flickr photo courtesy of nasrulekram
“J? I know it’s early, but…”
9 AM. I’d only just crawled into the loft bed when the phone rang; I was still playing solitaire, obsessively. I play three games, every night. I have to win, or lose, three in a row before I’m allowed to sleep. I was so wired even if I could get the cards to work right…but Laurie? She was never up this early, or this late, depending on which side of life you’re looking at it from.
“What’s wrong Lo?”
“Your friend. The guy…from last night? His car wouldn’t start, he said. He just wanted to use the phone. I thought, I thought you were still with him, out in the car… but you’re home. And, and he’s here…and… waiting for the tow truck, I guess, and I know it’s…I thought you could come back and…
“Lo? Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
“No.”
“Scared?
“No. Maybe..yes.”
“Sit tight, I’m on my way. Say whatever you think you need to say to make him happy. He’s crazy Lo, you understand? Crazy. But, he’s just fucking with your head. He’ll leave with me, so, really, no worries, okay? He’s watching you talk on the phone with me, isn’t he?”
“Uh huh.”
Every time we go out, me and the Big Man, we stop at the diner on Eighth Ave, across from Piper’s building and around the corner from Possible 20. P20 is supposed to be a jazz joint, but it’s really just one more pimp bar. Piper’s building is crawling with pimps, too. My neighborhood has junkies, hers has got a pimp infestation. A pimpfestation. Anyway, the Big Man gets me broiled lobster with melted butter and a baked potato. To go.
Piper doesn’t want him in her apartment, P20 closes at 4am and he won’t let me eat in the car.
My girls worked hard to pay for this car, he says. You can’t be disrespecting them with that fish stank, spilling butter on my leather. Lots of good ass got sold to pay for that white leather and not a dollar’a that come from you.
So, I wait till we get to 366 or Harry Brooklyn’s or some other afterhours where I sit in a dark corner and eat lobster with my hands while he sits at the poker table.
We never just stay at the diner and eat like regular people.
366 is around the corner from Laurie’s apartment. I thought, just once, it would be nice to not eat in the dark. And she always has wine. We did line after line of the Big Man’s coke, washing it down with wine stolen from the Italian restaurant where she worked.
I meant to be generous, to pay her back for taking care of me. That’s what I meant to do. But once again, I’d brought crazy into Lola’s house. She had no business getting involved with Havasha. Lola was strictly a good girl. She was strictly Long Island Jewish. She didn’t know what to do with a crazy man, what to do when they turned on you. H fractured her cheekbone. You’d think she’d of learned after that, that my boys were out of her league. She should not be allowing them any one of them into her house if they weren’t with me.
Havasha’s crazy couldn’t hold a candle to the Big Man’s.
I was at her door before she could hang up the phone.
The door is unlocked. He’s sitting in a chair across from her; quietly crushing cigarettes into the bare skin of his chest and watching her reaction. One after another. He lights one, takes a few puffs, staring at her, then grinds it into the festering sore in the center of his chest.
His name was Michael and Sammy and JJ. He had other names, I couldn’t know them all, didn’t know if any were real. He was a big man, about six five and somewhere between 280 and 300 lbs. Maybe not. Maybe he’s just grown in my memories.
But he was big and I shoulda seen it coming.
Just another pimp doing just another pimp job. In the antiseptic halls of my intellect I know he didn’t have the right. But deep inside, in the darkness that hides my heart and soul, I know they were right.
I got what I deserved.
Photo credit: CC BY 2.0
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Posted February 2, 2010 at 12:38 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1981, Chelsea, dirty boys, drinking, drugs, Lollipop Lounge, partners in crime, pimps, whores. Bookmark this post. Follow any comments @ RSS feed for this post.
