights. The soldier looked under the airplane in the direction Ken pointed. He extinguished, very carefully as not to damage it, his cigarette, put the butt in his pocket and stood facing whatever was coming, rifle in hand.
A small Army truck stopped a few yards away and a mustached man wearing a pistol holder came out followed by the driver, a tall, black soldier armed with a rifle. Ken didn' t like their looks, and neither did Tony who kept pumping gas with one arm, the other holding onto his gun.
The kid snapped a big salute and stood at attention, but the new guys past by, ignoring him. The pistol man stood behind the wing and motioned Ken to come down. The rifleman stood behind the pistol man, his weapon at the ready across his chest. Tony kept on pumping gas, his gun hidden behind his big chest.
"Si," said Ken, and the pistol man started talking Spanish, fast.
"No españ ol. No comprende," said Ken.
The pistol man became agitated at Ken' s answer. "Money," he said and his thumb and index rubbed each other in greed. "Dollars. Much dollars."
According to the Colombians, everything was taken care of. Why was this guy asking for money? wondered Ken.
"No money, no pesos," said Ken shaking his head vigorously from side to side. Ken put his hands into his jeans and pulled the pockets out. Only lint and used ticket movie stubs came with them.
The pistol man' s unfriendly face became angrier. He reached for his holster and had started to pull his pistol out when a hammering of automatic fire passed Ken by his side and struck both the pistol man and the rifleman. Blood splattered on Ken' s face as the Cubans fell dropping their guns. Ken looked back and saw Tony holding his gun at the hip. He saw him pointing his gun at something further to the right, behind him. Ken looked that way and saw the kid with his rifle in his hand with a face as surprised as his own.
The kid dropped his rifle and put his arms up. Tony ran toward the Cubans on the ground, still wriggling like worms, and kicked their guns out of their reach.
"Quick! Get his gun!" yelled Tony while gesturing towards the kid. Ken ran, picked the kid' s rifle and returned.
"Take the damn thing!" Ken yelled half scared, half angry, giving the rifle to Tony. "What in hell did you do this for?"
"Do you want to rot in a Cuban jail?" shouted back Tony.
Bouncing headlights now approached from the same place the two greedy Cubans had come, three or four trucks, who knows how many soldiers, a beehive buzzing with Tony' s gunshots.
"We need to get the fuck out of here!" shouted Ken. In a frenzy they pulled the fuel hose from the tank, closed the tank and rolled the drum out of the way.
"Get in there and crank that mother!"Yelled Tony. Ken jumped into the Beech, ran sideways towards the cockpit and sat on the left seat. Shit… shit… where' s the fucking flashlight?… Here…Fuel on… Mixture rich… Master on… Fuck the check list… Shit… Throttle, not much, don' t want to flood it…Come on, come on…
Sweat dribbled down Ken' s forehead. The small flashlight stuck in his mouth shone a red light over the instrument panel where his quick fingers bounced from switch to switch to the center pedestal were the prop and engine controls were. The left prop started to turn agonizingly slow. Ken felt in the marrow of his bones the strain in the starter as each prop revolution went by under his red light shining through the Plexiglas of his side window. The starter hummed and the prop spun, faster and faster.
Shit… Come oooooon…
The engine popped and fire shot out from the exhaust pipes. Give it power, slowly. Oil pressure is up. Right engine now… Comeooooooooooon baby.
"Let' s get the fuck moving!" Ken heard Tony shouting from the tail section. At that moment a distant cracking noise came over the noise of the running engine, and tracers started to draw paths of fire in the humid night. A report of automatic fire came from the tail section. Ken figured it was Tony hanging out of the door returning fire into the incoming headlights.
The right engine caught. Ken advanced the throttles with full brakes applied; once the engines reached full R.P.M., he released the brakes and aimed the Beech' s nose straight ahead between the marker lights for a take off that would have to use only over half the available runway. The tracers converged on the plane until the airframe shuddered and clinked with the impact of bullets striking aluminum.
Shit… Ten degrees of flaps… The old Beech roared down the runway heading into a solid darkness filled with unknown obstacles, but Ken had no time to ponder that; they were taking fire from the Cubans, and all that mattered was full power. Balls to the wall, now!
Twice Ken tried to lift off, but the heavy plane settled back on to the ground as the runway lights quickly and forever disappeared behind him. At the third attempt the plane remained airborne. Ken retracted the gear and kept the airplane in ground effect, rushing towards a darkness he remembered contained a line of palm trees beyond which awaited the ocean. He flicked the landing light on just in time to see the trees growing bigger by the second. He pulled on the joke gritting his teeth and praying for enough speed to clear the palms. The scrapping noise of vegetation came through his feet but the old plane cleared the tree wall in one piece. Ken lowered the nose and skimmed the top of the waves at full power, heading for Florida followed by a whirl of sea spray that rose on his wake.
A few minutes passed before he could release his shaky sweaty hands from the yoke. He thanked God it was a clear night and the horizon had a sharp edge to tell him which way was up. He climbed to 500 feet, throttled the engines back to cruise power, trimmed the aircraft, and checked his instruments. All needles stuck in the green. Fuel gages read almost full, so he was not leaking fuel, at least not in huge amounts. Fucking luck.
"Tony?" Ken yelled in the direction of the tail. No answer.
"Toooony!" Ken shouted many more times, but no answer came from the rear. The airplane felt tail heavy, so Ken knew that Tony was back there. No autopilot; not even an old fashion win-leveler; the instrument panel had an empty space where the autopilot was supposed to be. Flying the old plane at low altitude demanded Ken' s constant attention, and he could not release the yoke to check on Tony.
It would be a long trip, and Ken felt sicker by the mile.
Debbie' s van rides westward on I-20, flanked by flat expanses of cotton fields. Her windshield is dusty, and the sunset diffuses its rays into a fan of golden light slathered across the glass where the wiper' s path is demarcated by a lighter hue. The road stretches and shows the way to a dying sun, and Debbie tries to catch up with it, but she can' t.
Like many other things she had always tried to catch up with, this one also slithers out of her reach, she thinks. But not to worry; tomorrow, the same sun will pop on the east, then it will vault to its zenith and will catch up with her. Things always turn out fine, one way or another, she tries to convince herself.
She does the speed limit, no need to attract nosy cops. A big Buick stands still on the freeway' s shoulder. A white haired old man, dressed in his best Polyester, is looking under the hood. A white haired old lady stands beside him, and both look lost, like if they were gazing at some incomprehensible riddle that had usurped the engine' s place.
Debbie pulls off the highway, stops, and backs up to where the old couple stands like shipwrecks on a raft in the middle of the ocean.
"Hi there," says Debbie as the old man approaches her window. "What' s the problem?"
"The darn car died on us," says the old man, tall and skinny like a pole.
"If you want I can give you a ride," offers Debbie, her cute smile a flag of friendliness and good intentions.
"We would really appreciate it, ma' am."
The van is back on the road. The old lady, Edna, sits on the bench seat behind Debbie, beside the empty child seat. The old man, Bob, seats on the passenger seat at front. By the time they reach the next exit and a gas station, both Bob and Edna have concluded that Danielle is a delightful young lady, so perky and generous, and they thank her and wish her the best of things as they get out of the van.
"Such a nice girl," says Edna.
"God bless her," says Bob.
Debbie continues towards Dallas, happy of having helped the old couple, thinking of the money she will get after she delivers the five kilos hidden inside the sliding door' s cavity. Her butt hole itches when she recalls John' s damned habits, also awaiting, but pain is bearable when the money is good.
The shuffling of feet and the whispering of condolences fills the rented chapel. Steel and U.A.W. workers and their wives in their Sunday' s best pay their respects to Tony' s parents who stand unconsoled in front of the open casket. Ken stands beside them, thankfully wearing a one hundred dollar suit from Sears, and not some expensive double-breasted number ala Dave Letterman. He has the money for it, but not the courage to show it.
Explaining things had been very hard. More than explanations, they had been excuses. More than excuses they had been lies. Plain lies, maybe white lies, but lies, fucking lies.
Big callused hands shake his. "I' m sorry," echo dozen of lips. Ken shakes hands and bows his head at each "sorry."
After the plane stopped, he hurried to the back. Tony lay dead in a pool of black blood. A pungent smell of fluids and shit filled the cabin, and Tony' s open eyes looked into his. He got hit in the gut; the Dade County Coroner found three bullets lodged in his burst intestines.
"What the hell happened?" asked Ortega. Ken sat on the dirt in front of the plane' s door, waiting with puffy eyes and a sickened face.
"Fucking Cubans, they wanted money, and Tony got into a fight with them."
"Bastards. I never trusted them. Fucking bastards," said Ortega. He turned to his men and motioned them to remove the body and unload the coke. "I' m dealing with the Panamanians from now on."
Ortega' s men dumped the body under the tail, complaining about the smell and the mess.
"Mister Ortega," said Ken. "I want to ask you a favor."
Ortega nodded.
"Tony' s parents are Polish, and very Catholic. They will want his body back for a church burial. Can you dump the body where it can be found in good shape?"
"Tony was not too bright, but he had guts," said Ortega. "I will take care of it."
"Thank you, sir."
Ortega did as promised. The cops found Tony next day leaning against a Dumpster like a wino suffering from a hangover. The cops came around asking questions. "This guy Tony, he had a belly full of thirty caliber bullets, East German, you know, AK stuff. How do you suppose he got them?
"I have no idea."
The detective looked into Ken' s eyes," Yeah. No idea."
Ken flew back to Youngstown with the body as luggage in the belly of an airliner, and he brought the cleaned up, ready-for-display body to his parents in a nice coffin, the best one money could buy on a short notice. Ken paid the undertaker to put Tony’ s best suit on him.
Questions with impossible answers had taken Ken' s time since the first moment. Why? Why? Some asked. Many others suspected. But nobody said anything out of respect for the grieving parents. Times get tough and young men get into trouble; that' s the way it was, and is, and will always be. Damned mills closing down and laying off people; they have to make a living somehow, whisper the gruff, tired voices of union men inside the chapel. It was drugs. No, it was stolen cars. No, it was a Mafia thing. It was a hit. The Colombians did it. It was bad luck. Poor Tony.
Ken stands in front of the coffin, and wishes he were somewhere else. The jetties in Ponce Inlet surface in his mind, and Debbie naked under the water, and he feels ashamed of such thoughts.
"I' m sorry," he mutters to himself, and tears slide from under his gold rimmed Ray-Bans.
" Dee, I want you to meet a buddy of mine," says John. "We did business together out west."
A twelve string guitar bounces notes between the old Deep Ellum' s warehouse fronts. Some broad on a street stage sings about boy friends. Debbie thinks it is a cool song.
" Dee… are you with us?"
Beer and ecstasy give Debbie a hell of a good buzz. Her hips undulate with every chord. Smooth turn to the right, slow twist to the left, knees down a bit; yes, flow with the music.
"Yes honey, I heard you," says Debbie with a frolicsome smile, her eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses where a magenta sky shines its dying lights.
John and his buddy look at each other and laugh.
"She is royally fucked up," says John and adds after a pause," this is Erich."
"Nice to meet you, Erich."
"We wanted to talk business with you, but you won' t remember shit by tomorrow," says John.
"Probably no," says Debbie and she burst into a silly, uncontrollable giggle.
Johnny and his buddy leave her alone on the street corner to go their own way. Debbie watches them disappear into the partying crowd wondering who was the guy with John. Rick?Lorenzo? She can’ t remember either where she was going before the music had enthralled her to this corner.
A heavy mugginess presses on the crowd and the odor of sweat and fried foods drifts in slow eddies around her. The sun hides behind the downtown buildings, the signal for the winos to come out of the gutters and underpasses to make a living off the ones coming to down town seeking pleasure.
Debbie drifts shrouded in street aromas past biker bars, tattoo parlors, clubs, avant-garde furniture stores and trendy eateries. Debbie floats through the crowd using alcohol, ecstasy and coke asher magic carpet.
Later that night Debbie gets herself a new tattoo. She lies on the reclining chair, almost flat on her back while this Ernie guy, or was Randy?Whatever, draws a red rose where her pubic hair met her leg. The prickling pain excites her, that pain concentrated down in her middle, and she so detached from it, like a foreign observer watching her own pain from a far away tower, but feeling the physical strain moving up and down under the skin, and her juice gates open to a flood.
"I think I wet my panties," says Debbie with a giggle.
"Some people get excited," says the Tattoo guy running his index fingers in circles around her belly bottom. "Care for another one?"
Freedom of choice is what it is all about, thinks Debbie as she enters the loudest and raunchiest club with the dumpiest facade she could find open that late at night. The music booms and bodies writhe under dark lights. She carries her new pricking pain as she carries her small purse, right there at her fingertips, but not areal part of her, like something going just for a ride.
The bathroom' s counter is a mess of wet paper and butts but she manages to clean and dry a small section. From her compact devoid of make-up she pours a long line of coke on the counter. With a razor from the compact she aligns the white powder in a narrow ridge. Reflected on the mirror Debbie see faces that ignore her doings, and faces that wish they had what she has.
"Nice line," says a voice from the mirror as Debbie prepares to snort her coke. Debbie smiles and snorts half the line.
"You want some?" offers Debbie.
"Sure."
The face comes over the counter with Debbie' s straw, snorts the rest of the line and licks the counter clean. The pretty face belongs to a red hair of good body and hairy armpits. Debbie finds her armpits intriguing; they are like two more crotches, but real close to her freckled breasts.
She – Debbie couldn' t remember her name – kissed her first, just like that, and she let her do it. They ended up in a stool kissing, touching, caressing. Tongues rolled over damped skin and fingers got wet, and Debbie continued to live life by the drop.
Youngstown drifted in and out of Ken' s mind like a miasma rising from a sewer. The drab factories, the rusted clunkers on the road half eaten by winter salt, the shuttered stores downtown, and the lines at the Social Security office, what a shit ass place to remember. And the cramped cemetery full of concrete crosses where Tony was laid, what a human dump ground it was. Smokeless stacks reached to the sky like cold fingers poking at the curly clouds' bottoms. Psalms came mixed with the noise of trucks from the nearby highway. Down the hole Tony went in his shiny coffin, probably the most expensive thing he ever owned.
But those things now belonged to a past that Ken had been able to extricate himself from, the hard faces, the questioning faces that expected no answer but somehow understood. Ken sipped his piñ a colada and contemplated the blue and green water surrounding Ortega' s yacht now moving steadily over the waves. Splash, splash, its hull parted the waves, so nice to be away from that shit ass place. Tony, why in hell didn' t you come up front with me? Dumb ass. No, you had to fight it out like some fucking cowboy, like Rambo. Damned coke bales were like sand bags, stopped every bullet behind me. But there you were, sitting behind thin aluminum, shooting at the Cubans like if you were Mr. T in the A-Team. I pity the fool.
It was all over with. Life continued. Again. Ken slurped his piñ acolada and let the rolling and pitching of the boat cuddle him into a pleasant numbness fueled by alcohol. He heard somebody arguing at the stern in Spanish. He looked down in that direction and saw Ortega giving Sonia hell about something. He had no idea what the fuss was about.
Ortega and Sonia were at each other' s throat, yelling insults – at least they sounded like insults to Ken. Ortega pulled a nickel plated pistol from behind his waist and pointed it at Sonia' s head. An orange flash and a crack made Sonia' s head explode in scarlet. She fell to the deck shaking in jerky contortions while her blood tinged the wooden deck.
Ken dropped his piñ a colada between his feet. Two of Ortega' s men showed up with a short but heavy iron pipe and a rope that they tied to Sonia’ s still kicking legs. They heaved Sonia' s body overboard, still exuberant but now just a heap of fish bait. Ken saw her head go under followed by her hair leaving a bloodied spot soon diluted by the ocean water and the distance.
Ortega' s minions remained silent, neither celebrating Sonia' s fate nor showing any discomfort about it. Ortega said something in Spanish, still angry. He looked up and saw Ken looking at him from the upper rear deck, and he saw Ken' s ashen face. Ken couldn' t hold his stare and turned away.
"Am I next?" Wondered Ken. He figured Ortega had whacked Sonia because she was screwing him. Now was his turn to go for a swim. Ken though of jumping overboard. And then what? Swim to Miami?
Ken stood with both hands on the handrail, his knees trembling, looking at the waves, wondering what would be better, swim or stay. Ortega came behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. Ken started to turn around, expecting to see the black hole of his pistol' s barrel, right on his face. Instead, he met Ortega' s smiling face standing in front of him.
"No good woman, was getting too friendly with the cops."
Ortega held a glass full of Bourbon, which he offered to Ken," Have a drink. You will get over it, plenty of pussy out there."
Ken drank his bourbon in one gulp, his throat burning in a slide of fire. He watched Ortega' s crew wash Sonia' s blood away by splashing bucketfuls of seawater on the deck. Youngstown with its parade of wrinkled, weathered faces didn' t seem so unsavory now.
Erich breaths in short gasps. In and out. Debbie moans in pain as Erich goes in and out. Another round of forced anal sex, no Vaseline either. Bastard. In and out. Debbie wishes she had diarrhea so she could explode all over the bastard. In and out faster and faster.
Two days with Erich, and she has hated every minute. Erich from Arkansas, an inbred bastard, for sure, thinks Debbie sitting cross legged on the passenger side of Erich' s Seville, miles going by, country music rising from the radio to fill the smoky interior.
"I' m gonna make some good money in this trip," says Erich.
"So happy for you," says Debbie staring straight over the hood. She smokes in long puffs.
"First thing I' m gonna do when I get back West, is get my self two young China whores, you know, real nice and tender like chicken nuggets." He laughs at his own wit.
"I thought that you people would rather fuck your own relatives, like little nieces," says Debbie. "Or you don' t like fighting it out with your brothers?"
Erich pulls his nine-millimeter Glock from under the seat and points it at Debbie' s head. "You' re fucking funny, aren' t you?" He pokes the muzzle at Debbie' s temple, every time saying "Aren' t you?" Poke," aren' t you?" Poke," aren' t you?" Poke.
Debbie remains cool, staring straight. It didn' t matter one way or another. Erich puts the pistol back under the seat, then leans over her side and slaps her face. It burns but Debbie shows neither emotion nor pain. Been there, done that.
"I' m gonna dump your skinny ass once this deal is done. Fuck John and fuck you, you hear me? You' re riding the bus back little miss. I can get my own pussy." He pauses. As he looks away he mutters," If I haven' t killed you by then."
Debbie feigns hearing nothing, but her muscles tense and her already heightened survival instinct kicks into high gear.
"This mother fucker is up to no good," she thinks. John had asked her to accompany Erich in this trip so she could introduce him to his dealers. Erich showed them a briefcase full of money, from "West Coast investors," so the money part didn' t seem like bullshit, but the bastard, ponders Debbie, wasn' t right in the head, like he had watched too much TV or he had been dropped when he was a baby. Maybe it was the way his crooked smile seemed to hang from his face as if ready to spill from one side; and playing around with his gun. He couldn' t get a hard on if he didn' t have that thing pointed at her while she was giving him head.
She would be glad when they reached the end of this trip. Let John' s friends handle the hick bastard, bring him down a couple of notches, the hard way.
Her cigarette grows too short. She sticks the smoldering butt in the ashtray under the dashboard and squashes it by turning it in her fingers like if she were trying to drill a hole through the metal. From her purse she gets her pack and lights another one.
"What a fucking trip," she says aloud, as if speaking to herself. Erich ignores her, too busy picking his nose.
As Ken' s pick up crossed the Florida-Georgia line northbound on I- 75, a slight relief came over Ken. But he knew the relief would never be complete until he delivered the Adidas bag sitting beside his own bag on the floorboard.
"I need you to do me a favor," Ortega had asked back in Miami.
"Si," said Ken. "What is it?"
"I have a little bag of merchandise that needs to be delivered in Atlanta."
"Have one of your guys do it."
"I need an honest, white face like yours," had said Ortega. "Cops are too suspicious of us, more if we are driving expensive cars, or rental cars."
"Get yourself an old car."
"It' s good money. Easy work."
Ken took the job, but it wasn' t for the money. He had plenty of that. This job gave him the opportunity to pack his things and leave town without suspicion, for good. The good part Ken kept from Ortega as Ken didn' t want to get in an argument with him, like Sonia did.
Ken didn' t want Ortega chasing after him either, so he would do as told, deliver the bag, collect the money and deliver it to Ortega by FedEx, and then disappear for good. No hard feelings.
Ken slowed down as he looked for the right house. The maples aligned on the street made it hard for him to seethe numbers over the porches. A blue house with white trimming, Must be that one. He slowed down because a delivery van in front of him had stopped in front of the blue house, blocking the road.
Ken was ready to blow the horn when the van' s side door opened and a S.W.A.T. team rushed out and stormed the house.
"Police! Police!"
The house’ s door went down and cops burst in. It was over in seconds. Ken found himself surrounded by flashing red and blue lights that had poured from every alley and side street. The cop driving the van came out and motioned Ken to go around the parked van. Ken smiled, maneuvered his truck around the van and waved to the cop as he drove away. His hands trembled and his butt hole strained, ready to pop. Enough of this shit.
"I have a message for Mister Ortega," Ken said from the pay phone. "He needs to call me at this number." Ken gave the pay phone number to the old Cuban guy on the other side of the line, wondering if the old cog understood a word he said. Ken repeated the number in his mauled Spanish. "It' s important, im-por-tan-te, O.K?"
After three hours of waiting in his truck parked beside the phone booth, the phone rang. Ken reached across the window and picked the receiver up.
"Hello."
"Ken! So happy to hear from you!" came Ortega' s voice across the hissing line.
"Hey Mister Ortega, that little place of yours… it' s out of business, you know."
"Yeah, shit happens, you know."
"I got your stuff. What do you want me to do with it?"
"Let me make a couple of calls and I will call you right back, O.K.?"
"I' m at a pay phone, middle of Nigger town."
"Don' t worry. I' ll call you right back." The line went click.
Ortega didn' t own a phone, too risky he said. He used a network of pay phones and friends' phones scattered all over Little Havana. He had an almost psychotic fear of wiretaps, and he relied on his men to deliver his messages around town, or to make calls for him from pay phones. So Ken knew he would be sitting in his truck for hours with a bag full of coke while black faces looked at him with mistrust.
Two hours later the phone rang.
"Hello."
"Ken, I want you to take the stuff to this guy, and get my stuff from him," said Ortega without hissing noises on the back ground this time.
"Ortega, I' m not a muscle man to be delivering this crap and collecting your shit. Jesus, they are going to roll me."
"You' re all I have, so just do it."
"Fuck no! Listen, I' m giving this shit back to you. Better, I' m gonna dump it somewhere and your guys can come and collect it," said Ken without any sense of carefulness left in him. "I' m out of this business! Almost got busted this morning, you know!"
Silence came from the other side of the line. Ken heart was beating to break from his chest. Ortega' s voice came again, smooth and jovial.
"Hey Ken, I think it' s in your best interest to help me out. After all, your dad in Youngstown, and that dog of his, what' s his name? Rufus? Yeah, Rufus, cute little fellow." Ortega let his words sink in. "He needs the money as much as you do, you know, to pay for the new pick up and to finish fixing up that old house in Maple Street."
Ken stopped breathing and his face turned white. Fucking bastard. "Let my dad out of this," said Ken in a whisper.
"Hey, we are all family, and I don' t want to see anything bad happening to the old man."
"Fine, what the hell do you want me to do with this crap?"Ken’ s heart ran near red line.
Ken jotted Ortega' s instructions down and hung the phone with a loud bang. Fucking bastard. Ken called his dad and go this answering machine. Shit. "Listen dad, very carefully…" and Ken had to explain in short minutes what he thought he would never be able to explain in a lifetime.
The Atlanta map showed the way to Tech wood, by North Avenue. Ken drove up there and didn' t like it. Damn Federal housing project; fucking place looks like Beirut. He parked his truck in front of a building whose first floor looked like it had been fired bombed. Trash drifted in the wind and new black faces followed him and the bag into the building. A white face also watched him, keenly, from inside the building.
Ken had it figured out. Drop the stuff, pick the cash, get his cut, and drop the rest in a rental box at Harts field, then mail the key to Ortega with a nice fuck you note. Fe Dex would be too easy, let the bastard sweat it out for a few days. End of the story.
Ken knocked on the door, his knuckles white with apprehension. Soon it would be over.
"Come on in," a white voice with a twang answered from inside. Ken opened the door and saw a white guy and a white girl standing behind a table with a briefcase on it. He stepped inside and checked around with a nervous gaze, trying very hard to look cool, but not doing a very good job of it.
"Howdy," said the white guy.
"Hi," said Ken. He looked at the girl, and his jaw dropped. Debbie winked an eye and said," Hi stranger."
"You got… got… the money?" Ken asked with a nervous voice. For once in his life he wished Ortega' s men were at his back, or Tony with that square looking gun. But here he was, practically naked in front of this guy with the crooked smile, and Debbie. Ken couldn' t make any sense of what was happening. He placed the bag on the table and looked at Erich who kept on smiling.
Erich pushed the brief case to Ken; Ken reciprocated by pushing the bag to him. While Erich inspected the merchandise Ken opened the briefcase. He saw a bunch of money, but he had no intentions of counting it. He wanted out of there, soon. Debbie and he changed stares across the table, and Ken replicated Debbie' s aloofness.
"This is good shit," said Erich.
"It sure is," said Ken, closing the briefcase.
"But I will keep the money anyway."
Erich pulled his gun from behind his waist and pointed it to Ken, and laughed. "Good bye, sucker." Erich had observed that Ken had no back up and no gun.
Ken put the briefcase in front of him as Erich fired the first shot. The shock sent Ken backwards onto the floor, the bullet lodged into the money. Debbie jumped over Erich' s arm holding the gun and bit him on the hand as hard as she could.
"You bitch!" Erich screamed in pain and punched Debbie in the face with his free hand, over and over, but Debbie wouldn' t let go. Erich looked up just in time to see Ken coming over the table ready to swing the briefcase in his face. He tried to shoot again, but his shots went into the table instead. The briefcase landed on his face with a numb thud and split open.
Money and screams floated in the room. Erich was on the ground struggling with Ken. Debbie bit Erich' s finger with such viciousness that Erich opened his hand, the gun falling to the floor. At that moment Erich kicked Ken in the groin and sent him on his back. Before Erich could get up, Debbie was on top of him.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Good Lord, how many bullets does that gun carry? wondered Ken still grabbing his nuts. Debbie fired until the gun ran empty, then she proceeded to kick the bloody mass.
"Fucking inbred bastard!"
Ken stood and looked at her bloodied face in amazement. She finally looked at him and stopped kicking and cussing the corpse.
"Are you O.K?" asked Ken. The bruises in Debbie’ s face had started to swell.
"I' m fucking fine. What the hell are you doing here?"
"Same thing you' re doing, I suppose."
Both stood panting, the corpse still seeping blood between them. Seconds went by before anybody could say anything. Ken expected to hear sirens, and cops coming through the door yelling "Freeze!"But nothing happened. His ears continued to ring and a slight breeze fingered the curtains beside the open window where the top of the Coca-Cola building stood against an azure sky.
SNAPSHOTS OF MODERN LOVE
"An End Like the Movies"
An Original Screenplay
by
José R. Rodríguez
FADEIN:
INT.F.B.I. OFFICE, DOWNTOWN DALLAS – DAY
Ken and his lawyer sit side by side. Across the table sits an F.B.I. Man. His briefcase is open and legal papers are strung over the desk. Ken signs a paper, turns it around and slides it, with the pen, back to the F.B.I. man.
F.B.I. man (studying the paper)
Well, this does it.
Ken
Do I have to face Ortega in court, or just my deposition will be enough?
F.B.I. man
Depends. If he cuts a deal, you will never see his face again. If he decides to go to court, then you will have to testify.
Lawyer
He won' t be that stupid.
Ken
Why not?
F.B.I. man
The State of Florida is charging him with the murder of this Sonia woman. He could get the chair if convicted.
Lawyer
His lawyers will go for a deal, life in prison.
Ken
What about drug charges?
F.B.I. man
We aren' t interested at this time. If Florida can lock him up for life, or fry him, there is no need to spend taxpayers' money trying to nail him for smuggling.
Ken (sighing with a worrisome look)
I hope you' re right.
F.B.I. man (rising and extending his hand)
Gentlemen.
Ken and his lawyer rise, shake hands with the F.B.I. man.
EXT.F.B.I. BUILDING – FULL SHOT – DAY
Camera moves from the building' s top to the entrance and finds Ken and his lawyer standing on the sidewalk.
Lawyer
This is our last meeting. Once you and your dad go into the Eyewitness Protection Program, we will be cutoff for good.
Ken
Thank you for convincing them to let me keep my F.A.A. licenses.
Lawyer
No problem. (He extends his hand). Good luck to you both.
Ken
Thanks.
Camera pans out as they shake hands and goes for a full shot of downtown Dallas.
EXT.EAGLE CREEK STATE PARK PARKING LOT, OREGON – DAY
Ken sporting a goatee and one earring awaits by the side of his Harley-Davidson. The chilly morning makes him keep his hands in his leather jacket pockets. Camera pans out and shows a red convertible Corvette with the top down driving into the lot. The Corvette parks beside Ken. Camera moves over Ken' s shoulder as he approaches and finds driver. Debbie is at the wheel, her hair cut short and dyed black.
Ken
Hi, stranger.
Debbie
Hi, stranger.
Ken
I was sure I would never see you again.
Debbie (smiling)
Why? Don' t you trust me?
Ken (also smiling)
After that two for one deal, I don' t know. There was a lot of money in that bag.
Debbie
You don' t forget, do you? We deserve that money after all the shit we went through.
Ken (looking at the ground, hesitant)
The Atlanta thing… what the cops said?
Debbie
They blamed it on crack head niggers, you know, a white dude trying to buy shit from them, and getting ripped off.
Ken (looking straight at her)
Now what?
Debbie (tapping her fingers on the wheel)
I' m gonna give you your cut, of course. A deal is a deal.
Ken
That' s fine. My business can always use some money.
Debbie
Still smuggling?
Ken (laughing)
No, hell no. Flying hunters and fishermen around. Fish and dead bears are safer than coke.
Debbie (tapping on the empty seat)
You want to come for breakfast? I know a cool place by the river.
Ken
Sure.
Ken jumps into her Corvette. They look at each other and hesitate. Camera moves over the hood and pans in through the windshield as Ken and Debbie kiss, a long and passionate kiss.
EXT.ROAD PARALLEL TO COLUMBIA RIVER – DAY
Debbie' s Corvette moves over the road. Bird' s view of Corvette as if followed from behind by a helicopter, with a full shot of gorgeous mountain view, the Columbia river glittering like a golden snake by the side of the road.
Ken (voice over)
By the way, my name isn' t Ken anymore.
Debbie (voice over)
What the Feds named you?
Ken
Ruper. Ruper Korpolinski.
Debbie (laughing)
Oh my God! You' re kidding me, aren' t you?
Ken
I ain' t.
Debbie
Well, my name ain' t Debbie either.
Ken (in a cynical tone)
What a surprise. What is it? Bertha?
Debbie
Kathy. Pretty, uh?
Ken
Nice to meet you, Kathy.
Debbie
Nice to meet you, Ruper.
Both laugh. Camera stops following the Corvette and watches as it drives away until it disappears beyond a curve into the postcard perfect landscape.
FADE OUT
Of course, life is not like a movie; it is more like a dark comedy or noirfilm with a sad and ridiculous end where a lot of people die but it sure in hell is not like a Mary Poppings movie. After the incident Debbie and I took off with a gym bag leaking dope through a couple of bullet holes and a briefcase full of money with blood splattered on it. Since then I have never been back in Atlanta and I don' t even want to be anywhere near the state of Georgia. I needed to get rid of the drugs so a few ideas crossed my mind: dump the shit somewhere and never go back to Florida – probably not a good idea. Mail the stuff back to Ortega with a note telling him… well, there was no need for a note, the bullets stuck in the dope bags would be enough of a hint. Mail or UPS, I didn' t care, the only thing I was sure of is that it wasn' t going to be a personal delivery. I wanted out of the life; I didn' t want to end up like Tony, buried in a expensive suit in a grave among defunct smoke stacks, or like Sonia, as shark bait. Debbie' s idea was to keep the money in the briefcase and go to Texas and sell the stuff to her friends and then split.
" Split? What do you mean by that?" I asked. We were sitting in my truck. She smoked a cigarette held by shaking hands and mine shook empty over the steering wheel. We were parked at a McDonalds, not knowing where to go next.
" Split, you know, take off with the money." She smoked hard, consuming her cigarette in minutes.
"And live the rest of our lives waiting for Ortega to show up? I don' t think so." She didn' t answer but lit another cigarette.
"Let me ask you," I said. "The money we get, do we go half and half and then each of us split each way?" She looked at me and for once the smoke out of her nostrils came out slowly, in along draft that lasted forever. I knew she had hinted at us running away together and now I was putting the ball back in her side. Lether answer that prickly question.
"If that is what you want, yes," she said, almost a reproach. And there was that look, the same look she gave me sitting on the toilet that day, that scared look as if I had that something that would make her life end like a movie, as if it was up to me to give her the elixir that would right all the wrongs and give her peace. The money and the dope went out of focus. Debbie looked frail, scared, in need, and I didn' t know what to do.
"What do you want?" I asked in a whisper. She swallowed hard and looked straight ahead.
"Does it make a difference?"
She started crying.
My everlasting awkwardness with women manifested itself and I just sat like a frozen stick, unable to do a thing. After a few minutes of sobbing I managed to say I was sorry. I was not sure if that is what she wanted to hear or what I was sorry for but it did the job. She stopped crying and wiped the tears off her bruised face.
"I' m sorry too." She looked away from me.
What was she expecting me to say? Let' s split together, go to Las Vegas and get married? She a whore, a junkie, a killer? The derisive terms against her turned against me when I realized that I wasn' t much better than her: a drug smuggler, a soldier for a drug king, the one who buried friends and lied to their families. My head spun. I didn' t know if I was angry, or happy to be alive, or worried to death, I just didn' t know if I should crawl under a rock or grab Debbie and kiss her in the mouth, and I didn' t know if I wanted to kiss her because I cared for her or because she had saved my miserable life. But at the end I did nothing, I just sat there and waited for the turmoil in my mind to settle and let my head cool because a cool head is what I needed to stop getting deeper into the hell I was getting sucked into.
"These people in Texas, can we trust them?" That was a stupid question, when it came to drugs, and could I really trust Debbie? Of course I could, to a point, she and I were emotionally tight beyond comprehension and reason. Some fools may call this unseen bond love. For me, it was just some spiritual link that I could not describe. If it were love, I wouldn' t know, such thing had never happened to me. But she was a dope head, and that chemical pull had no loyalties and recognized no master but itself. Be aware, I reminded myself.
"Yes, we can. If you don' t try to screw them they won' t screw you."
Mailing a gym bag leaking coke was not a good idea. Shipping a bag full of money wasn' t as dangerous. An idea started to form, a workable idea that perhaps might work and might let me off the hook with Ortega.
"Listen then," I said to Debbie. "We sell this shit to your buddies, fair market value. That money is ours. The money here, ” I patted the briefcase between us, “ is Ortega' s, and I' m going to mail it to him."
"Go on," she said, knowing well that there was more to the story.
"I will take my cut from his money, what he had promised me for the delivery. It seems like a fair and square deal to me."
"You want to cover your back, don' t you?"
"I do. I' m not sure if that will keep Ortega from coming after me, or my dad, but it is worth a shot."
"It' s your shit honey. Do what you think is best."
"What do you think?"
She shrugged as if money was not the issue. Splitting with me was, but what did I have to offer to a drug queen and a prostitute? I had nothing. A promise for a better life as thin as a razor blade and as liable to hurt her.
I cranked the truck and we headed west with our drugs, money, fears and hopes. I kept on looking in my view mirror for blue lights chasing after us. It would be a long trip. Lost in my selfish thoughts I didn’ t bother to ask Debbie if she wanted any Ibuprofen for her swollen face until we were almost out of Louisiana. Sometimes I can be a prick.
Debbie had not bullshitted me and the deal went down as a transaction among gentlemen. I took Ortega’ s money, took my cut plus a little bit more, put Ortega' s cut in a box – mostly all of the money- and special delivered the damned thing through the mail. The Postmaster General bitches about sending cash in the mail, but out of all my latest crimes, this was the lesser one. The money from the sale of the hick’ s dope I’ ll split with Debbie.
I stand in front of Debbie. Now that she is back among friends, her eagerness to split and go with me seems less obvious. I don' t know and I' m not sure about that. I cannot read other human' s desires. My guesses are at best somewhere near the mark when they are not completely off.
"Here is your dough," I say, and I give her a huge wad of cash, no small bills. She takes the money with one hand and holds it behind her back. Didn' t bother to count it or even look at it. She looks at me again as if I were the master of her destiny. I' m just a scared to death schnook that wants to get out of this criminal life in a hurry and for good. We are standing outside, next to my truck, under an early morning big sky dotted with lazy nimbus clouds drifting east. This is one of those decisive moments that has the peculiar and unique characteristic of showing itself as such in the present. I know that what I say or fail to say will determine the rest of my life, and her life too.
I' m looking at Debbie while my mind gets clobbered with what if' s and why nots and doubts. A whore and a junkie; she was there for me when it really mattered; a junkie and a whore and a criminal. Look who is talking. Dad, meet Debbie the hooker. She snorts coke for a hobby. She saved my life. Damn it; I don' t know what to think. Perhaps I shouldn' t think and should let my emotions take over instead, do something from my heart and not my brain. I remember Tony and my brainless decision to follow in his steps. This is not the same thing, I say to myself. Yes it is, you dummy. As the minutes go by common sense gets the upper hand over the emotions (oh God, I want her by my side; I want her to smile at me every morning of my life).Living with a junkie is not living.
She lowers her eyes. Perhaps she has seen in mine what she didn' t want to see.
"Good bye Debbie, and thanks," I say.
"Good bye," she says. "And thank you too." She is now looking at me again, with sad eyes. I resist my urge to embrace her and kiss her, kiss her on the mouth. I walk to my truck and I feel her eyes burning on my back, pleading for what I cannot deliver, for what my cowardice won' t let me do. I drive away from her and we wave good bye to each other. I see her in my rearview mirror, still standing on the street, both hands behind her back and it feels like some part of me has been left back there with her. A junkie and a whore, good God. I hit the gas and leave Dallas in a hurry, not wanting to look back, afraid of what I may see.
The narrow county roads north of Dallas are fun with so many curves. Debbie down shifts before entering one. The engine revs up and the little MG convertible grips the road on almost two wheels. Before the car is out of the turn, she accelerates and when the car is again facing a straight road, it already has picked up good speed. She up shifts and watches the speedometer go up. There is a buzz of speed in her head, mixed with a buzz of booze and coke. Life is grand.
Her blond hair flies in the air and whips around her face. The money Ken gave her has paid for the car, and the booze, and the drugs and many other things already used up and gone but she doesn' t worry about money spent because there is always more money when drugs are involved. Ken is gone and so is her idea of splitting and starting anew somewhere else. Still, despite the money and the fun, there is an emptiness inside her, a hole where friendship and love and care for others is missing. All she knows how to do is to take but to Ken she wanted to give, she wanted to run the risk of being fooled and taken for a ride because she felt that Ken wouldn' t do that to her. The thought of sharing her feelings and exposing her heart scared her to death but still didn' t stop her for wanting it.
Ken was gone. She could see why; he had enough. He has a future with his flying thing, and has a dad who needs him. She has nothing he needs, nothing he cannot find somewhere for far less headache and without complications. What was she thinking? She was not girl friend material; not even friend material. She just takes what she cans and enjoys it until it is depleted; nobody else matters because nobody else thinks she matters.
Not even Ken.
Hedgerows fly by. The stop sign flies by. A car pulls out of a cut in the hedgerow to her right. Debbie doesn' t slam her brakes; instead, her convertible smashes into the side of the car in front of her. Debbie remembers the horrified face of the woman at the wheel, her huge eyes, the mouth open in a soundless cry. There is an explosion of metal and glass and a jolt and an instant numbness before consciousness disappear.
After the Dallas affair I drove straight to Youngstown to see my dad and try to explain things. Had he ever suspected what I was doing for a living? Probably. After bringing back Tony' s body with a belly full of holes I imagine that the gossip about our business down south had reached the inconceivable and the unbelievable but somewhere among the rubbish of tales and lies many folks had probably guessed what we were up to. Even before Tony' s funeral, when I bought and paid for with cash for my dad' s new truck, the old man gave me a look of disapproval that told me he knew something wasn' t right even though he said nothing. I made stories up about how I was working for this South American tycoon and how well I was getting paid to fly him around in his big jet. From flying bank checks and flipping burgers to be the anointed driver of the jet set; that was quite a leap and I knew that my dad didn' t buy the story. Besides, I' m not a good liar. I don' t know if at the time he kept his mouth shut because he couldn' t or didn' t want to contradict me, or because he figured that I was old enough to know what I was doing. These thoughts and the fabrication of an explanation and its delivery kept me occupied while the miles went by, driving in the company of my shame and my fears.
The day I had to return back south, after burying Tony, my dad stood next to my truck and said," Son, I think you need to quit that flying job you got." His grimace showed his feelings better than his words. I said nothing. Before I could make up any excuses my dad turned his back on me and walked back into the little clapboard house that had been our home since before I was born. He never looked back. Was he crying? Was he pissed off? Both? I don' t know and I don' t want to speculate. All I knew for sure was that he didn' t approve of my flying job. I couldn' t blame him. I was forcing on my dad the unsavory task of having to face Tony’ s parents almost everyday and be ashamed that his son was still alive and theirs was not. The old man didn' t deserve that crap.
Despite knowing I was hurting my dad, Youngstown and its misery had turned my stomach; I didn' t want to live from day to day on a few dollars, ever again, to get old and haggard and have to go to a funeral in threadbare cheap suits and shoes no better than cardboard. I ran out of Youngstown haunted by the hard times I saw in its people and its buildings and sought shelter in Ortega' s open arms.
After watching Sonia get whacked, of course, my attitude reversed. There is nothing like the sight of brains on a deck to make a person see things with a new perspective. There was nothing that could have stopped Ortega from spilling my brains on that deck that same day. That, as the cliche says, was an eye opener.
My dad was staying in the basement of an old Army buddy. Together they had faced the Chinese volunteers in Korea and together they now watched for… something. Mustached hitmen wearing dark glasses and driving big black cars? Cuban killers in guayabera shirts smoking big cigars? Brown faced killers with black hair disguised as telephone repairmen? Nobody knew but just to be safe my dad had avoided being seen in public and nobody knew where he was. Paranoia is a good thing when the enemy is unknown.
I met him in the dark and damp basement. It pained me to see him hiding like this because of my own troubles that had nothing to do with him.
"I' m sorry about this mess," I said.
"How are you holding up?"
"Fine, I think. I owe nothing to those guys and I quit fair and square."
My dad could see that my expression didn' t match the confidence of my speech.
"But you ain' t sure that they won' t come after you anyway."
I sighed. "No. I' m not sure. Like in a bad gangster movie, I' m the guy who knows too much."
The old man looked at me with sorrow printed on his face, sorrow not for him but for me.
"Where you some kind of capo for those guys?"
"Dad! You know me," I protested. "I was just the driver of drug smuggling airplanes, a gofer. I don' t even have agun!"
"What about Tony?" he asked.
"He? Well, he wished he could have been a big shot, but he was just a small time hustler…" and I proceeded to tell the old man the tale of the dismissal of Tony Szpiganowicz and how he came to die in my airplane. It felt good to let that off my chest.
"That one," my dad said after I was done," he died happy."
I had never thought of that, of Tony dying happy, shooting it out with truckloads of Cubans, going down in a blaze of glory and bullets. I was not cut out for that kind of glory. I wouldn' t feel too happy to see my blood pooling on the floor of an airplane flying a few feet above the Caribbean, with more blood on the floor than inside me.
"After a long silence I said my words of wisdom," I fucked up dad."
"No kidding. Live and learn, you dummy," said my dad. He showed neither anger nor disappointment. He was ready to move on, more willing than I was. I could picture Johnny in his dirty apron sitting next to my dad and winking at eye at me. I told you so, you dummy.
The sun beats down on McCarran airport and a wind coming from the desert across runways and taxiways blows through the buildings that shimmer behind the dancing heat. Inside the pilot' s lounge things are cool thanks to the miracle of air conditioning, a miracle dwarfed by the miracle of Las Vegas sprouting in the middle of what should be a death valley devoid of water and flora. A miracle within a miracle within a miracle, thinks Ken, sitting at the lounge in his black tie and white shirt with three-bar copilot' s epaulets. He is thankful for having landed a real flying job. It isn' t an airline job but it is close enough, as they say, for government work. Flying sightseers over the Grand Canyon is an auspicious beginning. His logbook is fattening up with multi engine turboprop time under Part 135, his springboard to the jet cockpits that roar in and out of Las Vegas day and night.
Leaving his past behind feels like getting out of the suffocating darkness of a burlap sack, emerging like the Great Houdini from his confinement into a bright future with his defeated shackles dangling harmlessly from his wrists and ankles.
His dad had refused to leave Youngstown and had even refused to move out of his old house to somewhere else in town.
"I built this house for your mother and I' m gonna die in it," he had said, and Ken had believed him. There was no point in fighting the old man' s stubbornness, plus his dad wasn' t a dummy; he was rather capable of taking care of himself with the help of a sawed off double barrel shotgun and his old.45 pistol.
Ortega had not shown any signs of displeasure, not yet, about the way they had ended their businesses relationship, and that was rather comforting; still, Ken can' t help waking up in the middle of the night, his nerves touched by the live wire of a noise or a shadow coming from the darkness. He sleeps behind a dead bolted door with a revolver under his pillow. Time, Ken thinks and wants to believe, will remove the ghosts that still haunt him. The memories of Sonia' s head exploding and Tony' s blood in his hands will fade into just a discomforting and sporadic thought, not to bother him in his sleep anymore.
"Kenneth Banaczyk!" a voice commands behind Ken. He turns around on his chair to face a group of men in suits. The one that spoke is holding a badge in his open hand.
" U.S. Marshals. Please stand up."
The sound of the handcuffs snapping around his wrists in the pilot' s lounge, under the eyes of his fellow pilots and chief pilot, the unsavory degradation of being escorted out like a criminal, like the criminal he was, to the waiting cars outside, the surprised faces of his coworkers behind the windows, that humiliation will haunt Ken for the rest of his life.
Inside the car, between marshals, Ken sees himself inside a thick and oppressing burlap bag, hands and feet tied by the strongest of steels and a heavy chain choking his neck, and he ready to be dropped into a cold and bottomless sea.