I stepped out of the Bon Soir, into a night damp and gamy with exhaust, sweat and blood, tripping over the body sprawled in front of the door. I didn’t know his name, but I’d seen him around the club. This didn’t exactly seem like the best time for introductions. He wasn’t paying much attention to me anyway, he was pretty intent on trying to keep his insides inside. Someone had blown away a lot of his outsides. He was slumped against the doorway, just staring down to where his navel was when he had one, trying to figure out what had happened, how to make it go away and how all those intestines had ever managed to fit inside him to begin with.
The coke wars had started and they weren’t going away.
Just what is the proper etiquette when you see your first gunshot wound? Your first drug war casualty? I’m a runner by nature. When things don’t make sense, when you get too close, when you love me too much, when everything gets too too, I keep moving, I run. It’s what I know. So, I stepped over the bleeding boy and hailed a cab.
There was a lot of coke going through the Bon Soir – a lot of coke meant a lot of coke dealers. The quickest way to increase the profit margin of any concern is to eliminate competition. The boy who lost his stomach was the first casualty I saw.
Two days later two small Latinas glided down the stairs, scanning the joint. Small girls with dark hair and lean muscular arms. Eyes shining in the darkness. Each with a pistol in her hand. Each with a purpose.
I don’t know much,
if I did, I wouldn’tve come back after the night of the bleeding boy.
But I know enough
not to get between
predator and prey.
I nodded at Floyd, holder of the key to the service entrance. He pushed me ahead of him, his fat hand wedged between my shoulder blades, pushing me into the back room, past cases of beer and cartons of cigarettes. We were already on the street when we heard the first gun shot. Pop. Small and distant, like the crack of whip. Muffled by the cement walls, the loud music and the night.
“Okay Superman,” I linked my arm through his as we walked away from the madness into the dark,”Where to now?”
“The Plaza. I’ll take you to the Plaza. I’ll pay you, we’ll order room service. I’ll….”
He was sweating from climbing the stairs, from the fear, from the excitement. Fuck that, he was always sweating because he was a Sweaty. Fat. Man. The standing offer was three hundred dollars. I wanted to be a whore. I wanted money for sex. If Sharon could do it, so could I. But, good God. Floyd? I owed him for getting me out the back, but I didn’t think I owed him that big.
“...take care of you. I’ll….” A police car rushed passed us, cutting him off. Sirens and lights flashing and screaming, the wrong way on a one way street. It jumped the curb in front of the club. Pop. Pop. Two more shots downstairs. Barely audible now, we turned the corner. He wiped his face with a handkerchief and stood waiting for me to answer.
“Let’s just get some breakfast for now, OK, Floyd?” I took the handkerchief and gently dabbed the sweat off his forehead, around his upper lip and steered him in the direction of the Waverly Diner.
I took a few days off to think things over. The idea of turning a trick turned me on, like being on stage for the first time. Men wanting me enough to pay me. Begging to be able to give me money for something as simple as pussy. It’s not like all the sex I was having was always fun. I didn’t like fucking Short anymore, but I did. I would make JJ so proud of me, prove to him I had the right stuff. But Floyd …?
I’d been looking at a little blue Ford Pinto a kid on my block was selling for $325. I’d only need to come up with another $25. I could manage that.
Nah. Forget it. Bad idea.
There was no way I could fuck the Fat Man.
I let go of the idea and just hung with the boys. Night came, and with night, the Bon Soir and barely listening to Floyd drone on about who cares what as long as he keeps buying; watching Shortrun run his game on some other chick, some little PR chick with her hair dyed blonde.
I keep an eyeball on the staircase over my cocktail, in case someone cute shows up to rescue me from this boredom. Even one of the drag queens would be better than being trapped by this human wall of flesh because truthfully, I’m not sure there’s enough vodka in the bar to make the Fat Man even vaguely interesting for much longer.
The double doors at the top of the stairs open out into the night. A crowd of guys I don’t know slowly fill the doorway. Latinos. Too well dressed for the Bon Soir. Italian suits, soft leather shoes, well groomed. Close shaven.
They start down the stairs one at a time.
Surveying the dance floor,
they walk
soundlessly,
slowly,
carefully
down the red carpeted stairs.
Uzi’s hanging loosely at their sides.
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Posted November 12, 2009 at 5:27 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1978, Bon Soir, dirty boys, drinking, drugs, Greenwich Village. Bookmark this post. Follow any comments @ RSS feed for this post.
